Speaker 1: Imagine the place where you can escape for a day,
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Speaker 2: Oh hey, it's that guy in your video editing class
Speaker 2: who choose so much gum you're actually worried about him.
Speaker 2: Ali Ward back with another episode of Ologies. So this episode,
Speaker 2: I'm just I'm gonna say this up top, just getting
Speaker 2: out of the way.
Speaker 3: It's out of this world.
Speaker 2: Okay, I said it, It's out of this world. Now
Speaker 2: we're going to start by talking about the passions that
Speaker 2: lead to a career in extraterrestrial alien searches as well
Speaker 2: as laid down some foundations on mission in our Solar system,
Speaker 2: and then we'll get to what could live where. But
Speaker 2: before we get to a live things on distant space bodies,
Speaker 2: let's thank some earthlinks. So thank you to all the
Speaker 2: people who make the podcast possible on Patreon dot com,
Speaker 2: slash Ologies, all my buddies there, to all the folks
Speaker 2: sporting ologies swag from ologiesmerch dot com. Thank you to
Speaker 2: all the folks who are rating and making sure you're
Speaker 2: subscribed and leaving reviews for me to peruse like a
Speaker 2: semi creep, such as, for example, one left by anonymous
Speaker 2: epidemiologists to speak, who said more years of grad school
Speaker 2: than I like to admit tends to hamper my ability
Speaker 2: to talk about my research without being boring, condescending, inaccurate,
Speaker 2: or worse all three. I love this podcast because it
Speaker 2: helps me figure out how to talk about my own
Speaker 2: work in a way that is true but hopefully relatable.
Speaker 2: I'm going to say I think a lot of folks
Speaker 2: listening probably related to that. So boom, there you go. Okay, astrobiology,
Speaker 2: let's get to it. Once called exobiology, but let's consult
Speaker 2: the grip, shall we. So astro comes from the word
Speaker 2: for star, and biology has its roots in the verb
Speaker 2: to live. So what is out there living on those
Speaker 2: ding dang stars? What's on the planets? That's the big question?
Speaker 2: Is anything alive out there? What are the odds?
Speaker 3: Is it big?
Speaker 2: Is it small? Is it cooler than us? So to
Speaker 2: get some answers, will consult a professional. So over the
Speaker 2: course of eleven months and twenty seven gentle desperate emails
Speaker 2: for me. This ologist kindly obliged, and the resulting interview
Speaker 2: is I was literally about to say stellar. I'm not
Speaker 2: going to I swear that was an accident, but it
Speaker 2: was a stellar interview.
Speaker 3: He's such a great dude.
Speaker 2: So he has been a researcher at the SETI Institute,
Speaker 2: the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence that was founded by Carl
Speaker 2: Sagan and Frank Drake. He's a National geographic explorer who
Speaker 2: has stretched the Arctic and down to the depths of
Speaker 2: the Sea. You may have seen him in James Cameron
Speaker 2: Aliens of the Deep and is currently the Deputy Chief
Speaker 2: Scientist for Solar System Exploration at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Speaker 2: in Pasadena, California. And side note, the opinions he expresses
Speaker 2: therein are his own and not those of JPL or NASA,
Speaker 2: because when you're in charge of looking for space aliens
Speaker 2: from NASA, you got to toss out some disclaimers. He
Speaker 2: stopped by last week after work and we settled in
Speaker 2: for an evening talk about icy moons and space drills,
Speaker 2: ty extraterrestrials sci fi movies, extremophile tartar grades, subsurface oceans, squirrels, ghosts. Okay,
Speaker 2: I brought up the ghost I'm sorry, various voyages made
Speaker 2: by NASA spacecraft and essentially what is lurking in the
Speaker 2: great darkness of the universe and doesn't want to kill us?
Speaker 2: So make some space in your brain for the brilliant
Speaker 2: and wonderful astrobiologist, doctor Kevin Peter Hand. Okay, that's what
Speaker 2: I thought, But just in case it was hond, I've
Speaker 2: never said it aloud.
Speaker 3: I thought i'd ask.
Speaker 2: Now, you are an astrobiologist, correct, when you toss that
Speaker 2: out at parties?
Speaker 3: Do people know what that means?
Speaker 4: No, because I don't toss it out at parties.
Speaker 3: That's one way to avoid that. What exactly does it mean?
Speaker 4: It's a it's a very good question, many different ways
Speaker 4: to answer it, but simply put, astrobiology is the study
Speaker 4: of the living universe. And yeah, that's that's it, in
Speaker 4: a nutshell.
Speaker 2: The study of the living universe. So this is excluding
Speaker 2: rocks air.
Speaker 4: Well, keep going and welcome back to some of that.
Speaker 3: Rocks light cars.
Speaker 4: So what's important about it being the study of the
Speaker 4: living universe is that Oftentimes when people think about astrobiology,
Speaker 4: they say, you know, okay, this is the search for
Speaker 4: life beyond Earth, And that's correct, that's certainly part of astrobiology.
Speaker 4: But what's also very central to astrobiology is the study
Speaker 4: of the origin, evolution, and future of life on Earth.
Speaker 4: Where did we come from, where are we going? How
Speaker 4: did life originate? And so when you think about the
Speaker 4: living universe, of course, right now all we know of
Speaker 4: is life on Earth. We have yet to find even
Speaker 4: a little speck of life beyond Earth. But based on
Speaker 4: what we know from life on Earth, and based on
Speaker 4: what we know about the other major sciences physics, chemistry, geology,
Speaker 4: we can make the prediction that, if the conditions are right,
Speaker 4: life should potentially arise beyond Earth.
Speaker 2: So to be an interplanetary alien hunter it helps to
Speaker 2: have a background that's a bit interdisciplinary. So Kevin doctor
Speaker 2: Hand got his bachelors from Dartmouth and physics with a
Speaker 2: minor in astronomy and studied some psychology in there as well,
Speaker 2: then went on to get a master's at Stanford in
Speaker 2: mechanical engineering with a focus on robots. He continued on
Speaker 2: at Stanford there for a PhD and his dissertation was
Speaker 2: titled on the Physics and Chemistry of the ice shell
Speaker 2: and subsurface Ocean of Europa. It used Galileo spacecraft magnetometer data.
Speaker 2: More on that later. Now. The abstract for Kevin's dissertation
Speaker 2: uses the term holophilic organisms, and yes, I look that
Speaker 2: shit up, and halophilic means I love me some salt
Speaker 2: in science talk. So next time you single handedly finish
Speaker 2: off the onion dip at a party, don't be shamed
Speaker 2: to say I'm a halophile. Just own it, salty bitches.
Speaker 3: How did you start to get into this field?
Speaker 2: Were you more of an astro nerd or a biology nerd,
Speaker 2: or like an alien nerd?
Speaker 4: What was your history? Sorry for the cough, but yeah,
Speaker 4: I don't know. I'm a bit of an intellectual platypus
Speaker 4: in that so I studied physics and astronomy and psychology
Speaker 4: and undergrad and part of the rationale for the psychology was, well,
Speaker 4: let's say we do get a signal from extraterrestrial intelligence,
Speaker 4: how do we with our five senses are senses that
Speaker 4: evolved under the conditions that planet Earth has presented us with.
Speaker 4: But from a just captivation standpoint, my curiosity and my
Speaker 4: obsession with this question started at a young age and
Speaker 4: just looking up at the at the night sky, did.
Speaker 3: You see e T? Did you see aliens?
Speaker 2: Like there's no lack of aliens in pop culture? Yes,
Speaker 2: what's your what's your flavor? What's your flavor of alien entertainment?
Speaker 4: Well that's that's a broad question. Well, so to your
Speaker 4: question of of E T. As a as a young child,
Speaker 4: I grew up in a small town in Vermont, and
Speaker 4: so the night sky of Vermont captivated my imagination early on.
Speaker 4: You it's hard to grow up under a clear night
Speaker 4: sky and not wonder what could be out there. And
Speaker 4: so that coupled with Carl Sagan's Cosmos, both the TV
Speaker 4: series and his books, uh and some great science teachers
Speaker 4: early on, those were all big influenced.
Speaker 1: The cosmos is were rich beyond measure.
Speaker 5: The total number of stars and you know, Verse is larger.
Speaker 4: Than all the grains of sand, than all the beaches
Speaker 4: of the planet Earth. And then yeah, ET Close Encounters
Speaker 4: of the Third kind. And not only did I watch ET,
Speaker 4: but I also was ET for Halloween. Nice.
Speaker 3: How many years in a row?
Speaker 4: Still going still? Yeah, I haven't stopped all yet. As
Speaker 4: a kid, my mom soda and et outfit for me,
Speaker 4: and I just lived in that thing.
Speaker 2: That's the best I can just imagine. They're like Kevin,
Speaker 2: it's February.
Speaker 4: Shut up, not taking it off.
Speaker 2: So when looking for alien life real quick, let's get
Speaker 2: some stats out of the way. Now, the Big Bang
Speaker 2: happened approximately thirteen point eight billion years ago. For more
Speaker 2: on that, you can see the two parter with cosmologist
Speaker 2: doctor Katie Mack. And Earth has been around for four
Speaker 2: point five billion years, and there's evidence that life began
Speaker 2: on our planet at least three point seven billion years ago,
Speaker 2: maybe even over four billion years ago. So now we
Speaker 2: are one. It's a bitsy tan ten ten pale blue
Speaker 2: dot in the cosmos, but we know there are a
Speaker 2: lot of grains of sand out there, so how many
Speaker 2: could have life. This is where you just grab an
Speaker 2: envelope and flip it over because it's time for the
Speaker 2: Drake equation. So Frank Drake. He's a round faced man
Speaker 2: of eighty eight who looks like he could play a
Speaker 2: grandpa in an oatmeal commercial. He's one of the founders
Speaker 2: of SETI, and in their very first meeting in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty one, he busted out the Drake equation, posing that
Speaker 2: the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which communication
Speaker 2: might be possible is based on ready whole bunch of math.
Speaker 2: Here we go the rate of star formation, the fraction
Speaker 2: of those stars that even have planets, and the number
Speaker 2: of planets per star in a habitable zone, and then
Speaker 2: the fraction that actually do the develop life, the fraction
Speaker 2: of those planets that have in intelligent life or civilization,
Speaker 2: and then the fraction of those civilizations that make technology.
Speaker 2: They can communicate their own existence to the universe times
Speaker 2: a length of time they're beaming there, hey, into the cosmos.
Speaker 2: So this Drake equation can come up with different outcomes
Speaker 2: that vary widely depending on your estimations for all those factors,
Speaker 2: but overwhelmingly, at the very most, our chances of being
Speaker 2: alone are thirty percent, just thirty percent, based on some calculations.
Speaker 2: It came out last summer by some Oxford astrobiologists, which
Speaker 2: included someone on the team named Ander Sandberg, not to
Speaker 2: be confused with Brooklyn nine nine's Andy Sandberg.
Speaker 4: Welcome to the Space of Olympics a year thirty twenty two.
Speaker 2: Anyway, that back of the envelope deduction is called a
Speaker 2: Fermi problem. This was named after the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi,
Speaker 2: who's known for those equations like how many piano tuners
Speaker 2: are there in Chicago? First you gott figure out how
Speaker 2: many people are in Chicago, how many people have pianos,
Speaker 2: how many people need tuners, blah blah blah blah blah. Also,
Speaker 2: Fermi famously uttered what is now known as Fermi's paradox
Speaker 2: when discussing astrobiology over a summer luncheon in nineteen fifty.
Speaker 2: Discussing the seeming absence of aliens, he asked, informally, oh,
Speaker 2: where is everybody?
Speaker 1: Where?
Speaker 4: Is everybody? Where?
Speaker 3: Is everybody?
Speaker 4: Where's everybody?
Speaker 3: Where? Is everybody? Everybody?
Speaker 1: Where?
Speaker 3: Is everybody?
Speaker 2: Fermi's paradox has become one of the smartest stupid questions
Speaker 2: ever asked. Now, speaking of those questions, back to Kevin.
Speaker 2: When Kevin was an undergrad, he interned at the NASA
Speaker 2: Ames Research Center, and he went to see his hero,
Speaker 2: Frank Drake give a talk.
Speaker 4: I love this story and I was obsessed with this
Speaker 4: stuff since I was a little kid. Got to see
Speaker 4: Frank Drake give a talk and afterward with a lot
Speaker 4: of trepidation, Doctor Drake, I just had a little question
Speaker 4: for you, and it's probably crazy, et cetera. And I said, so,
Speaker 4: if we think about life on Earth, what do you
Speaker 4: think is going to be the next tool using communicating
Speaker 4: uh organism. That means that's not a crazy question, it's
Speaker 4: it's it's obviously going to be squirrels and raccoons. Mind blown, uh,
Speaker 4: And you can you explained to his rationale which is
Speaker 4: quite sound, which is that those creatures are coexisting with
Speaker 4: us right now and they are problem solving.
Speaker 2: My god, he's going to delight my dad, who has
Speaker 2: now constructed four squirrel houses on the property. It's like
Speaker 2: I am welcoming the next species.
Speaker 4: And I like Frank's logic. And that was that was
Speaker 4: a fond memory that I have of my first interaction
Speaker 4: with a living, breathing scientist, and to some extent having
Speaker 4: my uh, crazy obsession validated by his like, oh, great question.
Speaker 4: Raccoons and squirrels the best.
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: So ask some more people stupid questions because they're great questions. Also,
Speaker 2: hide your wallet from raccoons. Don't tell any of your
Speaker 2: secrets to squirrels. Dad now in his work Kevin has
Speaker 2: traveled to all sorts of biomes, but he says that
Speaker 2: if you have the travel bug, you don't have to
Speaker 2: do astrobiology specifically to have field work adventures kind of
Speaker 2: any Earth science will get you out about. Also side note,
Speaker 2: there's a real need for folks who want to study geobiology,
Speaker 2: which is the study of microbes that eat rocks. Anyway,
Speaker 2: he loves to bop around for science.
Speaker 4: I grew up doing a lot of skiing, climbing, mountaineering,
Speaker 4: various things, and I've got to get out and see
Speaker 4: planet Earth. And it's exploring Planet Earth is part of
Speaker 4: what grounds me, centers me, connects me back with the
Speaker 4: night sky and helps reignite that that curiosity and that
Speaker 4: that passion for exploration and discovery. Uh. And so I
Speaker 4: feel very fortunate that I've been able to have some
Speaker 4: research programs where I've gone to Antarctica, made dives in
Speaker 4: submersibles to the bottom of to some hydrothermal vents and
Speaker 4: orosi and gone up to uh the Arctic and explored
Speaker 4: icy environments up there. Yeah. So it's uh, it's been
Speaker 4: amazing going to those places.
Speaker 2: Now, what is a day in the life of an astrobiologist, like, like,
Speaker 2: what does your work look like?
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, well that's there's many different layers to that.
Speaker 4: My is so, I'm a scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Speaker 4: and part of the job of scientists at JPL is
Speaker 4: not only to do their own research and to publish papers,
Speaker 4: publisher parish, et cetera, et cetera, write proposals and get
Speaker 4: in that that hamster wheel of of of research. But
Speaker 4: we also are very engaged with the formulation and implementation
Speaker 4: of missions. Missions to all sorts of different places, small objects,
Speaker 4: big objects, nearby objects, far away objects. And for me,
Speaker 4: what that means is a focus on worlds in our
Speaker 4: solar system that could harbor life.
Speaker 2: Sorry, I'm just a mouth therament over here.
Speaker 4: I focus most of my time, both from a research
Speaker 4: standpoint and a mission standpoint, on Jupiter's moon Europa and
Speaker 4: to a slightly lesser extent, Saturn's moon Enceladus.
Speaker 2: Why are we looking at moons so much rather than
Speaker 2: the planets?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so this has been one of the big game
Speaker 4: changers in astrobiology. I think people probably appreciate that an
Speaker 4: amazing revolution has happened in our understanding of of planets.
Speaker 4: Existing beyond our own Solar system. This goes back to
Speaker 4: the early nineteen nineties when the first exoplanets were discovered.
Speaker 4: Fast forward to to today, and we've got both ground
Speaker 4: based telescopic observations and spacecraft observations, Kepler being the most
Speaker 4: recent example that have discovered thousands of exoplanets. So I
Speaker 4: think people are for the most part pretty familiar with
Speaker 4: the exoplanet revolution in the prospect for potentially habitable worlds.
Speaker 2: Okay, quick aside, in case you're like, remind me what
Speaker 2: Kepler was all about again. Okay, So this is a
Speaker 2: space telescope that NASA launched in two thousand and nine,
Speaker 2: and it flew around to determine the percentage of Earth
Speaker 2: like planets out there. It weighed about twenty three hundred pounds,
Speaker 2: and I did a bunch of comparisons size wise, it
Speaker 2: was about as big as a hum vy. It scooted around,
Speaker 2: taken dope ass photos, observing five hundred and thirty five
Speaker 2: hundred and six stars. It discovered two thousand, six hundred
Speaker 2: and sixty two exoplanets, and after nine years, way beyond
Speaker 2: its expected lifetime, Kepler ran out of fuel last fall
Speaker 2: in twenty eighteen, it was deactivated with a good night
Speaker 2: command sent for a mission control. It's now just kicking
Speaker 2: it in space millions of miles away orbiting the Sun,
Speaker 2: but its data helped astrobiologists conclude that there may be
Speaker 2: eleven billion Earth like planets orbiting Sun like stars in
Speaker 2: the Milky Way galaxy. Eleven billion planets in the Milky
Speaker 2: Way Galaxy a lot like Earth whoa Also it was
Speaker 2: named after Johann Kepler, who in the sixteen hundreds was
Speaker 2: a contemporary of Tiko Brahe, the Danish astronomer who not
Speaker 2: only had a beer guzzling drunk pet moose that lived
Speaker 2: in his castle, but also had a metal nose after
Speaker 2: a sword fighting incident, and who later died after his
Speaker 2: bladder exploded because he was too polite to go potty
Speaker 2: at a fancy dinner party. For more on that, see
Speaker 2: Selenology Moon episode. But anyway, Kepler changed the game in
Speaker 2: helping discover so many planets that could harbor life.
Speaker 4: The other big game changer, in my opinion, has been
Speaker 4: what I like to call sort of a new Goldilocks.
Speaker 3: I think I see where this is going.
Speaker 4: So in the early days of astronomy and planetary science
Speaker 4: and astrobiology. Back in the sixties, seventies, and eighties, when
Speaker 4: planetary scientists, astronomers, exobiologists thought about what it takes for
Speaker 4: a world to be habitable, that framework was largely based
Speaker 4: on our Earth biases. Wherever we look and find liquid
Speaker 4: water on Earth, we generally find life. Therefore, you need
Speaker 4: liquid water for life, and in order for a planet
Speaker 4: to harbor liquid water, you've got to have liquid water
Speaker 4: on the surface in contact with a nice atmosphere. And
Speaker 4: for a planet to be able to sustain those kind
Speaker 4: of conditions, you have to be at just the right
Speaker 4: distance from your parent star so that you're not too
Speaker 4: hot or not too cold. If you're too close to
Speaker 4: your parent star, like Venuses, then you're too hot and
Speaker 4: you probably boiled off any ocean that you once had.
Speaker 4: If you're too far away like Mars, and maybe some
Speaker 4: of the water froze out or you lost much of
Speaker 4: your water to space. But if you're at the Earth
Speaker 4: Sun distance, then you're in that sort of Goldilocks sweet spot.
Speaker 6: And it was neither too hot nor too cold.
Speaker 4: It was just right, and you can have liquid water
Speaker 4: on the surface of your planet, and potentially it's off
Speaker 4: to the races from a biology stamp, that Goldilock scenario
Speaker 4: has kind of been the paradigm what we've learned in
Speaker 4: the past few decades, and this was largely informed by
Speaker 4: the Voyager spacecraft and then the Galley of spacecraft and
Speaker 4: then the Cassini's spacecraft that went into the Outer Solar System.
Speaker 2: Quick aside, let's do a rapid rundown of these spacecrafts
Speaker 2: for your next pub trivia victory. Okay, ready, So Voyager
Speaker 2: one and two are a set of twin spacecrafts launched
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy seven. They explored all of the giant
Speaker 2: planets of our Outer Solar System. We're talking Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus,
Speaker 2: and Neptune forty eight of their moons, plus a bunch
Speaker 2: of planetary rings, some magnetic fields. So as of November fifth,
Speaker 2: twenty eighteen, both are now exploring interstellar space. This is
Speaker 2: between eleven and thirteen billion miles away. So NASA JPL's
Speaker 2: website has a constantly updated ticker of their location, which
Speaker 2: is kind of like Find My Friends, but for forty
Speaker 2: year old, very famous and respected spacecraft. Now. Galileo was
Speaker 2: launched in nineteen eighty nine. It got to Jupiter nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety five and it orbited the Jovian aka Jupiterium system.
Speaker 2: It did eleven flybys of Jupiter's moon Europa during this
Speaker 2: outer space stint. It went from nineteen eighty nine to
Speaker 2: two thousand and three. Now Cassini was launched in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety seven. This was all about Saturn, and it entered
Speaker 2: Saturn's orbit in two thousand and four. It did two
Speaker 2: flybys of Venus, saw a cool asteroid, checked out Jupiter,
Speaker 2: and it also deployed a lander on Titan, which is
Speaker 2: one of Saturn's moons, in two thousand and five, and
Speaker 2: then we crashed and burned it on purpose in September
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen. Okay, so moons Europa is one of Jupiter's,
Speaker 2: Titan is one of Saturn's. Now, if you already knew
Speaker 2: that awesome, Here's something you might not know. In Scotland,
Speaker 2: it's illegal to walk a pig on a leash.
Speaker 4: Is that these moons of the outer Solar System are
Speaker 4: presenting us with a new Goldilock scenario. It's a Goldilock
Speaker 4: scenario where the energy to maintain and sustain liquid water
Speaker 4: comes not from the energy of your parent star, but
Speaker 4: rather from the energy of tie. It's the tug and
Speaker 4: pull that these moons experience as they go around their
Speaker 4: gas giants or their ice giants, and so the Jovian system.
Speaker 4: The moons of Jupiter are a great example of this.
Speaker 4: There are four large moons Io, your rope Aganamine a chlysto.
Speaker 4: Io does not have an ocean. Io doesn't really have
Speaker 4: any water, Io orbits Jupiter, and Io is tugged to
Speaker 4: such a great degree that it is the most volcanically
Speaker 4: active body in our solar system, more volcanically active than
Speaker 4: the Earth. The volcanoes are erupting on Io right now.
Speaker 4: It's just a beautiful, beautiful gem of a world. And
Speaker 4: it really does kind of look like a gemstone when
Speaker 4: you look at these pictures.
Speaker 3: It's a lava party happening so far away it is.
Speaker 1: It is.
Speaker 4: Break out the popcorn and just watch. So in this
Speaker 4: new Goldilocks paradigm, Io it's kind of like Venus. It's
Speaker 4: got too much tidal energy. It's too closer. It's you know,
Speaker 4: Venus is too close to warm. Io has got too
Speaker 4: much tidal activity. Let's go to the further furthest out
Speaker 4: of the large moons Calisto. Now Calisto, we think it
Speaker 4: does have an ocean trapped beneath a very thick ice shell,
Speaker 4: But Calisto has very little tidal energy dissipation going on
Speaker 4: in it. So in that scenario, Callisto is kind of
Speaker 4: like Mars. It's it's maybe doesn't have quite enough energy
Speaker 4: to really make it an ocean that we could explore
Speaker 4: and think could sustain life today. But in the middle
Speaker 4: we've got Europa and Ganymede, and Europa in particular, we
Speaker 4: think occupies this new Goldilocks sweet spot where it's got
Speaker 4: just the right amount of tidal energy dissipation. So it's
Speaker 4: to sustain a global salty liquid water that's one hundred
Speaker 4: kilometers or sixty miles in depth. Oh my god, yeah,
Speaker 4: that's the right response.
Speaker 3: How deep are are oceans?
Speaker 4: So it's about ten times as deep as our ocean.
Speaker 3: Oh, the smokes the octopods we must have.
Speaker 4: So in the Marianto Trench we're about seven miles deep,
Speaker 4: eleven kilometers down. Europe was ocean ten times as deep.
Speaker 2: So our oceans are seven or so miles deep. But
Speaker 2: where did the water come from? Kevin says, they're two
Speaker 2: sources water from the rocks from which Earth itself formed.
Speaker 2: And then there's what they call water that's exotic in
Speaker 2: its delivery. So coming from comets are asteroids. This is
Speaker 2: like Postmates, but a dirty ball of frozen space ocean
Speaker 2: ding goong, I'll get it.
Speaker 4: And so yeah, water elsewhere in the Solar System was
Speaker 4: delivered to the Earth. And when it comes to finding
Speaker 4: water elsewhere, we now that know that it exists not
Speaker 4: just on Earth but also on our moon and these
Speaker 4: various asteroids, comets, the moons of the outer Solar System,
Speaker 4: in the permafrost of Mars.
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a lot of water out there. And I
Speaker 4: should be clear when I say water, I'm not differentiating
Speaker 4: for the most part. I'm referring to water in ice form.
Speaker 4: Right when we get to Europa in the ocean world's there,
Speaker 4: we are then talking about water in the liquid phase.
Speaker 2: Slichy, sloshy water is what a lot of scientists cologists
Speaker 2: in case you need to use that in a meeting.
Speaker 2: So there's plenty of water on Jupiter's moon Europa, both
Speaker 2: in ice and in liquid form, and is deep. Now,
Speaker 2: could extraterrestrials be lurking in those deep dark waters.
Speaker 4: The Europe is small, It's about the size of our moon.
Speaker 4: It's Europe is about one seventh of the Earth's gravity.
Speaker 4: So when you do the math the pressure within Europa's ocean,
Speaker 4: it's comparable to it's a bit more, but it's comparable
Speaker 4: to the pressure found within the deepest trenches of our ocean.
Speaker 4: Oh and so when we think about, well, you know,
Speaker 4: could life survive within europos ocean, we can actually do
Speaker 4: the experiment and look at places on planet Earth where
Speaker 4: the conditions are comparable and say, oh wow, life found
Speaker 4: a way in that environment that has parameters similar to
Speaker 4: Europa's ocean, or in solidus is ocean, and so on
Speaker 4: and so forth.
Speaker 1: Life will find a way if you want so eloquently
Speaker 1: put it.
Speaker 4: And we can make the sort of biological plausibility connection.
Speaker 2: So Kevin says that they analyze magnetometer data to figure
Speaker 2: out what's creating the gravity fields on those worlds, and
Speaker 2: then with a lot of whiteboard number crunching, came to
Speaker 2: the conclusion that Europa is encrusted in ice with liquid
Speaker 2: salty water below it. But how thick is that magic
Speaker 2: shell of ice? So most of his colleagues would say,
Speaker 2: like twenty kilometers thick, but he's in the minority. He
Speaker 2: thinks it's quite a bit thinner, perhaps less than ten
Speaker 2: kilometers thick. So when do we get to bore into
Speaker 2: it like an icy coconut? While NASA is planning to
Speaker 2: launch the orbiting space.
Speaker 3: Probe that's called the Europa Clipper.
Speaker 2: In about twenty twenty two, and that's going to take
Speaker 2: a bunch of sassy photos and determine some chemical composition.
Speaker 2: It'll set the stage for a chilly, icy Europa landing
Speaker 2: by twenty thirty. What do we call this lander? Well,
Speaker 2: Kevin kicked around the nickname Europa Landing Probe for Surface
Speaker 2: Astrobiology or ELSA.
Speaker 5: Co never bothered me anyway.
Speaker 2: How will they bust through this ice? This isn't a
Speaker 2: crem breulet. At JPL, they're prototyping these robotic arms and
Speaker 2: drills and saws and sampling systems, and some of the
Speaker 2: oceanic diving technology that they're tinkering with has a win
Speaker 2: wind bonus because it's making waves in our own undersea
Speaker 2: exploration for this whole planet we call Earth.
Speaker 3: And now Europa.
Speaker 2: Is that where we're really looking in terms of searching
Speaker 2: for something alive?
Speaker 3: Is that really where all eyes are?
Speaker 4: Kind of on Europa, well, I love to highlight three
Speaker 4: prime ocean world candidates, Europa and Solidus and Titan Titan.
Speaker 4: When we talk about Titan briefly first and we can
Speaker 4: come back to it. Titan is just an amazing world
Speaker 4: with its atmosphere and liquid methane ethane lakes carving out
Speaker 4: its icy surface, and there's liquid water ocean beneath its
Speaker 4: ice crust. And from the standpoint of astrobiology, Titan is
Speaker 4: my favorite place to go and look for weird life.
Speaker 4: And what I mean by weird life is life unlike
Speaker 4: life as we know it. Life as we know it
Speaker 4: is based on liquid water as the solvents the substance
Speaker 4: in which the chemical reactions of life take place, and
Speaker 4: those chemical reactions and the building blocks are of course
Speaker 4: based on carbon. We are a carbon and water based
Speaker 4: life form. On Titan, life would potentially also be carbon based,
Speaker 4: but the solvent might be liquid methane and ethane in
Speaker 4: those lakes that we see on Titan. Could life? Could
Speaker 4: the business of life get done? Could life originate? Is
Speaker 4: there a weird life form that could arise in those
Speaker 4: lakes and seas. I don't know, but I'd sure love
Speaker 4: to get there and explore. And then Titan could, of course,
Speaker 4: within its liquid water ocean beneath its its icy shell,
Speaker 4: harbor water and carbon based life similar to what we
Speaker 4: know and love here on Earth.
Speaker 3: How flammable.
Speaker 4: Can you start titaned on fire? This short answer is no,
Speaker 4: because in order to light something on fire, what do
Speaker 4: you need? Yes, And so Titan's atmosphere as basically no oxygen,
Speaker 4: and so that actually is one of the limiting factors
Speaker 4: for me when I think about the feasibility of life
Speaker 4: on Titan.
Speaker 2: Okay, so back to general habitability. Kevin says liquid water
Speaker 2: is one of the keystones. So what else is on
Speaker 2: our intergalactic shopping list?
Speaker 4: The other keystones for life are that you need the
Speaker 4: building blocks, the stuff that life is made of, the
Speaker 4: bricks and mortar. For us, that's carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen,
Speaker 4: a smattering of some fifty four elements from the periodic table.
Speaker 4: Then the third kind of lesser appreciated keystone is life
Speaker 4: needs energy. It needs a power source. It needs something
Speaker 4: that can sustain the growth and reproduction and the maintenance
Speaker 4: of life. Technically, we call that the redox gradients that
Speaker 4: life harnesses. You bring together a reductant compound that likes
Speaker 4: to give up electrons with an oxygen that likes to
Speaker 4: accept electrons. And for us, we Homo sapiens, that redox
Speaker 4: reaction is eat some carbohydrates, eat some food, and breathe
Speaker 4: in oxygen, and then we do a slow burn in
Speaker 4: our stomachs and biology in us we're glorified campfire man,
Speaker 4: so we're doing a slow burn with our redox chemistry
Speaker 4: inside our bodies.
Speaker 2: So next time you're eating fistfuls of cookie dough, just holler,
Speaker 2: I'm redoxing. Microbes, however, can vary quite a bit and
Speaker 2: have all kinds of metabolic pathways. So by studying how
Speaker 2: they do it at the bottom of trenches and then
Speaker 2: the Arctic and next to volcanoes, we can try to
Speaker 2: determine how those little bibis on other planets and moons
Speaker 2: might go about their business of eating and farting and
Speaker 2: pooping and mating as it were.
Speaker 3: Now on some.
Speaker 2: Moons that may be easier to envision than on others,
Speaker 2: Kevin explains.
Speaker 4: And I think for Enceladus and Europa there probably is
Speaker 4: some redox chemistry, a reductant oxygen coupling that microbes could
Speaker 4: harness potentially quite easily on Titan. The chemical story there
Speaker 4: for redox pairing is a little more complicated than what
Speaker 4: we gotta go. We got to explore, We got to
Speaker 4: get out there and just see because biology doesn't care
Speaker 4: what our hypotheses are. It's just gonna if it can
Speaker 4: take hold, it will.
Speaker 2: And do you think in terms of alien life? Well,
Speaker 2: number one, let me ask this, is it correct to
Speaker 2: call alien life alien life? Extraterrestrials? I mean, aren't we aliens?
Speaker 2: As soon as we go to Europa?
Speaker 3: So why? How are they the aliens?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 3: How what's the proper terminology?
Speaker 4: Yes, frame of reference is important in all of these endeavors.
Speaker 4: So yeah, uh yeah, if you're an intelligent octopus on
Speaker 4: Europa and and our uh spacecraft lands there, then to them,
Speaker 4: we of course are the aliens.
Speaker 3: Right is it weird that we're aliens to someone else?
Speaker 2: Right? Now?
Speaker 4: I love it. Let's just hope we play that Close
Speaker 4: Encounters music bomb.
Speaker 3: And so do you think that when we find life?
Speaker 4: Well, but let's let's dive into that a little bit more.
Speaker 4: But go ahead and say, when do.
Speaker 2: You think we will find teeny tiny critters or do
Speaker 2: you think we'll find crazy translucent mammoths?
Speaker 3: What do you think we might find?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so a lot to kind of unpacking there.
Speaker 2: But.
Speaker 4: First let's change that when, if that's important, because both
Speaker 4: outcomes are incredibly profound. I certainly am excited about the
Speaker 4: prospect of discovering life elsewhere, and that's in part because,
Speaker 4: at a more kind of philosophical and human level, and
Speaker 4: taking off my real sort of science brain, biology is beautiful.
Speaker 4: I love life forms and seeing how life works, and
Speaker 4: so I'm excited by the prospect of biology being out
Speaker 4: there in different ecosystems, different planets, and so I do
Speaker 4: hope it is a when. But there again, the universe
Speaker 4: doesn't care what we want, and so it could be
Speaker 4: that life and the origin of life is a singularity.
Speaker 4: It's only occurred here on Earth, and we are the
Speaker 4: first and only instance of it. And so if we
Speaker 4: do go out and explore and we don't find life elsewhere,
Speaker 4: that also is pretty profound because that means that life
Speaker 4: is rare and and it also puts an even bigger
Speaker 4: onus on us to take care of the only life
Speaker 4: we know. We of course have to do that even
Speaker 4: if we do discover life elsewhere.
Speaker 2: But isn't it kind of like if you're looking for
Speaker 2: your cell phone and you're like, well, I checked my purse,
Speaker 2: it's not there.
Speaker 3: My cell phone doesn't exist.
Speaker 2: And meanwhile, your cell phone could be anywhere, like if
Speaker 2: we go, if we go check places, like, there's an
Speaker 2: infinite number of places we.
Speaker 6: Would have to check on prove it, like you'll almost
Speaker 6: never prove a null result, right, But then.
Speaker 4: So let's let's come back to the other part of
Speaker 4: your question. Were we to find it, would it be small,
Speaker 4: would it be large? Microbial? More complex? And this helps
Speaker 4: me sort of triangulate on one of the aspects of
Speaker 4: the exploration of ocean worlds like Europa, Enceladus, and Titan
Speaker 4: that I think is particularly important, and that is that
Speaker 4: I'm really motivated by the prospect of finding what we
Speaker 4: call extant life as opposed to extinct life, in other words,
Speaker 4: life that is alive today, life that we could see
Speaker 4: and study and understand how it works. And the reason
Speaker 4: for that is because I'm in large part interested in
Speaker 4: the question of is the origin of life easier hard?
Speaker 4: Is there a second origin of life in our own
Speaker 4: backyard here in the Solar system. And the reason for
Speaker 4: that is because if we discover life in our own backyard,
Speaker 4: if we discover a second origin of life, one that
Speaker 4: was not seeded by life on Earth, then that means
Speaker 4: that the origin of life is probably easy. Life arises
Speaker 4: wherever the conditions are right, and we potentially live in
Speaker 4: a biological universe. So looking out at all those exoplanets
Speaker 4: and everything and say, okay, there's a decent chance that
Speaker 4: since we found two instances to independent instances of life
Speaker 4: in our own solar system, the origin of life probably
Speaker 4: proceeds in many different places.
Speaker 2: So we're looking for life in our backyard, i e.
Speaker 2: Our own solar system, because if it arose on its own,
Speaker 2: it would prove that life might be easy. The universe
Speaker 2: might be filled with critters, and if it's still alive
Speaker 2: or extant as opposed to fossilized, we could find out
Speaker 2: if the building blocks and genetic code involving DNA and RNA.
Speaker 2: The whole business of ATP is, as Kevin says, not
Speaker 2: the only game in town. Is there another system besides
Speaker 2: DNA and RNA. This is like asking are there other
Speaker 2: restaurants in your neighborhood, and are they doing good business?
Speaker 3: Are they busy?
Speaker 2: Also? Are they pizza places? Or is this something totally
Speaker 2: different like a Sahi balls? Now would Kevin care about,
Speaker 2: say a shuttered and abandoned restaurant like, for example, extinct
Speaker 2: life on Mars.
Speaker 4: I love Mars. I do some work on Mars.
Speaker 2: I'm sensing there's going to be a however, or a
Speaker 2: butt coming up like you're this sounds like you're breaking
Speaker 2: up with Mars right now.
Speaker 3: Mars, I love you.
Speaker 4: But Mars is absolutely fantastic, and there could be extant
Speaker 4: life on Mars in the in the subsurface of Mars,
Speaker 4: and I hope we explore Mars in that context. But
Speaker 4: right now, our Mars exploration program is primarily focused on
Speaker 4: the past habitability of Mars. And that's for very good reason.
Speaker 4: You look at at the geological and geochemical history of
Speaker 4: Mars and we see that three and a half billion
Speaker 4: years ago, it had flowing water, rivers, lakes, perhaps even
Speaker 4: fast oceans that would have been potentially very earth like
Speaker 4: and great places for life as we know it to
Speaker 4: have existed and thrived. Now today, as for example, the
Speaker 4: Mars curiosity rovers is making its way up Mount sharp
Speaker 4: In on Mars in Gale Crater. Tomorrow it could turn
Speaker 4: a corner and see stromatolites. Stromatolites are or textures in
Speaker 4: rocks that can often be traced back to microbial mats,
Speaker 4: microbes that have worked in a consortia and perhaps lived
Speaker 4: three and a half billion years ago and left behind
Speaker 4: their sort of microbial fossil. That would be astonishing, That
Speaker 4: would be a game changer, like we'd be jumping up
Speaker 4: and down. I'd be super excited about that. But there
Speaker 4: are some limitations. We can't drill into a stromatolite on
Speaker 4: Mars and search for DNA. We can't do that on
Speaker 4: planet Earth. DNA, the large biomolecules of life, do not
Speaker 4: last long in the rock record, So then we'd find
Speaker 4: ourselves at a crossroads. Are these stromatolites from a rock
Speaker 4: on Mars evidence of an independent origin of life on
Speaker 4: Mars billions of years ago, or are they evidence of
Speaker 4: life on Earth that was transported to Mars hitchhiked on
Speaker 4: some ejecta from an asteroid impact which then seated life
Speaker 4: on Mars, or vice versa. It was life on Earth
Speaker 4: seated by this ancient strmatolite. Life form on Mars and
Speaker 4: then came here. So Earth and Mars have got a
Speaker 4: long standing relationship of trading material.
Speaker 2: Let's say turn a corner they find a dancing Martian
Speaker 2: and it's like.
Speaker 3: Surprise, I was waiting to get here. Where have you been?
Speaker 3: It's just like it's got maybe a camelback full of water.
Speaker 3: It's good. Do you think the government would tell us
Speaker 3: how soon before? Like a lay person who know.
Speaker 4: Now you're you're trying to get the real secrets out
Speaker 4: of the alley.
Speaker 2: Listen, I'm asking the questions. I know that you have,
Speaker 2: I know you're wondering this, but like, how soon would
Speaker 2: that come out? Because that would be something that would
Speaker 2: rock every society on Earth to find out that they're aliens.
Speaker 3: Right, people would freak.
Speaker 4: Out if there was a little marching Martian. Yes, that
Speaker 4: would would freak everybody out. Yeah, absolutely, But let's be clear,
Speaker 4: there's his historical president precedent for exact actly this. The
Speaker 4: al eight four double one meteorite, the Mars meteorite, the
Speaker 4: Allen Hills meteorite that was landed in Antarctica and was
Speaker 4: studied and could be determined to have come from Mars
Speaker 4: back in the late nineties, and this actually helped catalyze
Speaker 4: and initiate much of the current field of astronology. Back
Speaker 4: in the late nineties, there was a big press release
Speaker 4: and publications about a set of evidence from studies of
Speaker 4: that asteroid, of that meteorite that pointed to pass life
Speaker 4: on Mars.
Speaker 3: Oly Smokes.
Speaker 4: Bill Clinton got up and said, Hey, look at this.
Speaker 4: How amazing is this.
Speaker 3: This discovery is confirmed, it will surely be one of
Speaker 3: the most stunning insights into our universe that signed ever uncovered.
Speaker 4: Great job, NASA, and it was incredibly exciting for NASA
Speaker 4: in the community. Now, granted, that was a meteorite that
Speaker 4: landed on Earth. It wasn't a little Martian waving to curiosity,
Speaker 4: but even that Martian meteorite created a tremendous amount of excitement.
Speaker 4: Fast forward to today, and just to make sure that
Speaker 4: I put a cap on the Mars meteorite story, most
Speaker 4: scientists who study that meteaite think that probably what was
Speaker 4: seen in that meteorite was contamination from organics on Earth
Speaker 4: and potentially microbes on Earth. Yeah, back to your question,
Speaker 4: if we did find if a spacecraft visiting another world,
Speaker 4: such as a spacecraft on Mars or a spacecraft going
Speaker 4: to your Ropo or a spacecraft going to enceladuscer Titan,
Speaker 4: if it did find obvious evidence, if biology on those
Speaker 4: worlds was very generous and made itself readily apparent, that
Speaker 4: would just be phenomenal. I hope that everybody would be
Speaker 4: thrilled and excited. And I often get asked, well, then
Speaker 4: you know, what good is that? Why should we be
Speaker 4: spending money on this area other thing? It's like, yeah,
Speaker 4: that discovery. It's not going to change the way you
Speaker 4: make your coffee in the morning, it's not going to
Speaker 4: shorten your commute, but it really would mark the beginning
Speaker 4: of a new understanding, a new revolution in how we
Speaker 4: think about biology, The science of biology and the stuff
Speaker 4: that is us. The phenomenon of life are very phenomenon
Speaker 4: and to put that in context, and it's also very
Speaker 4: exciting in terms of the time in which we live.
Speaker 4: Galileo couldn't send a spacecraft to Mars to search for
Speaker 4: evidence of life on Mars, or to Europa or in
Speaker 4: Solidus or Titan or a in these other places. For
Speaker 4: the first time in the history of humanity, we have
Speaker 4: the tools and technology to do this last great experiment,
Speaker 4: to see whether or not biology and the phenomenon of
Speaker 4: life works beyond Earth. So let's get it done. You know,
Speaker 4: I'd love to get out there.
Speaker 2: So when you think of the aliens, like just slow
Speaker 2: your roll, start small, Maybe think of like a little goofy,
Speaker 2: little bleep bloor microbes instead of you know what we
Speaker 2: all think about when we talk about extraterrestrials. Why do
Speaker 2: they always make it? Why do you think we have
Speaker 2: such iconic imagery of these gray aliens with big heads?
Speaker 2: Where do you think these kind of stories are coming from?
Speaker 2: Because when we expect to see aliens, why do you
Speaker 2: think we expect to see these particular visions?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's I don't have a good succinct answer to that.
Speaker 4: I think it really, at the heart of it reveals
Speaker 4: some of our own anthropocentric bias. I'm a tremendous fan
Speaker 4: of what Arrival did and thinking about life forms that
Speaker 4: would evolve in much different environments. But I think the
Speaker 4: whole phenomenon of aliens, UFOs, et cetera, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 4: It is interesting historically, if you look at William James,
Speaker 4: the varieties of religious experience quick aside.
Speaker 2: So doctor William James was a Victorian era psychologist who
Speaker 2: believed in ghosts and telepathy, but who thought that religious
Speaker 2: experiences can come in all shapes and sizes. From what
Speaker 2: I gather now, this dead psychology doctor William James is
Speaker 2: not to be confused with the alive UFO ologist ufologist
Speaker 2: doctor William J. Burns, who's the editor of UFO Magazine
Speaker 2: and believes that like an influencer wielding face tune, NASA
Speaker 2: airbrushes extraterrestrials out of photos all the time. Anyway, theories
Speaker 2: have been simmering for centuries.
Speaker 4: And the different kinds of experience people had centuries ago
Speaker 4: that they ascribed to divine intervention, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 4: I think some of those same psychological phenomenon also informed
Speaker 4: the experiences that people have when they think that they've
Speaker 4: experienced something with alien life forms, abductions and all those things.
Speaker 4: I'm by no means a specialist in that, but there again,
Speaker 4: my interest in psychology has sent me down those roads
Speaker 4: many times.
Speaker 2: So how many people in the US believe in aliens?
Speaker 2: While a twenty seventeen poll showed that nearly half did,
Speaker 2: but a slim sixteen percent had reported seeing a UFO
Speaker 2: now among the believers Kesha Nick Jonas, that lady from
Speaker 2: The Nanny, Casey Musgraves, Russell Crowe, Kendall Jenner, and Demi Lovado, who,
Speaker 2: if nothing else, has admirable conviction.
Speaker 5: I believe that there could possibly be mermaids, which is
Speaker 5: actually an alien species that lives in parts of the
Speaker 5: Indian Ocean which we have never explored before as human.
Speaker 3: Beings also top cruise.
Speaker 2: But uh okay, so now, Kevin remember was a researcher
Speaker 2: at SETI listening for signals. Now I found one very
Speaker 2: sketchy article claiming that a bunch of astronauts have reported
Speaker 2: that the skies above us are just a traffic jam
Speaker 2: of flying saucers and there's an alien space station on
Speaker 2: the Moon. But even supposing all of that is true,
Speaker 2: how would we communicate? What do we do charades when
Speaker 2: it comes to trying to say, signals from other planets,
Speaker 2: other civilizations? How do we know that we will have
Speaker 2: the right intendant to pick it up like we don't?
Speaker 4: And so it's a great question, and my friends and
Speaker 4: colleagues at the same institute obsess over that kind of question.
Speaker 4: Even within the frequency space of our radio search, there's
Speaker 4: still so much to explore, and Frank Drake and Jill
Speaker 4: Tarter and Seth and Dan Warteimer and others have focused
Speaker 4: in throughout the years on particular wavelengths where the cosmos
Speaker 4: itself is quiet and it would sort of make for
Speaker 4: a good broadcast and transmission in the radio part of
Speaker 4: the spectrum. But then another colleague of mine, Andrew Howard
Speaker 4: who's now at cal Tech, and his advisor at Harvard,
Speaker 4: Paul Horowitz, they were some big innovators on optical SETI
Speaker 4: if you think about an advanced civilization, well, if you
Speaker 4: think about the center of the Milky Way galaxy, I
Speaker 4: hope the center of the Milky Way galaxy is like, well, okay,
Speaker 4: let's put this in context. We are in the boondocks
Speaker 4: of the Milky Way. We're eight and a half killiparsex
Speaker 4: outs and suffice to say, that's a long ways out
Speaker 4: from the galactic bulge.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right. The densely packed cluster of stars
Speaker 2: at the center of a spiral galaxy is called a
Speaker 2: galactic bulge. Someone please go as one for Halloween. It's March.
Speaker 2: It's not too late to get started on a luminous,
Speaker 2: starry cod piece and some twinkling spirally arms.
Speaker 4: I hope that the center of the galaxy is teeming
Speaker 4: with life, and we've got advanced civilizations and they're they're
Speaker 4: darting back and forth, and they're there's a galactic internet,
Speaker 4: the sort of you know, modern version of what Carl
Speaker 4: Sagan used to like to call the Encyclopedia Galactica. We
Speaker 4: I hope that is happening right now in the center
Speaker 4: of our galaxy. Those civilizations would probably communicate with with
Speaker 4: with laser beams, with optical beams directed UH star to star,
Speaker 4: planet to planet, uh spacecraft to spacecraft, et cetera. It's
Speaker 4: just more efficient to send transmissions that way. And so
Speaker 4: one of the ways that uh SETI researchers are now
Speaker 4: looking for signals from advanced civilizations is looking for those
Speaker 4: nanosecond pulses in the sort of visible part of the
Speaker 4: light spectrum, which so far nothing, but there's still so
Speaker 4: much to search.
Speaker 2: There could be aliens sending laser grams right now, like party, party.
Speaker 4: On my moon tonight exactly.
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm ann pose a theory.
Speaker 2: You can use this in a paper if you want to,
Speaker 2: it's fine, just credit me. But what if dark matter,
Speaker 2: dark energy is just full of ghost of aliens.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's that's beyond my pay grade.
Speaker 2: We don't know exactly what it is or what it's
Speaker 2: to what's allows you with ghosts and aliens?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 4: Yes, And to that I say, we are the four percents.
Speaker 4: Ok Right, Everything that we see, we know in love
Speaker 4: is four percent of the known universe. And actually I
Speaker 4: think it's it's more. It's closer to one percent when
Speaker 4: you actually consider the particles with which we interact. Yeah,
Speaker 4: but that's if.
Speaker 3: You're going to use it in a TED talk. It's fine.
Speaker 2: Just put a slide. This is thank you, Okay. Are
Speaker 2: you ready for some Patreon questions?
Speaker 1: Sure?
Speaker 2: Okay, But before we get to listener questions from Patreon,
Speaker 2: a quick word from our sponsors, who have allowed me
Speaker 2: to raise the pay of the folks who help me
Speaker 2: make ologies, also let me donate to a cause of
Speaker 2: the ologists choosing. This week, Doctor Kevin Peter Hand chose
Speaker 2: to support the work of Traveling Telescope and this is
Speaker 2: a cause started by Susan Marrabona and her husband Chu
Speaker 2: and colleagues to share astronomy with school kids and the
Speaker 2: general public in Kenya. They say that they regularly visit
Speaker 2: both government and private schools, exposed students to a variety
Speaker 2: of astronomy tools and concepts. Giving the students practical hands
Speaker 2: on experience with astronomy is important if we are to
Speaker 2: inspire young people to be the scientists of tomorrow. So
Speaker 2: that is Traveling Telescope and there will be a link
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Speaker 2: about them now. An additional donation this week was made
Speaker 2: to Vermont's Manchester Rescue Squad in memory of Peter Hand,
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Speaker 2: All right, your questions, okay, patroon questions, We got a
Speaker 2: gozillion I I can okay. It kind of a lightning
Speaker 2: round shoot from the hip. I categorize them as best
Speaker 2: I could. Okay, So, Jasmine Wells, Vincent Maddie Worker and
Speaker 2: Mike Marlowe all kind of want to know, as a
Speaker 2: firm believer of other forms of life, what's the most probable.
Speaker 3: Planet for alien life to exist on?
Speaker 2: Like one of the most likely places.
Speaker 4: Mars is fantastic. Mars is still a wonderful place to
Speaker 4: look for evidence of past life and potentially life that's
Speaker 4: alive today. We'll just have to dig a lot deeper.
Speaker 4: So I put Mars, Europa, Enceladus, and Titan. And when
Speaker 4: it comes to the search for extant life, I really
Speaker 4: prioritize Europa and Thencelladus for extant life similar to life
Speaker 4: as we know it. And then if we go one
Speaker 4: layer deeper, I prioritize Europa over Enceladus for a couple
Speaker 4: of different reasons. Europa, we have good reason to predict,
Speaker 4: has had an ocean for the history of the Solar system. Yeah,
Speaker 4: so it's an ocean that's been around for a while. Enceladus,
Speaker 4: there's still some question marks. The reason Saturn has rings
Speaker 4: is because some sort of collision, some sort of impact
Speaker 4: event happened in the neighborhood of the moons of Saturn
Speaker 4: in the past tens to hundreds of millions of years ago.
Speaker 2: Okay, so remember Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons. Kevin says
Speaker 2: that Saturn had had some drama in the last tens
Speaker 2: of billions of years, so didn't sell it.
Speaker 4: This form from that is, it's ocean relatively young.
Speaker 2: We don't know will those rings glomb together to form
Speaker 2: moons eventually, Well.
Speaker 4: A bunch of it will go into Saturn, and a
Speaker 4: bunch of it will will sort of drift in the
Speaker 4: other direction further out, and stuff will continue to glom
Speaker 4: onto the existing moons. And so yeah, it's going to
Speaker 4: continue to be a bit of a pinball game out
Speaker 4: there in the Saturnian system.
Speaker 2: So many people had the same question, and I'm going
Speaker 2: to say all of their names right now. Elizabeth Gable,
Speaker 2: one we Renee Coley, Mad's Clement, Moses Bibbi, Devin Robertson,
Speaker 2: Dion Dabolo, Anthony still Own, also Landy Bauer, Nathan Algrim,
Speaker 2: Theodore Vissian, Sani Seth, Sarah Clark, Jack, Gavin Jordan, where Me,
Speaker 2: Lauren Paul, Erica Kaine, and Tony Rosso all asked what
Speaker 2: well is there already non carbon based life on Earth?
Speaker 2: What is the possibility of extraterrestrial non carbon based life?
Speaker 3: Could it be silicon based? Is that possible? What would
Speaker 3: that look like?
Speaker 4: It's a great question, one that I definitely ponder, one
Speaker 4: that I don't necessarily have a good answer to, because
Speaker 4: what we know of life so far is that life
Speaker 4: needs a good balance between larger information molecules that can
Speaker 4: you know, the store the software for us that's DNA obviously,
Speaker 4: and so you need those molecules to be made of
Speaker 4: elements that can bond together and are stable. But you
Speaker 4: don't want those molecules to be too stable, because you
Speaker 4: got to tear them apart and translate them and figure
Speaker 4: out what they're saying. And then the you know, the
Speaker 4: RNA and the worker bees of life as we know
Speaker 4: it have to go off and build the proteins and
Speaker 4: make the business of life. So from a feasibility of life,
Speaker 4: using other things like silicon, et cetera. Every time I
Speaker 4: go down this road, it's like, gosh, darn a. Carbon
Speaker 4: is just such a good element for not just bonding
Speaker 4: with itself and bonding with other elements and forming long molecules.
Speaker 4: It's also really good, albeit at temperatures and pressures that
Speaker 4: are found here on Earth and frankly many of the
Speaker 4: other planets. It's also really good at forming molecules that
Speaker 4: occupy that nice sweet spot of you can be large
Speaker 4: and stable, but not so stable that you can't be
Speaker 4: broken apart and replicated and or metabolized and stuff. And
Speaker 4: all you got to do is look at the rocks
Speaker 4: on Earth. The rocks on Earth are made of strings
Speaker 4: of silicon, right, the silicates, the silicon linked to four
Speaker 4: oxygen atoms and then various metals bounded in there. You know,
Speaker 4: if silicon based life could have evolved on Earth, it
Speaker 4: had plenty of opportunity. So water and carbon based life. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it's it's a pretty darn good solution to that. Use
Speaker 4: the word solution appropriately.
Speaker 3: Well, rock solid pun there.
Speaker 4: But I would love nothing more than to go to
Speaker 4: a world like Titan or see some big mothership in
Speaker 4: the sky that comes down with silicon based life and
Speaker 4: the and keep in mind, of course, that silicon based
Speaker 4: life could be the future of life as we know it.
Speaker 4: When we think about our mushy bags of water and carbon,
Speaker 4: silicon based life that we then create an advance could
Speaker 4: obviously have a much greater staying power galactically than the
Speaker 4: carbon and water based life. So that's like maybe, well,
Speaker 4: it's a great question, and I love to think about it.
Speaker 4: But every time I go down the rabbit hole of
Speaker 4: chemical feasibility, carbon pops it's head up.
Speaker 3: Yeah you think you can be Carbon's like, yeah, I
Speaker 3: got this exactly.
Speaker 4: That's exciting to see that that your audience is interested
Speaker 4: in that question.
Speaker 2: Other people had questions about the oceans, trying to settle
Speaker 2: a debate Oceana Reese as are deep sea creatures aliens?
Speaker 2: I think they are? And also are we looking at
Speaker 2: the deep sea to provide any clues of what could
Speaker 2: exist on other planets?
Speaker 4: Yeah, great questions. Answer. The first one is as alien
Speaker 4: as they are, and I've gotten to see some of
Speaker 4: them up close, and as astonishing and beautiful and bizarre
Speaker 4: as they are, they are very well connected into our
Speaker 4: tree of life. They are based on DNA and RNA
Speaker 4: and the ATP paradigm with proteins, et cetera. So yeah,
Speaker 4: they are not different from life as we know it.
Speaker 4: So are we looking in our own oceans to see
Speaker 4: whether or not or search for life elsewhere it can
Speaker 4: be informed by life that works in these deep ocean environments.
Speaker 4: The answer is absolutely, And it's something that I'm very
Speaker 4: passionate about and I've been fortunate to be able to
Speaker 4: take part in some of that exploration and science. The
Speaker 4: depths of our trenches or the Mariana Trench, the New
Speaker 4: Britain Trench, the Japan Trench, all these places that are
Speaker 4: in what we call the hate Old depths deeper than
Speaker 4: six kilometers down in our own ocean. Those environments are
Speaker 4: incredibly poorly explored. There's so much great work yet to
Speaker 4: be done. And from an astrobiology standpoint, they offer a
Speaker 4: great bridge for learning about the environmental conditions that could
Speaker 4: affect the habitability of these distant worlds. It's entirely plausible
Speaker 4: that we could go to a world like Europo or
Speaker 4: Enceladus and discover that it has the right liquid water,
Speaker 4: chemical conditions, et cetera. It is quote unquote habitable but
Speaker 4: not inhabited, and that could be because the origin of
Speaker 4: life is a bottleneck. The origin of life could be
Speaker 4: quite hard. So going to these deep ocean environments, going
Speaker 4: to places on Earth that serve as analogs for the
Speaker 4: conditions that we might find elsewhere is part of NASA's
Speaker 4: astrobiology program.
Speaker 2: All right, I'm going to keep blazing through these ready,
Speaker 2: Sophia Garbo's great question. Do you think they have been
Speaker 2: here and left? What are the chances have aliens been
Speaker 2: here and bounced?
Speaker 4: I don't know if they came and went. They haven't
Speaker 4: left so much as a paper clip. And as a scientist,
Speaker 4: I need hard evidence, so as much as I have
Speaker 4: read anecdotes and I want to believe to use the
Speaker 4: X files. Uh yeah, it's at the end of the day.
Speaker 4: Give me an alien paper clip or sash. A stack says,
Speaker 4: bring back a fork from from the mothership?
Speaker 1: What is it? It's a dingle?
Speaker 2: Wait that brings me to someone. Two people had the
Speaker 2: same question. Sophie goes to know and Heather Shaver wanted
Speaker 2: to know, are you more of a Molderer Scully? Are
Speaker 2: you in the molder fan cult?
Speaker 4: Interesting? So the uh uh yeah, I'm the hybridized love
Speaker 4: child of two of them. Let's okay, both.
Speaker 2: Of their DNA's combined a new carbon based water bag.
Speaker 2: Not as you justin Griggs and Casey Wright. First time
Speaker 2: questioned askers wanted to know what's the coolest gadget we
Speaker 2: currently have and if you were given unlimited funds, like
Speaker 2: what kind of imaging or radio equipment would you use?
Speaker 4: Well, that's a that's a really interesting question. And layered
Speaker 4: into that question is that when we think about the
Speaker 4: search for life elsewhere and actually doing those experiments, and
Speaker 4: this is what I spend much of my days doing.
Speaker 4: I'm I'm the pre project scientist for the Europa Lander
Speaker 4: mission concept. This is a mission that is far from Greenlitz.
Speaker 4: Our team of scientists and engineers has been working on
Speaker 4: this for many years. NASA currently has a mission going
Speaker 4: to Jupiter to study Europa. That's the Europa Clipper mission,
Speaker 4: and it's a mission that will fly by Europa and
Speaker 4: do remote sensing look as it makes those flybys, to
Speaker 4: take images, do spectroscopy, do ice penetrating radar studies. It's
Speaker 4: an absolutely amazing mission and the data is going to
Speaker 4: be incredible. And I'm a co investigator on that mission,
Speaker 4: and hopefully someday following on that mission, we can put
Speaker 4: a landed vehicle on the surface to dig up some
Speaker 4: material and look directly for signs of life. Use a
Speaker 4: microscope to look for morphologic indicators little cells if they exist.
Speaker 4: Use things like mass spectrometry or infrared or roman spectrometry
Speaker 4: to look for organics and other things. And so to
Speaker 4: your listener's question, in the biotech world, here on Earth,
Speaker 4: we've made tons of progress in sequencing DNA and twenty
Speaker 4: three and meters and all this stuff. But when I
Speaker 4: think about a payload for exploring a world like Europa,
Speaker 4: we can't use DNA based analytical systems because then we
Speaker 4: might miss life. Even if it's carbon and water based,
Speaker 4: it may well not be DNA based. It would be
Speaker 4: really interesting if it was, because that would set the
Speaker 4: stage for some evolutionary debates and convergence versus contingency and
Speaker 4: DNA arising independently.
Speaker 2: More than once, I think what this means is would
Speaker 2: DNA appearing in extraterrestrial organisms be total chance or developed
Speaker 2: because the circumstances kind of steered evolution toward that efficient
Speaker 2: coding formation. Again, who the hell knows people, literally, no
Speaker 2: one at least not on this point. It maybe Kesha knows, but.
Speaker 4: We certainly don't want our instrumentation and our measurements to
Speaker 4: require that life form to be based on DNA.
Speaker 2: Right, It's like taking a VCR somewhere las.
Speaker 3: Hell are you going to do with that?
Speaker 4: Exactly? And that's important to appreciate with a lot of
Speaker 4: the biotech that feeding into those that instrumentation are primers
Speaker 4: that are that latch onto DNA in different ways, And
Speaker 4: so yeah, it's like a VCR.
Speaker 3: You got a thumb drive and in an eight track.
Speaker 4: Hell are you gonna do? Exactly a lot.
Speaker 2: Of people, including Lauren Murray, Sarah Clark, Timothy Diyke's, Joe O'Bannon,
Speaker 2: Jane Joy, Jenny Hoover, Jeffrey Katz all kind of wanted
Speaker 2: to know, in Jeffrey Kat's words, do you think intelligent
Speaker 2: aliens would look somewhat like us? Like as we evolve,
Speaker 2: somethings seemed efficient, like bilateral symmetry for extremities to use
Speaker 2: to manipulate tools. Are they going to look like us?
Speaker 4: So, instead of answering the question will alien life look
Speaker 4: like us? I like to do the experiment of what
Speaker 4: if we re ran the life on Earth again, would
Speaker 4: we end up with Homo sapiens? And you can look
Speaker 4: at different convergent and contingent events and evolutionary history. Obviously,
Speaker 4: one that's great to examine is the impact event that
Speaker 4: extinguished the dinosaurs. What if that didn't happen, would the
Speaker 4: dinosaurs have evolved into intelligent, communicating creatures with useful thumbs
Speaker 4: and all that. And Star Trek's is examined those kinds
Speaker 4: of scenarios, and I think there's a case to be
Speaker 4: made that early on in the evolution of intelligence, if
Speaker 4: you do not figure out how to use tools and
Speaker 4: how to build shelters, and how to propagate information beyond
Speaker 4: the single generational time scale, in other words, the printing
Speaker 4: press and the internet and all these things, if you
Speaker 4: don't develop that relatively quickly, you will become extinct just
Speaker 4: by the nature of the fact that the cosmos is
Speaker 4: full of hazards and eventually a large impact event will
Speaker 4: wipe you out. Caboo, no thing to fast forward to us.
Speaker 4: And now clearly we are at an inflection point. Yes,
Speaker 4: we're messing up the home planet. Yeah, climate change is
Speaker 4: going gangbusters. And planet Earth is saying, hey, we're going
Speaker 4: to shut down this subsystem. So our life support system
Speaker 4: is being challenged by our own existence. Coupled with that,
Speaker 4: we could still have an impact from outer space that
Speaker 4: wipes us out. And so, in my opinion, the clock
Speaker 4: is ticking on us to get some real intelligence and
Speaker 4: learn how to be a longer lived species. So if
Speaker 4: we re ran the clock, would you end up with
Speaker 4: bilotal symmetry? I think yes. Would you end up with eyes?
Speaker 4: I think yes. You can look at the evolution of eyes,
Speaker 4: and it's occurred some fifty or more times in different
Speaker 4: organisms on Earth. Obviously, photosensing makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 4: The senses that we have smell and taste are variations
Speaker 4: on chemical sensors, and that's very useful. I get intrigued
Speaker 4: by some of the sensory modalities that are not as ubiquitous,
Speaker 4: sensing the polarization of light as bees do, sensing magnetic fields,
Speaker 4: echolocation as obviously bats and dolphins and other creatures do.
Speaker 4: Is there a world in which those sensory modalities become
Speaker 4: more prevalent in the primary biological paradigm of a planet.
Speaker 2: Perhaps, who knows what an ultrasound antenna would look like.
Speaker 4: Well, and that in part goes to arrival, right, and
Speaker 4: the way in which those creatures communicated through sound and
Speaker 4: the circular timeless ink blots.
Speaker 2: Okay, from ink blots to the great filter. So several listeners,
Speaker 2: including Dion Dabolo, Tyler Q, Donald McCloud, Christopher Barley, and
Speaker 2: Katie Boyd asked about the great filter, which is the
Speaker 2: notion that the reason we've got radio silence from extraterrestrials
Speaker 2: is that our kind of advanced civilizations are either a
Speaker 2: one off just us, or they die out before they're
Speaker 2: capable of communicating with one another. Kevin says that if
Speaker 2: we make it through our own population growth and carelessness
Speaker 2: with the planet and aren't just randomly boned by a
Speaker 2: space rock, there is the prospect of finding another civilization
Speaker 2: if a signal is out there. But he says, on
Speaker 2: the flip side, I'm.
Speaker 4: Sure many of your listeners have probably read The Three
Speaker 4: Body Problem and that trilogy, which is a fantastic trilogy,
Speaker 4: and the second book called The Dark Forest, which really
Speaker 4: gets into the question of do you actually want to
Speaker 4: reach out and make contact? Yeah? Is that a safe
Speaker 4: thing to do? And I think that's a very important
Speaker 4: question to ponder and from a transmission standpoint, do you
Speaker 4: really want to transmit? I don't think I have a
Speaker 4: clear answer right now. I've got thoughts on both yes
Speaker 4: and no for transmitting. But short of that, we can
Speaker 4: certainly do a heck of a lot more in listening,
Speaker 4: and that is something that I advocate for and hope
Speaker 4: we do more of.
Speaker 2: So it's like reaching out and texting your ext versus
Speaker 2: just lurking on their Twitter late at night. A few
Speaker 2: people asked Christopher Barley, Layel Defkova and first time question
Speaker 2: asker Rebecca Lee Richardson, Does Fermi paradox make you sad?
Speaker 4: The Fermi paradox make me sad? Like where are they
Speaker 4: and why haven't we found them yet? Yes, in some
Speaker 4: ways it does, and to the extent that it makes
Speaker 4: your your listener said, I sympathize. But people like Jill
Speaker 4: Tarter and the folks up at the Seti Institute serve
Speaker 4: as great inspiration and when we talk to them about
Speaker 4: this stuff, I was like, well, we just we really
Speaker 4: have not listened enough. We haven't looked in We know
Speaker 4: where to look, we just have not yet had time
Speaker 4: or the computing power to to really search the haystack
Speaker 4: for the needle. So we're going to keep keep searching.
Speaker 3: Keep working. You're employed forever, yes, okay. One last question
Speaker 3: from listeners.
Speaker 2: Great question asked by Joe Porfito as well as Chris Bauman,
Speaker 2: Danny King, Jenny Cove Sick. In your opinion, did the
Speaker 2: chartar grade come from outer space? What's the deal with
Speaker 2: tartar grades? Should we send them to Mars? Let's talk
Speaker 2: tarties tartar grades.
Speaker 4: Those little water bears. They are curious little creatures, and
Speaker 4: they are again DNA based, RNA based. We can fit
Speaker 4: them into the tree of life on Earth. Okay, very well,
Speaker 4: so they make sense. Okay, that said, they sure are
Speaker 4: curious little creatures, aren't they?
Speaker 3: A tartar grade?
Speaker 2: By the way, is this teeny tiny micro animal. It
Speaker 2: looks kind of like if a futon cushion had eight
Speaker 2: stumpy little legs and then a vacuum for a face.
Speaker 2: And they're five hundred and thirty million years old at least.
Speaker 2: They've been everywhere from the Antarctic to the deep sea
Speaker 2: to volcanoes. They can survive like a decade without any
Speaker 2: water and crazy temperatures in space radiation. If you soak
Speaker 2: a piece of moss in water and then you look
Speaker 2: under like a low power microscope, you might be able
Speaker 2: to spot one. But yeah, Kevin says, sorry, y'all, they're
Speaker 2: earth lengths.
Speaker 3: Okay, last two questions.
Speaker 2: I always ask, what is something that is the shittiest
Speaker 2: part of your job, the thing that you dislike the
Speaker 2: most about what you do, or about alien life, or
Speaker 2: maybe some flim flam that you'd like to debunk some myths.
Speaker 3: That irk you. What is what gets your goat.
Speaker 2: When it comes to astrobiology so annoying?
Speaker 4: Honestly, the thing that comes to mind, of course as
Speaker 4: a scientist, the ubiquitous answers. We hate writing proposals, begging
Speaker 4: for money, getting rejected like yeah, yeah, yeah. That's just
Speaker 4: part of the life cycle of a scientist across the board.
Speaker 4: That's not specific to After a while, dude, I guess
Speaker 4: the sad part is for all of the exciting stuff
Speaker 4: that we discussed here today, why I wish we could
Speaker 4: just get going with it. It is through the generosity
Speaker 4: and dedication and excitement of the taxpayer who make NASA
Speaker 4: and all this stuff possible. So if you want to
Speaker 4: see us move faster. Just keep on being interested in
Speaker 4: the stuff and express it to your various folks who
Speaker 4: helped make the high level decisions that are well beyond my.
Speaker 3: Pig grid about NASA.
Speaker 4: So we got to do on the search for life
Speaker 4: in astrobiology.
Speaker 2: What about your favorite thing about astrobiology or your job
Speaker 2: the best you know.
Speaker 4: I've got a lot of great colleagues and we love
Speaker 4: brainstorming about forcing each other to think out of the box.
Speaker 4: I have a position at Woodshole Oceanographic Institution, an amazing
Speaker 4: institution that is a pioneer in the field of ocean exploration.
Speaker 4: And I go there and I visit colleagues like Chris
Speaker 4: Jerman and Julie Hooper and others, and we just have
Speaker 4: a blast forcing each other to think out of the
Speaker 4: box about how to explore a planet Earth and understand
Speaker 4: life on Earth and how to apply that to worlds
Speaker 4: and wonders beyond Earth. So that kind of intellectual popping
Speaker 4: the popcorn is a lot of fun. And at JPL
Speaker 4: I get to do that with engineers. I'm just a
Speaker 4: silly scientist with crazy ideas. I can't do anything without
Speaker 4: the engineers who figure out how to actually implement the
Speaker 4: ideas of myself and my fellow colleagues. They're the ones
Speaker 4: who are actually getting these missions done and making sure
Speaker 4: that when they fly by or orbit or land on
Speaker 4: a distant world, we get those bits back that can
Speaker 4: revolutionize our understanding of how the universe works.
Speaker 2: If someone wanted to be an astrobiologist, what would you
Speaker 2: tell them?
Speaker 4: Where do they start? Yeah, it's a great question. In
Speaker 4: the field of astrobiology today, there's biologists, chemist, geologists, geochemists, oceanographers.
Speaker 4: My own background physics and astronomy and geological environmental sciences.
Speaker 4: I also did a master's in robotics. It takes all
Speaker 4: kinds to get this sort of Let me use a
Speaker 4: few buzzwords interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary trendsdisciplinary kind of research done. And
Speaker 4: so what I tell students and folks interested within the
Speaker 4: framework of sciences that feed into astrobiology, follow your passion biology, geology, physics, astronomy,
Speaker 4: et cetera, et cetera, chemistry, and enjoy that fundamental research
Speaker 4: and then extend and bridge it into astrobiology.
Speaker 2: Smart It's just the sound of so many people changing
Speaker 2: their majors right now.
Speaker 3: Thank you for studying aliens.
Speaker 4: Thanks for having me a year to talk about aliens.
Speaker 2: So, whether it's about aliens or squirrels, the theme here
Speaker 2: asks smart people stupid questions, because what a shame not
Speaker 2: to know your surroundings. Now you can become a doctor
Speaker 2: Kevin Peter Hand fan by following him at Alien Oceans
Speaker 2: on Twitter on Instagram, He's Kevin Underscore Peter Underscore Hand
Speaker 2: And once again, the charities we talked about were Traveling
Speaker 2: Telescope and the Manchester Rescue Squad. Link to the show
Speaker 2: notes in case you're curious about them, alongside all the
Speaker 2: sponsors of the show and any codes that you might need.
Speaker 2: You can find those links up at aliword dot com
Speaker 2: to find ologies. You can follow along on Twitter at
Speaker 2: ologies also at ologies on Instagram. I'm ali Word with
Speaker 2: one L on both and yeah that's alien no n Now,
Speaker 2: if you're in the LA area, I'm moderating talks at
Speaker 2: the Natural History Museum for their first Friday series. So
Speaker 2: that's the first Friday.
Speaker 3: Of April of May of June.
Speaker 2: You just come in. I'm doing some talks with ologists
Speaker 2: SAH and I'm just kind of doing a live Q
Speaker 2: and A with them, so come say hi. More on
Speaker 2: that is at NHM dot org. I also have my
Speaker 2: own science show on the CW called did I Mentioned Invention?
Speaker 2: And I'm a correspondent on Innovation Nation on CBS every Saturday.
Speaker 2: If you're a Netflix havever, you can check out Brainchild,
Speaker 2: wherein I am in a beehive explaining science every episode. Also,
Speaker 2: Happy birthday to my wonderful sister Janelle. I'm very, very
Speaker 2: proud to share Earthling DNDA with you. For Ologies T
Speaker 2: shirts with the Ologies logo and mugs and toads and
Speaker 2: pins and hats, go to ologiesmerch dot com. You can
Speaker 2: tag your Instagram photos Ologies Merch so I can post
Speaker 2: them on Mondays. Thank you Shannon Felds and Bonnie Dutch
Speaker 2: for managing that. Thank you Aaron Talbert and Handah Lippo
Speaker 2: for admitting the Facebook group. Thank you to interns Harry
Speaker 2: Kim and CAYLEB Patten. To assistant editor Jarrett Sleeper of
Speaker 2: mind Jam Media and the new combat podcast Fight Stuff
Speaker 2: in case you're into boxing and MMA, and of course
Speaker 2: the Mulley. To my scolder Stephen Ray Morris of the
Speaker 2: per Cast and c Jurassic Right, And to Nick Thorburn
Speaker 2: who wrote and perform the theme music. Now, if you
Speaker 2: stick around to the end, you know, I tell you
Speaker 2: a secret this week. When I was younger, my sister
Speaker 2: and I used to love eating spaghettios with meatballs, and
Speaker 2: we had this tactic where we would eat the spaghettios
Speaker 2: and then save all the meatballs on a smaller, separate plate,
Speaker 2: and then at the very end you would just get
Speaker 2: an entire mouth full of meatballs.
Speaker 3: But it now sounds so gross, but it.
Speaker 2: Was just heaven as a child. So that's it.
Speaker 4: That's all I got.
Speaker 2: I have a good week everyone forby pacodermatology, hobiology or
Speaker 2: do zoology, Lithology and technology, meteorology and matterhology, nathology, seriology, selenology.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm all that choosy.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry,