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Short Stuff: The Mars Rock with Signs of Life? · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck and Jerry's even here to dates here in spirit,
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: so it's a short stuff. Let's go Martian rock. Yeah, Chuck,
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: we did one recently on not just set, but you
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: know how humans might respond to what the protocols are
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: for talking to aliens. I don't remember what we named it,
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: but um we mentioned this in passing in that episode
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: because we're talking today about a particular chunk of rock
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: that was discovered on December twenty seven and Antarctica, and
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  Speaker 1: it's called a l H eight four zero zero one,
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  Speaker 1: and a l H stands for the Alan Hills region
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  Speaker 1: of Antarctic, or was found zero zero one stands for
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  Speaker 1: the fact that it was the first rock discovered of
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: the season and it was the five collecting season. So
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  Speaker 1: that's where the eighty four comes from. And you might say, hey,
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: that's great, that's interesting. What's so remarkable about a l
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: A zero zero one? And I think we should talk
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: about that in depth real quick. Let's in depth real quick. Uh, yeah,
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: we should for sure. Shout out geologist ROBERTA. Score, who
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: was the person who was out on a snowmobile and
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: saw this thing for the first time. Every time she
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: found when she'd be like, Score didn't think way too
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: much of that kind of please with myself. Uh. So okay,
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: So ROBERTA. Score finds this thing. Uh, they bring it
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: back and it's um kind of Raiders of the Lost
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Dark style, uh, stuck in storage for a remarkably long
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: time because they didn't really know what they had on
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  Speaker 1: their hands until n when they finally, you know, you
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: started kind of looking into this thing a little bit
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: more and they said, wait a minute, everybody. This rock
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: is from Mars and it was formed when the Earth
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: was still molten, about four and a half billion years ago. Uh.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: And the way they figured it is that there was
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: some cataclysmic event that sent this rock launching out into
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: space and it sort of bumped around for about sixteen
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: million years and uh then eventually found our solar system,
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: what like thirteen thousand years ago. Yeah, and it got
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: pulled into Earth's gravity and eventually it deorbited in landed
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: in Antarctica. Yeah. Why is it? It's so funny. It
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: just seems like that stuff never lands in a suburban
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: neighborhood in Alabama or something. You know, I think it
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: has plenty of times, but we've just so developed that
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: and moved so much earth, we just have no idea
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: what what those rocks are. We're just pushing them out
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: of the way. And I guess there, even though it
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: seems like there's people everywhere, there's still a lot more
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: land where people aren't around for something to land on.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: Definitely for the ocean, of course. And then also took
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: remember the only person to ever be struck by a
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: meteorite I think was a woman in Alabama and like
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: the fifties or sixties remembered, Yeah, I don't think it
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  Speaker 1: was Alabama. So it's it's raining meteorites in Alabama apparently. Okay,
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: so this thing was special. They realized it was from Mars,
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: and so they started to really take a much closer
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  Speaker 1: look at it. And the first thing they discovered that
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: really kind of knocked their socks off were these orange
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: grains locked inside of it that they tested and they
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: found were made of carbonate. Uh. And they know here
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  Speaker 1: on Earth, carbon it forms when water that has carbon
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: in it flows through cracks in a rock. That water
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: evaporates and leaves and that carbon remains. And so they said,
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: hold on a second here, if this thing has carbon,
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  Speaker 1: which is an essential ingredient of life, then that might
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: mean this could be proof of life on Mars. And
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  Speaker 1: it also says everybody that there was water flowing on Mars. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: another vital ingredient for life. Right, So this kind of
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  Speaker 1: got their attention and focused it towards the idea you that, uh,
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: perhaps there was some sort of evidence of life in
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: this rock. And they started looking very closely at it,
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  Speaker 1: and as the BBC put it in an article that
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: we read, um, they noticed near the carbonate grains, worms
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  Speaker 1: and sausages that looked just like Earth bacteria, except much smaller,
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  Speaker 1: and that really got their juices flowing. So now, all
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: of a sudden, you have a team at the Jet
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: Propulsion Laboratory who are studying a four and a half
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  Speaker 1: billion year old piece of Mars, uh, investigating it for
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  Speaker 1: possibly having harbored life at one point, right, And we
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: should point out that there were obviously was something like this.
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  Speaker 1: There were people that were on what you would call
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  Speaker 1: or what I believe you called team believe or team believer,
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  Speaker 1: but of course also people who said, no, this thing
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  Speaker 1: was probably contaminated uh here on Earth like some kind
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  Speaker 1: of terrestrial contamination and that explains what we're finding here.
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  Speaker 1: So you had to sort of groups of I guess
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: for of a better word, naysayers and believers, and they
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  Speaker 1: were studying this thing really closely. Yeah, and I say
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  Speaker 1: we take a break and come back and talk about
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  Speaker 1: what each team figured out. Let's do it. So, Chuck
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  Speaker 1: Carl Sagan famously said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, right,
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  Speaker 1: And the idea of chunk of Mars bearing evidence of
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  Speaker 1: microbial life, ancient, billions of year old microbial life, is
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  Speaker 1: a really extraordinary claim. So there was a lot of
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  Speaker 1: push among team believer to um find extraordinary evidence to
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  Speaker 1: back this up. And like you said, there was this
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  Speaker 1: idea that perhaps this had been contain amanated terrestrially. And
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  Speaker 1: there was a study that was conducted by an entirely
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  Speaker 1: different group of people from what I can tell, that
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  Speaker 1: looked at other Martian rocks that had been found in
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  Speaker 1: the Alan Hills area of Antarctica that had been processed
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  Speaker 1: at the same jet propulsion lab in a search for
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  Speaker 1: something that looked like what was showing up on the
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  Speaker 1: a l H eight four zero zero one rock, and
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  Speaker 1: they didn't find anything. So that right there kind of
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  Speaker 1: bolstered the idea that this rock was special and unique
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  Speaker 1: and it hadn't necessarily been contaminated here on Earth. That's right.
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  Speaker 1: So that's one positive step forward for life on Mars.
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  Speaker 1: Uh More and more people I think started to kind
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  Speaker 1: of fall into the team believer camp um. But there
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: was one person, a specialist in uh microscopy or scoppy
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: what are you saying, I am going to say, microscope?
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: Oh well, alright, fancy pants, feeling like grape poupon here?
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: Do you look that your micro mic groscope? I do
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: when I examined my grape poupon. Uh So. Uh So
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  Speaker 1: this person joined the team um basically saying or advising them, Hey,
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: we may want to hold our horses here because we
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: don't want to make fools of ourselves by going public
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  Speaker 1: with some findings that I don't even know if I believe.
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  Speaker 1: And uh she started looking through this thing, obviously through
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: a microscope, and when you get down there in microscopic land,
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: it's they describe it on the BBC as terrain, which
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  Speaker 1: is kind of cool, like the terrain of this rock.
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  Speaker 1: And saw these little black grains on the rims of uh,
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  Speaker 1: these carbonate globes and they were very very tiny, just
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: nanometers in size, and she learned that these were magnetic
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: crystals made of iron oxide and iron sulfide, which was
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: another big aha moment. Yeah, they're like really tiny compasses.
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  Speaker 1: They're magnetic um. And it turns out here on Earth
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  Speaker 1: they're actually a byproduct of a specific kind of magneto
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  Speaker 1: tactic bacteria. It's a cool word once you master it,
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  Speaker 1: and it's it's a byproduct. It's a process of life
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  Speaker 1: that produces these little magnetites. It can also be created
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: in other ways, right, non organically, non biologically. But to
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: do that, to create these little magnetites nanometers across um,
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  Speaker 1: non biologically, it requires really really high temperature, really really
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: high pH and uh an environment that's not at all
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: hospitable for life. But that also means it's an environment
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  Speaker 1: not at all hospitable for liquid water. And since they
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: had basically essentially confirmed that liquid water had deposited those
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: cars that carbon um, it would have had to have
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: been liquid water that um. I guess, how's whatever bacteria
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: that might have created those magnetites. It was to put
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  Speaker 1: it differently, it was another check in favor of the
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: idea that something living had once been on this rock, right,
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: found by someone from Team naysayer? Yeah who who? Again
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: like she had come on too, I think to kind
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: of save her colleagues from embarrassment. She started out as
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: a genuine scientist is supposed to She attempted to debunk
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  Speaker 1: this um, not to be a jerk, but to again like,
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  Speaker 1: that's what scientists are supposed to do. I think from
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: what I could tell, she was also taking it upon
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  Speaker 1: herself too. She wanted to be the one rather than
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: say other scientists who might not be nearly as kind
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: or gentle about it. Yeah, team they say gives it
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: a negative connotation. Team septic Yeah yeah, I might as
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: well have said team poopoo pants. I like all three.
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  Speaker 1: Uh So the team believer gets back on board to
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: do some more studying. They found organic molecules called policyclic
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  Speaker 1: aromatic hydrocarbons p A h is that are in these
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  Speaker 1: carbonate deposits that they had originally found. And here's the thing.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: You can find this stuff, uh in the cosmos. You
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: can find it here on planet Earth when you char
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: your meat on a grill. Uh. They are the you
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: know you might have heard that if you grill things
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: in a certain way with big charred grilled marks, there
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: can be carcinogen carcinogenic compounds. That's what that is. Um,
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: And that just occurred to me. That's probably why you
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: don't grill food. Huh. Yeah, I'm not really happy about
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: the taste of charred stuff. But also I don't own
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: a grill, so that kind of profudes me from groom.
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  Speaker 1: All right, so there's a lot of stuff. Um. So
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: that's what the p a h s are. But um,
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  Speaker 1: they're created as a byproduct of life, which is sort
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  Speaker 1: of the key as far as this rock is concerned. Uh.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: And they found this stuff like when things decay is
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: like an oil deposits and cold deposits. Yeah, from when
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: microbes decay and become fossilies. Right. So here's the thing again,
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: just like those magnetites, phs can exist and be created
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: non organically, right, This is how they're part of cosmic
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  Speaker 1: dust and all that stuff. Um. But again, the way
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: that these they showed up in this rock really made
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  Speaker 1: this team say, you know, this is exactly what you
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  Speaker 1: would expect. Um, this this these p a h is
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: to be deposited in this form if it had been
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: deposited by a decaying microbe rather than happening non organically. Right,
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  Speaker 1: So again another big check in another box that supports
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: the idea that life had once been inhabiting this rock
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: that was from Mars. Okay, so at this point, it's
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: the mid nineties, it's ninety six, it's the summertime. They
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: don't have definitive proof, but they did submit findings in
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: a paper in the in Science and the journal Science.
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  Speaker 1: It was reviewed by a various steam panel, which did
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  Speaker 1: include Mr Sagan or Dr Sakean. Yeahs their doctor, Reverend
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: Sagan esquire uh, and then NASA got involved and grilled them,
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: and they finally decided, all right, I think we at
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: least have enough to make a public announcement that we
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: have possibly discovered life on or evidence of past life
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: on Mars. And old Billy Clinton got up there made
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: that announcement, and it was a really really big deal,
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: as you would expect, I think. Uh. The BBC reports
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: that within just a few days a million people had
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: seen the Science paper online. And this is a science paper.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: It's not generally the kind of thing that most of
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: the public will like click on and download and read,
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: and people were really into it. There were news crews
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: around the block in Houston trying to get a look
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: at this thing. Yeah, in the first week, there were
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: more than a thousand stories that NASA counted on on
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: the announcement, UM, and they suggested that the scale of
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: the coverage across the world actually eclipse and exceeded the
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: coverage of the first moon landing. So, like you said,
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: it was a really big deal. I mean, think about it. Chuck,
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: the President of the United States, arguably back then the
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: leader of the free world, UM said, hey, some of
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: our scientists think that they found evidence of ancient life
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: on Mars, said it out loud in the Rose Garden
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: at the White House. So yeah, it was a huge deal,
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: and the public received it pretty well and pretty enthusiastically. Again,
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: they're talking about microbes that existed, uh, sixteen million years
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: or more ago on Mars, but it was still evidence
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: of life. In the scientific community, however, it was not
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: received quite so well. Yeah. You know, I think since then,
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: all the evidence has been looked over and there is
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: there's still team they say, or sorry, Team Skeptic, The
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: team poop poop Pants is very much alive, as is
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: are a team believer and the jury is still out.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: It's there's a lot of circumstantial evidence that point to
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: it being life on mar Ours, and I think that
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: definitely sort of helped kick off a lot of our
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: subsequent research and interest on Mars. Just that first little hint.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: I don't know if you could point like a direct
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: line to funding or anything like that, but it wouldn't
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: surprise me. No, you actually can. I read that. It
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: actually created the field of astrobiology, which is pretty well
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: funded today. Yeah, so it was a really big deal.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: And the fact that the jury is still out, like
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: you said, means that somewhere, I believe in Houston, Uh,
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: we have a meteorite that contains evidence of life elsewhere
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: in the universe. We just not everybody believes that's what
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: it is. And they probably put in the grate and
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: rolled it back next to the ark of the Covenant.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: That's right, you got anything else and nothing else? Good one,
• 14:47
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• 14:53
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