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Selects: How Mars Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hello, friends. Have you ever been to Mars? I haven't.
0:04
Speaker 1: Do you know why? Because nothing ever happens on Mars.
0:10
Speaker 1: Did you catch that reference? If you did, then I'm glad,
0:13
Speaker 1: but I'm not going to spoon feed you and tell
0:14
Speaker 1: you what it was. This is how Mars works and
0:17
Speaker 1: it was from April and it is my pick for
0:21
Speaker 1: the Saturday Select. Please to enjoy Welcome to Stuff You
0:31
Speaker 1: Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and
0:40
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, Nur's Charles w
0:43
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant, Jerry's over there. We all have um I
0:46
Speaker 1: boogers because this is an early morning, unusual, early morning
0:51
Speaker 1: edition of Stuff you Should Know. Welcome to the morning edition.
0:54
Speaker 1: We should just talk like this. We got on NPR,
0:58
Speaker 1: we got taken to task and it's nine an email
1:00
Speaker 1: from a morning talk show TV show host. Did you
1:04
Speaker 1: see it? Uh? About the Inquisition? Yeah? He's like, way
1:08
Speaker 1: to release the Inquisition on ash Wednesdays, kind of slapping
1:11
Speaker 1: the face. So I respond I said, actually it came
1:13
Speaker 1: out on Fat Tuesday and by sheer coincidence. He's like,
1:16
Speaker 1: thanks for the reply. I responded to him too. I
1:19
Speaker 1: was like, man, I wish I was that clever and
1:20
Speaker 1: said I had no idea. It was like our our
1:23
Speaker 1: medical marijuana episode being our four utter complete coincidence guaranteed everybody.
1:31
Speaker 1: I think, over the course of six hundred plus shows,
1:33
Speaker 1: you're gonna have some weird coincidences like that, you know. Yes,
1:37
Speaker 1: I certainly didn't know it was ash Wednesday. I didn't
1:40
Speaker 1: either until I went to the mall yesterday evening and
1:42
Speaker 1: a third of the people are were walking around with
1:45
Speaker 1: charcoal crosses on their forehead. Nice. It's like I had
1:47
Speaker 1: no idea Atlanta had this many Catholics good going there everywhere?
1:53
Speaker 1: They sure are well, I mean they didn't used to
1:55
Speaker 1: be got You know, I grew up Baptist here and
1:57
Speaker 1: I didn't know many Catholics growing up, But Atlanta became
2:00
Speaker 1: a transplant towns instead, exactly. And I'll tell you about
2:03
Speaker 1: another transplant chuck, possibly life here on Earth from Mars?
2:08
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, is this your intro? Have you got breaking this? No?
2:13
Speaker 1: That was it. But do you remember we did an
2:16
Speaker 1: episode on UM the origin of life on Earth? Remember?
2:21
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah? And one of the possibilities that it
2:23
Speaker 1: was from Mars and one of the um pieces of
2:28
Speaker 1: evidence of this possibility was the Alan Hills Rock from Antarctica,
2:35
Speaker 1: a Martian meteorite that was discovered in that was studied
2:40
Speaker 1: and studied, and they thought in basically, Bill Clinton said,
2:44
Speaker 1: we found evidence of life on Mars. And then they
2:47
Speaker 1: studied it again and they were like, maybe not another
2:50
Speaker 1: studying it again, they're saying, yeah, it's possible. It's very
2:54
Speaker 1: possible that this four point one billion year old rock
2:58
Speaker 1: is showing evidence of fosse realized nano bacteria. And this
3:02
Speaker 1: is all still Bill Clinton saying this. Yeah, it is
3:06
Speaker 1: underwear at home. He's the authority. He's talking to the
3:08
Speaker 1: TV again. Nice. Uh, but yeah, we're gonna do how
3:13
Speaker 1: Mars works. Tom Hanks, this one's for you, big space guy.
3:19
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, sure, Okay. I didn't know if I was
3:21
Speaker 1: missing something there, like he did some movie that didn't
3:23
Speaker 1: know about. No, if I said, Gary Sinise, this one's
3:27
Speaker 1: for you, that would be a mission to Mars reference.
3:29
Speaker 1: I did not see that. Mind bogglingly odd and pretty bad. Yeah,
3:34
Speaker 1: I heard, That's why I didn't see it. That and
3:35
Speaker 1: Red Planet didn't see either. One of those. Red Planet
3:38
Speaker 1: I don't know about. Yeah, but that kind of brings
3:41
Speaker 1: us to a point that we've long been fascinated with
3:44
Speaker 1: the red planet, going back to you know, War the
3:47
Speaker 1: World's and early science fiction and Martians and Mars has
3:51
Speaker 1: just always captivated us because you know, sometimes you can
3:55
Speaker 1: see it with a telescope and it's not like what's
3:59
Speaker 1: on the other side of a Venus Venus. Yeah, we
4:01
Speaker 1: don't know much about Venus, shrouded in mystery. There are
4:04
Speaker 1: no Venusians that we're afraid will come down here in
4:07
Speaker 1: attack Us. I think it's Venusians Venetians, which is different
4:10
Speaker 1: from Venetians, which are people from Venice, which, strangely enough,
4:16
Speaker 1: Um kind of coincides with the guy named Giovanni Siaparelli.
4:21
Speaker 1: He might not have been from Venice, but that man
4:23
Speaker 1: was definitely from Italy. Do you think, yeah, he was.
4:27
Speaker 1: Can you say his name for everybody, Chuck, who Giovanni Sarelli.
4:31
Speaker 1: That was good that guy. Man, Have you been practicing
4:33
Speaker 1: at home? No, I just I've been even a lot
4:35
Speaker 1: of pasta. That's good stuff, man, So um Schiaparelli in
4:40
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy seven decided to draw a map of Mars
4:45
Speaker 1: and his conception of Mars what became the popular conception
4:49
Speaker 1: if it wasn't already. UM was that Mars was a UM,
4:54
Speaker 1: a lush planet with civilizations, and he named the regions
4:59
Speaker 1: of Mars a corps lee like Elysium, which which UM
5:05
Speaker 1: culture believed that that was Heaven. I don't know, I
5:08
Speaker 1: can't remember, man, I haven't heard that. We you know,
5:11
Speaker 1: we've discussed it before, Elysium. I haven't retained that. UM.
5:15
Speaker 1: Another part was called Utopia Arcadia. Basically, all these different
5:19
Speaker 1: names for paradise reflected the idea that Mars was a
5:24
Speaker 1: very similar to Earth, most likely inhabited by intelligent beings
5:29
Speaker 1: and UM. As proof, uh, Schiaparelli drew canals that he
5:35
Speaker 1: noticed on the on Mars, which suggested that this advanced
5:40
Speaker 1: civilization had dug canals to UM route water from the
5:45
Speaker 1: polar ice caps which are visible here on Earth to
5:49
Speaker 1: the central locations where their civilizations were get water to
5:52
Speaker 1: the Martians. Yeah, and this established like what earth links
5:55
Speaker 1: thought of Mars for a hundred years. Almost about forty
6:01
Speaker 1: years after that, a US astronomer named Percival lowell Um
6:04
Speaker 1: wrote a book also about Mars, where he actually talked
6:07
Speaker 1: about civilizations, and Uh, the problem was he he wasn't
6:12
Speaker 1: really based on anything, it might as well have been
6:14
Speaker 1: science fiction, right, And yet they named the Lowell Observatory
6:17
Speaker 1: after him. He was an astronomer, so it's not like
6:21
Speaker 1: he was. He wasn't just making stuff up, but he
6:23
Speaker 1: didn't have like hard evidence. He made a lot of
6:24
Speaker 1: stuff up. Okay, he well, he interpreted it without any evidence. Yeah,
6:30
Speaker 1: and then wrote a book and that became the impetus
6:32
Speaker 1: for Mars based science fiction. Yeah, it really captured folks.
6:37
Speaker 1: And that's when like I talked about war the World's
6:39
Speaker 1: and uh, Edgar Rice Burrows the Princess of Mars, and
6:43
Speaker 1: it's just always been just out there staring down at us. Yeah,
6:47
Speaker 1: it's speaking of war the World's. It even says it
6:50
Speaker 1: in this article. It did not cause the national panic
6:52
Speaker 1: in night. That's a myth. Did you know that? Um?
6:57
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm not sure I knew the full stories.
7:00
Speaker 1: Supposedly when h when um uh who directed Citizen Kane?
7:06
Speaker 1: When Orson Welles carried out this radio. Yeah, yeah, it's
7:09
Speaker 1: scared everyone, right, it caused a panic. People were wild
7:12
Speaker 1: in the streets, committing suicide, like doing all sorts of stuff. No,
7:15
Speaker 1: it isn't true. Um. Apparently the newspapers got wind of
7:20
Speaker 1: this rumor and played it up, and um, the reason
7:25
Speaker 1: they played it up was to prove that radio couldn't
7:27
Speaker 1: be trusted as a source of news because it was
7:29
Speaker 1: a big competitor to newspapers at the time. Have you
7:31
Speaker 1: done a Don't Be Dumb on that? No? Maybe I will?
7:36
Speaker 1: Can I plug that? Go ahead, Josh? As a web
7:39
Speaker 1: series called Don't Be Dumb? That is very funny and
7:42
Speaker 1: uh strange, and you learned stuff. It's like the perfect
7:47
Speaker 1: one to three punch. Weird funny and you walk away
7:50
Speaker 1: with some knowledge. Thanks man, And everyone likes it that
7:54
Speaker 1: watches it, so we just need more people to watch it.
7:56
Speaker 1: Give me the weird sausage fingers. Steve McQueen, clap, that's
8:01
Speaker 1: that is weird? Oh the director? Oh yeah, he was
8:05
Speaker 1: clapping weird, wouldn't he at the Oscars? Apparently he and um,
8:09
Speaker 1: the screenwriter who won an oscar for that movie, Yeah
8:12
Speaker 1: for twelve Years of Slave do not like each other
8:15
Speaker 1: over the writing credit. Oh yeah. The writer walked right
8:18
Speaker 1: past him, and Steve McQueen didn't even turn to look
8:20
Speaker 1: at him as he was walking up to get his oscar.
8:22
Speaker 1: I did kind of notice that Yeah, well, if you
8:25
Speaker 1: read delisted, he rooted it out and found out that
8:27
Speaker 1: it was over a writing credit. Is that why he
8:30
Speaker 1: was clapping weirdly? He was showing his disdain with sausage. Weird. Alright, So, UM,
8:37
Speaker 1: this weird early fascination with Mars, Like I said, we
8:40
Speaker 1: didn't have a lot of information other than just sort
8:42
Speaker 1: of looking at it from Earth. UM. And it wasn't
8:45
Speaker 1: until the sixties and seventies that we started in many
8:49
Speaker 1: countries started exploring Mars, but we started sending UM orbiters
8:54
Speaker 1: to take a closer peak and then eventually orbiters led
8:57
Speaker 1: to landers and rovers and it's been like kind of
9:02
Speaker 1: a prime directive of NASA for a while. Yeah, one
9:05
Speaker 1: of them. And and it was UM. When they scrapped
9:08
Speaker 1: the Space Shuttle UM program. I remember NASA was saying like,
9:12
Speaker 1: don't worry everybody, We're gonna go to Mars. We're gonna
9:15
Speaker 1: focus on Mars. That's why we're not doing the shuttle anymore. UM.
9:19
Speaker 1: And apparently they are. There was just as recently as
9:22
Speaker 1: yesterday NASA testified about its budget and UM and they
9:27
Speaker 1: were saying, well, we've got a really great thing plan.
9:30
Speaker 1: We're gonna get this asteroid. We're gonna maneuver it with
9:33
Speaker 1: a robot into lunar orbit so we can go visit
9:36
Speaker 1: it later. And the senators at this hearing basically said boring,
9:41
Speaker 1: like yeah, They're like, what's this backup Mars mission listed?
9:44
Speaker 1: And they're like, oh, well, we're talking about doing a
9:46
Speaker 1: man fly by a venus and Mars. Sentators are like, Mars, Mars, Mars.
9:52
Speaker 1: So it looks like NASA is gonna be forced to
9:54
Speaker 1: go to Mars, whether they like it or not. So
9:56
Speaker 1: it's still captivating. If it's captivating. The dumb dums and Congress, well,
10:00
Speaker 1: they even said, like the asteroid mission, that's not gonna
10:04
Speaker 1: spur the public the public imagination, like going past sending
10:08
Speaker 1: a person past Mars, that's what you want to do NASA.
10:12
Speaker 1: And NASA is like, all right, but there's gonna we
10:16
Speaker 1: could probably mind the asteroid and the senators I went
10:19
Speaker 1: Mars Mars Mars and they all went to a bar afterward. Yeah, okay, Jim,
10:23
Speaker 1: you want to go to Mars And he was like
10:25
Speaker 1: all right, yeah, I guess so. Um alright, so where
10:29
Speaker 1: should we start here? Um, well, let's start with the
10:33
Speaker 1: origin of Mars. It seems pretty appropriate. Yeah, it's pretty fascinating.
10:37
Speaker 1: I love how scientists piece together ancient history of the cosmos,
10:42
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, without having ever sent a geologist there.
10:45
Speaker 1: It's all I mean, even before the rovers, it was
10:49
Speaker 1: basically all just based on photographs and and surmising from those.
10:53
Speaker 1: Now we've got the Curiosity rover, the third rover up there.
10:57
Speaker 1: It's still up there, right yeah, yeah, or it doesn't
10:59
Speaker 1: come home, does it. No, it will, but it's still operational. Yeah. Um.
11:03
Speaker 1: And they were thinking, I think it was a two
11:05
Speaker 1: year mission, but it could go longer than that. I
11:07
Speaker 1: think it's already gone a little longer than that, because
11:09
Speaker 1: I think it went wasn't really already. I think it
11:11
Speaker 1: went up in late two thousand eleven. So I think
11:14
Speaker 1: it's been there a little over two years. Well, good going, Curiosity.
11:18
Speaker 1: I might be wrong. Um. All right, So there's basically
11:21
Speaker 1: five things that they surmise happened to four Mars, which
11:26
Speaker 1: will will list and then get into in more detail. Um.
11:30
Speaker 1: It initially formed from clumping together of little, tiny objects
11:35
Speaker 1: until it made a big round planet. It was an
11:38
Speaker 1: accretion disc. Yeah, like just like Earth, Just like Earth. Uh.
11:42
Speaker 1: Then there was a lot of meteor bombardment all over
11:45
Speaker 1: the Solar System, and Mars was of course affected just
11:48
Speaker 1: like Earth. Just like Earth. In the Moon, the mantle
11:51
Speaker 1: was very hot and pushed through the crust, lifting up
11:54
Speaker 1: portions of it. And then there were a couple of
11:58
Speaker 1: uh they don't know how many, but at least a
12:00
Speaker 1: couple of periods of lots of volcanoes going on, say
12:04
Speaker 1: it just like lava flows. And then finally the planet
12:09
Speaker 1: cooled down and the atmosphere thinned out to leave this
12:11
Speaker 1: with Mars unlike Earth, right, uh, And it Mars formation
12:16
Speaker 1: was virtually identical of the process that formed Earth. It's
12:20
Speaker 1: about half the size, but there in the beginning as
12:23
Speaker 1: far as makeup and the processes that they were undergoing, yeah,
12:26
Speaker 1: they were virtually identical. Yeah. And being half the size
12:30
Speaker 1: is pretty key to uh, why it's not like Earth
12:33
Speaker 1: more um one of the reasons. So I guess we
12:37
Speaker 1: should get into some more detail about this, Huh. I
12:39
Speaker 1: think we should. The accretion that you talked about, the
12:41
Speaker 1: small objects about it took about a hundred thousand years,
12:45
Speaker 1: and as the gravitational field got stronger, it kept pulling
12:48
Speaker 1: in more of this stuff and it would crash into
12:51
Speaker 1: the planet and uh and get hot basically and just
12:55
Speaker 1: sort of meld together. Yeah. I was like, oh, Mars,
13:00
Speaker 1: and that was interesting. I looked at why planets are around,
13:03
Speaker 1: and the reason why is because the gravitational field and
13:05
Speaker 1: the spin. Uh it's sucking everything into the dense core. Yeah.
13:10
Speaker 1: Well it's the core. The gravitational field behaves like it's
13:14
Speaker 1: coming from the center, and everything else thinks it's coming
13:17
Speaker 1: from the center. So the only way to get everything
13:21
Speaker 1: is close to the center as possible is to make
13:23
Speaker 1: a sphere like Obviously, if you had a square, that
13:27
Speaker 1: would be a corner that's not as close as other parts.
13:30
Speaker 1: That would be a creepy planet like a cube. Yeah,
13:33
Speaker 1: but I wondered, you know, or why doesn't it look
13:35
Speaker 1: like an asteroid, Let's say, but asteroids don't have the
13:38
Speaker 1: kind of gravitational force to draw everything in like that
13:40
Speaker 1: to form that sphere. It's called isotactic adjustment. Yeah. I
13:45
Speaker 1: just thought, wait a minute, all these things are perfectly round.
13:49
Speaker 1: We're not perfectly around. Want more pyramid shaped planet would
13:52
Speaker 1: be kind of cool? Um. All right, So that was
14:18
Speaker 1: the acretion, and now you have gas being released from
14:22
Speaker 1: cooling after the core and mantle and crust have formed
14:26
Speaker 1: in this hot ball. Right, and as the as the
14:30
Speaker 1: gases are being released in the hot ball, um, they
14:34
Speaker 1: are forming this atmosphere. They're supporting an atmosphere. They're floating
14:40
Speaker 1: out and um kind of hanging around. Yeah, you know.
14:45
Speaker 1: And um, so you've got an atmosphere in place. You
14:48
Speaker 1: have a molten core, you have a softer mantle, and
14:53
Speaker 1: then a crust that formed. Yeah. And um, as that
14:57
Speaker 1: that softer mantle and the woont and core press up,
15:01
Speaker 1: you have volcanic activity, yeah, which releases even more heat
15:06
Speaker 1: and gas, which makes the atmosphere even thicker. And at
15:10
Speaker 1: this point they think that there is a period of
15:12
Speaker 1: um water presence on Mars where it was raining. So
15:17
Speaker 1: then after you've got a primitive atmosphere. And then, as
15:21
Speaker 1: it says in the article by Craig he's a great
15:25
Speaker 1: writer for us. Yeah, PhD, that's right. Uh he said
15:29
Speaker 1: March Mars couldn't catch a break, which was pretty accurate,
15:32
Speaker 1: And it was pounded by meteors in the Solar system,
15:36
Speaker 1: forming craters and basins and all sorts of interesting landforms.
15:41
Speaker 1: And you know, the same thing happened here. But we
15:43
Speaker 1: had like water and things like that too, cause erosion
15:48
Speaker 1: and fill it, fill it in. On the Moon, there
15:51
Speaker 1: isn't anything like that, so you still see those craters.
15:54
Speaker 1: And but the same thing happened on Mars. Yeah, and
15:56
Speaker 1: actually there was water on Mars um that bombard it,
16:00
Speaker 1: and the that caused the magma to come up out
16:03
Speaker 1: of the core of of Mars, creating volcanic activity and
16:09
Speaker 1: shifts in the mantle and the crust. Um all released
16:12
Speaker 1: hot gas into the Martian atmosphere, which thickened it and
16:16
Speaker 1: increased its temperature, which led to rain, yes, rain, flooding, erosion.
16:23
Speaker 1: So there was like a period at least for a
16:26
Speaker 1: little while of um the presence of water on Mars.
16:31
Speaker 1: There still list, dude, the presence of unfrozen flowing water.
16:37
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, there's not flowing water right as of September
16:41
Speaker 1: last year, they found water in the dirt. Yeah, it's
16:43
Speaker 1: pretty exciting. Two points per cubic foot. Yeah, but but
16:46
Speaker 1: it's a spoiler. Sorry, actually it can't be a spoiler.
16:49
Speaker 1: But that happened in the bat right, Yeah, but if
16:53
Speaker 1: if you haven't heard of it any yeah, alright, sorry,
16:56
Speaker 1: Uh so, then Craig likens to Mars at this point
16:59
Speaker 1: is a soft boiled and as the eggshell is cooling, uh,
17:03
Speaker 1: the the yoke is gonna start busting through the mantle.
17:09
Speaker 1: And that's like on Earth is what is going to
17:11
Speaker 1: form things like volcanoes. And again those volcanoes and that
17:14
Speaker 1: activity led to that atmosphere in the periods of rain
17:18
Speaker 1: and flooding and erosion Olympus Mons. Yeah, that's a good
17:23
Speaker 1: pixie song. Was that a pixie song for a dream
17:25
Speaker 1: of the Olympus Mons? Nice? Yeah, I don't think I
17:28
Speaker 1: did that one. What's that on? Uh? Yeah, okay, Uh.
17:35
Speaker 1: Olympus Mons is the largest volcano there and it's like
17:38
Speaker 1: it makes Mountain Everest look like a mole hill. As
17:40
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, it's the largest point in the
17:43
Speaker 1: known Solar system, the highest point. Yeah, yeah, the tallest um.
17:50
Speaker 1: Remember our myth busting episode where we showed that Mount
17:53
Speaker 1: Everest wasn't the tallest mountain. It's mounta Loa Yeah. Yeah. Um,
17:57
Speaker 1: on Earth, mounta Looa is um something like it. It's
18:02
Speaker 1: six miles from the ocean floor. Uh, yes, the rises
18:07
Speaker 1: six nice chuck and um it's a hundred and forty
18:10
Speaker 1: miles wide at its base. That's a big mountain. On
18:14
Speaker 1: Earth on Mars, which is again half the size of
18:17
Speaker 1: Earth in diameter. Olympus mons is sixteen miles tall. And
18:23
Speaker 1: and that's not from an ocean floor either, Yeah, you know,
18:26
Speaker 1: because there is no ocean on Mars exactly. But if
18:29
Speaker 1: you want to see something cool, type in Mars, what
18:33
Speaker 1: would Mars look like with ocean and people have done
18:36
Speaker 1: like um simulations of it. It looks really neat, like
18:39
Speaker 1: vacation worthy, like you would want to go there to vacam.
18:43
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like a sunny beach with it looks
18:46
Speaker 1: like Earth, but with weird continents um. And then it's
18:50
Speaker 1: three seventy miles across Olympus mons Is. That's large. It's big.
18:54
Speaker 1: And they have like pictures if you google it, uh,
18:57
Speaker 1: compare it to Everest and it just dwarfs it, that's right.
19:02
Speaker 1: And you can see pictures of it too, you know,
19:04
Speaker 1: they snapped photos of it. It's pretty impressive. It's been
19:07
Speaker 1: large volcano which eventually went dormant. All the volcanoes on
19:14
Speaker 1: Mars went dormant, that's right, somewhere possibly about three billion
19:18
Speaker 1: years ago, and um as the volcanoes went dormant, the
19:24
Speaker 1: the the heat was released. Basically Mars had no more
19:28
Speaker 1: heat to give from its core um, which meant the
19:32
Speaker 1: atmosphere wasn't being fed any longer, so it thin, which
19:35
Speaker 1: led to a drop in temperatures. Yeah, and how we
19:38
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, how the the fact that it was smaller
19:40
Speaker 1: than Earth is one reason why it's not more like Earth.
19:43
Speaker 1: That's the reason it cooled so fast, like Earth wouldn't
19:45
Speaker 1: have cold nearly as fast, no, huh. And um it
19:48
Speaker 1: also kept a magnetic field going thanks to its molten core.
19:53
Speaker 1: Mars did not any longer, so you got a thin atmosphere,
19:57
Speaker 1: cold temperatures. Um. The atmosphere that was there started freezing
20:01
Speaker 1: and falling two Mars and was stored as ice. Any
20:05
Speaker 1: water that was already on the planet's surface turned into
20:08
Speaker 1: perma frost, and um Mars became it underwent what's called
20:12
Speaker 1: the Great desiccation event, where it became a barren, deserted
20:17
Speaker 1: desert planet. Yeah, and before that, these were this kind
20:20
Speaker 1: of happened in cycles for a while, like the volcanic
20:22
Speaker 1: action and then the gas is being released and like
20:26
Speaker 1: major flooding from water, until like you said, eventually it's
20:30
Speaker 1: the cold, not hot, but cold, dusty place that we
20:34
Speaker 1: love today. Yeah, And what's um interesting is that Earth
20:38
Speaker 1: and Mars were so similar as they formed and about
20:41
Speaker 1: at the same time. About three billion years ago, Mars
20:44
Speaker 1: underwent the Great Desiccation Event and Earth underwent the Great
20:48
Speaker 1: Oxygenation Event, which gave rise to all life here on Earth.
20:52
Speaker 1: The the appearance of algae, which created a breathable atmosphere
20:57
Speaker 1: almost at about the same time. So they totally diverse,
21:00
Speaker 1: two different paths that have around the same time. I
21:02
Speaker 1: wonder if the main reason was because of its size. Yeah,
21:06
Speaker 1: the cooling another Earth. Yes, it's interesting. Had it been
21:09
Speaker 1: the exact same size, who knows, maybe we'd be like
21:14
Speaker 1: going there and back right now, right on vacation like Swarnegger.
21:20
Speaker 1: That was a good one, or Colin Farrell. Did you
21:23
Speaker 1: see the remake? No? Although I heard the Robo Cup
21:27
Speaker 1: remake was like surprisingly good, I haven't seen expecting that.
21:30
Speaker 1: I haven't seen it either. Yeah, that's why I'll definitely
21:33
Speaker 1: wait for TV for that one. You know, Uh, you
21:37
Speaker 1: really don't care about seeing that one. Not even DVD
21:40
Speaker 1: like TV. Well, I don't watch DVDs, Okay, I'm streaming
21:45
Speaker 1: like the rest of the modern world. Not even a
21:49
Speaker 1: laser disk Uh, should we talk about what it's like there. Yeah,
21:55
Speaker 1: on the surface, Yes, the surface of Mars Um scientists
21:59
Speaker 1: have divided into three major parts, the Southern Highlands, the
22:04
Speaker 1: northern plains, and the polar regions, which we already said
22:07
Speaker 1: you can actually see from Earth polar ice caps. Yeah,
22:10
Speaker 1: just like Earth, but the ice caps are made of
22:13
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide, so it's dry ice ice caps, and then
22:16
Speaker 1: underneath there's water ice yea. So the southern highlands are vast.
22:22
Speaker 1: I love our morning shows. It's always a little more
22:24
Speaker 1: like laid back. I feel like, yeah, like I'm sleepy. Yeah,
22:28
Speaker 1: you're not riddled with anxieties yet. That comes on about noon. Yeah,
22:33
Speaker 1: I haven't had enough coffee yet. So you've got your
22:35
Speaker 1: Southern Highlands, and like I said, they are extensive and vast,
22:38
Speaker 1: and uh, it is elevated. It's the the highest part
22:42
Speaker 1: of Mars and heavily cratered and again the highest part
22:45
Speaker 1: of the solar system, right, because that's where Olympus Moms is.
22:48
Speaker 1: That's right in the southern region, the Southern highlands. Uh.
22:51
Speaker 1: And they scientists think it's ancient um these highlands because
22:55
Speaker 1: of the craters, because the cratering happened close to four
22:59
Speaker 1: billion years ago, and that was just meteors kind of
23:02
Speaker 1: just pounding the solar system all over the place. So
23:06
Speaker 1: the southern Highlands are high and then there's a very
23:09
Speaker 1: um pronounced drop of several kilometers down to the um
23:16
Speaker 1: northern plains, which are low lying regions. There are a
23:19
Speaker 1: lot like the seas on the Moon um but they
23:22
Speaker 1: do feature raised areas plateaus, a couple of them. Yeah,
23:27
Speaker 1: the cinder cones. Yeah, well, the cinder cones are on
23:30
Speaker 1: the plateaus. I think basically the mantle bulged up through
23:33
Speaker 1: the crust. It's thinner in the northern region and the
23:36
Speaker 1: mantle just pushed up and formed like continent sized plateaus. Um.
23:41
Speaker 1: That are called crustal upwarps. That's a great word. Yeah,
23:45
Speaker 1: I kept thinking I was reading it wrong. Nope, crystal upwarps. Uh.
23:49
Speaker 1: And the these crystal upwarps, there's two of them. One
23:52
Speaker 1: is the smaller it's Elysium membered Paradise that right, and
23:55
Speaker 1: the other one is called Tharsis. Arcis in the Northern
24:00
Speaker 1: Hemisphere is divided into eastern and western hemispheres. Tharsis is
24:05
Speaker 1: in the west and Elysium is in the east. Yes,
24:09
Speaker 1: celestial names are so cool, it really are You know,
24:12
Speaker 1: what do we have on earth? New Jersey not thar No,
24:18
Speaker 1: we start a campaign to rename New Jersey tharsus Um
24:25
Speaker 1: and then like the main city could be Tharsist City,
24:27
Speaker 1: which sounds super futuristic, and in fact it's Newark. Every
24:32
Speaker 1: citizens issued to sparkly silver jumps. Oh. U, so you've
24:38
Speaker 1: called out Olympus Mons is the highest point. That is
24:40
Speaker 1: where in the it's in the region which this article
24:44
Speaker 1: is confusing because it mentions the sarsest Reason region in
24:47
Speaker 1: the southern um the hemisphere and in the northern hemisphere. Uh.
24:52
Speaker 1: And I looked all over the place to find definitively
24:55
Speaker 1: where it is. And I think the discrepancy comes from
24:58
Speaker 1: the fact that it's equatory. Okay, it's pretty close to
25:02
Speaker 1: the equator. Olympus Mons definitely is. So maybe it's both right,
25:08
Speaker 1: But it's about at that point, um that the uh,
25:11
Speaker 1: the highlands drop off into the northern plains. That's right.
25:16
Speaker 1: And Uh, in Tharcis you have some pretty impressive canyons um,
25:21
Speaker 1: a system called the Vallis Marineris and it makes the
25:26
Speaker 1: Grand Canyon look like a tiny little hole in the ground.
25:29
Speaker 1: It is three hundred and seventy miles wide and twenty
25:32
Speaker 1: six thousand, four hundred feet deep, not to slam the
25:36
Speaker 1: Grand Canyon, but if you've ever been there, imagine something
25:39
Speaker 1: dwarfing that even, right, And again, Mars is half the
25:42
Speaker 1: size of Earth, right, and it doesn't even just dwarf
25:45
Speaker 1: the Grand Canyon. It's bigger than the Mariana Trench, which
25:48
Speaker 1: is eighty miles long. So it's a good thousand miles
25:52
Speaker 1: longer than the Mariana Trench. And the Mariana Trench is
25:56
Speaker 1: forty three miles wide. The Vallis Marina Harris is seventy
26:01
Speaker 1: miles wide. Yeah, that's nuts. Yeah, So it's a big
26:04
Speaker 1: old trench. Like you can't even comprehend that kind of
26:07
Speaker 1: size when you're standing there, No, imagine when you're in it.
26:10
Speaker 1: You can't see the edges or anything like that. So
26:12
Speaker 1: you're just of course, you can't be in it because
26:15
Speaker 1: you know, people can't go to Mars. But you know,
26:16
Speaker 1: I know what you mean, we will eventually, you think
26:19
Speaker 1: Elon Musk predicts he will retire and die and be
26:22
Speaker 1: buried on Mars. That's what he's he said. It's not
26:25
Speaker 1: a certainty, but it's a possibility, but that's his goal. Yeah. Wow,
26:30
Speaker 1: Well he's got the dough to make it happen, I guess,
26:32
Speaker 1: and the vision, Like you say the same thing, but
26:34
Speaker 1: you've just got the vision, right, you don't have the
26:37
Speaker 1: billions of dollars. And it's not even my vision. I'm
26:40
Speaker 1: just reporting what Elon Musk said. You know, oh I
26:43
Speaker 1: thought you wanted to do that as well. Now go
26:45
Speaker 1: to Mars. You want to get shot out of a cannon.
26:47
Speaker 1: I would I abandoned that a long time ago. Yeah, Um,
26:51
Speaker 1: what's the new plan? Just to be cremated? Yeah, distributed
26:56
Speaker 1: with youmi? Okay, that's nice. Yeah, she's really calmed you down.
26:59
Speaker 1: She is like, first, first things first, this cannonball thing, right,
27:03
Speaker 1: it's gotta go. Um, the polar regions you can see
27:08
Speaker 1: from Earth, like we said, and it is surrounded by
27:10
Speaker 1: a bunch of dunes and they are like I think
27:13
Speaker 1: you said, it was frozen carbon dioxide, right, So it's
27:16
Speaker 1: not like the ice we have here on Earth. No,
27:18
Speaker 1: it's well, we have it here on Earth, dry ice.
27:20
Speaker 1: Well yeah, but just it's not our polar ice cap.
27:23
Speaker 1: And like Earth, depending on the season, the ice caps
27:27
Speaker 1: are going to change shape in the summertime, the CEO
27:30
Speaker 1: two from the northern caps uh melt away and and
27:35
Speaker 1: there's water ice below that, so not dry ice as
27:39
Speaker 1: they call it in Spanish agua ice. And that's why
27:43
Speaker 1: apparently we sent the Phoenix there. Uh. They were like,
27:47
Speaker 1: send that thing up there and dig down into the
27:49
Speaker 1: frozen dirt and let's see what what it's made up of.
27:54
Speaker 1: And they found water. They found uh two points. Phoenix
27:59
Speaker 1: didn't find it. Phoenix found like found uh that the
28:03
Speaker 1: Martian soil is filled with perchlorate, which is a big
28:07
Speaker 1: problem for Mars missions. Yeah, that's like very bad for
28:11
Speaker 1: human beings. It's extremely toxic. It's a thyroid toxin has
28:16
Speaker 1: a very quick effect um as a developmental effect on
28:19
Speaker 1: infants and um fetuses, So reproducing on Mars would be
28:24
Speaker 1: a big problem. And even in adults, it has a
28:27
Speaker 1: big effect on your thyroid, which affects your hormone production
28:31
Speaker 1: function UM. And it's everywhere. It's in the light Martian
28:35
Speaker 1: dust and Mars has tons of dust storms that enveloped
28:38
Speaker 1: the whole planet, which we'll talk about for like weeks
28:41
Speaker 1: at a time. Yeah, and there there's pe chloric in
28:44
Speaker 1: those dust storms, so it would get everywhere. So they
28:47
Speaker 1: just found out like a couple of months ago that
28:50
Speaker 1: this is everywhere and it's going to be a huge
28:53
Speaker 1: challenge to Mars missions in the future. But they're saying,
28:56
Speaker 1: now that we know about it, we can design around it. Yeah,
28:59
Speaker 1: it's just seems so uninhabitable, Like, I don't know if
29:04
Speaker 1: our lifetime we're going to see it a manned mission.
29:06
Speaker 1: Maybe we'll definitely see a fly by. Yeah, yeah, a
29:10
Speaker 1: man fly by. Yeah. Okay, you and Elon Musk, we will.
29:15
Speaker 1: That's not even just for this Elon Musk in the
29:19
Speaker 1: Senate Okay, yeah, Marr. They're all so excited. So Chucker's
29:27
Speaker 1: up next. We're going to talk about the interior of Mars. Okay,
29:53
Speaker 1: so we're back and we're talking about Mars's interior. And
29:56
Speaker 1: to talk about Mars interior is really boring unless you
30:00
Speaker 1: compare to Earth, and then all of a sudden you're like, oh,
30:02
Speaker 1: this is cool. So let's compare to Earth. The Earth's
30:06
Speaker 1: core is um has a radius of about from the
30:10
Speaker 1: center to the surface, and is made up of iron
30:14
Speaker 1: in two parts, the solid core and the liquid outer core,
30:18
Speaker 1: and the interplay between those two creates Earth's magnetic field,
30:23
Speaker 1: which allows for the northern lights. Oh yeah, encompasses what else, Ah,
30:32
Speaker 1: that's about it. Okay. Mars's core radius is only about
30:37
Speaker 1: nine um and between nine miles and it is probably
30:43
Speaker 1: made up also of iron, but throwing some sulfur, maybe
30:46
Speaker 1: a little oxygen. And they believe, Uh, I don't. I
30:52
Speaker 1: didn't get this. He said it may be made up
30:54
Speaker 1: maybe maybe molten, but it's unlikely. So they still don't know.
30:57
Speaker 1: I guess. And they think that The reason they don't
31:00
Speaker 1: think that it's molten, though, is because Mars has a
31:04
Speaker 1: very weak magnetic field. Um, but maybe not always. Yeah,
31:09
Speaker 1: it probably had a strong magnetic field and the and
31:11
Speaker 1: before the great desiccation event, um, but now it doesn't have.
31:15
Speaker 1: When they think that if it is molten, it's not.
31:19
Speaker 1: There's not a lot to it. Okay, Yeah, that makes sense.
31:22
Speaker 1: Around the Earth, score is softer mantle like toothpaste, and
31:27
Speaker 1: it's way less dense than it is iron and magnesium
31:30
Speaker 1: silicate about eighteen hundred miles thick. And that's when you
31:35
Speaker 1: see a volcano and lava flowing from a volcano. That's
31:38
Speaker 1: where that's coming from. Well, it comes from the magma
31:40
Speaker 1: through there the liquid all right, isn't it. I think
31:44
Speaker 1: so we did a podcast on volcanos. You think you
31:48
Speaker 1: remember that was a good one, the volcanos one, I thought, so.
31:52
Speaker 1: I was worried about it and chuck the mantle pushing
31:56
Speaker 1: up through the through the surface. Yeah, counts for those
32:01
Speaker 1: crustal uplifts, up up warps, up warps, that's right. Um.
32:07
Speaker 1: And here on Earth we have things like volcanoes, active
32:11
Speaker 1: volcanoes and earthquakes, and they're largely due to, if not
32:15
Speaker 1: exclusively due to, um, the fact that we have continental
32:19
Speaker 1: plates like the crust of Earth, which Mars also has
32:23
Speaker 1: a crust, but Earth's crust is broken up into these
32:26
Speaker 1: plates that drift and move around slowly and rub up
32:29
Speaker 1: against one another. Um. And that's where the fault lines exist.
32:33
Speaker 1: And along those fault lines you have volcanoes and earthquakes.
32:36
Speaker 1: Mars that's not the case as a crust, but it's
32:39
Speaker 1: not broken into plates. It's solid. Yeah. I thought that
32:42
Speaker 1: was pretty interesting. And that's why there's no active volcanoes
32:46
Speaker 1: right now for one reason. Yeah. Yeah. Um. And we
32:50
Speaker 1: while we're talking about Mars, well we probably should have
32:55
Speaker 1: mentioned it on the surface, but it's a neat little
32:57
Speaker 1: tidbit if you ask me, do you know I Mars
33:00
Speaker 1: is rust colored? Uh no, because it's coated in rust. Yeah. Yeah,
33:06
Speaker 1: it's oxidized iron in the soil, which makes it rusted.
33:11
Speaker 1: It's a rusty old planet, a rusty, dusty, cold, windy,
33:17
Speaker 1: uninhabitable perhaps planet. And again the reason why it's probably
33:22
Speaker 1: uninhabitable is it lacks an atmosphere, or it practically lacks
33:28
Speaker 1: an atmosphere. There is a very thin one still, Yeah,
33:31
Speaker 1: I guess we can compare that to Earth to um.
33:33
Speaker 1: Mars's atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide. On Earth it's less
33:39
Speaker 1: than one percent, right, Like you could just stop right there. Toxic,
33:45
Speaker 1: a lot less nitrogen two point seven percent compared to
33:48
Speaker 1: Earth seventy eight. Not much oxygen at all, only point
33:51
Speaker 1: one three. That's a big factor. It's toxic again and
33:57
Speaker 1: um about one as much water vapor as on Earth. Yeah,
34:03
Speaker 1: you need that too, inhospitable, which is why they there
34:08
Speaker 1: are proposals to seed Mars to terraform it. Yeah, basically
34:13
Speaker 1: going and like artificially stimulate an atmosphere to form so
34:18
Speaker 1: that in ten thousand and fifty hundred thousand years it
34:22
Speaker 1: could conceivably be habitable. Yeah, and we we did a
34:26
Speaker 1: show on that too. Is all coming together. It's a
34:28
Speaker 1: long term plan, but sure, which means we'll never do it.
34:32
Speaker 1: Elon Musk will maybe his grandchildren. Uh So. The atmospheric
34:37
Speaker 1: pressure in Mars is interesting too. It's super low and
34:41
Speaker 1: super cold, and that's why there is no water liquid
34:45
Speaker 1: flowing because it's either going to freeze or evaporate. They
34:49
Speaker 1: can't just exist as water these days. Nope. But like
34:53
Speaker 1: we said, possibly probably did at one point. So you've
34:57
Speaker 1: got a thin atmosphere, which means a lot of um
35:00
Speaker 1: solar radiation is not blocked, is not reflected um, which
35:06
Speaker 1: means that you have very wild swings in daily average
35:10
Speaker 1: temperature on Mars. Because Mars does have a day, it
35:14
Speaker 1: does rotate, and actually it rotates it about the same
35:17
Speaker 1: rate as Earth. The Mars salt which is short for
35:22
Speaker 1: solar day, it's just about forty three minutes longer than
35:26
Speaker 1: um Earth's day. Yeah, but because it's further out away
35:31
Speaker 1: from the Sun, it's orbit around the Sun takes longer.
35:33
Speaker 1: So it's year is about twice as long as a
35:36
Speaker 1: year on Earth. Six hundred and eighty six point nine
35:39
Speaker 1: eight Earth days, which means the seasons last longer, which
35:44
Speaker 1: makes them more extreme as we'll see. Yeah, and you
35:47
Speaker 1: talked about the temperature fluctuation. It's almost a hundred degrees
35:50
Speaker 1: fahrenheit on a daily basis. The difference in temperature, that's enormous. Again,
35:57
Speaker 1: not very friendly for us humans. No, well figure it out.
36:00
Speaker 1: You have to pack a big suitcase. You know, you
36:02
Speaker 1: have to pack your your thong as well as your
36:06
Speaker 1: Arctic explorer. Well, you could just wear a thong under
36:11
Speaker 1: your artic explore coast there, it's the key to Mars.
36:15
Speaker 1: Where layers pack big where layers. But like you said,
36:21
Speaker 1: there are seasons in the spring and early summer, the
36:23
Speaker 1: sun heats up the atmosphere and the dust lifts up
36:28
Speaker 1: and and makes it even hotter once that dust is
36:30
Speaker 1: in the atmosphere, and it basically is what causes those
36:35
Speaker 1: big dust storms we're talking about. Yeah, the dust, the
36:39
Speaker 1: dust particles get suspended and invite more heat, which suspends
36:44
Speaker 1: more particles than um. It creates wind there winds. Yeah, well,
36:50
Speaker 1: just like here on Earth, it creates convection cells, which
36:54
Speaker 1: creates wind. And as those wind speeds whip up because
36:58
Speaker 1: the atmosphere is thinner, you have to have higher speeds
37:01
Speaker 1: because the wind has less to push against air to
37:04
Speaker 1: push against, so it takes higher speed winds. But once
37:08
Speaker 1: they do hit something like a hundred and twenty miles
37:10
Speaker 1: an hour, the entire planet can become enveloped in a
37:14
Speaker 1: dust storm that can last months. That's crazy. And again
37:18
Speaker 1: it's not just dust. It's dust with one of the
37:22
Speaker 1: more toxic compounds known to humanity in every bit of it. Yeah,
37:27
Speaker 1: and it's not going to blow off a Mars rover
37:29
Speaker 1: these things, you know, way like in the tons. Yeah,
37:32
Speaker 1: I think theirsities one ton one ton. And actually what's
37:36
Speaker 1: strange is the dust storms, it says, are um beneficial
37:40
Speaker 1: because they will blow the any um Martian dirt caked
37:43
Speaker 1: on the solar panels. Yeah, that makes sense too, or
37:46
Speaker 1: maybe it might reveal something, Yeah that wasn't there before,
37:49
Speaker 1: like a pyramid. That'd be pretty cool, Chuck, I want
37:54
Speaker 1: to talk about water on Mars. That was NASA's directive.
37:57
Speaker 1: Follow the water for many years and still as because
38:00
Speaker 1: they think they're in holds. The key to the big
38:03
Speaker 1: question is there possibilities of having life on Mars? Is there? Life?
38:09
Speaker 1: Was their life on Mars and we're not talking about Martians. Unfortunately,
38:13
Speaker 1: we're talking about maybe bacteria which could be Martians. I mean,
38:17
Speaker 1: if it lives on Mars, it's Martian. I guess it's
38:20
Speaker 1: a good point. Everybody just basically needs to lower the
38:23
Speaker 1: bar for their expectations of what a Martian is. Yeah, right,
38:27
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, instead of little green men, right,
38:30
Speaker 1: it's bacteria and um. When this article was written, it
38:33
Speaker 1: was pre curiosity, but it just a couple of months
38:36
Speaker 1: ago Curiosity confirmed, uh that there is water present in
38:42
Speaker 1: the soil. Yeah, and they think it's everywhere. Yeah, it's
38:46
Speaker 1: basically the soil has a very big leaching property, yeah,
38:50
Speaker 1: where it absorbs water from the atmosphere and locks it
38:53
Speaker 1: in there, so that if if we went up there,
38:57
Speaker 1: we could extract um about, like A said, two pints
39:00
Speaker 1: of water from every cubic foot of soil that's mine.
39:04
Speaker 1: It's pretty cool. It is pretty cool. Again, though, we
39:06
Speaker 1: have that per chlorate problem. It's everywhere. It would get
39:10
Speaker 1: in the water, and one of the ways that it
39:11
Speaker 1: transfers to humans and becomes toxic is through drinking water,
39:16
Speaker 1: so we'd have to deal with that. But ironically, the
39:19
Speaker 1: thing about per chlorate being there, it's also used in
39:22
Speaker 1: solid rocket fuel here on Earth. So we would need
39:25
Speaker 1: it to get to Mars, but once we got to Mars,
39:26
Speaker 1: we wouldn't want to have it. Interesting, that is very ironic. Thanks.
39:31
Speaker 1: So you're talking, Chuck about how water could consuerably lead
39:34
Speaker 1: to life on Mars. We it's vital to life. It's
39:38
Speaker 1: one of the um vital parts of life. I can't
39:41
Speaker 1: remember the term for him. Not a building block, one
39:46
Speaker 1: of the essential some things for life component? Yes, yeah,
39:51
Speaker 1: I think that is it essential component for life. We
39:54
Speaker 1: worked that out together. This has been morning condition and no. No.
39:59
Speaker 1: Now they found water on Mars and confirmed that it
40:01
Speaker 1: is there, and they knew all along that there was
40:03
Speaker 1: water ice on Mars. Um. It makes that Martian rock
40:08
Speaker 1: from four billion years ago seem all the more likely
40:12
Speaker 1: that it is displaying evidence of fossilized microbes. Yeah. And
40:16
Speaker 1: they used to think that there was methane uh in
40:19
Speaker 1: the atmosphere or trace amounts, but I think that has
40:21
Speaker 1: been debunked now with upon further research. Yeah. Yeah, because
40:25
Speaker 1: again when this article was written, it sounds like they
40:28
Speaker 1: thought it was still like they still head detective methane
40:32
Speaker 1: and they didn't know whether it was from of biological
40:35
Speaker 1: or chemical origin. Yeah, more recent studies UM as of
40:38
Speaker 1: October two thousand twelve, UM, they analyzed the atmosphere uh
40:44
Speaker 1: for methane six times and basically found no more than
40:48
Speaker 1: one point three parts per billion. Yeah, that's not good
40:51
Speaker 1: for evidence of life. Yeah, and that's about one six
40:55
Speaker 1: as much as they had previously estimated. And they thought, well,
40:59
Speaker 1: maybe it went some where, you know, and and they
41:02
Speaker 1: NASA said no, it wouldn't. UM. It would have been
41:05
Speaker 1: super exciting, but it's methane doesn't uh distribute and leave
41:10
Speaker 1: like that that quickly, like it would still be around.
41:14
Speaker 1: So unfortunately, no methane. Speaking of methane UM as evidence
41:18
Speaker 1: of life. Remember our termite episode, somebody wrote in to say,
41:21
Speaker 1: did you know termites or like a huge contributor of
41:24
Speaker 1: methane to on Earth. They're the second largest contributor of
41:28
Speaker 1: methane after five stock. Yeah. Wow, even beating out humans. Wow,
41:33
Speaker 1: that's crazy. Yeah, because we shoot a lot of ducks,
41:36
Speaker 1: we humans, some of us termites have flatulent insects uh
41:42
Speaker 1: so bacteria UM. Martian soil has been known to be
41:48
Speaker 1: like formally chemically active, but maybe not biologically, but it
41:52
Speaker 1: is possible maybe because they have a good example in Greenland. Um,
41:57
Speaker 1: they found bacteria that was dormant for a hundred twenty
42:00
Speaker 1: tho years frozen in the ice, and when they unfroze it,
42:04
Speaker 1: it started multiplying again in the beginning of the apocalypse. Yeah,
42:08
Speaker 1: it's kind of creepy. Yeah, but like it's not stopping.
42:12
Speaker 1: Possibly in the polar ice caps on Mars. Maybe that's
42:14
Speaker 1: going on to Yeah, we just don't know yet. Yeah,
42:17
Speaker 1: they think that, um, it is very possible that you
42:20
Speaker 1: could take some of them, the extreme of file bacteria,
42:23
Speaker 1: ones that live like in um volcanic vents undersea and
42:27
Speaker 1: things like that, and transplant them two Mars and some
42:30
Speaker 1: of them would survive, especially mineral thriving um bacteria ones
42:35
Speaker 1: that like eat minerals. You could put them on Mars
42:39
Speaker 1: and they would they would do Okay. Possibly well spaceships
42:43
Speaker 1: like if we could possibly bring our own bacteria there
42:47
Speaker 1: by accident as well, you know, just from like I
42:50
Speaker 1: think the International Space Station had E. Colid in it. Yeah,
42:53
Speaker 1: and possibly lee Jonella retainers disease on the I S
42:58
Speaker 1: I Wow, Yeah, or the I S S. That sounds
43:01
Speaker 1: like a like a movie waiting to happen. Sure, I
43:05
Speaker 1: guess we sort of did that with Outland. Was there?
43:08
Speaker 1: Was it a disease? A disease? It was just a
43:11
Speaker 1: cop chasing a bad guy. Again. I wonder if it
43:15
Speaker 1: holds up. I doubt it. Yeah, if it held up,
43:19
Speaker 1: it'd be alien like, it would still be in the rotation.
43:23
Speaker 1: But Outline doesn't play on cable very often, you know,
43:25
Speaker 1: it really doesn't. That is pretty good evidence too. I
43:29
Speaker 1: remember the Outland Mad magazine. Um, but I didn't have
43:34
Speaker 1: that one. Yeah, that was a good one. Um So Chuck,
43:37
Speaker 1: You remember we were talking about way back how the
43:40
Speaker 1: um Viking and um mariner and Mars orbiters provided this
43:47
Speaker 1: evidence that Mars was just a dead, barren planet and
43:50
Speaker 1: really undermine the idea that there was possibly life there
43:53
Speaker 1: and that it was lush. Yeah. Well it also provided
43:58
Speaker 1: some conspiracy theorists pretty solid evidence that there was or
44:02
Speaker 1: is some sort of civilization on Mars, because yeah, Viking
44:07
Speaker 1: one in nineteen seventies six produced a photo that looked
44:12
Speaker 1: a whole lot like a fernic type face, like the
44:18
Speaker 1: face on Mars. Pretty clearly a face if you look
44:21
Speaker 1: at it. Uh, it was two miles from head to
44:25
Speaker 1: toe from tip to bottom. So it wasn't like Jesus
44:28
Speaker 1: on a piece of toast. No, I mean it looked
44:30
Speaker 1: like it looked like a artificially constructed monument, a face
44:35
Speaker 1: of a monument. Maybe when that had toppled, it was
44:37
Speaker 1: now just poking out from the Martian soul soil. Um.
44:41
Speaker 1: So they looked uh, closer in, but there's a lot
44:45
Speaker 1: of cloud cover, so they got kind of a garbled look.
44:49
Speaker 1: And they looked again more recently, maybe two thousand eight
44:52
Speaker 1: or two thousand eleven, and it's very clearly just a
44:55
Speaker 1: mesa that's disappointing. It is, especially like when you look
44:59
Speaker 1: at that original Yeah, yeah, when you look at the
45:03
Speaker 1: Viking one photo, Yeah, it looks like a top old
45:05
Speaker 1: statue head. Yeah it does. It actually factored into that
45:09
Speaker 1: terrible movie um Mission to Mars, Yeah wow, which I
45:14
Speaker 1: saw with hippie rob By the way. Oh really yeah? Nice?
45:17
Speaker 1: Was that is the last time you saw him? It
45:19
Speaker 1: was among that he just walked into the woods after that,
45:22
Speaker 1: never to be seen. Wasn't that that was Brian to Palm,
45:26
Speaker 1: I wasn't it. I think it might have been so disappointing.
45:30
Speaker 1: I mean, it had an all starcust Gary Sinise, don Cheetle.
45:35
Speaker 1: I think Bill Paxton Maybe I don't think it was Pullman,
45:40
Speaker 1: but I might be confusing Bill Paxton from Apollo thirteen. Anyway,
45:44
Speaker 1: it didn't pan out very well. What do you got
45:47
Speaker 1: anything else? Yeah? Um, I don't know why this article
45:50
Speaker 1: doesn't mention if Mars has two moons, phobos and demos. Yeah,
45:53
Speaker 1: they didn't get into that at all. No, um and uh,
45:58
Speaker 1: Mars popped up and pops up in pop culture a lot.
46:03
Speaker 1: There's um, the Mars Volta the band. Yeah. Uh. David
46:08
Speaker 1: Bowie had a song called Life on Mars, one of
46:10
Speaker 1: the great songs. The Misfits had the greatest Mars song,
46:14
Speaker 1: Teenagers from Mars. That's a great song. Yeah. Oh what's
46:19
Speaker 1: his name? Jared Leto right thirty seconds to Mars. Yeah,
46:24
Speaker 1: they're going on tour right after his oscar Win. I
46:27
Speaker 1: had never heard any of his music until the other day.
46:30
Speaker 1: I was like, what are they like? And Emily tried
46:32
Speaker 1: to describe it. Then she just played a song. Yeah,
46:34
Speaker 1: it's not my bag, mine anything, but good for him.
46:36
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I think they're like huge internationally. Yeah, he's
46:39
Speaker 1: got gout. Did you know that? I did not know
46:41
Speaker 1: that he needs to lay off the pet Noah, I
46:43
Speaker 1: think he um. I think it was had to do
46:46
Speaker 1: with his weight gain and loss for the John Lennon
46:50
Speaker 1: Um the Mark David Chapman movie. He did, Oh really, Yeah,
46:54
Speaker 1: he got all fat to play Mark David Chapman, then
46:56
Speaker 1: like got all skinny again, I think, got gout because
46:58
Speaker 1: of it, and then got even anywhere to play Rayon
47:01
Speaker 1: in Dallas Buyers Club. Dude, have you seen it? Yes?
47:05
Speaker 1: How thin can two people get? And they were pretty thin?
47:08
Speaker 1: Like the two of them together make me. And there's
47:12
Speaker 1: gotta be like that. There's gotta be a safe way
47:15
Speaker 1: to lose and regain weight. Yeah, but I'll bet there's
47:20
Speaker 1: not very many safe ways to gain weight to make
47:23
Speaker 1: yourself look pudgy, no, I mean, and then to lose
47:26
Speaker 1: it again, I'll bet when it's been done, like from
47:28
Speaker 1: DeNiro to Fat mac On always sunny. I think they
47:31
Speaker 1: say they just eat like lots of garbage and just
47:35
Speaker 1: pile it on. Yeah, that's not I'll beat at all now.
47:38
Speaker 1: But you know that's one of my pet peeves. When
47:40
Speaker 1: you take a fit person in like the game thirty
47:42
Speaker 1: Pounds for a movie and it it's like you don't
47:45
Speaker 1: look like a fatter person, and you look like a
47:47
Speaker 1: fit person who like has a distended belly. You know,
47:53
Speaker 1: it takes years to get this look. You know you
47:56
Speaker 1: gotta work at it, sculpt this. Yeah, Um, okay, you
48:00
Speaker 1: got anything else? I got nothing else. I think this
48:03
Speaker 1: is better than the sun. Oh yeah. As far as
48:06
Speaker 1: our our celestial episodes go far less physics that we
48:10
Speaker 1: had to deal with. We haven't done the moon straight up?
48:12
Speaker 1: Have we? I think we have? Have we, Jerry? Have
48:16
Speaker 1: we done the moon? I think we did because we
48:18
Speaker 1: talked about its origin, whether it was calved, whether it
48:21
Speaker 1: was a separate decreation. I'm pretty sure we've done the moon.
48:25
Speaker 1: All right, we'll look it up. Is getting bad? We
48:27
Speaker 1: need we need to get a list together, so we
48:30
Speaker 1: quit boring everyone with this. Yeah, you'd think we'd edited out,
48:34
Speaker 1: but we just don't. Well, if you want to learn
48:37
Speaker 1: more about Mars, you can type that word into the
48:40
Speaker 1: search bar at how stuff works dot com. And Uh,
48:43
Speaker 1: since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. Uh, Josh,
48:52
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this um your theory on eating what
48:54
Speaker 1: you crave? Did you see this email? No? Um, just
48:58
Speaker 1: listen to the Salt podcast Dude and Josh posture that
49:01
Speaker 1: you could get along just fine eating only what you crave.
49:04
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how serious he was, though fairly serious,
49:07
Speaker 1: fairly okay, I'll agree that if it depends on whether
49:09
Speaker 1: the right I'll agree that a hundred and fifty years
49:12
Speaker 1: ago this may have been pretty viable. But these days
49:14
Speaker 1: it's a different story. There's a lot of evidence that
49:17
Speaker 1: points to food manufacturers actually designing junk foods that make
49:21
Speaker 1: you crave more of them, mainly sugar and fat heavy foods.
49:24
Speaker 1: There's one great book in particular called Good Calories, Bad
49:27
Speaker 1: Calories by Gary Tobbs, basically tells the story of how
49:30
Speaker 1: a lot of what the f d A in U
49:32
Speaker 1: s d A recommends as wrong and how it got
49:35
Speaker 1: that way. For instance, the guy who conducted the seven
49:38
Speaker 1: country study, which is what caused the government to say
49:41
Speaker 1: fat will kill you, simply throughout data that contradicted the
49:45
Speaker 1: result he was looking for. Throwing the fact that corn
49:48
Speaker 1: is subsidized and super cheap, we have the recipe for
49:51
Speaker 1: an obese, misinformed population that's addicted to sugar. Has been
49:55
Speaker 1: fed terribly wrong information about health for a long time. Yeah,
49:58
Speaker 1: I've learned recently, like you're supposed to have fats, and
50:01
Speaker 1: there are good fats and there are bad fats, but
50:03
Speaker 1: like low fat is a not a good way to go,
50:08
Speaker 1: and it has been kind of foisted on us, foisted Jerry.
50:13
Speaker 1: Jerry likes the value that word uh. And that is
50:15
Speaker 1: from Steve Baum, the bomber in what he calls good
50:19
Speaker 1: Old New Jersey or as we calls Parsis. Is he
50:26
Speaker 1: from Tharsus City, That is Steeve Bomb. I don't know
50:29
Speaker 1: if he's from Sarcas City or not, but he's from
50:31
Speaker 1: somewhere in dars There is a really good article about um,
50:39
Speaker 1: how food scientists engineer foods to make us crave them
50:45
Speaker 1: is on the New York Times. It was a couple
50:46
Speaker 1: of years ago by a guy named Michael Moss. Yeah,
50:49
Speaker 1: and in your defense, I don't think you were. I
50:51
Speaker 1: think you meant it more along the lines of craving
50:55
Speaker 1: real foods and not necessarily I'm craving ben and Jerry's
50:58
Speaker 1: or pretzels, you know, i' meant like like craving a
51:02
Speaker 1: steak or something like that, not ignoring that and going
51:05
Speaker 1: with you know, ahead of lettuce Um. I can't find
51:10
Speaker 1: the name of that article, but it's a Michael Moss
51:13
Speaker 1: article and it's from the New York Times, and dude,
51:16
Speaker 1: it is good. It's one of those really extensive long
51:19
Speaker 1: form ones that like should be long form because there's
51:22
Speaker 1: just so much great information in it by opening ye
51:25
Speaker 1: So look it up, everybody. It will open your eyes. Uh.
51:29
Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch with Chucking Me,
51:31
Speaker 1: you can tweet to us at s y s K podcast.
51:34
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51:36
Speaker 1: you Should Know, or you can send us an email
51:39
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51:45
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