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How Mars Works · Stuff You Should Know

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