A typical star there are hundreds of millions of stars like that in our own galaxy and so astronomers can monitor the life cycle of stars like our sun and we know the sun is about 4 and a half 1000000000 years old and it stars like the sun last around 9 or 10000000000 years so dont lose any sleep over it but its true that some day the earth will be destroyed by our own star well look at the world well live in nj and i mean the growing number of conflicts on the Climate Change is recognised as another existential threat were facing what makes you think that will survive for even another 1000 years before you have billions. Thats a great question i mean fundamentally im an optimist i think that weve already seen well i know that weve already seen just incredible advances in science and Technology Medicine communication transportation just in the last few 100 years and i think that you know thats whats going to help us survive as a species thats whats going to help us learn to live in a Sustainable Way on this very precious and rare planet that we live in to maintain the environment that is conducive for for a good quality of life so so im an optimist i believe in science and technology and and that the Scientific Method can make our lives better and it has and will continue to do so as we go into the future is now im sure you know this asked a physicist and just marching i was speaking to him recently and he told me that there is no plan b. For us. Do you think there were raised or there is not. Well i mean right now thats true thats absolutely true we we are made for this planet for this environment we have evolved to for this life around this star in this kind of an atmosphere with this temperature and this pressure and this composition so you know earth is our home and earth will always be the home planet of the human species and so there is no plan b. Course you know there there is lots of interest in exploring the rest of our solar system and settling you know sending people to the moon on a lunar base sending people to mars maybe other places in the outer solar system establish research stations and bases maybe tourist destinations but the earth is always going to be humanitys home and everywhere else we go will have to figure out how to carry the earths environment with us in the space suit or habitat or somehow figure out how to modify those environments maybe underground caves or whatever to be more earth like so so i agree there is no plan b. For the species but there is a plan to explore and to push our species out into our own solar system talk about that lets talk about that and well start with mars colonizing mars so the main problem with terra forming mars for instance is that it was fairest thing for us to survive there and ive heard the idea that it is possible to thicken marshes atmospheric by releasing the socalled Greenhouse Gases now here are nervous that will produce this gases from agriculture and waste but why do we get them when lars. Right no thats a gets a great question and you know mars has polar caps with water ice and Carbon Dioxide ice it has a composition very similar to to the earth actually all of the rest real planets have very similar composition so there is methane gas and other other kinds of Greenhouse Gases that are stored in the planet just like inside the earth so all that is possible but the timescales sofi are really long you know its its taken humanity 200 years or so basically since the Industrial Revolution to start to change our own climate with Greenhouse Gases like c o 2 to change the climate of a planet like mars which with a much thinner atmosphere would require a lot more time and some pretty industrial scale processing and creation and release of Greenhouse Gases were talking hundreds of thousands of years to really terra form a place like mars so in the near term were really talking about People Living in spacesuits and habitats and environments that we create on mars that are a little mini versions of earths environment. So when you know that marsh lost its Magnetic Field when millions of years ago and this amazing nasa physicist jim greene came up with the idea of creating an artificial one is that feasible is a something that could work well you know the wonderful thing about science is that that you can speculate you can hypothesize you can come up with ideas and models and thats just an idea its a model you know if it were if it were possible to you know to somehow tap into mars internal heat if theres enough left to to to you know create this kind of a Magnetic Field right now my opinion its sort of Science Fiction because it required. Theres a scale of planetary engineering that were just not capable of as a species but but like all good Science Fiction we can kind of imagine a future where we could change our planets climate or you know locally change the planets Magnetic Field for example so possible sure you know one can imagine some scientifically developed steps engineering steps to head in directions like that but is it is it practical practical probably not and certainly not anywhere in the near term. All right but scientists today already create artificial atmospheres and sealed testing chambers right so theoretically it is possible to create an artificial atmosphere on mars meaning like not satellite stations but cities that could accommodate earths population i mean youre saying it will surely work here on a special suit but why cant we just create like special minnesota. Absolutely we could certainly do that with but domes or covered structures or you know the mars has some natural environments like these lava tubes that volcanic lava used to travel through like you see these kinds of lava tubes in places like hawaii or iceland on the earth and there are buried caves basically and if you just seal them off from the from the surface you could create an environment in in a place like that that is very earth like with with oxygen and nitrogen and High Pressure and normal temperature shirtsleeve temperature or you can imagine dome structures or small habitats you know what youre probably familiar with the movie of the martian that came out a few years ago the movie in the book you know they imagine some some pretty decent sized habitats and structures where they created an earth like environment i think those are all very very possible the engineering is challenging but not impossible and i think its going to be part of the future of people eventually settling mars in the next few decades so once again martin rees well worst. Tell me that the people who colonized loris will have to be a different kind of species because they will need to adapt to this long term travel in outer space and harsh ready ation do you think that well have to sort of mutate if we want to get off earth eventually. Well i mean you know evolution is slow and it is forced by environmental changes certainly as well as mutations and weve seen that throughout the history of life on our own planet so the 1st people who go out to live on mars to stay or to live on the moon to stay or to go live on jupiters moon europa to stay will sort of suddenly be in a very different environment than the one in which their ancestors were raised in and so one can imagine that there could be favorable mutations to radiation that allow allow that trait to be built up over time you know we dont know we dont know if if women can have children in space we just dont know what is the effect of gravity on the development of a child. You know what goes on and they wait a minute or a better eye or a fetus to to to actually develop into a Healthy Human it may take so much inside the tomb. In space supposedly that its not possible as of now thats what ive heard. Well it just it depends i mean there are there are more and less benign radiation environments in space around jupiter for example huge enormous radiation environment very intense its difficult for our robotic spacecraft to survive in that environment let alone a living you know beings mars is kind of is different its its a different radiation environment than the earth its not as protected as the earth is but theres a variety of calculations that show that you know people should be able to survive there there may have to be some special shielding in there in their habitats or in their space suits etc but it shouldnt be too crazy harsh like other places in the solar system but let in general what abilities or features humans have to survive in this new habitat maybe maurice or any other planet. Yeah i mean i think probably the number one. Skill that we will have to develop is sustainability is the ability to live off the land as much as possible to kind of break the supply chain of having to bring everything from the earth and figure out how do we extract water and oxygen from these rocks or from these polar cap deposits how do we use the materials that are around us as Building Materials how do we shield ourselves from from radiation or just from the the very thin atmosphere how do we protect ourselves and keep our atmosphere in using materials around us where do we get our energy how do we make ourselves completely selfsufficient Solar Energy Nuclear Energy other geothermal wind other sources you know all of that that we think about when we think about pioneers settling new lands they have to learn how to live off the land and going out into space the moon mars other places will be the extreme test of that for the human species all right you know when i take a short break right now and when were back well continue talking to nasa planetary researcher professor and discussing the future of Space Exploration stay with us. True description is owned up to tell using even for the owners so how to choose pet Food Industry is telling us what to feed our pets really more based on what they want to sell us than whats necessarily good for the path turns out may not be the best people believe we have animals that have you know diabetes and arthritis they have auto immune disorders allergies we are actually creating these problems its a huge epidemic of problems all of them i believe can be linked to very simple problem of diet and some dog owners so heartbreaking stories about their pets streets the larger corporations are not very interested in proving or disproving the value of their food because theyre already making a good 1000000000. 00 on it and theres no reason to do that research. Or back with nasa Planetary Science researcher Professor James balog about our solar system the exploration so why the International Space station for instance requires huge resources and it is located it well attilla close to earth which makes it possible sustain it how are colonies on mars going to sustain themselves i mean would it be like in martian the one that you know that. The movie growing potatoes and recycling waste. Right certainly there will have to be they will have to figure out how to live off the land you know initially one can imagine lots of Building Materials and water and maybe even oxygen coming with them in the the pretty large space ships its going to take to get there even just to go to the moon its a pretty big space ship and you can imagine there being lots of room for cargo as well as people so food and water oxygen bringing a bunch of that initially is probably the smart thing to do but then there are the 1st settlers theyre the 1st towns and villages that are built up small numbers of people theyre going to have to learn how to get Construction Materials and make you know bricks and structures out of the rocks and how do you pull the iron out of that and other other metals that they might need how do they get oxygen out of the c o 2 out of the water ice that they can find in the Ground Breaking up the hydrogen and oxygen you breathe the oxygen you can drink the water you can use the water as a shield against radiation if you build your structure the right way so all of these things and theres a lot of research being done here on earth today by nasa by the Russian Space agency by the European Space agency the Japanese Space Agency in many Different Countries thinking about how do we extract resources from those environments out there in space so that they will help us survive. So lets try to reverse the perspective once we colonize other planets and have a sort of a life ready in waiting i think it will devalue life on earth how i make things like nuclear war more likely to happen for instance. I look i tell you im an optimist i have exactly the opposite perspective. I believe and i truly believe that that the ability to learn how to sustain ourselves and your groups of people who have to Work Together out in harsh environments on the moon or mars or other places learning how to live off the land learning how to completely recycle everything and use everything to its maximum efficiency and maximum potential i think all of those skills all that engineering all that knowledge will come back to the earth and they will help us live better lives on the earth we can solve a lot of our Energy Problems we can solve a lot of our waste problems we maybe can solve a lot of our social problems because what we have to realise we are all living on a small fragile spaceship together and its really no different than a bunch of people in a harsh environment trying to rely on each other to survive we we are interconnected on this planet and we rely on each other everywhere around the world to survive as a species so i think all of thats going to come back and in fact thats why we explore space in my opinion to learn more about our home planet how to sustain and better our lives here because of course most of our species will remain here on this planet and only a small fraction will be fortune enough to go out there and explore and settle so i know youre an optimist but ive just so want to bring a rat ray that i what he once suggested that every colonization that humankind undertakes and then surely entails destruction and devastation whether its here on earth. Or anywhere else what is your take will we destroy other planets just like well almost destroyed our own. The certainly i dont deny that there is that potential and that makes for great Science Fiction of course because it is the history of our species and its not as not a very pretty history of course we have to learn from it we have to learn you know what we did wrong what we can improve how can we you know achieve that that betterment of our species by learning from the past so i i think of course when we get to another planet or moon or elsewhere in the inner solar system. We dont think theres anybody living there right now there could perhaps be microbial life deep underground in some of these places we dont know of course there could be life in the oceans of jupiters moon europa we dont know so you know theres the potential and maybe an ethical responsibility that we need to find that out before we go to some of these other places but were also going to have to exploit some of the resources we need to you know find the water find the oxygen find the Building Materials figure out how to grow food. You know those those have all been part of settlement in the past and can we do it responsibly can we do it sustainably can we do it in an ecologically friendly way for that environment i think these are big challenges for us im an optimist i think we will rise to the challenge so youve been saying that it would actually take approximately 40000 years to get to the next star and that means that tails of thousands of generations will die and be born during this trip i mean 1 may be easier to build like a new planet than to fly thousands of years without a Firm Guarantee of achieving the goal. Sure no i agree and you know its tens of thousands of years using current technology. Propulsion technology is always advancing there are radical ideas that dont you know defy the laws of physics that could potentially get us out into interstellar travel faster than that so you know but its still hundreds maybe thousands of years so still many generations to do that so youre right we have in our own backyard in our own solar system you know a number of places planets moons asteroids comets that we want to explore that could have the resources that could support a small human civilization expansion of human civilization into our solar system theres been a lot of course a lot of Science Fiction books and Television Shows and movies that explore this theme and much of it is based in reality there there are resources out there that we can use to survive and there are ways that we can travel around in our own solar system that art generational that take years or decades maybe to go out to really distant destinations so so youre right in that the prospect of interest or travel is daunting stream lee challenging but maybe thats whats causing us to focus mostly in our own solar system were near term the next few centuries thinking about settlement well ive heard that and nothing engineer has recently come up with this concept of a revolutionary engine that could take us to the stars at the speed of light and without any feel at all some scientists have already called this idea crazy is it if somebody told me as a scientist hey you know what im going to get you something for nothing id be skeptical so im certain theres a lot of skepticism especially if its the no fuel part. And we should be skeptical but you know science doesnt work as a democracy science works on. Hypothesis and test so lets see some tests