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What Is Terraforming? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Okay, Daniel, how many times in your life do you
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: think you've moved, like from one house to another so
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: many times. There was one period when we actually moved
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: back and forth across the Atlantic. I think it was
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: seven times in four years. That's wild. Yeah, from California
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: to Geneva and back. It was insane. Well, the hard
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: part is when you need to do renovations right, Like
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: if you're the home that you're moving into is not
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: quite habitable, that's right. You want to get it just
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: as you like it. You wanted to be nice and cozy,
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: you wanted to be comfortable place to live. You want
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: all those things right. And that's hard enough when the
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: other place you're living is across town or across the country,
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: or even somewhere else on the planet. Yeah, but now
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: imagine if you had to move to a whole another planet.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure I can get my wife on board
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: for taking the kids to Mars or to the moon
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: or did you better it's a little further than Geneva.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: It's a time of it for the traveling in Switzerland,
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: and I'm not sure how we'd find a contractor to
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: do that work, Like, who's going to do the renovations
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: of my lunar base Elon Musk. He's probably got a
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: company already for it. So you five different kinds of flooring.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: It's called house X the flooring company. The flooring company.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: Oh perfect. Hi, I'm h and I'm Daniel. Welcome to
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe. I'm a
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: particle physicist, but I like thinking and talking about all
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: sorts of crazy things in science, and I make cartoonists
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: and mostly I'm just crazy. I got nothing to say
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: to that. You're totally a sane, a normal person, and yeah,
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: I'm so not saying that. Um. And this is our
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: podcast in which we take things in the universe and
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: try to explain them to you, make them understandable. We
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: don't want you to be intimidated by the fancy words
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: and science. Who wants you to understand them so you
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: can impress people of cocktail parties when they ask you
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: what is the Higgs boson or how does something actually work? Yeah,
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: we want you to imagine what it's like to travel
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: the universe and to see all these amazing things out there. Today,
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about living on other worlds, terraforming, terraforming.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: Is that like the ceramic thing that you make statues
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: out of. I think if you want to make a
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: really big planet size statue, then you could call that terraforming. Yeah. Wait,
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: I think I'm thinking about terra cotta. That's different. Terra cotta.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: That's right. Can you build a planet out of terra cotta? Right?
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: That would be the largest pottery wheel in the in
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: the history of the universe. Yeah. So that's a big
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: question is can we be an InterPlaNet hairy species? Can
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: we can humanity live in multiple planets? That's right? And
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: this this is a really important question because if we
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: want to survive for thousands or millions of years, we
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: can't keep all of our eggs in just one planetary basket.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: You know, one comet comes and slams in the Earth
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: and kills everything on Earth. Poof, we're dead. But if
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: we have people living on Mars and the Moon and
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: you know, and somewhere else, then we could survive such
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: cataclysm as a species. You mean as a species, not
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: me or you individually. Like I'm not going to jump
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: up there and catch the commet and save the planet
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: or anything like that. But from the point of view
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: of humanity. It seems like a really important project to
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: get off this rock, get living somewhere else. Yeah, Or
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: like if we ruling this planet, right, Like, if we
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: mess it up somehow and Earth is no longer happenable,
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: what's going to happen to humanity? We have to go
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: somewhere else. And you make us sound like we're a
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: bunch of kids making a mess in the living room
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: or something like you don't have faith that we're gonna
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: be able to take care of this planet. You think
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: we're on a on the trajectory to climate doomsday, where
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: more like little kids burning tires inside of the house,
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Like that's an officially recommendation people,
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: Jorge says, do not burn tires inside your house. Just
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: do it in the backyard. Right, Generally that's a bad idea. Yeah,
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: is that how you start your cozy family evenings? Let's
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: go burn some tires outside? Um. Yeah, But this is
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: even bigger than that. This is bigger than can we
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: go to another planet? Can we establish a base on
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: another planet? This is can we make another planet habitable?
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: So you can live outside, you can breathe the air,
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: you can run around, you can grow crops. So you
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: meaning we can go to another planet and live there,
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: but we would be in space suits and inside of
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: some kind of base the whole time. That wouldn't be
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: a lot of fun. That would not be a lot
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: of fun. I mean, I think if you went to
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: Mars and just build a colony, like you know, out
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: of ships and domes and stuff like that, you'd basically
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: be living on Antarctica, you know, be cold and dry
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: and unpleasant, and you have to pee in a space
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: suit all the time, and it would not be like
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: living on Earth and be very hard to imagine millions
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: or billions of people living that way on Mars right
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: or anywhere else. So if you want to really want
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: to establish non Earth population centers, you have to figure
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: out a way to make the planet itself habitable without
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: space suit. Yeah. So that's where the term terraforming comes from.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: And so we were curious to know how many people
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: out there, including you, maybe knew this term. Yeah. So
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: I went out in the street and I asked people,
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: have you heard of terraforming? Do you know what it is?
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: What does it mean? Is it possible? Here's what people
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: had to say, I've heard the word before, but I
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: don't actually know anything about it. Okay, I used the
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: form like how the Earth got formed? Okay, No, I
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: haven't heard terraform before. No, No, I have no terraform.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: I've heard of it, I don't know the meaning of it. Okay,
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: um on another planet forming the environment or something like that,
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: something along those lines. A right, is that like when
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: you dig up the planet. I've heard of the term,
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: but not the definition. What's your best guess what it
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: might be? How the Earth forms or how any planet
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: forms or good. Yeah, I have heard of terraforming. Terraforming
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: is whole fully something when we can be a step
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: three civilization. I forget the correct connotation. But you'll maybe
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: get a lot of energy from the Sun and be
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: able to use that to go and colonize another planet
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: and make the human race become a multiplanetary species. Do
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: you think that's realistic? No? I think we have way
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: too much on Earth that we need to take care
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: of still, and that it's a sexy idea, but I
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: think that it's not gonna happen for some long amount
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: of time. All right, So a lot of nose. Maybe
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: I was asking the wrong question. I was asking people
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: have they heard of terraforming, and most of the people,
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: except for one very smart gentleman I had a lot
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: of a lot to say about it, had never even
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: heard of the word. Right. They're like, just not even
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: part of something they think about or or talk about
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: or wonder about. Right, So that's good. We can we
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: can explain people what the word means. Nobody thought it
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: was terra cotta. Nobody except for you things that has
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: to do with pottery, That's right, very Chinese soldiers. Except
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: for now. Somebody now is going to be listening to
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: this podcasts. They're gonna come away with it that that's
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: their takeaway, right, that terraforming is making an earth out
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: of terra cotta. But maybe a more interesting question to
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: have asked would have been like, do you think it's
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: possible to turn Mars into a habitable planet? Right? That's
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: I'm curious what people would have thought about that. But anyway,
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: in another universe and another multiverse, I asked that different question.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: Do you think people would have known or thought it
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: was possible or not? I don't know, but I'm always
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: surprised to hear what people think. I would have would
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: like to know what people think is possible if that's
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: sort of a feasible project the humanity could pull off.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: I mean, man, massive planetary engineering, as you'll hear in
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: today's podcast, folks, it's not a small project to undertake.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: That's a word, planetary engineering. The idea that you can
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: change an entire planet. That's amazing, right, Yeah, And you
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: know it's something people thinking about for Earth. Right. Geo
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: Engineering is the study of, like, can we solve our
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: climate climate problems by doing some crazy engineering, you know,
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: like deflecting the Sun's rays or or you know, injecting
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: things into the atmosphere or pulling CEO two out of
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: the atmosphere, like these massive engineering projects as desperate measures
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: to reverse climate change. It's gonna become center stage more
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: and more, and then in the next few years, I
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: think be cool to we get that as a degree,
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: you know, in your diploma planetary engineer. Yeah. Well, you know,
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: the more people burned tires outside or in their living room,
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: the more we're gonna have to worry about this stuff
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: and counteract it. So somebody's got to think about it.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of really fun papers about geo engineering.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: People have crazy schemes to try to cool off the
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: Earth or I mean a lot of it sounds really
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: risky to me. It's not like we really understand the
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: way the atmosphere works. So trying to tweet it and
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: twiddle with it, like dialing the knobs on the atmosphere,
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: that scares me. Seems tricky. If you don't have a
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: lot of faith in engineers, generally, I feel, well, you know,
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: sometimes you have to put your faith in the engineers
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: because you have a desperate problem. Right, But when it's
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: a when it's a system that you know they don't understand,
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: Like we can't predict the weather very well, right, so
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: how can you predict what happens when you seed clouds
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: or when you put huge mirrors in space? Like And
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: that's a fine thing to do on another planet where
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: you know you have a million year is to figure
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: it out, or a thousand years to figure it out. Um,
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: an infinite budget. But when it comes to Earth, our
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: home less open to this kind of crazy experimentation. I
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: would be very concous. We only have one planet and
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: so you know we if we miss it up tinkering,
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: it could be bad news. Yeah, exactly, Um, would you
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: put the whole climate into the hands of engineers and say, hey,
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: tinker away, see what happens. I think it'd be cool
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: just to be be called the P you know, like
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: Planet arr engineer. You just want the title, you don't
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: want the responsibility. Ye say it part of com planetary
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: Engineer pH D and P. Yeah. So let's get into it.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: So what is terraforming? What is what is the concept
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: of terraforming? Yes, so, just from the word terror meaning
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: earth and right informing meaning forming, it means take another
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: planet like Mars or another planet and make it like
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: the Earth, make it to be able to sustain human life, right,
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: make it habitable, yeah, make it habitable, make it a
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: place that you might want to go, right, right, But
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: is it? So it's basically the concept of making it
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: so that you can step outside without a space food,
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: take a deep breath and enjoy the sun and the
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: air on Mars, yeah, or any other planet. I mean,
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: And that's exactly the kind of thing that happens in
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: science fiction stories all the time. Right, they land on
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: some planet, they set down, they open the door, they
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: take a deep breath, and they go ah, yeah, yeah,
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: smells pretty sweet on planet x y Z. But there's
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: nothing toxic or dangerous when I breathe this air, right, Yeah,
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: exactly exactly, And that's that strikes me as very unlikely.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: I mean, that would be wonderful if it happened, but
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: it strikes me as very unlikely. But that's the point,
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: is being able to step outside without a space, food
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: and breathe and live. But is that the only motivation
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: kind of to enjoy the outdoors in another planet or
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: is there something more that you know, we can't physically
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: live that many people inside of a base or inside
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: of a constrained environment. Yeah, I think if you want
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: to if you want to really spread across the planet,
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: you've got to make the whole thing habitable. I mean,
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: if you're gonna build domes and live inside domes, that's
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: that's not nearly as fun, right, and it's it's constrained exactly. So, um,
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: if you want to have agriculture that supports a large population,
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: you can need to have plants growing, and so either
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: you have to build a dome the size of the
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: planet or just make the planet into a dome, right,
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: eventually having domes impractical? Interesting? Okay, So let's get into
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: the details and what does it mean to be habitable.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: For a planet to be habitable, like, what do we
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: need to change in other planets to make it more
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: like ours? Yeah? So you need an atmosphere. You need
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: non toxic atmosphere with oxygen in it. You need to
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: have enough water, right. Um, you need the temperature to
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: be reasonable. Right. You can't be a frozen instantly or
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: boiled to a crisp as soon as you step outside. Um.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: You also, and that's not even enough, right. You might think, well,
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: that's a tall order, and it is, but even that's
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: not enough. You need things like shielding from cosmic rays. Right.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: If you're a place where the radiation is much higher
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: than it is on Earth, then you need to be protected.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: Having an atmosphere will do some of that for you,
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: but it might not be enough. Um. So I'd say
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: those are the basics. Water, temperature, atmosphere, um, and shielding
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: from cosmic rays. Those are the four elements. It's a
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: lot of things to get right, you know already. I mean,
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: so it just seems like four things. But that's that's
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: a big list of requests for your for the flooring
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: company or whatever it is we're gonna hire to to
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: renovate the Moon for us, Well, it's just four things,
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: but it's four things the size of an entire planet, right,
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: Like you, it's not about like changing in a little dome.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: It's it's an entire gigantic space that you need to
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: have these, right, Yeah, exactly. And we have that situation
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: on Earth, which is wonderful, but it's not like that
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: happened overnight. You know, this is a billions of years
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: process to get to where we are today, and now
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: we're talking about engineering it and doing it in hopefully
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: less than a billion years, right, So it's gonna be
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: harder to do on another planet, or it didn't happen
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: by itself in a shorter amout of time. Yeah, it
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: kind of makes you think how precious it is the
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: conditions that we have here. Yeah, exactly. Maybe we should review,
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: like roughly how that happened on Earth, how we got
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: to habitable planet on Earth. Earth was formed big ball
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: of hot lavats that it's cooled down a little bit,
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: but then it was dry and so as we talked
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: about a podcast episode a while ago, um, we got
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: water by having comets smashed into the Earth's surface. And
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: comets are basically huge snowballs in space, and so we
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: brought water in from outer space. We ordered it right
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: on door dash or something. Can you deliver like a
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: thousand commets tomorrow, Hey arrowhead, we need a couple of
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: trillion gallons please, yeah, exactly. So that's where we got
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: the water right from space comets um. And then life started, right,
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: and life and produced some carbon dioxides. This is very
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: very early life like microbes that could eat things like
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: metals and rock and all sorts of stuff that existed
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: on the planet Um and produced some carbon dioxide. And
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: we also got some carbon dioxide by venting from volcanoes.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: So that's how we got our atmosphere from microbes and
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: from volcanoes. That gives us an atmosphere that has a
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: lot of carbon dioxide in it, right, But then we
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: need the oxygen, and the oxygen came when microbes, actually
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: cyanobacteria in particular, and then later algae and plants figured
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: out how to photosynthesize. For the instance, this essentially is
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: breaking down C O two into oxygen and carbon, right,
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: and so some of that oxygen is released in the atmosphere.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: And see, you have huge amounts of microbes and algae
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: and plank in the ocean doing this all the time,
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: and the trees now doing this produced enough oxygen to
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: give us an atmosphere that was breathable for animals. Right,
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: So that's how we got water, we got pressure, we
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: got oxygen. Yeah, And it's all sort of tied together, right.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: The living things are tied together with the things in
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: the rocks and the things that came from out of space,
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: and it all sort of mixed together too, and that's
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: where we evolve. Right. It's not like these are the
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: ideal conditions for any life. It's just that these are
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: the conditions in which we grew up in and so
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: that's what we need, right. That's right, And you're right there,
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: all tied together. It's hard to get one without the other.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: You know. Having enough water helps you with all these cycles,
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: and having the right pressure in the atmosphere helps keep
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: the water on the planet, and caps keep the temperature right.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: And so it's a very complicated, delicate system, and it's
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: very easy to throw out a balance. I'm amazed, frankly
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: that we haven't screwed it up already. You know that
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: it's lasted this long where we're well on our way.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: I think expectations are are not low enough. That's right.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: Too many people are burning tires inside. Yeah. Um, okay,
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: so let's get into the then how you would do
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: it and another planet. Let's get into the details of
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: of peeing, not peeing, but peeing planetary engineering a whole
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: other planet to be just like our cozy Earth. But
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: first let's take a quick break. Al Right, So, how
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: do we set up a livable situation on Mars so
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: that we can do cartwheels in the grass and enjoy
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: and take deep breaths and drink from rivers and raise
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: our children care free? Right, that's the goal? Yeah, how
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: do we change the planet in which we would die
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: if we stepped outside, to one in which it would
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: be nice to go out and take a walk. Right,
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: We basically want to turn Antarctica into southern California. Right.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: That seems how hard could that be? Right? Well, we're
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: well on our way for that too. Antarc global warming
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: is the new Southern California. Yeah, so we're going to
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: start with Mars because that's the nearest planet. Right, that's
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: kind of the best candidate we have for maybe moving
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: the entire species to Right, that's right, this is a
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: ridiculous project, possibly potentially impossible, costing zillions of dollars and
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: maybe taking zillions of years. But of the impossible destinations,
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: we mightsidder, Mars is sort of the least impossible. So yeah,
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: that's the one people people talk about a lot, the
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: least impossible. Okay, so there's a sliver of a chance
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: that we might be able to pull this off, yeah, exactly.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: And so to figure out whether this was possible, I
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: actually made a call to an expert, professor Jim Castings
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: at Penn State University. He was he knows a lot
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: about terraforming and Mars. He's thought about this. And when
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: I first called him up and I asked him, I said,
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: is terraforming Mars possible? He said, just flatly no, I
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: can't be done. I was like, well, that was a
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: short phone call, right, it was gonna be a this
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: will be a short podcast. Yeah, But then I said possible,
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: no next time, thanks for tuning in. So he said no.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: He said he's an expert, he's worked with NASA. He's
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: like no, yeah, he's thought about like you said no.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: But then I said, okay, what if I give you
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: an infinite amount of money. He was like, okay, mab Yeah.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: So then he considered it as an infinite number of
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: years and he said, okay, infinite amount of time and
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: infinite amount of resources, then we can do it. Wow.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: So there's it's about the resources. When you say it's impossible,
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: it's not um like it violates any laws of physics.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: Is just that we he didn't foresee how we would
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: pull this off with the resources that we have. Yeah. Well,
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: as you'll hear when we talk about this, it's going
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: to be expensive. Right. So the first problem is Mars
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: has hardly in the atmosphere, and the atmosphere is mostly
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: carbon dioxide. Right, There's almost no oxygen on Mars. So
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: problem number one is you need an atmosphere on Mars. Right,
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: But an atmosphere you mean like a layer of gas
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: surrounding the planet, because currently it doesn't have much of that.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: That's right, So that when you step outside you take
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: a deep breath, you get a breath instead of like
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: your lungs boiling um, which seems less comfortable. Right. I
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: don't want to we adds for the resort that we're
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: going to start on Mars. We don't want um, images
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: of our guests having their lungs going inside out and
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: their blood boiling into space. Right, yeah, like Arnold trash
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: Negger in total recall. Yeah that was a documentary exactly. Yeah. Yeah,
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: well he could when he goes outside of Mars and
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: like his eyes bug out and yeah exactly. Um. And
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: so that's one problem is the atmosphere. And connected to
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: that is the temperature currently on Mars. I checked the
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: web this morning. It's negative sixty three degrees celsius on
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: the surface of Mars. Right, Chili chili definitely not Southern
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: California standards. Right. And those two things are connected. Is
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: it connected to the the fact that there is no atmosphere,
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: you know, like vacuum is by definition kind of cold. Right, Well,
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: there's that, I mean, but also there's nothing to store
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: the Sun's energy. Right. The Sun hits Mars and and
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: warms it up, but then the energy just floats off
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: into space, right, It just radiates back onto space. But
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: an atmosphere acts like a blanket, right, and so it
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: keeps the Sun's energy on the planet. That's one of
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: the reasons why we have global warming here on Earth
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: is that we're thickening the blanket we have of carbon
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: dioxide is keeping more and more of the Sun's energy.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: So Mars has almost greenhouse, right, Yeah, it acts like
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: a greenhouse. Mars has almost no atmosphere, and so most
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: of the energies bounces right back into space. So the
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: fact that you don't have an atmosphere and you don't
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: and you and you're too cold are connected, right, which
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: is bad. Had an atmosphere, it could warm up, Yes, exactly.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: So one strategy for warming up the planet is to
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: give it an atmosphere. Right. So for example, um, I
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: asked the professor, I said, you know what if we
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: um use the carbon dioxide that is on Mars. Because
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: Mars has a bunch of carbon dioxide, It has a
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: bunch of water, but it's mostly frozen in the ice caps, right,
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: so in the polar caps. So there's these huge amounts
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: of basically dry ice which is frozen carbon dioxide on
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: the surface. And so people have been thinking what if
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: we could melt that somehow? Right, what if you stick
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: it in a microwave? If you can build a planet
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: sized microwave, then I think all these terraformy projects will
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: be easy. Um. But no, say, for example, you sent
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: up a bunch of nukes, right, you nuked the ice
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: caps on Mars. Yeah, vaporized all of it, right, and
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: then you would have some gas in the atmosphere, right,
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: And so that's sort of a step in the right direction.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: So you propose that to him, what do he say?
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: The problem with that is that there's not enough. Right.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: Even if you did that, it would be like one
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: of the carbon dioxide, you need to make enough pressure
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: on the planet so that you could warm it up. Right,
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: So you need some other source of carbon dioxide. Now,
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: this is something which is in contention. Some people say, Oh,
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of more carbon dioxide that's sort of
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: buried under the ground, and as soon as you start
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: warming it up, that carbondox will be released into the
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: atmosphere and it's sort of be a runaway greenhouse effect.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: It has to already be in on Mars. Like, we
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: can't bring enough CEO two, like we have. Our problem
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: is we have two munch c O two. We can't
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: just take it to Mars. No, we could, that's another solution, right,
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: but it's easier to start with the CEO two on Mars.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: And some people think there's just not enough c O
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: two on Mars, so that even if you melt the
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: ice caps and warm up all the rocks, that you
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: just won't get enough C two. But that's the point
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: of contention. Nobody's entirely sure. But if there isn't enough
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: CEO two on Mars, as you say, we could bring
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: some in it. You could find some comets or some
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: you know, asteroids that are mostly CEO two and just
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: sort of nugs them towards Mars and crashed them onto
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: the surface. Oh man, wouldn't that cause other problems? Well,
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: I think you'd want to do that before you build
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: your resort um otherwise, I mean, what problems would it cause?
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: I don't I mean, it sounds sort of naive, But like,
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: what's the danger with crashing an asteroid onto the surface
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: of Mars? Like nobody lives there. What's the worst that
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: could happen if we on other planets? Um? No, that's
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: a that's a realistic approach. And this is what I
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: meant when I said, like massive resources can Now you
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: have to build a huge spaceship and you have to
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: get it out there to the asteroids system, and you
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: have to somehow like find an asteroid or nudge you
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: towards Mars, and like this is already costing a lot
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: of money. Now we're talking about asteroid wrangling. Yeah, exactly,
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: that's another cool job description. Yeah, asteroid wrangling. You're gonna
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: get a lot of PhDs. You're gonna be like Bruce Banner,
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: You're gonna have like seven pH D so you can
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: solve any problem. Okay. So so that's where the costs
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: start adding up, Like to get the atmosphere we need,
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: you just need this these huge engineering problems which caused
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: the money for people to do exactly sign up for them, right, Yeah,
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: but there's there's more problems, like say you could do that,
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: so you can nuke them, pull the ice caps and
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: you can get some c O two, and then you
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: bring in enough asteroids and you get enough c O
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: two to warm up the planet. Then you have another problem,
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: which is that the atmosphere is then toxic because in
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: order to get enough c O two to make like
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: a blanket to keep the planet warm enough, you need
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: a lot more c O two on Mars than you
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: do on Earth. And the reason it's just that Mars
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: is further away from the Sun and it's smaller, so
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: it doesn't get as much sunlight, so it needs a
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: thicker blanket. Right, So you need a lot more c
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: O two on Mars and you do on Earth to
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: get to the right temperature. The problem is if you
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: put that much CEO two to the atmosphere, it kills humans.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: So humans cannot breathe that atmosphere like could and you
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: just make up for it by adding more oxygen more oxygen. Well,
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: for you don't want an atmosphere with too much oxygen
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: because then everything it just ignites simultaneously. Um. And also
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: oxygen doesn't have the same properties as CEO two in
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: terms of warming. Right. Each of these gases have a
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: very different behavior in terms of planetary warming because they
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: act different in the atmosphere. So that's not just not
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: possible to do just straight CEO two. Um. But then
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: the people have some other ideas, like maybe we could
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: bring in some ammonia, because ammonia is a really good
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: atmospheric warmer. Um. But pneumonia doesn't last very long. Um.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: So then I asked the professor, I said, well, what
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: if you had some other way of warming it? Right,
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: instead of just using CEO two, what if you brought
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: the CEO two up to a level where humans could
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: breathe it, and you had some other technique for bringing
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: up the temperature, like burning tires. Do you have a lot,
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: a lot of extra tires in your life and you're
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: desperate to get rid of Is that what I'm hearing here?
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean? Like, couldn't you create heat
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: another way? Yes? Planet, Yes, And so one other way
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: is to just increase the amount a solar solar exposure, right,
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: to get more sunlight onto Mars. So build a big
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: mirror in space and just focus a bunch of energy
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: onto the surface of Mars. You mean, like kind of
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: like um, like little kids do with the magnifying glass
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: and ants. Yeah, exactly, kind of focus more sunlight onto
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: the spot where the planet is. Yeah, you know, like
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: those little um camping ovens that are just aluminum foil,
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: and you can put hot dog in the middle of
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: it and focuses the sun's rays on and eventually your
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: hot dog warms up. That's the scenario, except Mars is
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: the hot dog. Okay, So, but you'd have to build
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: gigantic mirrors. Yeah, the Mars has about half as much
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: solar radiation as Earth. Does that means the mirror would
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: have to be about the size of Mars right now,
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: we're talking about huge planet sized mirrors in space, and
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: you gotta get them right. You know, if you too
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: much or too little, and all of a sudden all
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: of your guests and your resort are freezing or fried up. Right,
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: So you're really going to be trusting these pH d
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: p s to to get this right into never fail right.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: This has to work forever and always right. So it's
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: a it's a tricky task, and all of this is
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: just to warm up the planet, right, Yeah, exactly, So
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: you've got to bring into problem number one exactly exactly.
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: Are you feeling less enthusiastic now, it's just like training
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: on the thermostat you know, that's just the beginning of
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: your problems. Yeah, So you bring in an atmosphere somehow,
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: you warm up the planet right, and then what do
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: you have? You have a planet has the right temperature,
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: has enough CEO two in it. But you also want
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: to be able to grow crops, You want to be
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: able to breathe, right, so you need to produce oxygen. Now,
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: I remember the way that happened on Earth was that
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: we had basically algae and phytoplankton. And also it's a
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: little green microbes that are capable of producing oxygen. Um,
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: and that's cool, and we could do that again. We
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: could just like launch a huge tub of of plants,
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: you know, of algae into the new lakes on warm
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: Mars and they could just we could wait for them
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: to do their thing. We could just make Mars moldy.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: That's right, that's right, make Mars funky again. Um. Yeah,
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: And that all sounds great, And you might be thinking
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: that sounds wonderful because then we're using the power of microbes.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: They multiply fast, and they can spread all over Mars
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: and we can green the planet. Um. So I talked
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: to a microbiologist. Um. One of them is my wife,
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: and I also consult consulted them Professor Heather Beans, she's
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: at Arizona State University. And they tell me that agreason
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: will estimate for how long it would take to produce
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: enough oxygen is about a million years. Oh my goodness.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: Even if we put giant tubs of algae there, it
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: would take a million years to process all that t
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: O two into oxygen. You would take a million years
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: unless you know, you want to add another degree and
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: you want to do like plankton engineering and create some
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: new kind of microbe that's better at producing oxygen. But
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: you have take about a million years, and you know
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: it took it took like ten of the six or
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: so years on Earth. It was not a fast process.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: So what what's the factor? Do you just not have
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: enough algae or do you see algae juice? You know,
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: if you max out the number of amount of alogies
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: you could have on Mars, it would still take a
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: million years. So in your mind's eye, you have like
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: the surface of Mars is covered with ten ft of
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: algae or something or something. Yeah, I'm all right, let's
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: go into the max algae scenario. Even in that scenario,
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: it still takes about a million years. And the reason
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: is that algae are not in the business of producing oxygen.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: It's not why they do it. They photosynthesize and but
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: in that process they produce oxygen. They also use some oxygen.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: So the amount of oxygen that's like produced is spare,
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: is not It's not a lot um And yeah, so
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: there's sequestering some carbon. They're producing some oxygen, but it's
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: not an efficient way to make oxygen. I mean, it's
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: it's nice because the sort of runs itself, and it's
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: historical because it's the way we did it on Earth.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: So that's nice and cozy, but it's not a very
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: fast way to make a to make a planet have
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: enough oxygen it and I want to talk about that
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: some more, but first let's take a quick break. Okay,
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: So then what can we do? Can we bring oxygen
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: in other ways? Yeah? Well we could bring water, right,
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: we could bring water in and we could split it,
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: make the H two O into H and O and
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: uh and use that oxygen. That would take a lot
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: of time and a lot of energy, right, splitting water
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: into oxygen and hydrogen takes a lot of energy. But hey,
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: if we're building planetary sized mirrors and shepherding afterwards around
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: the around the solar system that I'm assuming we have
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: access to a huge amount of energy. So yeah, we
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: could certainly do that. Meaning maybe grab another comment with
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: water and crash it onto Mars. That's right, splash it
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: now into your ocean of algae that you have, pumping
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: away oxygen into your atmosphere like a cooking project. We
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: have the splant here, just grab some comments from over here,
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: some asteroids r here. Mix it all together. Yeah, yeah,
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: it's a cooking project. Um. And even if you do that,
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: even if you accomplish all of those things, you still
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: have another problem, which is that Mars doesn't have a
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: magnetic field, and the magnetic field is really important in
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: shielding from cosmic rays. Remember, cosmic rays are just tiny
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: particles from space and they're usually charged, and so a
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: magnetic field will bend them. Here on Earth, we have
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: a magnetic field, and it bends a lot of the
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: radiation from space and protects us and also protects our atmosphere. Right,
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: so let's assume that we heated up the planet and
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: we created enough oxygen for us to step outside and breathe.
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: We still have a big problem, which is that it
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: would all just blow away, right, that's right. The magnetic
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: field keeps the atmosphere from getting blown away from the
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: solar wind and from other kinds of cosmic rays. And
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: so we need to create a magnetic field for Mars.
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: And the size of the planet, the size of the planet,
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: and as um, as crazy as that sounds, it's maybe
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: the easiest task of all the things we've talked about. Today,
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: because you don't need to like go inside of Mars
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: and like get the core spinning to give you a
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: magnetic field, which is how we think we have a
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: magnetic field on Earth. You just need to provide a
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: magnetic shield. And that might be as simple as putting
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: a huge magnet out in space between the Sun and
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: Mars to provide like a you know, a bending so
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: that the particles don't hit Mars. And if you can
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: get the magnetic field a little closer to the Sun,
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: you can create sort of a magnetic envelope or a
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: shadow to protect the planet. Wait, is it the easiest
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: problem that we have in this is creating planet size
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: force field using a planet size magnet. That's right. If
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: you had if you had to pick each of these
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: tasks to solve, that's the one I would recommend pick
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: because that one's easiest and cheapest. Also, if you've solved
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: all these crazy problems, you might be able to make
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: Mars habitable. That's right. So you build an atmosphere, you
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: trunk in a bunch of CEO two, You warm a
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: planet with this, mirrors, you seated with things that produce oxygen.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: You provide a magnetic field then you wait a million years.
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: You forgot to wait a million years apart. Don't pack
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: your bags yet, you're gonna put your underwear back in
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: your drawer. People. Um, it's gonna take a long time
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: before Mars is habitable, even if we started tomorrow. Um,
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: and you know, we can get there earlier with various basis.
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: We don't have to complete the terraforming to start living
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: on Mars. But for the deep future, if we want
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: humanity really have a home on Mars, to be comfortable there,
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: to to have plants growing and crops and all sorts
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: of things, really healthy ecosystem, then yeah, we gotta do
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: the terraforming. And it's gonna take a long time. So
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: there is this liver of possibility. It would just be
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: really really expensive and might take a long time exactly.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: It would be expensive, it would take a long time. Um,
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: but it's not impossible. So given infinite time and infinite resources,
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: it is possible. And you know, on this show we
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: talk about things that are totally impossible and things that
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: are just difficult and expensive. And and I like when
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: things are just difficult and expensive because then you can
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: just say, well, pass it off to the engineers I'm
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: sure they'll figure it out. Right, You, as a physicist,
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: can just wash your hands, be like, it's not my
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: fault anymore, that we're dying as a species exactly. If
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: physicists our job is to move something from impossible to possible.
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: The rest is details, right, That's that's what we really
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: have the engineers for. You know, eventually there'll be an app.
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: You know, you could just um uh, you know, terraform
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: my planet with with your app or something. It will
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: take five seconds. And who wrote that app? Engineers? Engineers
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: and they made all the money. Okay, so and they
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: deserve it. A lot of a lot more rich engineers
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: out there than rich physicists. If you ask me, I
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: was gonna say something, but I forgot you were going
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: to say something, but you got distracted by the huge
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: pile of cash you have as an engineer. Sorry, I
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: was counting my gold coins. I forgot what you were saying. Okay,
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: So that's Mars. That's maybe one of the closest and
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: and maybe least sour impossible tasting of the options. But
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: there are other possibilities within our solar system, or maybe
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: outside our solar system. Right, that's right, There are some
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: other places that we could consider living. For example, there's
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: the Moon. Right, the Moon is even closer than Mars,
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: and so from the point of view like getting stuff
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: there and doing the engineering, it's even simpler. The problem
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: is that the Moon is has a lot of the
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: same challenges as Mars, but it's even smaller, so the
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: gravity is is much much less, which means it would
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: be really hard to hold onto an atmosphere even if
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: you did all the work. You crashed a bunch of
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: comments into the moon. Um, you warmed it up somehow
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: with mirrors, and you give it a nice atmosphere, the
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: atmosphere which is leak away. Right, there's not enough gravity
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: to hold onto the atmosphere on the Moon. You have
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: to be big enough. There's a size requirement, yeah, exactly,
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: have to be big enough so that you have enough
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: gravity to hold onto the atmosphere. Right. It's like you
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: don't want to buy somebody a fancy new jacket. If
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: it's they're just going to throw it away. And that's
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: basically it would be like, if we build an atmosphere
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: on the Moon, it's just going to float away into
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: space because the Moon is not big enough to hold
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: onto it, but at least you would have enough cheese. Right,
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: That's that's right. It would be a fun party while
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: it lasted, right. Um. But if you're looking for like
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: a you know, thousands and thousands of years kind of solution,
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: like you want to establish a human base there, it's
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: just not really a good good idea. I mean, it
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: might last hundreds of years, you might even get a
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: thousand years out of it, but you need to continuously
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: replenish the atmosphere because it'd be constantly running away from you,
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: because it'll just float out into space. Yeah, exactly, and
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: just be constantly farting out your life source into space.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: So the Moon your far back in right, your planet,
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: all right, So that's moon, the Moon. What about other
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: planets in the Solar System. Well, Venus is interesting because
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: it has exactly the opposite problem, right, Venus Mars we
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: talked about has almost no atmosphere. The Moon is no atmosphere.
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: Venus is the other problem, has way too much atmosphere.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: Venus is like we're afraid Earth might be in a
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: million years is it's covered in carbon dioxide and it's
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: way too dense. It's like ninety times the density of
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: the atmosphere on Earth, right, so you'd be crushed two, right, Yeah,
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: And all that CEO two on that planet for all
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: those years has really heated it up. So it's like
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: four hundred and something degrees on the surface of Venus
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: all the time, right, That's not just like during the summer,
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: that's all the time. So the problem with Venus is
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: the opposite. You need to get rid of some of
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: that atmosphere and that will help Venus cool down. And
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: so that's that's hard, Like how do you get rid
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: of atmosphere. It's the opposite problem. You need to take
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: out CEO two. Yeah, And so people have crazy ideas.
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: They're like, well, you know some ideas like somehow get
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: that CEO two sequestered, you know, fire bunch of stuff
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: into the atmosphere of Venus like magnesium or calcium, or
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: you know, bombarded with hydrogen so that it forms water
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: or um, you know, with all sorts of other stuff.
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: These strategies to try to get the CEO two out
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: of the atmosphere onto the surface, which has its own problem.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: And there are other strategies like make huge scoops and
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: scoop off the atmosphere, right, Like like just gather it
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: up and scoop it off Like that seems crazy to me,
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: Like you're going to build an enormous spoon, like, you know,
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: dig into the atmosphere Venus. It sounds crazy, but reasonable
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: people talk about this stuff. You're like, it's physically possible,
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: So get to work engineers. Yeah, and then I thought,
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: you know what if we could take some of the
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: CEO too off of Venus and bring it to Mars.
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: Or we could solve two problems at once, Right, what
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: if you could crash Venus into Mars and create the
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: perfect planet? Now you're going too far. Okay, we can
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: talk about planet sized mirrors, but we can't talk about
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: smashing them together. That's just totally impractical. Um. Yeah, so
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: that's you have am there's a limit to your flavors
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: of that's right. The other problem with Venus is that
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: it rotates really slowly. A day on Venus is two
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: hundred and forty something days on Earth, right, so you
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: have like really really long nights and really really long
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: day So that's a pretty hard way to live. So
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: it to really live on Venus, you'd have to like
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: speed up its rotation somehow, And people have talked about
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: how to do that. Yeah, like if you wanted to
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: get ready the atmosphere, you could build like a huge
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: jet which punches, which pushes the atmosphere out into space,
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: and that could act like, um, like a nozzle, right
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: to speed up the rotation of the planet. Now this
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: is I mean, it sounded crazy, but like, um, that's
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: a real solution. Okay, So that's venus. Um. We have
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: the opposite problem. Where else where else could we go?
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: Maybe outside of our solar system. Yeah, one of the
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: most promising things is not engineering a planet that's close by,
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: but picking the right one. You know. It's like, don't
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: choose from the cars that are available to you in
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: your neighborhood. If none of them work, like, go drive
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: thirty miles to find the right one, you know. And
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: so one option is to look for extrasolar planets, right
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: planets outside our solar system around other stars. And recently
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: we have amazing technology to do this. We found thousands
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: of them and just find one that has the right characteristics,
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: that has the right amount of solar radiation, has an atmosphere,
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: maybe even has liquid water, um, you know, and from
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: that point of view that we'd be starting from a
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: pretty good spot. It's not unlikely we could find one
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: that has carbon dioxide rich atmosphere with the right pressure
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: and the right temperature and liquid water that there's nothing
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: unreasonable about that expectation. So that's more like terror finding
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: than terraforming, right, you know what I mean? Like it's
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: you're looking for one that already looks like ours. Yeah,
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: and even in that scenar area, there of some big problems.
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: Like problem number one is it's super duper far away, right,
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: So it's gonna take a long time to get there,
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: if if that's even possible. Um. And you have to
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: figure out that it's a good destination before you get there,
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: because you don't want to travel for a thousand years
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: and then turn around because oops, you know, we forgot
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: the shopping list or oops, went to the wrong place. Um.
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: The other problem is what do you do when you
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: get there? Right, you want to establish an ecosystem on
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: the planet, and having enough CEO two and you seed
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: it with lie if and it produces oxygen, even that
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: is not enough to make like farmable land. Right. What
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: you need then is soil. You need to cover the
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: planet somehow with with dirt that you can use to
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: grow plants, and that's complicated, right, getting the getting dirt
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: to work, getting soil to work is hard. We don't
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: even understand how it works. On Earth. You know, people
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: are studding. It's not just dirt. Dirt is not just dirt,
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: you I mean, you can't grow things and just sand, right,
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: sand and water you need. Most of the soil that
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: we have on Earth is basically decayed plants, right, is
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: leaf litter and other stuff that has died. So now
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: you've got to start that process on another planet. You
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: have to somehow seated. You can bring some soil and
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: you can put it out there and it'll grow and spread.
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: But to get the right balance of all those microbes
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: working in just the right way to support the plants
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: that you need to feed your people, that's not an
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: easy problem to solve. And you can't just like truck
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: in a planet's worth of soil from Earth. Right, people
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: on Earth are not gonna be happy about that, And
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: that's expensive. So it's a hard problem to solve. Even
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: when you get there. You can just go to home
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: deep and by trillion bags of soil, that's right, It's
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: just not enough soil to fill another planet. And so
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: that's the kind of thing that would take a lot
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: of experimentation and a lot of time, but it is feasible. Okay,
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: So we learned that there are a lot of different
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: flavors of impossible. That's right, hoping beyond hope. Yeah, yeah,
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: they're not impossible, right, All these things could be done,
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: and you know, these are the ideas we have now.
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: And if we're talking about things we're doing over thousands
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: or millions of years, you've got to hope that human
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: ingenuity is going to come up with even better solutions,
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: better strategies, new energy sources, ways to do this kind
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: of engineering. So give us some time. I think we'll
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: figure it out. Yeah. We might not be desperate now,
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: but we might be more desperate later. Yeah, so throw
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: another tire on the fire and uh, you know, make
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: some plans to live on Mars. That really makes you
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: think about how fragile our planet is. You know, like
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: we're so lucky not to be like Mars, and if
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: we're not careful, we're gonna end up like Venus, you know,
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: totally uninhabitable. In either case. Yeah, you know it's good
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: to have negative role model. Right, we see some pretty
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: terrible examples around us of what happens when planets go
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: off kilter Mars lost its atmosphere, Venus overcooked. It's so,
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: we're pretty lucky to be right in this sweet spot,
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: and we better take care of it because it's gonna
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: be a long time before we are capable of making
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: another planet be home to a substantial population. So the
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: next time you go outside, take a deep breath and
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: savor it. That's right. You're not likely to get that
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: anywhere else. That's right. All right, everyone, Well, thanks for
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: lifting this upbeat episode of Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe.
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: If you have questions about what we said and you
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: want to hear more about it, send us an email
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: at Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com. Or if
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: you have another suggestion for a topic you'd like to
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: hear us talk about, send it on over. Or if
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: you have a question about physics or philosophy or dating
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: or small mammals or whatever, just send it on over. Yeah,
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: if you have questions about ceramics like terra cotta, don't
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: ask us. We don't know anything about it. All right,
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: see you next time. Thanks for listening. If you still
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: have a question after listening to all these explanations, please
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: drop us a line. We'd love to hear from you.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: You can find us at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge That's one Word, or email us at
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: Feedback at Daniel and Orge dot com