Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book Discussion On Mars Up Close 20151004

Marc kaufman, published by national geographic. Id like to ask to please turn off your cell phone, and please dont take any pictures during the presentation. Fyi, tomorrow in the New York Times in the science section, it will be all about mars and features will be an article by this evenings speaker, mr. Kaufman. Curiosity is a cartsized robot county rover that has been exploring gale crater on mars since landing there august 2012. Nasa launched curiosity in november 2011 from cape canaveral. It took a little over eight months to reach mars. The rovers goal is to investigate the martian climate and geology and determine whether the crater has ever been ever had environmental conditions favorable to life. This is quite an intriguing subject for those interested in the exploration of space and for Science Fiction readers, too. No matter what category you fall into this evenings lecture is sure to fascinate. Marc kaufman has an be a journalist for more than 35 years. He has worked as a science and space writer and jet for for the Washington Post for the past 12 years, and has spoken extensively on astro biology here in the u. S. And abroad. Mr. Kaufman is also the awe cor of a book published in 2011 title first contact. Scientific breakthroughs in the hunt for life beyond earth. Please give a very warm welcome. Were very pleased to have here tonight, dr. Marc kaufman. [applause] thank you all for coming. This is a terrific time to be talking about mars because it turns out that a lot of events are taking place right now. Theres a lot of change. And a lot of wonderful developments. So, lets get started. Head shot of our character of the night, mars. Approximately half the size of earth. One and a half times as far away from the sun as we are. And as i will describe, it is a place that is long lived in the imagination of people here, probably more than any other planet and for good reason. And right now we are just on the edge of learning remarkable things about the place. In fact we are learning remarkable things about the place that have to that kind of bring back into the future some of the things that have been discussed for centuries. But first a little bit. Mars has been very much in the news. This was the exciting spring comet that passed by mars a month and a half ago or so and almost hit the planet and it struck me as one of those really kind of key moments in terms of how things have changed because there are two rovers on the ground now, and five orbiting satellites, and so if it had hit mars, a lot of money would have gone down the drain. Were a spacefaring society, and things like that can really matter. Also, this is the capsule that some day will hopefully bring astronauts to mars. Just last week was lawned for the first time, called orion. Orbited twice and successfully landed. And this is many people are of the opinion that the American Space program is kind of sleeping or moribund. In fact that ill try to argue thats not the case at all. And just today, this is to some extent the subject of what ive written about for the times, but just today there was another report from curiosity, from the Curiosity Team, and what they said was truly remarkable. This late are in the talk ill explain it a little bit more but what this proves in terms of what they see and what as geologists and geochemists know how to interpret, this is a delta. This is end of a river that most likely was going into a lake and its right there in gale crater where they were, and we now have prove positive that way back when, 3. 5 to maybe 4 billion years ago, o or more, mars was very, very wet, and much warmer, and keep in mind the number 3. 8. Thats the around the era when life began on earth, and when earth was warm and kind of wet and i dont know. Mars wasnt too different. And this is kind of a rendering of what perhaps mars looked like back then, or just based on the information that they have now. Lakes, rain, snow, a water cycle. That the news that is happening now in terms of mars. And what i want to do is go back in history a bit and then talk about curiosity in terms of how it is that we have come to this really, really exciting point. Scapellny the 19th century looked at mars, maybe a little too much, and saw canals everywhere, and this became a major kind of cause celeb and a personal lull in the United States started the notion that mars was inhabited by intelligent people who were making canals and doing exciting things. And ironically they kind of intuitived something that turned out to be partially true but they were off on most things. But again, the canals. The martian chronicles. Virtually everybody on then team came in because of the book. Its the iconic tale, and again, here we have the canals, some water or whatever. So water is key to our understanding of mars. This is carl saggan with the viking rover or viking lander which there are two of 0 them that landed on mars in 1977. And at the time, saggan was iconic figure and continued to be for a while. The cosmos seriesas yet to come. He was one of the first astro biologists, people who thought that a search for life beyond earth was plausible and necessary and exciting. He took it pretty far. One of his jobs with viking was to look for visible life, and it was explain to me that he got irate when nasa did not put lights on so they could see these things at night. He was saying, when they come at night we wont see them in any case they didnt come because this is where they landed and this is what it was like. It was after all of that buildup of canals and water and life and sagan talking about all kinds of living things coming to eat at the trough of viking, this is what they found. It was really pretty barren. There were some tested that seemed to suggest there were living microbes about they were debunked and the view is that they really did not find anything and certainly the way of biology. Heres another picture, and you can see not very enticing. Not something that just screams out, hey, life used to be here or life is here now. And i think it would be fair to say that because the viking pictures and the stories it was able to tell was so kind of bleak. It was exciting in many ways, remarkable they landed, but what they reported back was kind of so depressing and so different than what people had anticipated, that there was very, very little Mars Exploration for the next 20 years. Just kind of fell off the agenda. Then gradually they nasa began sending orbiting satellites there and began sending back pictures and thingert started to things started to change. This is the delta, one of many features on mars that if it was on earth, people would say, hey, that used to be a river. It took a long time this image was probably taken in the mid90s and a lot of scienceties would say we dont know what it was. Could have been just ice or could have been Carbon Dioxide in some kind of frozen form but there was a reluctance to say there was not only Running Water but standing water and water that would have run for a long time. They already knew there had been some major breaks, dam breaks and water would flow when that happened, but those were catastrophic kind of things. This is the kind of thing you would find on earth, and one over the main reasons why they said it couldnt be just a delta like a river delta on earth, is because the understanding was that the mars atmosphere back then couldnt handle that. It was much too thin. And anything that was standing water would quickly either evaporate or sub limate and freeze. Some of the more daring scientist would say what were looking at is obviously a riverbed and then a lake and other things. What they also began to see after sending up some instruments that could read this kind of information, was minerals. There are classes, large classes of minerals that are formed only in water. No water, no clay. No water, no souffle sulfates, and yet now theyre able to, with new technology from the orbiting satellite able to determine that there was quite a bit of clay. There was sulfates. And a picture started to emerge of a place that now is very dry, very barren, and but maybe objects wasnt. This was taken by the highrise camera on the mars reconnaissance orbiter, and the colors are not true colors. What they do is they enhance them so you can see the features. Otherwise its just a brown undistinguished kind of scene. But if youre interested in this kind of thing, go to the highrise hirise site on the web, and you can find thousands of these magnificent images of a mars that is very different than what people would have imagined. In any case, there are there begins to be more activity, more interest. There were viking landed in 1977. The next lander was in 1997, and then there were the two small rovers that landed in i think in 2004 and they have one of them is still going. Kind of remarkable. But they knew they needed more. These were little tiny things. The first lander after viking was basically the size of a small electric toy car. The others were bigger but they didnt have much capacity. So, they dreamed of something much more sophisticated and came up with what we now know as curiosity. It was given the name curiosity. Its two tons as opposed to 25 pounds, and it has ten instruments and much, much more sophisticated. So, here we go. Because its much larger, you have a problem. How do you land it . The little ones, they lapped them in big balls, literally drop on to the martian surface, bump along for a while and then the ball would open and they would drive out but you cooperate do it with something that was more than two tons. So this gentleman, adam came up with the idea of the sky crane and he is part of this new generation of nasa and other engineers who are not what you would kind of think about old school engineers. He played for a long time in a rock band. He doesnt have his earrings on now but he usually does. Got an elvis kind pompadour. He came up with this idea they would come into the martian atmosphere, theyre going 13. 2 132,000 miles an hour. Im sorry. Thats how fast theyre going, and they have seven minutes to go to zero. Without crashing. And his job was to figure out how to do it. This sky crane is a very last stage of that, where basically there was a mechanism that would hover for awheel over the ground for a while over the ground and then slowly drop it down, the curiosity down to the surface. Never been done before. And part of an extremely Important Development because in order for humans to be some day dropped on to mars, they need something that can land maybe 30 tons, much more sophisticated than this. But theyre in the process of figuring it out. So, this is the first time this was the first time we had a camera at the bottom of the rover and its landing mechanism. There was a camera taking picture. This is he heat shield after the heat shield has been shot off and the camera started taking picture, and you can see it going down, going down, going down. This is the very enwhen its doing the sky crane. Engineers really happy. To be at jpl that night, which i had the good fortune to toe to do was one of the happiest days of my life that they put so much time and effort into and it carried really deeply about it. And so this was an enormous success. And heres our its interesting story about how they got into the habit of taking these selfies. Obviously it looks like someone is there taking the picture. Theres not. It has an arm and the arm goes out and theres a camera on it and it take picture ands and they photoshop the arm out. Theres our guy. Its cold, down to minus 200 degrees fahrenheit, and theres a lot of radiation that comes down, and all in all its a very harsh varmint so this has to be designed in order to be able to handle that, and so far its now two and a half years and has done a phenomenal job of doing that. This is gale crater, formed 3. 5 to 3point pt. 8 billion years ago when avalanche meteorite hit. It dig as big hole and then starts kick ago things out. Theres a lot of debate how this particular mountain in the middle hoff crater came to be put theres an unusual 3. 2mile high mound in the middle of the crater. They selected it because there were signs that there had been water. Some of those not a delta but sand going down. And also there was a lot of minerals that the minimum recalls formed only in water, and then you have this mountain. No rover or machine of my type has ever gone to another planet and had a mountain like this to look at. It has lots of different layers. It will gradually climb the layers but it is utterly unique, and is this actually why i got involved in the whole story, because this was something i hope people understand how you unique this was. It struck me has really signal moment in the history of space science, and in fact it has been. So, gale crater. Just to put it in at bit of context by the way, there have been seven successful landings on mars, and not being hopefully not being nationalistic or gyppingowistic here jingoist yipping here but nasa has opportunity them. There is old metal on the planet but if theres one thing that the United States does really, really well, that no one else does, its go to mars. It makes us exceptional. In any case, the blue is the northern lowlands. It is well talk about this more later but it is about a mile to two miles below the other green and then yellow and tan elevations, and this is a very key thing because there is some suggestion that is getting louder and louder, the suggestion more persuasive, that perhaps there was once a huge ocean up there, which would have enormous implications because of the potential for life. You can see where curiosity is. This is call the dichotomy where it cuts across, and about a third of mars is this very low area, and then twothirds is the highlands. And after curiosity lan lands, starts looking around, has 17 cameras, some really spectacular. This is what it sees and contrast if the with what viking saw, and you see why they got so excited. These are features that theyre very brown now but you can imagine maybe were once somewhat different, and also you can see the fine layering quite so well here but they are clear layers, and layers means that sedimentary rock as opposed to volcanic, basalt or whatever, and the sedimentary rock has to be brought there, be it water or wind or whatever. And then it becomes rock over time. But this is all sedimentary, and was just what the Curiosity Team described mount sharp was the Promised Land. Its taken a while to get there but theyre there now. One of the first things they found on landing by the way, they landed at a place they named after ray bradbury, the author of the martian chronicles because thats what brought all the people into their jobs. But this is a conglomerate. Kind of like a concrete and they found it wasnt within a month or so of landing, and conglomerate requires water. It doesnt it cannot come about, cant be formed without water and in this case a lot of water, and also there are lot of small pebbles in this, and the small pebbles, the scientists interpret as being something the size that only water could brick could bring down. So went two months of arriving they had ground through something that had been speculated on for decades, which was there was Running Water on mars. And there it was. They could find until the con glock rats and then other things as conglomerates conglomeratn found it in other things as well. This was kind of a more real life picture. And doesnt maybe come across too well here but that its mt. Sharp on the other side. That is a channel, a big canyon coming down mount sharp, and this is what was begin the anymore peace vallis, and then the stream and the sand that curiosity landed at the end of that and where i soughtsaw this conglomerate. This was like really makes sense in terms of the location and this is over on this side would be the rim of the crater. Just to back pedal for a second, mars, name after the roman god of war, always kind of had this sanguine, kind of bloody feel to it because its kind of red and everything thinks its the red planet. I keep saying its not the red planet. Its like a tiny, tiny blotch of red on top of what is a planet with rocks very similar to ours in fact the same rocks often times. And curiosity ran over some rocks and you can see inside. Kind of bluish gray. The red is just a blush on the top. And thats the case all over the planet. The red is iron oxide, which became an important component of certain things happened to the planet, and it creates alet of dust, but it seemed to define the planet but in fact it doesnt. After landing, they were supposed to go straight to the Promised Land to mount sharp, but they saw this feature right here. Unfortunately you cant see it too well right now but there are three different kinds of rock that come together. And one of them is kind of lower than the others. This is where they landed, and thats kind of the jet exhaust, and this is the track they took. Going the opposite way from mounter mount sharp. This was kind of a daring thing to do. Their mission was to go to sharp, but they were officially also a mission of discovery. They decided this was very, very promising, and so they headed in the other direction. Theyve gotten some criticism for that over the years, but as youll see it was very successful and i believe a wonderful thing to have done. This is where they ended up. This is an area called yellow knife bay, and you again remember those images that we saw from viking that was just volcanic, you know, rocks strewn around. This look like in fact was the bottom of a lake. Look at this. These are he kinds of things kind of mud this is actually mud stone as opposed to sandstone, and looks very much like what would happen when a lake or what the call a playa, a low kind of marsh, when it would dry up, and here you go. That what they found. Some then what then they drilled into it. But this never before on mars or any other planet has this kind of thing been found, and then researched. Just again to backtrack for a second, this is the arm of curiosity. Its seven feet long, has a number of cameras and collecting tools and a gatherer a way to take what is drilled and put it into the ovens inside curiosity. All that is on there. Seven feet out you can imagine its kind of like its heavy and not easy. Fortunately the gravity there is much less so you can do it. Its hard thing to do but has a drill. The first time theres been a drill on mars or another planet and this is what theyve done. At this point theyve done five major drills. Takes a lot of time. It has to be calculated just right, and then also they want to do it at the right angle because they could easily kind of break or damage this very important tool, and also they want to make sure that are dooring it in a place that deserves that it kind of attention. But the drill has worked extremely well, goes down, as well see, not very far, but turns out its gone far enough to find really interesting stuff. This is to me interesting for a lot of different reasons. This says here, a drill hole with the width of a sharpie. That is what the drill does, and you can see somewhat here that there is a white line here. Theres also some holes that are up to here. The holes come from a one of the instruments on curiosity, has a laser zapper and zaps stuff and theres a little bit of plasma and then it analyzes what elements there are based on that. So they did the zapping, and then they could see here a line which tells them theyre geologyises and know about these things this was an area that had water in it not once but probably many times. As youll see, the surrounding mud stone clearly had water in it because it was Something Like 20 clay, and clay means water. It requires water. And then this is a gypsum, calcium sulfate, and it would have come into that area after everything had dried out once and then now it was watery again. So, you have an ability from 100 million miles away to look with this incredibly fine detail. They have a camera on that turret that is unlike anything been done before. Like a geologists field camera or glass, and this they were able to take this picture, which is of something that is that big. So, early on, or after theyve gone through this first campaign, which takes a year, they conclude, well, you know, gale crater was once really quite wet. They werent willing to say there was a lake there but they did say that water came down the cliffs, would form a broad expanse of water and this happened over a period they estimated into thousands or tens of thousands of years, which was important but it was not really enough time for anything resembling life to develop, and these were not yet the conditions for life. Just totrack, what they concluded here just to tobacktrack, what they concluded was there was not only water done not only the the project head said it was water you could drink in terms of Different Things but also in terms of being not acidic and not very basic. Kind of down the middle, which is what you want for life. So, it had water, it had an energy source, the sun, and had all the chemical elements needed for life, carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, so on. So they declared that this area, yell low knife bay, was at the yellow knife bay, was the first place found outside of earth that was habitable. Doesnt men mean it was inlabed but means of there was life there, if life began there, it could have survived. And they were conditions there that could have allowed for that initial origin, and just as life began here 3. 8 bill years ago, this was 3. 8 billion years ago or 3. 5, and it was similar kind of conditions. After their time at yellow knife bay, they decided they say, okay, its time to go to mount sharp, which was their destination to begin with. Here in this little graphic, mount sharp is this one. This is everest. This is mt. Mckinley. I forget that what that one is. Thats a big mountain. And on the top, it is kind of if not as setment ricer not as interesting, its all kind of a hardformed dust that is turn into rock. Here is all the sedimentary part we talk about before. And this is the promisedland. Now, getting to the Promised Land was going to require six or seven miles of travel, and turned out to be very difficult. Rovers are incredibly versatile machines but theyre also very complex, and they have a lot of moving parts, and they had more than their share of problems. But as well see they made it. All right. This is the rover at work. Everything much of it is done autonomously, in terms of the rover being able to take orders and too things itself, and sometimes can even not take orders but, rather, think for itself. It is Artificial Intelligence has been built into and it is the future of these kind of rovers, theyre not going to necessarily need people like this woman, vandy tom consistence, who is tompkins who this rover driver elm puts on pd glasses her job is to draw a safe path, and then understand the coordinates and look for obstacles and then that guess reviewed by a lot of different committees, want to see where the science is good, and also wanted to make sure theyre being safe. But she is the one who is going and 14 others theyre going to write the program that then is sent up to mars and the next day the rover will do what it is told in terms of driving. Cant see it too well here but these are the wheels and after about a year and a half or so, they noticed that there are big holes. Thats not good. This was there are six wheels. This was the front two and the middle two, and they needed to have a lot of traction built into this wheels because theyre going to be going uphill. But that traction meant that this couldnt be too heavy, and the there was a struck you can see can the die agnels but the diagonals and the thin is quite thin ask at they would drive along there would be rocks stuck in sandstone, and, bomb, they puncture the wheels. So unfortunately triplea does not good to mars or gale crater. Maybe other parts of mars not but gale creator. So they go backwards now. That was less stressful on the wheels, and it has proven to be a decent way to go. Said earlier that there was a designed part of their programmed route and then theres an autonomous part where the rover can drive on its own, because its going backwards, what hey have to do is do the program part and then program a turnaround, and then it goes forward on its own. But any case, its going backward into the future. On the way to mount sharp, they come across all kinds of really to me very interesting things. This is an iron meteorite. Its actually the kind of thing that you find at the museum of natural hoyt and whatever. They land on mars just look they land here, and for that matter, meteorites of all kinds land there and they bring or begannic material to mars just like they bring it here. These are the Building Blocks of life, carbonbeared billing blocks of life that curiosity is searching for. The at mose fear there lay lous in plot more radiation which destroys the organic, but this kind of meteorite makes clear that, yes, theres a lot of meteoritic activity, and organics are coming in, they just have to find them. Organics are an important part of the life story. This is basalt, which is just the volcanic rock. But just look at in the context of mars up close. What could be more up close. This is a small piece of rock that theyre able to magnify to this enormous extent. You can see in here, this is just some little bits of dust and bits of sand and whatever, when you contrast that with what had been possible in the past, this is a whole new generation, and it is not only does it provide really phenomenal art as far as im concern but also, as well see a lot of science that was not possible without this. [inaudible question] good question. I dont recall. I can get it for you. Its i think its centimeters if not millimeters. This is crystal. Found also on the road to mount sharp. Kind of the overall back story here is that what theyre finding is mars has basically the same chemistry as earth, and basically the same kind of interaction that rocks have the same kind of interactions with water and other elements as thats do on earth, and come up with similar kind of results. So, phenomena known that are studied and understood and nope here on earth, they now feel quite comfortable if they see those same kind of structures, they can assume properly that it is the same thing that they find on earth. Now, i dont know if you can see this, is a chicken bone. Actually no, its not. But there have been probably a dozen formations like this. Wind designed bits of rock that have caught peoples attention and its all over the water . They found a rodent, a gopher, they didnt. This is not a chicken bone. Wish it was. [inaudible question] theres a famous image of allegedly a human face from taken from orbit. Maybe. But probably not. All right. Heres our friend again, another selfie. Just loves taking selfies. Kind of full of himself or herself. Its like a large oceanliner, curiosity and other rovers are generally female, and at this point, its getting closer to mount sharp, and it has made quite a few kilometers going backwards. It is once again finding the kind of sendmentry striated rock that is so interesting to the scientists because it means there was water there. And that brings us to todays news. This was an image released today, and what it shows is quite clear live that here there were layers layer upon layer upon layer of sedimentary deposits, and to have it this flat, theyve say, means that it was a lake. If it was more wavy or crossbed then it would be a river or a delta or stream, but this means this was a lake. And theyve come across quite of few of this and the whole way from yellow knife bay to the base of mount sharp has been going through one they have found one delta after another after another. Another aspect thats exciting for the science is, remember early on i showed you a picture, delta, and there were just until a few years ago, a lot of people would think, no, that wasnt water, that wasnt a river. Now, all all of those kinds of formations and theres hundreds of them around mars can be pretty identified as being the result of water. Which change it is whole nature of the discussion about mars because that means that it was a it was like global water and to do that, will, well, well get to that in another slide. That requires a whole change, paradigm. Yeah. [inaudible] there . Right there. Here. It is beautiful. This is in detail that same kind of layered rock that has the geologist delighted, theyre now on the geological formation, that is the base of mount sharp. They can see that it gradually about 150 meters and all of whats there, they know from where they are now is the same kind of stuff, and to have built up 150 meters of this kind of layered material, nothing below it takes a long, long time. Thats how they began to say, okay, thousands of years, millions, maybe tens of millions and we maybe getting into hundreds of millions too. What theyve always done is concluded based on these most recent discoveries that the water was running there probably much later than had been anticipated. Its always been said or long been said that there was water on mars. If there was wars from 4. 5 billion years ago when the planet formed to maybe four or 3. 8 billion years ago. Thats when there were was still an sphere. The equator formed thousands of years. So you have water and its suddenly becoming clear that mars has a condition for stabled water well past where they thought initially or what they thought for a long time. This is kind of a cool picture, a deposit fault. They tested it and it was a salt. Just like a lake dries up here and you have saltly deposits and mud slides, this is within the last six months. Now, this is a picture that was just released today. This is now their current thinking about what happened. Water start coming down because it warms up or theres you know, theres a water cycle that allows for rivers to be coming down here and theres this lake, and it probably comes and goes over a period of time. Even if theres no lake, theres ground water and this is, again, important for the life story because the as we were discousinning discussing earlier, in order to be a survival there has to be water. It doesnt have to be water on the surface, water in the ground could also work. It turns out that there are a lot of microbs that live off the rocks. Thats where they get the energy source. Yeah. So why [inaudible] well, we dont know that it didnt. I think that it would be fair to say that an awful lot of scientists think they did. Finding is really, really hard. The oldest microbial life on earth was for sure, consensus 3. 5 billion years ago, some people say 3. 8. These are little this is microbes that interact with rock that theres a tale tale residue. They bring it into a lab and examine it for years and years. Its going to take a long time to do it here. The theory, there was a habitable area, we dont know how life started here but theres really no particular reason to think that it didnt start in mars if it started here [inaudible] possibly finding microbes, 1020 feet. Whats the technical problem that prevents them from doing that . Im sorry, ill ask you to repeat the question. The question was about the likelihood or the greater likelihood that there would be microbial life perhaps existing a ways down, 10 meters or whatever rather than on the surface and that is, indeed, accurate. And so it needs to go deeper. The answer is that its really hard to bring instruments to do it. This is the first drill. First one that has ever arrived at. The European Space has a mission called exomars that are supposed to land in 2018 and although rocket will be sent there with the Russian Space agencies and im not sure thats really going to work anymore, but putting that aside, politics, that will have a drill that can go down i think 2 meters and that is expected to be, if it works, to be potentially a lot richer in terms of finding that kind of stuff. But all that really is very hard to determine what you found, and thats why what what mars scientists are really excited about, i mean, in addition to all this, they want to bring that back, bring back soil. Something the United States has done now seven times and landed successfully, no one at this point has technology to then blast off again and come back. Thats something thats in process and require a lot of technological advance and support for taxpayers. As you can see, after all the soil thats brought down here to create materials and those are the kind of things that they now see. Of course, they dont see the water but they see where the water was. Now we are going back to the pictures that i started was, this was just released today. Perhaps, it makes its more clear, a delta there. Its so obvious, you know, the structure of it, the shape. There are also in terms of kind of rock and the kind of grains here, rock grains, tell the same kind of story. One of the things that was depriving about the announcement today, they said that since since going since being lowest points in crater theyve been going up in elevation the whole time. And, yes, as they see all of these deltas, theyre going toward and that makes no sense since the water we know came from the other side, from the cliff. So what they were describing today is a crater that once had mountain. And they had their theories as to how it was created. You know, they dont have volcanic, this was not created out of the bowels of mars, this was created after layer, after layer, after layer. And to me this is one of the most fascinating parts. In order for as we were saying earlier for there to be as much water in mars and around mars as there apparently was back in the goldold days, there needed to be a huge reservoir or else if there was water that just was in a lake it would evaporate and go away. It needs to be replenished, there needs to be rain, there needs to be snow, a lot of moisture in the air and climate modelers said this is not possible. They are the ones saying it could not be a real delta because the atmosphere wouldnt allow it. It was too thin. Now the gentleman that there was a whole new interest in terms of a Northern Ocean, which was a third of mars and, if thats the case, then the issue again for life, thats terrific to have that kind of water, to have huge pools like that, and you know, some islands in it. That a very much like early earth was like in the around the period of 3. 8 billion years ago. Youll probably hear more about the Northern Ocean in youre interested in mars in the days ahead. Theres a lot of back and forth, they havent found anything that they suggest that there was a shoreline here. These are the kinds of things that they look for but they found quite a few rivers and Valley Networks that empty here and kind of suggest that is going the water was going into a big pool. So you have another ocean and increasing possibility for life and you have a story that says there was water all over, and for a long period of time. This is one of my last slides. This was taken out of curiosity and this is this is earth and thats the moon taken from mars. And one of the things that is really compelling, i think, about the curiosity story is potentially will tell us an enormous amount going into it i wasnt as deeply aware of it, when you think about earth has been changed so much since the early months, moving crusts moving all around, but most important by life, by life changing, you know, everything around. If there was life on mars, we know that it probably didnt last more than about 3. 5, 3. 3 billion years ago because the Climate Change it clearly got much colder, much more acidic, it got much more inhospitable. Major reason why because of the Magnetic Field that surrounded mars disappeared. Magnetic field is protects us from radiation and having the same fate as mars did, we had a terrific Magnetic Field, we are proud of it. They dont. But in any case, because earth has changed so much over the ions, most of the history is gone for good. It will never be understood. We can push back some things in terms of when theyll be microbial life. In mars there hasnt been the same kind of turning, and so its possible that when they have the technology to drill down or when perhaps the young gentleman here becomes an restaurant and arrives on mars, and thank you, we appreciate your daring, you know, they will find potentially a lot of things that give us insight of what happened on earth when earth was young, all of the things, and so thats why this image struck me as so important because mars was similar to earth, was very much our cousin and then two, itll tell us a lot about earth. And thats the end. This is, again, you know, what to me is the beautiful lower of mount sharp, the most probably the most interested thing features ever researched in the history of nasa from my view. [applause] thank you, thank you. Yes . Any chance rob rovers can get to the cave . I would say, yes, i dont know of any particular reason why there wouldnt be caves going up mount sharp. You may recall one of the images show that there was a big canyon coming down the mountain, they would have then be protected from the radiation of potentially we have more organic that were still detectable. Yes. [inaudible] im sorry. Say that again. Very good question. Do the taxpayers the primary benbenefactors 2 billion. The structure itself is laboratory in pasadena, which i had a very good fortunate about sending two years there, a year and a half and i have to say you would be proud of what your tax money is doing out. These are brilliant people and working hard taking huge risks and doing spectacular stuff. There are two ovens that go up to 2,000degrees fahrenheit and they cook the sample and gases come off and it reads those gases, but there are also the radar the lasers and others, like many not so many past programs, missions going forward, theres a lot of international cooperation. The germans play the role, canadians, the french were very important, and thats kind of the future. The u. S. Will send it off and create the capsule and maybe the structure itself, but the instruments are going to be international. [inaudible] yes, i believe its largely aluminum. I take that back. The wheels are definitely aluminum. I think the structure itself has allot of alum anymore in it but other metals as well. [inaudible] yeah. The question is why they didnt make them out of the answer is twofold. You would recall at the very end of the decent the the wheels were actually part of the landing mechanism and so they had to be structured in a certain way as a result of that. Second thing, they were going to be driving uphill, they needed to be light around or they wouldnt get the traction, they would go up and then down. They needed something very light. It would be heavier. [inaudible] the answer is yes, and however, every president. I think Richard Nixon said if were going to sent restaurants to mars, its very complicated. Its very expensive. You have to do quite a few missions to other destinations in order to learn how to get to mars, but i think it would be fair to say, now the capsule is there, that there is. One of the things that i discovered is that just like in my generation, the apolo program , american achievement in a way. Today a lot of young people see mars and say, going to mars and send humans to mars, learning first about it and sending humans to mars is a significant goal. Is it significant enough to have that decade long momentum that you need . Unclear. I hope so. I sure hope so. Yeah. The canals ended up being peoples imagination. One of the things that scientists often say about mars is that itll mislead you all of the time. This is Current Sciences as well, and certainly going back then, you think you see something, youre looking through your lens, oh, my god, you are projecting on, they were projecting on to the fact and thats what these folks tried so, so hard not to do. They gathered data, they have a team of 300plus scientists, they go over the data, they put out papers, people criticize them or agree with them. Theres a process that e evolves. When they conclude that its an ancient large lake, thats like a canal. I think it really was. Yes, sir. [inaudible] you find that these committee seem to be synonomous in their goals or do you think theres bureaucracy in every step . Some of both. Committees that play a role and where the rover is going to go and many committees that decide where the next rover should go or what kind of instrument it should have. Its a very slow moving bureaucratic. But in terms of the the committees that decide the big, you know, the kind of bigger questions, the policy questions, take a long time. Theres another rover, similar, the process of deciding where it would go and what kind of instruments it would have have been going on for a year. So a very long process. Also nasa has a variety of layers of decision of oversight and there was a Senior Committee that recently looked at a variety of missions and this was one of them, and they concluded that this was not doing what it was supposed to, that it was traveling too much and not doing enough science. It was kind of a controversial conclusion because in the first year they found that mars had been habitable which was a blockbuster discovery. It turns out that the committee, some of the people had a grudge against a variety of different folks. Suffice it to say, todays announcement and other things that are coming, kind of put to rest the criticism. They. Also doing science and they found all the deltas and concluded that there was a huge lake, so but it would be it would inaccurate rat for me to say that theres not a lot of bureaucracy, there is. Some of it is necessary because its taxpayer money and its really expensive. Some of it is inviting. Yes. Its interesting that you say the United States was landing on mars so many times. In the United States [inaudible] mars is up there and also and also mars is very interesting and described as a circle and aoh cross and that represent [inaudible] they made an arrow. When you think when i think of the astrology per the past year, what i find interesting specially that is the desire, the intuition of humans that there is life out there, that there is, you know, happened beyond what happens on earth and in my first book i wrote about search for life beyond after earth. Its almost impossible, intuition that there was water on mars, well, yeah, there was, but not now. [inaudible] well, the water dribbling down, but thats still in process trying to determine that its water or maybe. Sandra underneath. It appears that probably salty water. [inaudible] they have no doubt that theres life out there considered the billions of stars. I dont know how long theyve known theres billions of stars and trillions of planet. There might be plenty of life out there. Yes, and the the understanding that there are a lot of stars certainly goes back a long way, the the estimate now when the milky way alone, 300 million stars and probably most of them have planets or have, you know, solar system that and planets that orbit them. And so, thats just one hundreds of millions of gal gal galaxies and scientists are much of the opinion that theres life found. Thats why mars is so important. Thats why we have science to say on the end of one. We have an example of one planet where theres life. Us. Its a turnout that there was life on mars at some point, that we could get a pretty good handle, even if it was micros microscoping and didnt have time to evolve into us. Then the likelihood, the probability of other planet, life goes up like this, so thats why, you know, theres so much attention. One of the parallels that i like to think about is for a long time scientists have speculated, have even assumed that there was planets beyond our solar system. I kind of think that maybe theres the same kind of dynamic going on. They didnt have the technology before. They didnt have the intellectual pathway, but in 1997, several groups kind of came together and they said, it picks up steam and now they find them every day. It may well be that the same thing happens with life. People are looking for it, looking for it and cant find it. We dont know how to do it. We dont have the technology yet. But, when we do, a lot of places. Yeah. [inaudible] elements of mars remarkably, no. The chemistry appears to be very similar. There are probably some elements that arent there. Equipment chemistry is not my field. What the team says in general is that nothing has surprised them in terms of what they find chemically, there was a large deposit of opal. You might want to go to mars. Dig it and do well. And so the chemistry appears to be the same. Im sure there are elements that arent there but none that they detected that are different than here. Methane . The question was methane and i for my first book i spent a lot of time with a gentleman name mike, who was the methane specialist at nasa. He had been looking for methane on mars for 15 years. I had the fortunate to go to chile with a lot of the most powerful telescopes are and youre high up and he had detected what he understood to be a enormous methane and then stopped. And he wrote a paper about that, you know, a journal highlighted in science, it was highlighted by nasa, it was a really, really big deal. If theres methane, which is an organic material, putting two and two together suggests that there might be more organics out there and little whorg organisms that live on methane. If they detect it, it would be a big deal. The paper had its critics. For a while the theory looked like it was on the ropes. The First Reading for methane by curiosity were not at all promising. This gentleman says that curiosity couldnt find the kinds of things he was looking for. Suffice it to say, i think youre going to hear something in the not too distant future thats going to make numa happy. Embargo. Friendship. Yes. Which has at the time believed to be signs of microbial signs. Could you comment on that . Correct. This is the same alan hill, it was found in antartica. Thats where they get most of the mars meteorites that are clean and pure, it doesnt land in a farm and immediately gets organic in them. In antartica you can get much less and this this was a paper and a few that was very, very highprofile. They said that there were five biosignatures and thats gradually scientists took bio signatures and said this is not true, this is why. Main author passed away recently but still has a team, they believe more strongly than they did back in 1997, they believe more strongly that they did find signs of organic life and so you can never quite tell. I mean, its sometimes issues in science get debunked and the debunking goes too far. Sometimes theyre debunked because there really isnt the substance there. One of the people who is key of debunking, a guy named andrew has now himself published that did not have microbial fossil but did have organic carbon in it. This would be from mars. If i could digress you for a second, one of the things that i find interesting, we are talking about meteorites. Some of them are really big, they kick up a lot of soil of rock and we now know through the world of extreme file these are microbial life that can live in extreme environment. We know that these can survive long periods of time in hibernation. Life from eat, earth, potentially, you know, after they hit they kick off a lot of rock, some of it has microbial life in it and over it sails to mars and lands there and maybe start life, as it turns out from the perspective of the scientists, mars back in 3. 8 billion years ago was more conducive to life in earth. Asteroid hits and kicks up a lot of rock, brings life here which means were martians. [laughter] [applause] yes, sir. In the world of out space, thought how their own unique atmosphere absolutely. Mars had a different atmosphere. Another way that these as ast ro physicists, they can look at the planet and analyze whats in the atmosphere. Theyve detected cash on Carbon Dioxide. It binds very quickly with other elements so it has to be replenished in order for there to be oxygen atmosphere, if they would find a planet with ozone, oxygen has to be replenished. Yes. [inaudible] the question was are there gases on mars that are different than here and then also is is this kind of material being shared with younger folks in schools. In terms of the first, i think the answer is, no, that its the same kind of gases that we find here, just that information mentions earlier that the chemistry seems to be the same. In terms of the second part, nasa does a lot of outreach, by law part of their mission is to create information in all different kinds of ways. The different i could show you these pictures is theres no copyright on them is because theyre public, i wrote a book thats successful to a broad range of people. I didnt do things that would describe things that are inaccurate rat, but i didnt go into the kind of detail that sometimes a science book can go into and so i tried to make it into a narrative and explain the science that way. And to be honest with you, i mean, when i go out and talk to people and sell my book, a young child that will hopefully read it in the future. You said, i think on mars there are meteorites and, therefore, organic, can you clarify, when you say organic, i hear life. Its a kind of confusing thing. Organics are compounds, carbon and oxygen together, those are the Building Blocks of life. Thats what make amino acids and stuff like that. And it turns out that theres organic material like this, carbonbased compounds throughout the universe. This is one of the relatively recent discoveries that all of the stuff is out there and is falling on the planets and moon or whatever else. And so the the question that is if there is organics, organics are found, are they the kind of organics that come from the universe or are they the kind of things that life built, because organics come that way as well and thats going to be one of the big challenge ifs they find organics, and, again, i cant say too much about this but i think that theyll be news on that score fairly soon and the issue over time is do these organic molecules come down as metoerites or something that brought them together. Yeah. Yeah. I always wondered if scientists make speculation on this, on the formation of the earth, whats the base [inaudible] the question well, i guess you heard the question. Basically how do they know these things from far, far ago and the answer is theyve developed on earth all different ways to understand the geology so that they can determine what happened at a particular place at a particular time, roughly speaking. And they do it by looking at fossil records, they know that there was this fossil, this organism was alive at a particular time f its a rock layer, that means its around that time. So they have techniques. On mars, actually, came up with a way to determine age by using the gas. The relationship between those forms can be can be measured and understood in a way that will give you the sense of how long how long ago that surface was clear. Well, beyond my understanding, but suffice it to say, these folks based on what they know on earth and mars has similar process, they are mak