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How Terraforming Will Work · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
0:04
Speaker 1: dot com. Hang, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
0:13
Speaker 1: Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant, Jerry's over there, Chandler's
0:17
Speaker 1: over Chuck Shoulder in the window, Free things all weird.
0:21
Speaker 1: I'm hot and your cold. Uh yeah, I'm cold. One
0:25
Speaker 1: of us is Mars and one of us is being this.
0:29
Speaker 1: That a book Chuck from Mars. It's the best seller
0:34
Speaker 1: in the podcast co host segment of Barnes and Noble.
0:40
Speaker 1: Are those still around? Yeah? They got like three books
0:44
Speaker 1: in three stores. That one click and clack, by the way,
0:47
Speaker 1: r P R I P legend. Man, that was a
0:50
Speaker 1: sad one. Was he click or clack? You know? Always
0:54
Speaker 1: got that confused? Um it was Tom right, I want
0:58
Speaker 1: to say click but um but as Tom who died
1:01
Speaker 1: and his younger brother Ray still around. Yeah, it was
1:04
Speaker 1: a great show man. Yeah, my house is off to
1:06
Speaker 1: MPR for like immediately like lowering the flag and making
1:11
Speaker 1: a big deal out of it, I mean like it
1:13
Speaker 1: was cool. Yeah, he certainly taught us a thing or
1:15
Speaker 1: two if they did about just everything we know, kind
1:17
Speaker 1: of being natural goose leaving it in everything. So hats
1:22
Speaker 1: off to you, sir, so Chuck. Moving along to terraforming, Um,
1:29
Speaker 1: did you know that a recent study found that even
1:34
Speaker 1: if we instituted a global one child policy like China,
1:40
Speaker 1: but global sure, which is less than a hundred years
1:46
Speaker 1: away now, Um, it's like eighty five years away, that's
1:51
Speaker 1: not that far, we'd be able to keep the population
1:55
Speaker 1: at about current levels. A lot of people would say
1:58
Speaker 1: the current level is too much as it is. But
2:01
Speaker 1: if we didn't do anything and continued on this pace
2:04
Speaker 1: of growth, we've hit about twelve billion people. By that
2:09
Speaker 1: is a ton of people. It's a lot of folks.
2:11
Speaker 1: There's a that's a lot of stretch on resources for agriculture,
2:16
Speaker 1: for fuel, energy, all that kind of stuff, and it's
2:20
Speaker 1: it's caused a lot of people numbers like this, studies
2:23
Speaker 1: like this. It's caused a lot of people to say, Um,
2:27
Speaker 1: how are we going to support all of these people? Yeah?
2:30
Speaker 1: Did you know a lot of people poo poo that notion.
2:33
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I had no idea when I did that
2:36
Speaker 1: little video and overpopulation. A lot of people are like,
2:38
Speaker 1: this is not a problem, this is a conspiracy. There's
2:41
Speaker 1: a there's a there's a definite division between camps. There's
2:44
Speaker 1: the gloom and doom camp who say like, we're screwed,
2:47
Speaker 1: and then there's the other camp who says we'll always
2:52
Speaker 1: technologically advance our way out of trouble like this, right,
2:56
Speaker 1: is that what you're saying. I don't know what the
2:58
Speaker 1: point was. I think there's just there's a camp that
3:00
Speaker 1: says overpopulation is not an issue like people say it is. Well,
3:04
Speaker 1: I think a few people redistributed people. It's possible that
3:10
Speaker 1: that could alleviate overpopulation if it is a thing, But
3:14
Speaker 1: I think most people I can't even say that. Some
3:17
Speaker 1: people would say that agriculture has what's called a carrying capacity,
3:21
Speaker 1: and we've talked about mouth this before, um, and that
3:24
Speaker 1: we are possibly stretching it right now. UM. So a
3:28
Speaker 1: lot of people, the ones who do believe in the
3:30
Speaker 1: overpopulation problem, are starting to look to the stars and saying, hey, man,
3:36
Speaker 1: let's figure out how to exploit other planets too, so
3:39
Speaker 1: the human race can survive. Isn't that what Interstellar is about?
3:42
Speaker 1: That new movie? Yeah, And and it was totally I
3:44
Speaker 1: didn't think, like, oh, Interstellar, this will be timely, like
3:47
Speaker 1: the two just happen to coincide. Is about terraforming, or
3:50
Speaker 1: is it just like, hey, go find a place that's hospitable. Well,
3:53
Speaker 1: according to what Michael Caine says in the preview, it's
3:57
Speaker 1: about just going to find a hospitable plan which is
4:00
Speaker 1: a search that is currently underway and has been for
4:04
Speaker 1: a while through NASA's Kepler Um Observatory. They've been looking
4:09
Speaker 1: for exoplanets, and supposedly right now they have. They're eighteen
4:14
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty four confirmed exoplanets, forty one undred and
4:18
Speaker 1: seventy three unconfirmed, and all of them are between ten
4:21
Speaker 1: light years and twenty five thousand light years from Earth.
4:24
Speaker 1: Pretty far it is right now, it's it's prohibitively far.
4:29
Speaker 1: But there are planets out there that exist in what's
4:31
Speaker 1: called the Goldilocks zone, which is they orbit a star
4:35
Speaker 1: and they're just far enough away from the star that
4:37
Speaker 1: they're not going to burn to a crisp, but they're
4:41
Speaker 1: not so far away that you're going to freeze to death.
4:44
Speaker 1: Hence the Goldilocks zone. Not too hot, not too cold,
4:48
Speaker 1: got it. That's cute. So that's one thing we could do.
4:50
Speaker 1: We could go find a planet that's like ready made
4:52
Speaker 1: for us to live on. If it I doubt that
4:56
Speaker 1: exists though. Yeah, and plus, even if we did find it,
4:58
Speaker 1: like I said, the closest exo planet that we know of,
5:01
Speaker 1: I think is about ten light years away. That means
5:04
Speaker 1: it would take a photon, which travels at the speed
5:07
Speaker 1: of light, ten years to get there. We can't travel
5:10
Speaker 1: anywhere near the speed of light, so it might as
5:12
Speaker 1: well not exist, so all you know, we're not so. Alternately,
5:17
Speaker 1: a lot of people are proposing to take a planet
5:20
Speaker 1: or a moon or an asteroid or something and turn
5:23
Speaker 1: it into something habitable for us, and that's terraforming. Yeah,
5:27
Speaker 1: find a nice little fixer upper planet, go in there
5:30
Speaker 1: and flip it and move humanity there to ruin it.
5:34
Speaker 1: Maybe have a meltdown in front of the cameras, make
5:38
Speaker 1: a couple of stupid things, cliffhangers. Boom, you've got yourself
5:44
Speaker 1: a serious that's right, terraforming. We did a short video
5:47
Speaker 1: about this once about a hundred years ago, where we
5:51
Speaker 1: explained it in sixty seconds. We should just try that again, No,
5:56
Speaker 1: just press play and sit back. We also did one
5:59
Speaker 1: of lunar building a lunar base. Yeah almost at a
6:03
Speaker 1: lunar base on the Moon, but that's redundant. Yeah. Uh,
6:07
Speaker 1: and that's another idea, is what we could just build
6:11
Speaker 1: lunar bases and stuff. I think Russia is doing that, right.
6:13
Speaker 1: They announced in May or June they want to build
6:17
Speaker 1: a like habitable base up there, right. They plan to
6:20
Speaker 1: spend several hundred million dollars and put it on the
6:23
Speaker 1: Moon and just start mining the Moon. They want to
6:27
Speaker 1: get a jump on the rest of the humanity. And
6:28
Speaker 1: it's pretty smart. But building a lunar base, or building
6:31
Speaker 1: a base anywhere, a floating city on venus or anything
6:34
Speaker 1: like that, that's not terraforming. That's building a base somewhere
6:38
Speaker 1: or floating city somewhere. Yeah, we're talking about changing the
6:41
Speaker 1: atmosphere of a planet and more. Yeah, which requires a
6:45
Speaker 1: substantial amount of energy, a lot of foresight, and and
6:50
Speaker 1: a tremendous amount of patients and money. Yeah I have money.
6:53
Speaker 1: But I mean if if you take money and the
6:56
Speaker 1: amount of time, I would say the amount of time
6:58
Speaker 1: is more depressed seeing them the amount of money you're
7:01
Speaker 1: going to have to sink into it, because what we're
7:03
Speaker 1: talking about is stuff that's not going to take place
7:08
Speaker 1: until millennia have passed. Yeah, there's all sorts of ranges
7:12
Speaker 1: of how long it might take the terror form of
7:14
Speaker 1: planet from a thousand years to twenty years. I saw, yeah,
7:22
Speaker 1: for Mars to for us to be able to go
7:25
Speaker 1: to Mars and take off a helmet and be like.
7:29
Speaker 1: Michio Kaku has a very cheap idea. Have you ever
7:34
Speaker 1: seen his little short video he explains in sixty seconds?
7:37
Speaker 1: What is he what's his idea? He's like, you know,
7:39
Speaker 1: there's lots of CEO two under the surface, and all
7:42
Speaker 1: we have to do is heat that up a little
7:43
Speaker 1: bit and jump start the process, and then it creates
7:46
Speaker 1: a what he called a catalytic effect and it just
7:49
Speaker 1: sort of sustains itself. Well, it's yeah, so that's called
7:53
Speaker 1: what he's talking about is called the standard paradigm that
7:57
Speaker 1: Mars has not CEO two on the planet, that if,
8:02
Speaker 1: like he says, you can just melt it, it will
8:05
Speaker 1: create an atmosphere that traps heat. You know, we have
8:09
Speaker 1: a problem with c O two on this planet, which
8:11
Speaker 1: is another reason people say we need to go find
8:13
Speaker 1: another planet and create a greenhouse effect, and that will
8:16
Speaker 1: trap heat, which would melt more c O two and
8:18
Speaker 1: more and more, and it will just create this cycle.
8:20
Speaker 1: Do there what we don't want to do here exactly
8:23
Speaker 1: jumps started. Let's let's talk about Mars. Man, You've got
8:26
Speaker 1: some time to wrap about Mars and and why Mars
8:29
Speaker 1: is frequently pointed to as an ideal locale for terraforming. Yeah,
8:34
Speaker 1: if you listen to our April episode on Mars, then
8:37
Speaker 1: you know a lot about mars um. But we're gonna
8:40
Speaker 1: recap some of it. Mars is a very cold, dried,
8:43
Speaker 1: dusty place now, but it used to be wet and
8:46
Speaker 1: warm and a lot more like Earth than a lot
8:50
Speaker 1: of surrounding planets. So they think we can just get
8:52
Speaker 1: it back to that state, then we've got a good start.
8:55
Speaker 1: Probably the key to Mars, more than anything else, that
8:58
Speaker 1: makes it a the likeliest candidate for terra for me,
9:02
Speaker 1: is that the Martian day is twenty three point seven hours.
9:07
Speaker 1: I think it's almost exactly like Earth's day, right, getting
9:11
Speaker 1: shorter or no, twenty four point seven hours, I'm sorry,
9:15
Speaker 1: twenty four hours and thirty seven minutes something, yes, point
9:19
Speaker 1: seven is thirty seven minutes, isn't sure. I just wanted
9:22
Speaker 1: to give it a relatable So it's close. It's it's
9:25
Speaker 1: very close to the Earth day um, and that indicates
9:30
Speaker 1: that it spits so if Mars is already spinning, it
9:32
Speaker 1: has a huge leg up over the competition in the
9:36
Speaker 1: terraforming contest. So many many years ago, Mars was wet,
9:42
Speaker 1: there was volcanic activity, and it was getting bombarded by asteroids.
9:46
Speaker 1: That right, that did two things chuck, two huge things
9:49
Speaker 1: for Mars. One, these asteroids were bringing in gases or
9:53
Speaker 1: compounds that Mars needed to have an atmosphere, right, it
9:57
Speaker 1: was applying the planet with it. And then the volcanic
10:01
Speaker 1: activity was taking these, um, these compounds and elements that
10:07
Speaker 1: were locked into rock and stuff like that and recycling
10:11
Speaker 1: them back into the atmosphere, which was sustaining the atmosphere, right, Yeah,
10:15
Speaker 1: which was great as long as that was going on.
10:18
Speaker 1: But once those volcanoes stopped and it was lousy with volcanoes.
10:22
Speaker 1: Once they stopped doing their recycling, gig uh, it basically
10:26
Speaker 1: absorbed all that stuff and locked it in the the planet. Yeah,
10:31
Speaker 1: the same thing would happen here, apparently, like if we
10:33
Speaker 1: didn't have volcanic activity. Um, what volcanoes do. One of
10:37
Speaker 1: the things they performs atmospheric recycling, which is taking this
10:41
Speaker 1: stuff that you normally have an atmosphere that's been absorbed
10:44
Speaker 1: by by the soil or by rock and boiling it,
10:48
Speaker 1: melting the rock and spewing it out as a gas
10:51
Speaker 1: back in the atmosphere. And like you said, when Marsh
10:53
Speaker 1: stopped doing that, it's the recycling process stopped, and all
10:57
Speaker 1: of a sudden you just had a static atmosphere that
10:59
Speaker 1: slowly was stripped away. Another part of the problem was
11:03
Speaker 1: Mars cool that the core, and that means it lost
11:07
Speaker 1: its magnetic field, so the upper atmosphere was not being
11:11
Speaker 1: held in place any longer by the magnetosphere, so the
11:14
Speaker 1: solar winds were just stripping it away, and all of
11:16
Speaker 1: a sudden, Mars had this very thin atmosphere that wasn't
11:21
Speaker 1: they couldn't trap heat any longer, and the whole planet,
11:24
Speaker 1: like you said, got really dry and really cold like
11:26
Speaker 1: we know it today. That's right, and uh, completely uninhabitable. UM.
11:31
Speaker 1: A couple of other things Mars doesn't have going for it.
11:33
Speaker 1: UM is it's not very close. It's what like six
11:39
Speaker 1: months away to get there. Yeah, I guess yeah. I
11:42
Speaker 1: think it's like a six month trip to get to Mars. Uh.
11:45
Speaker 1: And that's a long way to go if you want
11:48
Speaker 1: to make regular trips. It's cost prohibitive, yes, but compared
11:53
Speaker 1: to the Moon, which you can get to like lickt
11:55
Speaker 1: ease play that's like a weekender six months is that's
11:58
Speaker 1: pretty distant. Um. But the fact again, the fact that
12:03
Speaker 1: Mars has this history of um being able to hold
12:08
Speaker 1: an atmosphere and surface water, two huge factors in an
12:12
Speaker 1: a habitable planet. UM and the fact that, uh there's
12:17
Speaker 1: stuff that's necessary for life, like c O two and
12:21
Speaker 1: things like that trapped on the planet already in a
12:23
Speaker 1: frozen form really just kind of is a is a
12:27
Speaker 1: bright flashing neon signed to people saying, hey, man, come
12:32
Speaker 1: terra formed me. That's right. We'll talk about some of
12:35
Speaker 1: the steps that you have to take to terra form
12:36
Speaker 1: a planet like Mars right after this. Okay, so Mars
12:44
Speaker 1: is a good it's a good, nice old house that
12:47
Speaker 1: has good bones. Oh yeah, it's a great analogy, and
12:49
Speaker 1: we want to restore it to its former moist wet glory,
12:55
Speaker 1: which sounds really gross. Some people can't even hear the
12:57
Speaker 1: word moist. You know. Yeah, there's a whole it's like
13:02
Speaker 1: a yeah, I don't mind it. Uh so meetchokaku is
13:06
Speaker 1: has the right idea. There are polar ice caps on Mars,
13:10
Speaker 1: which have a lot of CEO two, And if you
13:12
Speaker 1: jump start those and start to melt them, let's say,
13:16
Speaker 1: with solar reflective mirrors, bounce that sun over there that way. Uh,
13:22
Speaker 1: that might be a good way to get things started, right,
13:24
Speaker 1: And it's not going to take too terribly much energy
13:27
Speaker 1: um to melt those that sequestered c c O two
13:32
Speaker 1: because carbon dioxad. Basically what those polar ice caps are
13:36
Speaker 1: is dry ice. Like Mars has dry ice all over it.
13:40
Speaker 1: That's from the atmosphere that was frozen, right, that's right,
13:43
Speaker 1: and um, dry ice sublimates that a hundred negative a
13:47
Speaker 1: hundred and nine degrees fahrenheight. Right, So if you can
13:51
Speaker 1: just direct some mirrors at it and just raise it
13:53
Speaker 1: to that temperature, all that c O two is going
13:56
Speaker 1: to go from ice and vaporizing to gas and it's
14:00
Speaker 1: going to float up and hang in that thin atmosphere.
14:02
Speaker 1: And like we said, once you have that c O
14:05
Speaker 1: two in that thin atmosphere, you've just started this chain
14:07
Speaker 1: reaction that's going to create a cycle where the planet
14:10
Speaker 1: gets warmer and warmer, and the more and more CEO
14:13
Speaker 1: two sublimates and joins the atmosphere and you have a
14:16
Speaker 1: runaway greenhouse effect. Apparently the at the peak the calculations
14:21
Speaker 1: of the amount of c O two on Mars uh
14:27
Speaker 1: says that you would have a surface temperature of about
14:29
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty eight degrees fahrenheight. That's great. Yeah,
14:32
Speaker 1: it's a little hot, but that means water can be sustained. Um,
14:37
Speaker 1: that means that with that atmosphere, the air pressure will
14:40
Speaker 1: be increased, because right now the air pressure on Mars
14:43
Speaker 1: is pretty low too. I think it's about one percent
14:46
Speaker 1: of sea level here on Earth, which is another challenge. Yeah,
14:50
Speaker 1: well maybe once it's that hot, we can introduce hyper
14:53
Speaker 1: thermophiles because and I we'll get to Venus. But that's
14:57
Speaker 1: one of the ideas for Venus. And the idea is
15:00
Speaker 1: you want you can't just plot humans down immediately. What
15:04
Speaker 1: what you're gonna have to start with is some basic
15:06
Speaker 1: form of life, some kind of bacteria perhaps that just
15:10
Speaker 1: starts doing its thing and uh chowing down on CEO
15:14
Speaker 1: two and the making oxygen, and uh pretty soon, like
15:20
Speaker 1: many thousands of years later, humans might be able to
15:23
Speaker 1: live there. Right. One of the that's that's almost like
15:26
Speaker 1: the intermediate steps. So the first step is to get
15:29
Speaker 1: an atmosphere back on Mars. And to get an atmosphere
15:31
Speaker 1: back on Mars, you take Mitchio Cacus mirrors and melt
15:36
Speaker 1: the polar for his mirrors. But yeah, right, it's just
15:39
Speaker 1: nice to say his name. Uh. And you melt the
15:43
Speaker 1: polar ized caps of dry ice, and you create this atmosphere,
15:47
Speaker 1: and you allow water to to melt onto the surface,
15:51
Speaker 1: and then you add something like I think the likeliest
15:54
Speaker 1: candidate to cyano bacteria, which is incorrectly referred to as
15:57
Speaker 1: blue green algae. Who says that? Who says, what? Blue
16:01
Speaker 1: green algae? That's the other term for it. But it's
16:04
Speaker 1: not analogy. It's like a protozoan, I think or something.
16:07
Speaker 1: It's a prokaryote, not a eukaryote like algae. Got man,
16:11
Speaker 1: I feel nerdy right now. It's the oldest fossil on Earth.
16:15
Speaker 1: I mean, that's kind of where it all began, right,
16:17
Speaker 1: That's what gave Earth. It's oxygen. So we're saying, hey,
16:21
Speaker 1: why not try the same thing on Mars. Got a
16:24
Speaker 1: bunch of CEO two on Mars a runaway greenhouse effect. Well,
16:28
Speaker 1: it just so happens that Ciano bacteria eats CEO two,
16:32
Speaker 1: and not only does it eat CEO two, it converts
16:37
Speaker 1: that stuff into oxygen as a waste product. So all
16:39
Speaker 1: of a sudden, you have something, a living organism on
16:43
Speaker 1: Mars that's converting the atmosphere into something breathable for us
16:47
Speaker 1: humans here on Earth. The problem is you have to
16:50
Speaker 1: have water present for Ciano bacteria to live. But you're
16:53
Speaker 1: gonna have that water because you've melted the ice caps.
16:56
Speaker 1: You've melted the ice caps to get the CEO to release,
17:00
Speaker 1: which is like negative a hundred nine. You need to
17:03
Speaker 1: raise the temperature to at least thirty two degrees to
17:06
Speaker 1: start melting the water, which requires even more energy. Where
17:10
Speaker 1: you're gonna get that, well, you're not gonna introduce any
17:12
Speaker 1: sound of bacteria until you have that water. Like that's
17:15
Speaker 1: the first goal. You can't have life without water exactly.
17:17
Speaker 1: But once you do get the water going, which again
17:20
Speaker 1: you could use orbital mirrors, but you just have to
17:22
Speaker 1: concentrate them a little more to reflect more energy into
17:25
Speaker 1: a tighter spot. Um, you've got the cyanobacteria chomping away
17:29
Speaker 1: at the CEO two. It's producing oxygen. Some conservative estimates
17:33
Speaker 1: that i've seen are once you have the oceans or
17:37
Speaker 1: the surface water on Mars, which staggeringly to me, we
17:42
Speaker 1: could do in a couple hundred years. Supposedly, that's nuts, man,
17:46
Speaker 1: Think about that, Like, Mars could be turned from a
17:48
Speaker 1: desert into a place with service water in a couple
17:51
Speaker 1: hundred years. That's not that far away, it's not. But
17:55
Speaker 1: after that, it would take about forty thou years for
17:59
Speaker 1: enough oxygen to be introduced in the atmosphere for a
18:02
Speaker 1: human to possibly walk around on Mars. Yeah, this is
18:05
Speaker 1: why it's so like far fetched to me. Well, it's
18:08
Speaker 1: science fiction. It is far fetched. But if you take
18:10
Speaker 1: a long view of humanity and say, yeah, I mean
18:14
Speaker 1: there's no reason. What was the man in the extinction episode?
18:18
Speaker 1: How long does the average species last? Wasn't it like
18:21
Speaker 1: ten million years? We'll say it is even one million years.
18:26
Speaker 1: That means humans will be around supposedly. I'd be surprised
18:31
Speaker 1: well beyond forty thousand years. So we need to be
18:34
Speaker 1: thinking like in in these terms, because there's no way
18:37
Speaker 1: Earth is gonna last another forty tho years for us
18:41
Speaker 1: unless we just radically re engineer ourselves. Yeah, I'm I
18:46
Speaker 1: get I don't. I never thought of myself as a
18:48
Speaker 1: dim and glimmer. But I must be because I don't
18:50
Speaker 1: I don't know if humans will be around forty years.
18:53
Speaker 1: I guess we'll see. Yeah, all right, we won't see that.
18:56
Speaker 1: But I mean, technically, it should only take an existential
19:01
Speaker 1: existential catastrophe to get rid of humans, Like we shouldn't
19:06
Speaker 1: just necessarily die off as a species. It should It
19:11
Speaker 1: should take something like physics experiment gonnawry, or a nuclear
19:18
Speaker 1: war or biochemical attacks, something like that. Man will do it, yes,
19:24
Speaker 1: it would be as self injury, probably suicide, I guess, well,
19:29
Speaker 1: not suicide murder, murder humanity. So then there's two other things.
19:35
Speaker 1: And there's a guy named Martin Fogg who wrote a
19:37
Speaker 1: book called Terraforming Engineering Planetary Environments, and he basically laid
19:41
Speaker 1: out what you have to do to get Mars going um.
19:45
Speaker 1: And again, Mars is the easiest one to do because
19:47
Speaker 1: it has that planetary rotation already. But additionally there's two
19:52
Speaker 1: other things you have to handle. One is UM, the
19:56
Speaker 1: atmospheric pressure. So apparently even at best Mars would um,
20:02
Speaker 1: it would be a lot like existing on a mountaintop
20:05
Speaker 1: here on Earth, Like the air would be thin. You'd
20:08
Speaker 1: be like living on the top of Mountain Everest. You
20:10
Speaker 1: kind of you'd have to bring your own oxygen, you
20:13
Speaker 1: would so like, But maybe Tibetans and Ethiopian highlanders would
20:18
Speaker 1: make like great early inhabitants of you know, a terraform Mars,
20:22
Speaker 1: because they're already used to that kind of thing exactly.
20:25
Speaker 1: The other thing is is you need nitrogen. Nitrogen is
20:29
Speaker 1: vital of life and the atmosphere, and there's not much
20:32
Speaker 1: nitrogen o Mars. No, So they're saying, well, then all
20:35
Speaker 1: you have to do is start directing commets ammoniu based
20:38
Speaker 1: ice sterroids I think is what they call them. Yeah,
20:41
Speaker 1: because I don't know if everyone knows this. Commets are
20:44
Speaker 1: I think one of the articles liking it two giant snowballs.
20:47
Speaker 1: And if you sent a comet and exploded it before
20:51
Speaker 1: it hit the planet, uh in theory would send ice everywhere,
20:56
Speaker 1: which would be pretty cool. But you need a lot
20:59
Speaker 1: of commets, you you. It's not just like one comment
21:02
Speaker 1: you're done, no one, and done doesn't apply to there
21:05
Speaker 1: for man, we have to figure out how to steer
21:07
Speaker 1: these comments that way, which apparently is not I mean,
21:10
Speaker 1: using um astrophysics. I guess that's not it's not all
21:15
Speaker 1: the remo possibility to steer a comment and then hit
21:19
Speaker 1: it with a nuclear device to blow it up so
21:21
Speaker 1: that it explodes into shards and then rains down on Mars.
21:24
Speaker 1: A lot of things can go wrong though. Yeah, you know,
21:28
Speaker 1: it's frought with complications and comments, but it is a
21:31
Speaker 1: viable way to introduce nitrogen to Mars, and it should
21:36
Speaker 1: ideally stick around, especially once you have an atmosphere um
21:41
Speaker 1: so that's Mars. It's probably the way we're gonna go.
21:45
Speaker 1: Keep an eye out because in a couple of centuries
21:47
Speaker 1: there'll probably be some sas on Mars. Yeah, and I
21:50
Speaker 1: think that guy that you mentioned too says, even if
21:52
Speaker 1: we do manage to do this, it's going to be
21:53
Speaker 1: a constant process of reintroducing, uh, these these elements, these
22:00
Speaker 1: volatile elements to keep that atmosphere going. I don't I
22:03
Speaker 1: don't know if if Mitchocoko was right, if it would
22:05
Speaker 1: ever like self sustain. Well, it could if you do
22:09
Speaker 1: that standard paradigm of creating a runaway greenhouse effect. What
22:13
Speaker 1: Martin Fogus saying is, why would you want to do that,
22:16
Speaker 1: because then you have a greenhouse effect that you have
22:18
Speaker 1: to deal with. I was wondering, and then you have
22:19
Speaker 1: to rein that in exactly, he takes a longer view
22:24
Speaker 1: of just slowly introducing stuff again and again to to
22:30
Speaker 1: to create this Martian atmosphere over a longer period, but
22:34
Speaker 1: um in a more granular way, right, Like more more
22:38
Speaker 1: directed than just creating a runaway greenhouse effect. That makes
22:41
Speaker 1: more sense, a little more focused. So we'll talk about
22:45
Speaker 1: some of Mars's rivals for the terraforming game right after this.
22:51
Speaker 1: So I guess I'm Venus, and so I'm always hot
23:01
Speaker 1: because Venus is a very hot place. It's um very
23:05
Speaker 1: unlike Mars. But some people say Venus has a few
23:08
Speaker 1: things going for it. Namely, it's super close, closest planet
23:12
Speaker 1: to us. Uh. We have similar almost well not identical,
23:16
Speaker 1: but very similar size and mass and a very thick atmosphere,
23:21
Speaker 1: just like Earth does. So there's a lot of similarities there. Um,
23:26
Speaker 1: But you're sort of working in the opposite direction of Mars.
23:29
Speaker 1: Is You've got a cool Venus down a lot, and
23:32
Speaker 1: there's lots of wacky ideas on how to do that,
23:35
Speaker 1: one of which is, what would you do if you
23:38
Speaker 1: were hot? Put up a big shade? Yeah, like one
23:41
Speaker 1: of those little umbrellas in a tiki drink. Yeah, just
23:44
Speaker 1: a giant one. Yes. Basically, the idea is to block
23:48
Speaker 1: all sunlight from Venus and cool it um And apparently
23:53
Speaker 1: in about a hundred years, venus is atmosphere which is
23:57
Speaker 1: pretty substantial, like you said, and almost all CEO two
24:01
Speaker 1: would freeze and fall to the surface. Well, there's a
24:04
Speaker 1: lot of sulphururic acid there is, but um, this this
24:09
Speaker 1: atmosphere would freeze and create a surface layer, just like
24:13
Speaker 1: on Mars, like how the CEO two is locked in
24:16
Speaker 1: the polar ice caps would be doing the same thing
24:18
Speaker 1: with Venus. Then you'd have to go in and deal
24:21
Speaker 1: with this frozen atmosphere, which is kind of a thing,
24:25
Speaker 1: but you could use it to your advantage, Chuck, because
24:27
Speaker 1: the leg up like I said that Mars has over
24:30
Speaker 1: Venus is that the Martian day is about twenty four
24:33
Speaker 1: hours long, right, Well, the Venusian day is about a
24:37
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty days long, which means it rotates way
24:41
Speaker 1: too slowly for us to be habital for us. So
24:44
Speaker 1: if you take this atmosphere and you freeze it, and
24:47
Speaker 1: you create this frozen hulk of a planet, you can
24:51
Speaker 1: actually make it spin faster if you can blow the
24:55
Speaker 1: atmosphere off into space in a directed manner. Yeah, and
25:00
Speaker 1: actually inshow correction, that's a hundred and sixteen uh days
25:05
Speaker 1: is the length of their day day. There you go.
25:11
Speaker 1: But I think anything over a hundred you just call
25:13
Speaker 1: a big problem. Yeah, it's too long. So if you
25:17
Speaker 1: can figure out how to blow the atmosphere, the now
25:20
Speaker 1: frozen atmosphere off of Venus in the direction that it's
25:23
Speaker 1: already rotating, you could conceivably spin up speed up the
25:27
Speaker 1: rotation of Venus. Yeah. One of the other problems with
25:31
Speaker 1: Venus is is there's no water. Um. And as everyone knows,
25:34
Speaker 1: like we said, you need water for life. But then
25:36
Speaker 1: we come back to our common idea of driving these
25:39
Speaker 1: comics and exploding them and creating water that way. And
25:43
Speaker 1: then the hyperthermals which I mentioned thermophiles sorry that I
25:46
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, are these organisms that can thrive in really
25:50
Speaker 1: hot temperatures. Um, and we're talking really hot. I think
25:55
Speaker 1: that the service temperature of Venus is something like eight
25:57
Speaker 1: hundred degrees fahrenheight eight in seventy two, which is four
26:01
Speaker 1: d and sixty seven degrees celsius. Yeah. The problem is
26:03
Speaker 1: we We haven't found anything on Earth, any hypotherrmophiles that
26:07
Speaker 1: can handle that kind of temperature and pressure yet, but
26:10
Speaker 1: they think they exist. Yeah. Did you mention the pressure
26:13
Speaker 1: of the atmosphere on Venus. It's two hundred times the
26:17
Speaker 1: pressure at sea level here on Earth. It's a problem
26:19
Speaker 1: as well. But if you could find a hypo hyper
26:23
Speaker 1: thermophile that could sustain that and a sulfur and then
26:27
Speaker 1: they do though, Yeah, and then yeah, because I think
26:30
Speaker 1: some of them are by thermal vents under underwater, you know,
26:34
Speaker 1: they surf sulfur. We just haven't found any of that
26:36
Speaker 1: can sustain that kind of heat and pressure yet. It's
26:38
Speaker 1: only one way to find out, and that's the launch
26:40
Speaker 1: them towards Venus and see what happens. Basically, in fact,
26:43
Speaker 1: the planet is what you're talking about. Yeah. Um, so
26:47
Speaker 1: the problem with all of this is is too to
26:50
Speaker 1: freeze Venus, it's going to require a lot of energy
26:53
Speaker 1: to reflect all all the light from the surface. Uh too,
26:59
Speaker 1: bit the frozen atmosphere out in the space is going
27:02
Speaker 1: to require even more. Basically, it would require the amount
27:05
Speaker 1: of energy that the Sun puts out in an entire year.
27:09
Speaker 1: It is crazy, It is crazy. Now but have you
27:12
Speaker 1: ever heard of the Cardassian scale? Sure, so then you
27:16
Speaker 1: know there's type one, Type two, and Type three civilizations,
27:19
Speaker 1: and a Type one civilization uses all of the available
27:23
Speaker 1: energy from the star. So, like all of this energy
27:26
Speaker 1: that hits the Earth normally from the sun, if you
27:29
Speaker 1: could harness all that, you'd be a Type one civilization.
27:31
Speaker 1: We're not even there yet. Type to civilization could harness
27:35
Speaker 1: all of the energy at the that's created at the star,
27:39
Speaker 1: not just the stuff that makes it to your planet.
27:42
Speaker 1: And if you could harness that, if you're a Type
27:43
Speaker 1: too civilization, you could be doing this kind of terraforming,
27:47
Speaker 1: no problem. But no sweat man. But I mean, if
27:50
Speaker 1: you think about it, if you have a couple of
27:53
Speaker 1: like leaps forward in understanding, a couple of geniuses are
27:57
Speaker 1: born and live and advance human understanding over the course
28:00
Speaker 1: of a few generations, you could conceivably hit something like
28:03
Speaker 1: that in a hundred years. So, I mean, it's not
28:06
Speaker 1: it's not out of the wrong possibility that we could
28:08
Speaker 1: be doing stuff like this a hundred two hundred years
28:11
Speaker 1: from now. Yeah, venus. Another idea they have instead of
28:14
Speaker 1: these huge giant um shade sales would be to have
28:18
Speaker 1: a big, floating, pressurized geodesic sphere city that people basically
28:24
Speaker 1: would use the atmosphere because the atmosphere is okay above
28:29
Speaker 1: the sulfur cast of that is but um. That would
28:32
Speaker 1: provide shade and then eventually it would cool the planet
28:37
Speaker 1: down enough. Just by creating a shadow. They'd be simultaneously
28:41
Speaker 1: sucking the CEO two out of the atmosphere and breaking
28:44
Speaker 1: it down into carbon and oxygen as well, supposedly, so
28:47
Speaker 1: be doing like two things at once. It's not a
28:49
Speaker 1: bad idea. Yeah, sounds efficient, a little more efficient. And
28:52
Speaker 1: apparently if you pressurized um like a indoor city or
28:56
Speaker 1: something like that, a floating city, and put it into
29:00
Speaker 1: NUS atmosphere, it would naturally float in the atmosphere. It
29:04
Speaker 1: would stay put. Yeah, I think that was the same
29:07
Speaker 1: for the The solar mirror wouldn't have to be attached
29:11
Speaker 1: to anything either off off of Mars. I think it
29:13
Speaker 1: would just be held in place by I think gravity
29:16
Speaker 1: and what solar bubble gum. And then of course, chuck
29:23
Speaker 1: there is the moon. Seems pretty unlikely. The one thing
29:27
Speaker 1: that the moon has going for it is its proximity. Basically, Yeah, basically,
29:32
Speaker 1: it's like the moon is close. It's small, so you're
29:36
Speaker 1: not gonna have to spend a lot of money getting there.
29:38
Speaker 1: And it's because it's small, you're not gonna spend a
29:40
Speaker 1: ton of money fixing it up. It's the budget terraforming idea.
29:44
Speaker 1: I guess the Russians are already be living there at
29:47
Speaker 1: this point. Um. I don't know if the moon is
29:51
Speaker 1: very viable though, Well, you'd have to again bombard it
29:54
Speaker 1: with something to get it to spin faster, because right
29:57
Speaker 1: now it's days Earth days right. Yeah, they said like
30:00
Speaker 1: a hundred comments at least about the size of Haley's comment. Yeah,
30:04
Speaker 1: to get it just spinning faster, and perhaps knock it
30:07
Speaker 1: off its axis a bit and give it seasons, which
30:09
Speaker 1: would be nice. Like we have here on Earth, and
30:12
Speaker 1: my money's on Mars. It's got everything you need except
30:15
Speaker 1: for nitrogen, and that you can just deliver however you like.
30:19
Speaker 1: I kind of like the shell idea that you sent along,
30:21
Speaker 1: kin Roy. He's an engineer who's basically says, why don't
30:25
Speaker 1: we just in case a small planet and a huge
30:28
Speaker 1: shell made of kevlar and steel and dirt, Yeah, and
30:32
Speaker 1: just create like a huge geodesic dome around a planet.
30:36
Speaker 1: I guess the question is where are you gonna get
30:38
Speaker 1: all that dirt? I don't know, because that is the
30:41
Speaker 1: it's it's an essentially greedy you're mostly sitting dirt. Then
30:45
Speaker 1: you create an atmosphere between the shell and the dirt. Yeah,
30:50
Speaker 1: where where's all that dirt coming from? Adobe? Adobe sphere?
30:57
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think that's a pretty neat idea.
30:58
Speaker 1: I'd be, you know, I too, be all artificial that
31:01
Speaker 1: you have to have artificial light because you're inside a
31:03
Speaker 1: dome um and apparently you would have like air locks
31:06
Speaker 1: and stuff to account for, like the vacuum. I don't
31:09
Speaker 1: know about that though. That sounds like he was saying
31:12
Speaker 1: the atmosphere be just thin enough for gravity, would be
31:14
Speaker 1: just light enough so that humans could fly around. I
31:18
Speaker 1: swear he added that I saw that. He's like, just
31:22
Speaker 1: as sweeten the pod a little more, yea, to make
31:24
Speaker 1: it that much more cool, you'll be able to fly.
31:27
Speaker 1: So anyway, we'll eventually ruin this planet and need something.
31:31
Speaker 1: Hopefully we'll have had the foresight to have started terraforming
31:34
Speaker 1: in time. Well, they're they're already working on it, are they. Well,
31:39
Speaker 1: people are talking about it, proposing ideas theoretical ideas. I
31:43
Speaker 1: don't think they're like building. They should be the asteroid Slinger.
31:47
Speaker 1: They should have started in the nineteenth century. They're building
31:50
Speaker 1: a comet sling in Texas as we speak. If you
31:55
Speaker 1: want to know more about terraforming, you can take that
31:58
Speaker 1: word in the search part how stuff works out com
32:00
Speaker 1: And since I said search bar, it's time for Chuck
32:04
Speaker 1: a very special edition Thanksgiving edition of That's right. We
32:17
Speaker 1: are here to say thanks because it's around Thanksgiving, because
32:21
Speaker 1: my friend, it is Thanksgiving. Is it Thanksgiving Day? Yes? Well,
32:24
Speaker 1: of course it's the thurs Day unless you're in Canada
32:26
Speaker 1: and in which case happy late belated Thanksgiving. Yes, because
32:31
Speaker 1: they do. There's in like October weirds. I think so too.
32:35
Speaker 1: So who do we have to think? Yeah, I mean
32:38
Speaker 1: we have. For those of you who have never heard
32:39
Speaker 1: this segment, we have listeners that send us gifts from
32:42
Speaker 1: time to time and it is always very much appreciated
32:45
Speaker 1: and very nice, and so here they are. Yeah, I'm
32:48
Speaker 1: gonna start with the second page. If you want to
32:50
Speaker 1: start with the first base, sure you go ahead, Chuck Uh.
32:52
Speaker 1: Anthony Savino sent us from his Etsy shop Swiss Chisel,
32:57
Speaker 1: a lap laptop and business card holders made out of
33:00
Speaker 1: old wine barrel staves, and he makes all kinds of
33:03
Speaker 1: stuff out of these things. So check out a store
33:06
Speaker 1: which is Swiss Chisel. Yes, and Matt Perky from Evolved
33:11
Speaker 1: Workforce dot com sent us some mugs. Matt's aim is
33:15
Speaker 1: to refine drug testing for states where marijuana is legal,
33:20
Speaker 1: so he can get an idea of what your intoxication
33:24
Speaker 1: is immediately after something like an accident or whatever. Yeah,
33:27
Speaker 1: I was wondering about that well, because he's legalizing, like
33:30
Speaker 1: if your job, you know, if you have to get
33:31
Speaker 1: drug tested, this guy's on it. Interesting. Evolve workforce dot
33:34
Speaker 1: com is that where the mug came from? Okay, I
33:37
Speaker 1: thought that was a hint. New York, New York. The
33:40
Speaker 1: band sent us a promo CD, which is terrific. So
33:43
Speaker 1: we always like getting music from our musician friends, so
33:45
Speaker 1: thanks for that. Yep. Mike do Deck from the Clicky
33:48
Speaker 1: Post dot com c l I c K Y p
33:51
Speaker 1: O s T send us Cube pen holders of his
33:55
Speaker 1: own making. He also sent us some awesome pilot Metropolitan
33:59
Speaker 1: Fountain pens and Rhodeo dot pads. Mike is a pen
34:02
Speaker 1: person and he wanted to share his his passion with us,
34:05
Speaker 1: So thank you very much. Mike. All right, we have
34:07
Speaker 1: an anonymous gift so one sent us a postcard from
34:09
Speaker 1: the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glencoe, Georgia, along
34:12
Speaker 1: with the junior Federal Agent badges for all three of us,
34:16
Speaker 1: and have mine in my wallet. Ye you really do,
34:19
Speaker 1: don't you do? Huge thank you to Chloe the candy maker,
34:22
Speaker 1: who is also a ghost tour guide, who sent us
34:25
Speaker 1: tons of amazing candy from mckinaw Island, Michigan, where I
34:28
Speaker 1: used to go sometimes as a child, so I was
34:30
Speaker 1: very happy to get this. Y. Yeah, and um, we
34:34
Speaker 1: want to say good luck and safe travels to you
34:35
Speaker 1: and your sister and your world tour Chloe, be safe.
34:39
Speaker 1: Big thanks to Annie from Brisbane, Quinsland, Australia send us
34:44
Speaker 1: a megacre package for real of Australian treats. Uh. Tim
34:47
Speaker 1: TAM's I think you love those things, right man? I
34:49
Speaker 1: went crazy for this and Carmelo Kids were pretty good
34:52
Speaker 1: as well. Violet Crumble's picnic Boost Hero. There was some
34:56
Speaker 1: weird stuff in there, but there God, man 've got
35:00
Speaker 1: some crazy candies. Uh. Thanks to Andrew Parr for an
35:04
Speaker 1: entire puzzle dedicated to Stuff you should Know in the
35:07
Speaker 1: World of Puzzles win Or two thousand fourteen issue. It
35:09
Speaker 1: was awesome. Oh boy, this is one of my favorites.
35:12
Speaker 1: Rob henion Um from sin Us those awesome stuff you
35:16
Speaker 1: should know bookends made from industrial fasteners and they are
35:20
Speaker 1: super cool. They're really heavy and they're awesome. And you
35:23
Speaker 1: can get information at more Metal Welding at gmail dot
35:27
Speaker 1: com or more metal dot Etsy dot com. It's like
35:30
Speaker 1: quality quality stuff. Uh. Kevin pelo Quinn from Kevin polo
35:35
Speaker 1: Quinn dot com. That's k E v I N p
35:37
Speaker 1: e l o q u I N and Red Dad Tease.
35:41
Speaker 1: I think those are both of his sites. Uh. He
35:44
Speaker 1: gave us an amazing illustration of Steve Zesu from The
35:47
Speaker 1: Like Aquatic looking pensively toward the horizon, which I have
35:50
Speaker 1: up in my cubicle. Oh, I wonder where that was from.
35:52
Speaker 1: That's from Kevin pelo Quinn. Uh. Lauren and Megan from
35:55
Speaker 1: Chopsticks for Salamanders. They've got a pretty cool cause they
35:58
Speaker 1: sent him. Uh sent us stay less steal reusable chopsticks.
36:02
Speaker 1: And this is a big deal because chopsticks are honestly,
36:05
Speaker 1: they're kind of a problem. Uh. They sell these to
36:08
Speaker 1: help prevent destruction of forests um from those little cheap
36:12
Speaker 1: wooden ones. And they're the same forests where they where
36:15
Speaker 1: they get these the wood for these things, where salamanders live.
36:19
Speaker 1: And so every year sixty billion pairs of chopsticks are
36:21
Speaker 1: thrown away and a lot of salamanders are having their forests,
36:26
Speaker 1: forests and habitats destroyed because of your sushi addictions, which
36:31
Speaker 1: I have as well. So get some of these. You
36:33
Speaker 1: can learn more at Chopsticks for Salamanders dot org. Nice. Um,
36:37
Speaker 1: we got a postcard. It's been a while since we
36:39
Speaker 1: did this. We got a postcard from one of our
36:42
Speaker 1: announcing the birth of one of our newer fans, Clyde
36:44
Speaker 1: Avery Thomas, who was born at one fifty eight am
36:47
Speaker 1: on January sixteenth, two thousand fourteen, in Traverse City, Michigan.
36:51
Speaker 1: I thought, you say it's like six by now. He
36:53
Speaker 1: probably is, but um, he most likely came out a
36:56
Speaker 1: little frost bitten because it's cold up there. But congratulations
36:59
Speaker 1: to and Drew and Janelle Thomas on the birth of
37:02
Speaker 1: your son. Yeah, and happy first birthday pretty soon, pretty soon. Uh.
37:06
Speaker 1: Mike and Cassidy Lord from Athens Georgia who send it's
37:09
Speaker 1: a postcard from Cambodia. Um while in Borneo, I know,
37:14
Speaker 1: wrapped your mind around that interesting? Uh. Sarah Austin gave
37:17
Speaker 1: us a very chic and rugged handmade leather cardholder wallets,
37:21
Speaker 1: which are pretty awesome. Rachel Crandall for the line drawing
37:25
Speaker 1: of stuff you should know written in Gallifrayan. It's the
37:28
Speaker 1: language apparently that uh time lords and doctor who of
37:33
Speaker 1: the time Lords. So I'm not a Doctor Who fan,
37:36
Speaker 1: but I appreciated the gift. Yeah, that was pretty cool.
37:39
Speaker 1: Julie from Austin, Texas sent as a postcard from the
37:41
Speaker 1: Shed Aquarium in beautiful Chicago, Illinois. Thank you, Julie. Oh boy,
37:46
Speaker 1: Lois Olsen. This is my favorite gift I've gotten. Very
37:49
Speaker 1: simple but awesome. The mini quilts they are. It's basically
37:54
Speaker 1: a little tiny not a tiny. It's a small place
37:58
Speaker 1: matt that you use in place of a coast right,
38:00
Speaker 1: it's mug rugs bigger than a coaster, smaller than a placement. Yeah,
38:03
Speaker 1: a little rectangular thing. And I often at dinner will
38:06
Speaker 1: have like maybe a beer, maybe a glass of water,
38:09
Speaker 1: maybe a cup of coffee, shot of whiskey, and I
38:11
Speaker 1: put everything down on my little mug rug and if
38:14
Speaker 1: anything spills, it soaks it up. It's better than a coaster.
38:16
Speaker 1: It doesn't stick like a coaster. It's like it's gonna
38:18
Speaker 1: revolutionize the coaster industry. I love them. So thank you
38:22
Speaker 1: Lois Olsen for that. Thank you to Brett Arnold, who
38:25
Speaker 1: won our horror fiction contest if you'll remember, he sent
38:28
Speaker 1: us a copy of his book Avalon and you can
38:30
Speaker 1: get Avalon on Amazon dot com. And then lastly, for
38:33
Speaker 1: this one, UM, we want to thank Joe and Lynda
38:36
Speaker 1: Heckt for sending us tons of stuff, including customized stuff
38:40
Speaker 1: you should know mugs with hints to UM podcast topics
38:45
Speaker 1: that they'd like to hear stuff about. They put them
38:46
Speaker 1: on a mug and have them made and send them
38:48
Speaker 1: to us mugs. They send us copy of the DVD
38:51
Speaker 1: American Amazon. They gave us ten bucks to watch it
38:54
Speaker 1: O man. So they're the best. They are very great people.
38:58
Speaker 1: So thank you to everybody, and we still have more
39:00
Speaker 1: people to think left. Um eventually. Yeah, that's this is
39:04
Speaker 1: part one, right, but we are grateful for each and
39:07
Speaker 1: every one of you and all of you listeners out there,
39:09
Speaker 1: whether you send us stuff or not. We're thankful to
39:11
Speaker 1: all of you and we hope you're having a wonderful
39:13
Speaker 1: holiday no matter where you are in the world. Agreed,
39:17
Speaker 1: Happy Thanksgiving, Happy Thanksgiving. You all for more on this
39:26
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff Works
39:29
Speaker 1: dot com