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June 8, 2018 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
16:02
Special Edition - Mars Update Jun '18

Nick Lister from Astronomy For All...

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Hello, it's Howard in London with a special edition, a short one of The Unexplained, just to bring you up to date with the developments announced by NASA in the last few days to do with Mars.
What you're about to hear is an interview with our space specialist, Nick Lister, from astronomyforall.co.uk explaining it all.
This will be broadcast on my radio show on Sunday night, June the 10th.
But I wanted you to hear this here now.
As you will have heard on Thursday, certainly in the newspapers on Friday, NASA, after a lot of news coverage about the announcement of the news conference, held a news conference involving some of its top scientists and a supposed announcement about the discovery of something on Mars.
Of course, that got the speculation machine running in top gear.
A lot of people saying, could this be it?
Could it be life on Mars?
And the truth is, what they've come out with is a possible step along the way to that discovery.
The way that it's being reported Friday morning, Curiosity Rover has uncovered the best evidence yet that life may have once existed on Mars.
Two separate studies on data collected by the Curiosity rover over the last few years have brought scientists to identify an abundant source of organic matter in an ancient lakebed, and they've traced some of the planet's atmospheric methane to its roots.
So two important studies, the organic matter in the lake bed and the methane, where's that coming from and why does it appear to be seasonal?
Let's hear first of all from Chris Webster at NASA's JPL lab in Pasadena, California.
We've seen the seasonal variation and we've tried to look at the data and come up with some explanations and we've been able to rule out some of the sources.
We don't actually think the meteoritic or delivery of interplanetary dust that can produce methane in the atmosphere, as Jen said, we don't think that's so important because we wouldn't expect to see a large seasonal variation.
We might see 20%.
Instead, we're seeing this massive change in the methane signal.
And so what we consider, we look at the data and the idea that best fits our data is the idea of subsurface storage.
So way under the ground, under Mars, there's methane that's trapped.
It may be trapped as clathrates or other materials.
We don't know if that methane is ancient.
We don't know if it's modern.
It could be either.
And we also don't know if that methane was created from water rock chemistry like serpentinization or it was created by methanogen microbes.
We cannot distinguish that.
But the methane leaks or seeps up to the surface, we believe, and finds its way through cracks and fissures.
And eventually, when it gets to the surface, we're then in a situation where the surface temperature can modulate or especially amplify the release of methane.
So this is an exciting time because we have this seasonal cycle to constrain some of the theories of the sources and sinks of this important gas.
Now, Chris, I want to talk to you a bit more about trying to distinguish between whether this is a biological or non-biological source of the methane.
But to begin with, tell us about how you actually detected this.
So in the case of Jen's work, they actually brought Martian soil into this oven and heated it up.
But how is the methane variation detected?
Well, we're ingesting from the air, and if you look at Curiosity, around about waist height, there are two inlets, two little valves, and these valves allow the Martian atmosphere into our sample cell.
Once it gets into SAM and into the tunable laser spectrometer in particular, we have tiny little infrared laser beam that multipasses.
It bounces 81 times between these mirrors, and that amplifies its sensitivity.
So when you look at the laser light on a detector, you can scan the laser and look for the spectrum of methane.
And the resolution, the spectral resolution is so high that we see individual methane lines, and in particular, we see a fingerprint of three lines together that can only be from methane.
So our measurement is unambiguous.
The signals we see, they come from methane and nothing else.
And secondly, we measure them with high precision.
So let's go to the two different scenarios as to what would be causing the methane.
I guess one is that we have a seasonal cycle because bacteria under the surface of Mars would be more active in the summer.
Is that the idea?
That's a possible idea.
But again, we cannot distinguish that from serpentinization, the reaction of water with olivine to produce serpentine and hydrogen.
Once you get the hydrogen released in that reaction, it can be catalyzed either through metal catastrophic methane, that's the abiological route, or it can be catalyzed through enzymes in the microbes in the cell potential.
So just sort of putting that into slightly simpler terms, if you have water that's interacting with volcanic minerals like olivine, you can also get similar methane that's trapped in the soil and preferentially comes up in the summer?
Yes, yes, that's exactly right.
Right.
But we're hoping that we'll see more, we'll get more results in the future on this, especially from other missions.
And as far as testing for the biological source or not, there's steps that can be made.
We can look at the carbon-13 isotope ratio, for example, that could be suggestive of biological activity.
And we can look at the accompaniment of other gases.
So we have, and we can sit on the surface in curiosity, and maybe one day we'll see a plume that's large enough where we can measure that carbon-13 ratio ourselves.
So there's lots of exciting ways forward.
But at this moment, again, the biological option is being held.
It hasn't been ruled out.
And excited Dr. Chris Webster of NASA's JPL Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
Let's cross now to our spaceman, Dr. Nick Lister from astronomyforall.co.uk.
Nick, thank you for doing this.
Should we be as excited as clearly he was about this?
What does it mean?
I think he has every right to be excited.
I think it's absolutely fantastic.
It expands once again this idea in the last 10, 15 years that life really, really could be out there.
We never used to think in these ways previous to that.
And now we're getting more and more facts, more and more evidence that are pointing certainly towards the potential for life.
Methane, of course, is an organic compound.
It's an organic chemical.
And whenever we think of organic chemistry, we think of carbon-based chemistry.
We think of life, life out there.
Now, the methane studies that have been found on Mars are very, very exciting, I think, actually, because of the sort of the idea that there seem to be seasonal adjustments to the amount of methane that are coming out from under the crust on Mars.
So, for example, in the Martian summer, it appears that we're getting three times more methane than we are in the Martian winter.
The reason this is so significant is because it seems to suggest that the methane is being made still today.
What I'm trying to say is, if methane has been around and made in the past, it will take a century or so for the methane to escape to space.
So, methane doesn't hang around forever.
That's what I'm trying to say.
So, any methane that we're detecting now is something that's been made in recent times.
Is this evidence of life once again?
That's why I think the particular methane findings are so exciting.
This really could point the way.
Methane is produced by many different means, but I think it's something like 95% of methane, for example, on Earth is produced organically as a result of life.
So, these are really great findings.
They really are.
It's fantastic.
It's a really wonderful thing to get excited about, ideas of life out there.
Well, totally, and I think that's why the world's media was captivated by this.
But I was interested to see that I think the actual announcement itself got less coverage up until the point at which we're recording this than the actual news conference that was held.
You know, the announcement that there was going to be a news conference was hailed around the world as, could this be it?
And then, you know, the next morning, a little bit of a damp squib, unfortunately.
I think to some extent, some of the journalists who followed this may have either A, been disappointed by what they heard, or B, they just haven't understood it.
I think you're hitting the nail right on the head there, to be honest with you.
It is a little bit sort of an in-depth idea that we're talking about here.
You know, they're obviously thinking, oh, well, methane, so what?
But as I said, I think it's the way that the methane has been detected and this idea that we're getting different levels of methane throughout the Martian year, which is indicating, hey, look, new methane around, methane being replenished all the time.
I think one of the other things might be the idea that in the past, certainly NASA have been known to be a little bit previous with some of their exciting announcements.
I'm sure they won't mind me saying that, because I think they've sort of tempered that a little bit lately.
So that could be one of the things.
But I think this is fantastic.
I have mentioned on your programs before that I think a lot of scientists in the world, most scientists in the world, we're not really saying, look, there is life out there, full stop, wonderful, wonderful.
But what we are saying is that the potential is there.
And we didn't think the potential was there 20 or 30 years ago.
It is an amazing thing.
And I think they have every right to be excited.
And of course, NASA want to demonstrate their great cross-continental video capability.
They do these great presentations now.
It's not just, you know, dull scientists standing there with a clipboard.
You know, they do all singing, all dancing, and it's still online if you want to see it.
Now, our plan here at The Unexplained is to do a Mars special on the 24th of June, Nick.
So if you can be involved in that in any way, I would love that.
Let's get back to the discovery, though.
The big question about the methane, or as the Americans there were calling it, the methane, is is it biological?
And in that news conference, they seem to be steering us in that direction.
Yeah, I think so, and I think they should be doing.
Again, it's because of this variety in emission, the fact that it seems to be a seasonal thing, and it's methane that's being replenished, continuously replenished.
So yes, there are other reasons that methane can be created.
As I said, here on Earth, I think 95% of it is created due to life organically.
There are, however, other ways that it can be created, definitely.
But I think that the idea that the thing's being replenished on Mars in a continuous manner, I think one or two of the issues that I've seen on the internet, some of the releases have got this right, because they're talking about two fundamental announcements, And I think it's the second one that's the most important one, I really do, because it is giving an idea that the methane's getting replenished, that it's not all old methane.
And you can lean very strongly towards the idea, therefore, that the methane's getting produced maybe by organic life a few feet, a few meters down under the subsoil on Mars.
Yep, even if that's a plant or if it's a small creature, something appears to be burping this stuff up.
Exactly right.
And you just hit a really salient point there, because when I often talk about things like this, and we always have a joke, we say, look, there could be life on Mars.
We don't mean little green men, but we mean things like bacteria.
And let's face it, you know, a lot of people, again, it might have been some of these reporters may have thought this that you mentioned earlier.
Some people might believe that bacteria, or so are what, but bacteria is 100% living material, no question about it.
And let's also realize that bacteria, although we call it primitive life, we know here on Earth that bacteria is really hardy stuff.
It adapts.
It finds a way.
It lives here on Earth under the most hospitable circumstance, inhospitable circumstances you can possibly find.
So even if it is, as you suggested, it could be plant life, which is quite advanced life, but it could be so-called simple bacteria.
But I would say, look, in 20 years' time, if we've got people walking around on the surface of Mars with a bucket and spade, and they finally find evidence of there's bacteria here kind of thing, I think that's going to be awesome.
I really do.
Yeah, yeah.
And, you know, just think about it for a second.
It's life, but not here on Earth.
And that has to be changing of everybody's paradigms from the ground up, I would say.
What about the other discovery then?
Material found in a lake bed?
Yeah, I mean, the lake bed chemistry is all very interesting because, again, the way the chemistry is and the sort of stuff we've found, it hints strongly, Therefore, at the ideas that this ancient lake bed was there and that it was there for a long time.
And if you're considering again that liquid water is around, we know here on Earth that liquid water is so important for life, all forms of life on earth, including plant life, etc., that liquid water is a transporter.
It moves things around our bodies to where they need to go.
And so not any old water, not any old H2O is good enough to do this.
Frozen water, solid water, ice, is no good for life as we know it.
Gaseous water, steam or water vapor, if you like, is no good for life as we know it.
So we've known that there's ice, solid water, ice on Mars.
We've known that for a long time.
But the idea of therefore confirming the existence of lake beds confirms again the existence that there was certainly H2O liquid water around a long time ago, and maybe that it was around for a long time.
In other words, giving enough time for life to develop into bacterial life, whatever.
So the scientists at NASA, when they gave this news conference, said that some of the future discoveries will depend on further missions.
What kind of time scale then are we talking about to get to the bottom of this mystery?
Very exciting story, I think, regarding the question you just asked, because we used to say people, not just robot spaceships, but people will go to Mars in the next 50 years.
Now, I think we're starting to say, look, people could be on their way in the next dozen years, the next 12 years.
I regularly talk to younger children or six, form age children.
I say, look, where will you be in 12 years' time?
What age will you be?
You'll be the perfect age to train to be an astronaut.
Somebody's got to do it, and somebody has to go to Mars.
And I do feel that no matter how clever our robotic space probes are, and they are, they are really, really good and they do a great job and have done so for years now, Howard.
But no matter how good they are, I do feel that you can't replace a person.
As I said before, just scrummaging around in the soil on Mars with a bucket and spade, looking for evidences of life.
So I think this is a great encouragement.
These finds are always great encouragements towards the idea of, look, let's get a manned mission out to Mars.
It is our destiny.
I don't mean to sound corny or anything here.
But we have, it is innate in us as human beings to discover, to want to discover, to get to the top of Everest, to get down to the bottom of the lowest oceans.
You can't knock that out of a human being.
It's innate.
So therefore, the next step is space.
And if you've got an idea where you can plan to visit somewhere, as you suggested earlier, extraterrestrial and somewhere that might harbor life, this has got to be done.
This has got to be a go or it would be awesome.
Well, we'll explore all of this a little more in our June the 24th edition of The Unexplained.
We'll do some more on Mars then.
Dr. Nick Lister, thank you so much for doing this.
And we're both excited.
I think the world should be excited about what's been discovered.
Thank you very much.
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