Can You Terraform Mars? with Kennda Lynch

Can we grow food on Mars? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comedian Paul Mecurio learn about a new NASA project "Plant Trek" and the challenges of surviving on other planets with astrobiologist Kennda Lynch.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Paul Mecurio?

  I love that Kennda would just go into the ship and just start like getting samples from people.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  Oh, heck yeah.

• 0:05Paul Mecurio?

  And they'd be like, see, this is why the humans are a little bit annoying. They just come right in and they just take over as opposed to like at least chit chatting for a minute before you start taking swats.

• 0:14Speaker 01

  I'm kinda liking myself to Grace from Avatar. Like, she's like, I need to get samples wherever she is, you know?

• 0:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk Cosmic Queries Edition. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist. I got with me Paul Mecurio. Paul, welcome back to StarTalk.

• 0:45Paul Mecurio?

  All right, great to be back. Great to see you, buddy. How are you?

• 0:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, Paul's a professional comedian. You're an Emmy and I just learned also a Peabody Award winner? You never told me that. You get an Emmy just for being funny, but you get a Peabody Award for being funny with purpose.

• 1:00Paul Mecurio?

  With intellect.

• 1:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With intellect.

• 1:03Paul Mecurio?

  Why are you laughing that I don't have an intellect?

• 1:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I didn't. No, that's not. No, you know, no, that's not why.

• 1:08Paul Mecurio?

  I know, I do.

• 1:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, just congratulations. I think Peabody, we've always counted that among the highest possible awards someone can get who's got stuff on online or on TV or in video. So congratulations on that.

• 1:22Paul Mecurio?

  Thank you.

• 1:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you perform regularly on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. So great to have you here.

• 1:28Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah. And by the way, if I can just mention, I'm taking my Broadway show out on national tour called Permission to Speak and December 29th is gonna be in Orlando at the Dr. Philip Center for the Performing Arts.

• 1:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know, I know that facility.

• 1:40Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, it's a beautiful venue. They let anybody in there if they let me in.

• 1:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  December 29th, 2023, yes.

• 1:47Paul Mecurio?

  Yes, and so people can go to my website, paulmacurio.com and get tickets and come out. And if you buy tickets, my son can get that kidney that he needs. That's all I'm saying.

• 1:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay, there you go.

• 1:57Paul Mecurio?

  If you want a kid to leave a normal life, it'll come to my show. Anyway, thank you.

• 2:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you got a podcast called Inside Out with Paul Mecurio.

• 2:06Paul Mecurio?

  Which you've been on.

• 2:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And on your list of guests, Paul McCartney, Spike Lee. Kevin Costner, many others, and someone named Neil Tyson was on your show one time.

• 2:15Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, there was a lot of weeping during that episode. He would talk and then he would cry and I'd be like, I have to hug him. No, no, yeah, we had a great conversation. We talked about black matter and it was the best.

• 2:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No such thing as dark matter.

• 2:29Paul Mecurio?

  Dark matter.

• 2:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Apparently I didn't educate you at all.

• 2:31Paul Mecurio?

  Okay, see, you could have just.

• 2:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No such thing as black matter. There's black holes and dark matter.

• 2:37Paul Mecurio?

  Just let it slide and pretend you didn't hear it.

• 2:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Black holes and dark matter. There's no black matter, just so you know.

• 2:44Paul Mecurio?

  Let's retake this whole thing.

• 2:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Black lives matter, but no black matter. All right. So, so today it's Cosmic Queries and we're going to talk about astrobiology. We don't talk about that subject enough. And so we're going to bring a returning guest, Kennda Lynch. Kennda, welcome back to Startalk.

• 3:02Speaker 01

  Hi, thanks so much for having me. I'm super excited to be here.

• 3:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent, excellent. You're a staff scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute, the LPI, just outside of Johnson Space Center in Planet Houston. And you're an astrobiologist and we have you on primarily to talk about a new NASA project called Plant Trek. Now, we all know Star Trek. Plant Trek sounds a little derivative, but investigating strategies. But I got the, wait, I got the line here. Investigating strategies for Regolith preconditioning to support establishment of plant microbe systems in Martian habitats.

• 3:48Paul Mecurio?

  I wrote that, by the way.

• 3:52Paul Mecurio?

  You're welcome.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  Thank you, Paul, thank you.

• 3:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Kennda, don't ever repeat that phrase on this show.

• 4:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? Just, what the hell is a regolith? I think I know, but it sounds like you've been hanging out with geologists too long. So, let's, let's, give us in plain English what Plant Trek is and what your relationship is to the project.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  Plant Trek is, what we're trying to do with Plant Trek is we're trying to figure out how to live on Mars and grow on food on Mars using NC2 resources or basically Martian regolith. We can't call it dirt or soil because it doesn't have microbes in it that we know of. So, anything that doesn't have life in it is regolith that we define in the geology, geological terms as regolith. And so Martian-

• 4:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, so, so your roots are in biology, astronomy, or geology, or all of the above?

• 4:43Speaker 01

  I wear a lot of hats. So, my actual bachelor's degrees, I have two because I'm crazy and I got two at University of Illinois at the same time. My bachelor's degrees are in engineering and biology. And I designed my secondary field in engineering to focus on what's called advanced life support systems. So, back when I was doing engineering and I was an engineer, I learned about how to develop life support systems for astronauts. And back then, we were talking about something called bioregenitive life support systems or closed-loop life support systems. Ways to basically take Earth with us and recycle the things, use plants to help us make air, help us clean our water, help us grow our food-

• 5:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Without needing a supply ship, without needing a-

• 5:24Speaker 01

  Without needing a supply ship or any kind of resupply because relying on a two-year turnaround for resupply from Earth is gonna really suck if you're living on Mars. You don't wanna have to do that.

• 5:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, now, these are, now, these are tools and things. So, how does astrobiology relate to this?

• 5:38Speaker 01

  Well, that's an interesting thing that I discovered and I am, and you asked about my relationship to it. I am the principal investigator. This is one of the projects that I got funded. Yes, I'm the PI. I got this funded with NASA to test this process that me and my colleagues came up with and-

• 5:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait, so, so you're PI, so-

• 5:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 5:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is your fault that it has that title?

• 5:59Speaker 01

  We just call it Plant Trek and yes, there's a T-shirt and you should have my logo somewhere. You should have my logo there.

• 6:04Paul Mecurio?

  Can I just propose this? I work at CBS. I think this is a drama. It's called Regolith, Regolith PI, and then you show up.

• 6:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good one.

• 6:15Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 6:15Paul Mecurio?

  You've got a shovel and a hat and a thing and then there's a plant.

• 6:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So regolith, so when I reach into the soils of Earth, well, I don't see it, but it is teeming with microbes.

• 6:26Speaker 01

  Millions and millions of microbes that have made that soil possible. Yes.

• 6:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That enables plant life to grow in it. So if I go to the moon, I can still grab up a handful of dirt or on Mars, but there's no microbes in it. So you don't call it dirt.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  No, we don't call it dirt. We call it regolith because it, because dirt, we don't even, you know, and if you talk to a soil scientist, they hate the D word. They don't like it called dirt. They like it to be soil. I've learned this from my colleagues who's the soil scientist. So it's soil. They call it the D word. I didn't know dirt was a four-letter word, but apparently for this science it is.

• 6:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow. Okay. Okay. So now what, so tell me how astrobiology fits in.

• 7:05Speaker 01

  Well, astrobiology fits in because one of the things that we learned is that, you know, Mars, what we know from all of our missions to both the moon and Mars is that the lunar regolith and the Martian regolith have a lot of interesting things in them. They have a lot of like heavy metals. They have a lot of iron. They have a lot of, lunar soil has a lot of titanium. Martian soil has a lot of iron and sulfur. The big thing about Mars is we have a thing called perchlorate in it. And perchlorate is something that there's more of it in Martian regolith than there is on the highest site on Earth, which would be the Atacama Desert. And perchlorate is a really cool molecule that does cool things that we like to use it for spaceflight, like to mail solid rocket engines.

• 7:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, you say that, wait, wait, the highest spot on Earth is Mount Everest. So what do you mean the Atacama Desert?

• 7:48Speaker 01

  The highest concentration of perchlorate is in the Atacama Desert.

• 7:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, God, so highest, not the highest elevation?

• 7:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, the highest concentration. I am sorry.

• 7:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because the Atacama Desert is a very high elevation.

• 7:59Speaker 01

  It is.

• 8:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We have telescopes there for that reason. So that, I was confused there. Okay, thank you for clarifying.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  It is the highest concentration of perchlorate because it is one of the driest places on the planet. And perchlorate accumulates naturally, perchlorate is raining actually all over, out all over the planet all the time. It's generated in the atmosphere using photochemistry with ozone. It, it, photochemistry reactions with ozone make perchlorate and it rains out all over the planet. But it only accumulates-

• 8:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, so what is the, what is the whole molecule perchlorate?

• 8:26Speaker 01

  Perchlorate, it has got one little chlorine atom in the mountains, in the center surrounded by four big oxygen atoms. And

• 8:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, it's only chlorine and oxygen.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 8:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't know that.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's very simple.

• 8:40Paul Mecurio?

  Come on, Neil, everybody knows that.

• 8:43Speaker 01

  Come on, Neil, I mean, what up?

• 8:45Paul Mecurio?

  I can't, I can't work like this.

• 8:50Paul Mecurio?

  There's always, I'm sorry, he's always playing catch up on this stuff.

• 8:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, all right, so perchlorate, I got you. So, so ozone gets you three oxygen molecules for free.

• 9:00Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 9:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, and so, and how many total is surrounding the chlorine?

• 9:04Speaker 01

  Four, so four for perchlorate.

• 9:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Four.

• 9:06Speaker 01

  And there's another one called chlorate, it's just three, but we kind of focus on perchlorate right now because that's the, that's the big one that, that, that we care about the most right now, even though

• 9:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And why is that important?

• 9:15Speaker 01

  Um, because, for a couple of reasons. First of all, um, it's important for humans because perchlorate likes, is a, is a contaminant that affects human health. Perchlorate is the perfect size to compete with iodine for binding on your thyroid. So if you have perchlorate in your system, it's gonna knock that iodine out of the way and bind to your thyroid, and guess what, your thyroid's not gonna work too good. So if you're, if you're

• 9:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Our bodies are just so stupid. They can't figure out what, they don't know basic chemistry.

• 9:46Speaker 01

  Right, right, right, so it's just, it's got the right affinity where it just likes to knock that iodine away. So if you're eating, let's say if you're eating Martian potatoes that were grown in the Martian dirt, like Matt Damon did.

• 9:57Paul Mecurio?

  Matt Damon, right, yeah.

• 9:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Those are poop potatoes.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  They are poop potatoes, but remember, he, he planted them in the ground in Mars, in actual Mars regolith ground, which there would have been perchlorate in those, in those regoliths. Oh, even though he mixed it with poop, he didn't take care of the perchlorate. So if he had eaten those poop potatoes, uh, other than the fact that they're poop potatoes, he would have been ingesting perchlorate, like, all the time because perchlorate is so mobile, it would have actually been uptaken probably into the potato. And he, and honestly, the bottom line is, if he'd eaten those potatoes, we would have killed Matt Damon. I mean, Matt Damon would have just died.

• 10:28Paul Mecurio?

  Also, the idea that, like, it, a group of people in all seriousness couldn't eat those potatoes because the poop has his pathogens in it, which would be fine for him, but wouldn't work for others.

• 10:39Speaker 01

  Exactly, there's some other issues with regards to the pathogenic aspects of it.

• 10:42Paul Mecurio?

  And I know this because as a hobby, I freeze dry my waste, just as a hobby. But the point is that, in all seriousness, it would not have worked as a concept, okay?

• 10:51Speaker 01

  Not, not without some bioremediation, which is one of the things that we try to do when we develop What we call biological life support, bioregenerative life support systems. We remediate things, we try to clean up things and make them safe before we use them to grow our food. And the first thing we're trying to do with PlantTrack is we're trying to deal with this big, this big perchlorate elephant in the room, which is what do we do with the fact that there is up to 1% and some cases 2% weight by weight perchlorate in the Martian regolith? And if we're going to use that regolith to help us grow food, we need to figure out what to do with that perchlorate. So that's what we're trying to answer.

• 11:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The moon is at least as dry as Mars. Why doesn't the moon have the same amount of perchlorate in it?

• 11:35Speaker 01

  Well, that is a good question. It's probably because first of all, the moon doesn't really have an atmosphere. And so perchlorate on Mars is probably awesome. There's a lot of chlorine on Mars because of all the volcanism on Mars. So there's a lot more chlorine on Mars and there is a lot of, you know.

• 11:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Volcanism from, from long ago.

• 11:50Speaker 01

  From long ago, but it still put a lot of chlorine on there. And we're not sure if, it's not quite the same process because there's not a lot of ozone on Mars, right? But we think it's more surface grain chemistry or other kind of chemistry. Maybe even when, when there was, um, you know, surface of groundwater that made that perchlorate. Probably the biggest theory is probably surface type grain chemistry along with radiation like impacting it, causing like surface chemistry happening.

• 12:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Radiation, you mean, uh, high energy light from the sun?

• 12:17Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah, high energy photons hitting, you know, all the high energy photons coming in, yeah.

• 12:22Paul Mecurio?

  Just a quick question. There was a, there was a, uh, an experiment done in China in laboratories with lunar soil where they grew a certain strain of.

• 12:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is not a quick question.

• 12:31Paul Mecurio?

  A certain shade of tobacco and.

• 12:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just a long question, okay.

• 12:35Paul Mecurio?

  And would they, and would, is that tobacco, is that experiment, was that experiment able, is that, any help that we've gotten from that for what you're doing in terms of what they were? They, they used three forms of bacteria to grow this sort of strain of tobacco. Anything from that study that helps?

• 12:51Speaker 01

  It does because it's interesting because there's a lot of different, um, yes and no. So no on the fact that we're really not going to try to encourage tobacco use on the moon or Mars, so.

• 13:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know, I know, Paul.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  Not really.

• 13:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll get that news story.

• 13:03Speaker 01

  For the type of plant that they chose.

• 13:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nicotine addicts on Mars? Where'd Paul?

• 13:09Paul Mecurio?

  Well, listen, you're gonna have a cigarette stand everywhere, so why not?

• 13:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Paul.

• 13:14Speaker 01

  But, but from the standpoint of that they tried different bacteria to try to improve the lunar regolith and to try to create a good community with the regolith, yes, that was very helpful. I've seen that study and we're starting to move into some of the lunar regolith work too. But right now, one of our first things with Plant Trek and what we were funded to do is kind of solve that perchlorate issue. And, and the reason astrobiology ties in is because one of the things that I realized when I started thinking about life support systems with my colleagues again and things is that I learned so much about extreme environments and extreme microbes. And I actually happen to have this 2019 astrobiology paper where we discovered perchlorate reducing microbes in a Mars analog environment, you know?

• 13:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 13:56Speaker 01

  Just happen to have that. And I was like, you know, what if we took microbes from that environment and applied it to, you know, and tested and see if we could take, you know, Martian simulant that we preloaded with, simulated with perchlorate and we simulated actual Martian regolith, what if we took those bugs out of that environment and put them in Martian regolith to see if they could process all that perchlorate out?

• 14:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so, so Kenneth, this is a tiny part of the cog in the wheel of terraforming, isn't it?

• 14:27Speaker 01

  Oh, you're using the T-word.

• 14:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The T-word, I'm saying. If you want to make Mars good enough for, you know, for prime time.

• 14:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You gotta fix everything up.

• 14:42Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You gotta, you gotta, you need, until you could put your microbes to work. You can have a microbe cocktail. You set it loose, some will produce the ozone, others will take out the perchlorate, others will make the soil, whatever, others will poop where you need it with the right kind of poop. Not, not Paul's poop. Paul's poop won't grow anything.

• 15:01Speaker 01

  Neil, I'm glad you're getting excited, but I need to rank really in because we got this little thing called planetary protection. And we don't want to do that yet because we're still trying to find out if Mars has its own life on it. But we do want to be able to support human life. We don't want to kill our mantamans. We want to keep our mantamans alive. So, so we do want to try to figure out ways to use NCT resources because like I said, that supply chain issue of two years, that's serious, it's even worse than the pandemic.

• 15:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Also, you should stay in the character and call him Mark Watney.

• 15:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying, we've had Andy Weir as a guest on StarTalk.

• 15:37Speaker 01

  Fair enough.

• 15:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And he would want you to call him Mark Watney.

• 15:40Speaker 01

  Fair enough, Mark Watney. We don't want to kill our Mark Watneys.

• 15:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so Paul, this is at Cosmic Queries and you've got questions for Kendra.

• 16:00Paul Mecurio?

  I do, yeah. We're gonna jump right in here.

• 16:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I haven't seen them. I don't think Kendra's seen them.

• 16:04Speaker 01

  No, I haven't seen a single thing.

• 16:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. So Kendra, occasionally they drift into the universe. I'm happy to take those if you, if it's like drifts away from your planned expertise, but otherwise they're all for you. So let's, let's go.

• 16:19Speaker 01

  That works.

• 16:19Paul Mecurio?

  Well, this first one's appropriate based on what we were just talking about. So this is from Dennis. Greetings, humans. This is Dennis from Indiana. Dr. Lynch, were you ever approached by filmmakers for technical support when they were shooting The Martian?

• 16:32Speaker 01

  No, that's a good question, but no, I was still in grad school when they were shooting The Martian. So, no.

• 16:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, but if they were shooting it today, no reason why you wouldn't be on it.

• 16:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, if they were shooting it today, I would give tech support any day of the week. That would be, that would be fun.

• 16:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but then you would have ruined the poop potato. Cause you say, that can't happen.

• 16:54Paul Mecurio?

  You would have had a big fight with Ridley Scott.

• 16:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 16:59Speaker 01

  Oh, to just have a duke out with Ridley Scott, that's a gene comin'.

• 17:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, I'm just saying.

• 17:03Paul Mecurio?

  I gave technical advice on the movie on how to kill any living plant known to man ever. So I'm like that. So I can't grow air plants. Okay, that's how bad I am.

• 17:12Speaker 01

  I mean, they even skipped over the whole planetary protection issue about wondering about life on Mars. I mean, there were so many things astrobiology relevant that they just skipped over. Yeah, but, but you know, you sit next to my friends who were both a planetary geologist and then, you know, a, you know, a flight systems engineer when I went to go see the movie and all of us were going, nope, nope, on different parts of the movie.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  But we had fun. We thought it was fun. It was the closest movie that got close to, you know, accuracy on the science and the engineering. So we love it. We have fun.

• 17:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Science, science was its own character in that film.

• 17:45Speaker 01

  It was. It really was.

• 17:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I praise it for that.

• 17:47Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 17:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's the film, that's the film where science became a verb.

• 17:54Speaker 01

  There you go. I'm gonna science the out of this.

• 17:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ah, I'm gonna science the shit out of this, right?

• 17:59Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 18:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To science. That's what Matt Damon uttered in the film.

• 18:03Speaker 01

  To science, yeah.

• 18:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What else you got, Paul?

• 18:05Paul Mecurio?

  Okay, Andy Weber. Hey, Dr. Tyson, Dr. Lynch, and Dr. Mercurio.

• 18:10Speaker 01

  Oh, all right.

• 18:11Paul Mecurio?

  I just added that. This is Andy.

• 18:13Speaker 01

  I was gonna say, he got an honorary PhD from...

• 18:16Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, from The Daily Show. This is Andy from Edmonton, Alberta. I'm a big fan of the movie, um, The Martian. And in that movie, Mark Watney, see, he did it, right, is able to plant, uh, uh, potatoes on Mars using Martian dirt, water, and human waste. Would this be possible? Uh, how could this be more realistic? Thank you so much. Love the show.

• 18:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So let's unpack that. So, so we are, we are told that solid excrement is fertilizer. There's an entire cottage industry in the farming universe for just that. So let me ask you, what's the difference between human poop and horse poop? All right, in terms of fertilizer. Second, what does the perchlorate matter if he's completely embedded the, the potato, uh, seeds or the eyes of the potato in poop? Then why does the rest of the perchlorate matter?

• 19:12Speaker 01

  Well, so, okay, so let's unpack that completely. So first, um, the difference between perchlorate poop and like horse poop. Well, horses eat a lot more grass and a lot more like vegetarian diet, whereas humans tend to eat meat and other things, so.

• 19:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, just get the poop of vegetarian humans.

• 19:29Speaker 01

  No matter, no matter what.

• 19:30Paul Mecurio?

  Do you know how annoying that poop would be? Oh my God, it'd be looking down its nose at the other poop.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  Judgment everywhere from the vegetarian. No, that's the vegan poop that would have the judgment.

• 19:41Paul Mecurio?

  Oh, that's true. Right, right, right, right.

• 19:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The vegan poop.

• 19:45Paul Mecurio?

  Well, of course you, of course perchlorate is a problem for you because you're not a vegan poop.

• 19:54Speaker 01

  And

• 19:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So how do you make, how do you make the, the, the Mark Watney scenario work? I think in the end, that's what we really want to know.

• 20:01Speaker 01

  I mean, so how we make the, the scenario work is how we do things here on Earth. We do, we, we add a few more things in between the poop and, and, and the plants that make the whole loop, right? So we get the plant, we get the poop and we process it a little bit. We get the right microbes eating it, microbes that are making things that we like, like, you know, like nit, you know, nitrates and things like that, that we want to put in the soil. We get that in there and then we can then turn and we make sure we get rid of the microbes, the bugs that could make people sick or like could kill our helpful bugs. Cause there are unhelpful bugs that could take over. And we don't want that. So we want to make sure that we have a good microbial, we want to make sure we have a good poop microbiome.

• 20:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But just because this microbe will do task A and this microbe will do task B, doesn't mean A plus B will work because A could eat B is what you're saying.

• 20:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. And we, and we want to make sure that we have a good population of A, A through Z that are going to be happy and keep like, if A is the bad guy that could really make a human sick, we want A under control. A is always going to be there. I mean, like for example, E. coli is everywhere.

• 21:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, you know, the kindergarten joke, why was six afraid of seven?

• 21:04Speaker 01

  Cause it, because seven, eight, nine.

• 21:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, because seven, eight, nine. That's, that's like

• 21:10Speaker 01

  I got you.

• 21:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Safe for kindergarten. Great, great.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 21:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you've got microbes, you don't want microbes eating other microbes.

• 21:15Speaker 01

  No.

• 21:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They all have a task.

• 21:16Speaker 01

  Or just taking over and taking all the res, what they do is they may not eat the other microbe, but they may be like, see all these resources, they're all mine. And then they deny it from the other microbes and the other microbes die of starvation. So you don't want that. So you want to make sure

• 21:27Paul Mecurio?

  You can genetically modify some of these microbes to make them what you want them to be?

• 21:31Speaker 01

  We can, but we, we, you know, we can, and there are folks that work on that. We're trying to, but microbes are pretty smart. Every time we think we've got microbes understood, they go, yeah, here, fold my beer, wash this. You know, so every time we think we got them understood, but they're pretty smart and they know how to organize themselves in a way to be optimal for the environment they're in. So we're trying to learn, at least on Plant Trek, we're trying to learn how microbes from an extreme environment, like how could they organize themselves in a, in a, in a Mars simulated environment? How could they organize themselves to deal with prochlorite in a simulated environment? So that's what we wanted to try to do. So to get back to this unpack question is, yeah, we want, we want to use that poop. That poop is good. It's got nutrients. We just want to make sure that we control, we, we get the, we get the rough guys under control and we put them back in.

• 22:13Speaker 01

  And then, um, we want to make sure, and the reason that the point so matters is if you saw, um, Mark Watney still put the potatoes in the ground where that regolith still had perchlorate in it. And perchlorate is super mobile. It goes wherever water, water is. It's really water soluble. So you put it in water, it's wherever the water goes, it's going to go. So if you put, if you water your potatoes and there is perchlorate in the regolith, it's going to dissolve into the water and it's going to get uptaken by the roots of the potatoes and then get concentrated in the potatoes. So you don't want that.

• 22:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Got it. And I just was reminded, I reminded myself of the periodic table of elements where elements that appear in a vertical column have similar external, uh, uh, similar electron configurations in their outermost shell, which means they make similar families of molecules to each other. So iodine is right there below chlorine in its own, in their column. So wherever iodine goes, chlorine can go. And there you have it.

• 23:11Speaker 01

  And that's why they have the similar affinities and that's why it can just kind of go, excuse me, iodine, boop, and knock it out of the way.

• 23:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 23:16Speaker 01

  And we don't want that because then you're going to be hypothyroid and you're going to be tired and lethargic. And then, you know, things are going to be bad. You can get, you can generate heart disease. If you have low thyroid, there's a lot of negative effects of low thyroid. And if you have chronically low thyroid, it can lead to really bad stuff, including the big D word. You know?

• 23:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm hmm. Dirt.

• 23:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We can't have two D words in one show that are different.

• 23:44Paul Mecurio?

  Too much.

• 23:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Stick with one D word.

• 23:46Speaker 01

  Fair enough. Please.

• 23:49Paul Mecurio?

  Are there any insects in, in, that we translate, that translate to Mars that we can use? Like insects here that could sort of?

• 23:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's got microbes. If you have microbes, you don't need insects.

• 23:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean.

• 23:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hugely macroscopic objects that are.

• 24:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, microbes will do everything for you, right?

• 24:05Speaker 01

  Well, ideally, right now, we're kind of focusing on microbes. I mean, and insects are, again, is another type of things like insects or, I mean, on Earth, you know, earthworms are very much a part of soil, right? But, you know, we have, and there are those that I've worked on trying to add earthworms to like lunar and Martian regolith, but it takes a lot of work to keep them alive. And you have to add them a little later after you've kind of already pre-processed the regolith with like microbes first, but then you can eventually add like earthworms and things like that to the, to the regolith to kind of help them get that regolith going into soil, right? But it takes a little work.

• 24:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, again, that's part of the, part of the terraforming, I'm telling you.

• 24:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. But let's just, we're to keep it in-

• 24:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The T word.

• 24:44Speaker 01

  We're gonna keep it in the habitat for now. We're gonna try to keep it in the habitat so that the astrobiologists can still look for life on Mars outside the habitat.

• 24:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, alright.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  We're gonna try to keep it in the habitat for now.

• 24:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Paul, give me more.

• 24:56Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, artist, this is the artist formerly known as James Smith. Hello, all. James from Indianapolis here. So Ken, in the movie Arrival, what do you think the best course of action would have been had they given someone with your knowledge and background when, when the aliens showed up? Thanks, have a great day.

• 25:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so there are two Arrival movies. One of them had Charlie Sheen.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 25:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think it was back in the 90s, and that, I think they probably mean the more recent one, where the aliens put these vertical ships around the world. And then they got, and they got a physicist and a linguist.

• 25:33Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. They did.

• 25:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I would have picked, and I tweeted this, and I, I got jumped all over because, first, social media cesspool, second, you know, how often, how often do linguists ever get portrayed in movies, right?

• 25:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 25:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I said, instead of a linguist and a, and a, and a physicist, they should have had an astrobiologist and a cryptographer. That's what I said, alright? And, but then I, then I felt bad because, you know, give the linguist some, some, you know, cut him, cast a shade on the linguist. So what would you have done in that case?

• 26:10Speaker 01

  Well, as a scientist with astrobiology cred, I would have said, let me go take samples and listen to the linguist, they're figuring something out.

• 26:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, take samples. You'd go up to the septopod and then say, excuse me, let me cut some of your flesh away.

• 26:24Speaker 01

  No, I just feel like, can you just, can I just swab? Can I just swab one of your, like, tentacles? That's all I would have done. Like, can I swab your tentacles? That's all I would have done.

• 26:34Paul Mecurio?

  Open the side of your head and I want to swab.

• 26:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Swab.

• 26:38Speaker 01

  I just would want to, yeah, that's all I want to do.

• 26:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or give me some of that ink or whatever you're drawing with, right? How about that?

• 26:44Speaker 01

  Or just swab the spaceship. I would have just taken some spots of spaceship and just...

• 26:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, for those who didn't see the film, aliens arrived in these pods all around the world. I don't know how many locations there were. And we focused on the one that landed in the United States. There might have been several in the United States. I don't remember. And of course, the military is there and they've got to corner it off. And we learn that these aliens, to them, time is a loop rather than a linear thing. And so, so, and they play with your, your head about that.

• 27:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  About events that happen either before or after. But if time is a loop, there is no before or after. There just is.

• 27:24Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, so that's, that's where they tried to take that.

• 27:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, and they, and they did a lot of interesting thing about, um, there was a other underlying message about common language and commonness and, and understanding and communication being key, which, when we're talking about searching for, for intelligent life, which is something we do do in astrology, we look for techno signatures. Techno signatures. We try to look for signs of intelligent life either in the past, especially if we're getting signatures from hundreds of light years away. We know that that, that happened, you know, in the past, that civilization may not be there anymore. But, and we, and we try to look for any kind of signs of like techno, you know, techno signatures even, you know, um, I would say nearby, but not, you know, they actually, for the first time commissioned that, that... That committee on, what is it, UAE's unexplained events or?

• 28:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Aerial.

• 28:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, UA.

• 28:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  UAP, UAPs.

• 28:16Speaker 01

  UAPs.

• 28:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Aerial phenomena.

• 28:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 28:18Speaker 01

  So they're actually starting to think about, you know, from a policy perspective, maybe we're not alone anymore, you know? So maybe people are starting to think about that from that perspective. And that is something that we do have astrobiologists that think about that. So like I said, I would have, I would have been all about getting samples and trying to understand their, you know, their microbiome or their, you know, their genetics or lack thereof, like what are they made of? How did they come to be?

• 28:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So here we are talking about swabbing the aliens so we can study it. Whereas in the film, Nope. Which was like a alien horror film, basically.

• 28:51Speaker 01

  Yes, oh my god.

• 28:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alien is sucking people up from Earth. And while it never says it explicitly, it's pretty clear they're getting eaten.

• 29:00Speaker 01

  It's like a giant, it's a giant jellyfish kind of thing, just eating it and like digesting them, yeah.

• 29:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Digesting you while you're in its digestive canal. And so in that case, it is swabbing us.

• 29:13Speaker 01

  Just taking a little taste and, you know, it's certain things I didn't like, it would spit back out, right?

• 29:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Spit back out.

• 29:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Back out.

• 29:20Paul Mecurio?

  But then, but it begs the question, it answers the question that we are not alone in the universe. There are the humans because if they like humans and that's what they eat, how did they survive until they got to us to eat us, right? So they had to be eating other.

• 29:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They were just unhappy campers eating lesser food.

• 29:36Paul Mecurio?

  Or maybe. So like they chicken or fish, they didn't care, they'd go eat away?

• 29:41Speaker 01

  Or, you know, deer, wolves, bears, you know.

• 29:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're too gamey. Humans are nice and fun.

• 29:47Speaker 01

  Well, they were eating horses for a while, it seemed like in the show, you know, they were bringing a lot of horses.

• 29:52Paul Mecurio?

  I love that Kennda would just go into the ship and just start like getting samples from people.

• 29:56Speaker 01

  Oh, heck yeah.

• 29:57Paul Mecurio?

  It's like, and they'd be like, see, this is why the humans are a little bit annoying. They just come right in and they just take over as opposed to like at least chit chatting for a minute before you start taking swabs.

• 30:06Speaker 01

  I'm kind of liking myself to Grace from Avatar, like she's like, I need to get samples wherever she is, you know?

• 30:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right. If you're a scientist.

• 30:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a, there's a, there's a fun science comic where someone, you know, connects these two electrodes and there's a spark. They get shocked and they said, well, I'm never doing that again. And then another person comes up, connects them, they get sparked and said, wow, I wonder if that happens every time?

• 30:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the scientist.

• 30:51Speaker 03

  I'm Joel Cherico and I make pottery. You can see my pottery on my website, cosmicmugs.com. Cosmic mugs, art that lets you taste the universe every day. And I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 31:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I pull, keep going.

• 31:13Paul Mecurio?

  All right. This is Captain James Riley. Seeding's greetings from Houston. I was wondering what percentage of Mars soil regolith rock is seeming to work best in your soil mixes for healthy plants? And what kind of composition are we dealing with with Mars rock powder? I suppose you won't have to supplement iron.

• 31:33Speaker 01

  No.

• 31:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good, good question. And let me add to that.

• 31:36Speaker 01

  Great question.

• 31:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really good question. And let me just add to that, that, um, Ken, to remind me, which mission intentionally landed at the boundary between the receding ice cap?

• 31:49Speaker 01

  Phoenix.

• 31:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Phoenix mission, the Phoenix mission.

• 31:52Speaker 01

  That was.

• 31:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that one is finding Martian regolith soils that are right, that are damp, and maybe there's some action there.

• 32:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right? So that's a, that's, that's a place.

• 32:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 32:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a place. And, and the captain duly noted that Mars has way more iron than the moon does, right? And which gives it its rusty color.

• 32:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, because it gets oxidized from that. Like I said, that, that, that radiation, like the surface is very oxidized because of the heavy, you know, the heavy, you know, radiation particles and things like that. That's where we get that red color from iron.

• 32:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Solar wind, solar wind.

• 32:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, yes.

• 32:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 32:29Speaker 01

  From that, yes.

• 32:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so-

• 32:31Paul Mecurio?

  Great Frank Sinatra movie, by the way. Love song, by the way, Frank Silverwin. But anyway, go ahead.

• 32:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, so to answer this question, great question. That's the beautiful thing is that Martian Regolith has so many beautiful things that we love in it. It has that iron, so we don't need iron. It has sulfur. It actually has, you know, it has, it has a little bit of organic carbon, but it also has carbonates. Um, it has a little bit of nitrates, like, um, biologically available nitrogen is nitrate. Not a lot, but it has nitrogen in its atmosphere, which is good. Um, we have a lot of other elements. We have some phosphorus. We have, we have all these other elements that we need. Um, and it does have a little bit of oxygen. What it also has-

• 33:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What do we do, what do we do with phosphorus? Cause you know, uh, my, my first encounter with phosphorus was like phosphorus bombs, right? And so it was, oh, we need phosphorus for our health. What is it doing in our body?

• 33:15Speaker 01

  Phosphate backbone. DNA. The whole DNA backbone is phosphate. Yes.

• 33:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 33:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what you should have said, it, what you should have said is the whole backbone of DNA. Stupid. Okay. Let, let's do that again. Let's do that again. So, so Kennda, like, I forgot what the, why we did, we need phosphates? Why? Okay, and then you go.

• 33:38Speaker 01

  Uh, DNA backbone, Dr. Tyson.

• 33:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 33:43Paul Mecurio?

  No, let's do it again. Do it again. Do it again.

• 33:46Speaker 01

  I can't.

• 33:47Paul Mecurio?

  No, I'll do it. No, no, no, no, I'll do it.

• 33:50Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 33:50Paul Mecurio?

  You ask the question, you answer. Okay, tag it.

• 33:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, alright, okay. So good, so Kennda, why do we need phosphate again? I don't have an understanding.

• 33:59Speaker 01

  Um, uh, it's our, it's our, it's, it's the part of the DNA backbone, phosph- the phosphate backbone is fundamental to, to, to creation of DNA.

• 34:07Paul Mecurio?

  Stupid.

• 34:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Okay.

• 34:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So now I'm caught up. I'm all caught up now.

• 34:19Paul Mecurio?

  So if someone says you have no backbone, they're saying you have no phosphate. That's what they're saying.

• 34:23Speaker 01

  Your phosphate, your, your phosphorus depleted, you know?

• 34:26Paul Mecurio?

  Depleted, yeah.

• 34:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got you.

• 34:29Speaker 01

  So, um, um, so yeah, it has a lot of the different, it has like the, the chelms or sponch. It has like a lot of the different things. It has hydrogen, it has all of those things. From a mineralogical standpoint, from the actual regolith, like the rock, it's in the rock. We have lots of clay. We like clay in earth. We actually have clay in earth because clay helps do a lot of things. Clay has activated surfaces, so it lets things bind to it and does caddie exchange. Caddie exchange is very important in soil for, for plant growth. Um, clay absorbs water. It can hang on water. So it can, you know, clay swell when they have water. So they're very good for water retention in the soil so that that water, so we don't have overwatering and we don't drown our plants, but then we have an access to water that the plants can take, take for a period of time.

• 35:11Speaker 01

  And then we also have, um, uh, believe it or not, and I'm still not quite sure why this works. I'm assuming it's the calcium, but gypsum. There's actually here on earth, they actually, to help certain, um, soils, um, certain, um, plots of agriculture improve their growth yield. They will actually like go out and lay out gypsum and add and supplement the gypsum. I, I think it has something to do with the calcium supplementation and the calcium and the sulfate. And the sulfate probably gets used by microbes, but the calcium is an essential element that the, that plants need. And so those two, those two, um, minerals are two things that we have in abundance on Mars.

• 35:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and remind me, gypsum is, is that the softest item on that, on that hardness scale?

• 35:53Speaker 01

  On the hardness, on the Mohs hardness scale? Oh my god.

• 35:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mohs hardness, yeah. I think gypsum was down there.

• 35:58Speaker 01

  It's pretty soft. I don't remember. I want to-

• 36:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or talc, talc, I don't know.

• 36:03Speaker 01

  I think talc and carbonates are softer, but you know what? I don't remember my mineralogy very well.

• 36:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, ooh.

• 36:09Speaker 01

  Cause I didn't, I didn't take it officially. I, I'm a Justin time learner. I learned my mineralogy on my own.

• 36:13Paul Mecurio?

  Well, if you don't remember that, why is anything you say, we should take anything seriously?

• 36:19Speaker 01

  Cause I do have degrees in biology and engineering-

• 36:22Paul Mecurio?

  There you go.

• 36:23Speaker 01

  And environmental microbiology.

• 36:27Paul Mecurio?

  Uh, all right, another one?

• 36:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Time for just a couple more, yeah.

• 36:30Paul Mecurio?

  All right, Mary Lee Dewey. This is the subject I've been waiting for. I'm a high school biology teacher and this discussion comes up a lot. We've been studying the Miller Array experiment. My question is, what do you think is the actual probability our atmosphere could be recreated on another planet like artificially?

• 36:51Speaker 01

  Like artificially like I I'm trying to understand.

• 36:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think I I think I understand. If we catch people up on the Miller and Yuri experiment.

• 36:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Miller and Yuri two, they were they both chemists, one may have been a biologist working at the University of Chicago. This is back in the late 50s, early 60s. They put a mixture of certain base ingredients that we expected to find on Earth. They put in what we think was the early atmosphere on Earth. And they put a spark across that air, which as an energy source. Then then they went away and came back. And when they came back, they found amino acids formed spontaneously in that in that primordial soup, basically, that they were creating. And so, again, this is very terraforming like. So I think the question is, can we set something loose?

• 37:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That will then create the atmosphere that we now know and love on Earth, but on another planet.

• 37:48Speaker 01

  So there's there's a couple of problems that that that that that my terraforming friends sometimes don't remember. And that's that Mars does not have a magnetic shield anymore. We don't have the art, we don't have an electromagnetic, we don't have a dynamo anymore. So we don't have that electromagnetic radiation protection. So our atmosphere is being constantly stripped away. So I I'm not, I'm not 100% confident that we could do that. But there are a lot of concepts for how we'd have to basically build up the atmosphere. And how we'd have to like get things in the atmosphere to really kind of to get to get some some warmth. And to basically get some more radiation. There's there's a bunch of different concepts out there.

• 38:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this amounts to geoengineering.

• 38:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's it's geoengineering.

• 38:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got engineering chops, so this should be right up your alley.

• 38:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, from a theoretical standpoint, is it possible to? I don't know if we need to go all the way back to Miller, Yuri. What we need to do is we need to basically kind of make a simulated greenhouse effect. We need to get something in there to kind of get a controlled. Runaway greenhouse effect where we get enough of an atmosphere in there where we get enough heating from the from the sun into that atmosphere where it generates heat and and you know thickens up the atmosphere on Mars and then we then we can actually have you know then we pump out some more oxygen and things like that so

• 39:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we get we get a space we get a space pipeline from all of our energy generating plants and pump all the CO2 to Mars.

• 39:17Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 39:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then but Mars already has CO2 in its atmosphere but we increase the concentration and then yeah that's how you do that.

• 39:24Paul Mecurio?

  And then Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos can fight to see who controls the pipeline. That would be the rest of that. Can you explain to me what the plan is to deal with the radiation on Mars? So let's say we can grow something that supports life. What do you do have you thought about I assume you have the effects of radiation on whatever you grow and how do you how do you protect that?

• 39:46Speaker 01

  So the big thing that we look at is we look at habitat we look at habitats we look at building habitats including like a Martian like a Martian like greenhouse and those habitats would be would have some level of some level of shielding to manage to protect from the radiation especially from things from the solar wind GCRs things like that. One of the things that they looked at they're looking at building partial habitats they're looking at like Martian you know Mars has caves they have possible lavatories they're looking at or places where we just bury you know we use actually some of the Martian regolith and rock.

• 40:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hide.

• 40:18Speaker 01

  Yeah to hide to kind of use it to kind of shield from all that radiation but basically you just kind of part of part of that is you build that shielding into the plan. The other part is we look at how we we look at studies about how much radiation do we really need to shield the greenhouse like how much radiation before the plant it really does you know cause plants to grow in a way that's not healthy and does it produce actual you know nutritious nutritious biomass and things like that so so that we can optimize we can optimize how much shielding do we really need for the greenhouse versus like the hab where that humans are sleeping if the greenhouse could take more radiation we bet maybe don't make the greenhouse a shielded you know so those are some of the the trades that we need to look at.

• 40:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If I'm going to Mars I'm I'm bringing a satchel full of cheeseburgers that's all.

• 41:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm sorry.

• 41:05Paul Mecurio?

  And potatoes grown in the right poop.

• 41:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the right poop. My own damn poop.

• 41:10Paul Mecurio?

  Your own poop. Fry later to your fry, your potatoes grown in my own damn poop. That would be, that would be, that would be the advertisement on Mars. Potatoes grown in my own damn poop.

• 41:20Speaker 01

  Well, and you have to grow the soybean oils to like make the soybean oil for frying your potatoes too, in your own poop. So you're frying them, you know?

• 41:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 41:27Speaker 01

  So it's just, it's just like, it's your own poop cycle, right?

• 41:30Paul Mecurio?

  Now you're getting the vegans aroused with that soybean oil stuff.

• 41:37Paul Mecurio?

  Should we go on?

• 41:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, give me like one more.

• 41:40Paul Mecurio?

  All right, Colby Hyde, hello, Dr. Tyson, Colby Hyde from Colorado. My question is...

• 41:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, Kennda, we can get two more if you answer this in half the time.

• 41:48Speaker 01

  Okay, fair enough.

• 41:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, go.

• 41:50Paul Mecurio?

  Hello, Dr. Tyson, Colby Hyde from Colorado. My question is, what is the coolest part about being an astrobiologist? Which I guess would be for Kennda. What is the coolest part?

• 41:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Kennda, by the way, astrobiology is a field that has no data.

• 42:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let me just be clear about that.

• 42:06Speaker 01

  That's not true. We have, we have ambiguous data from Viking. That's not true.

• 42:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, it's still ambiguous data.

• 42:12Paul Mecurio?

  Just say it depends on how you define data, Dr. Tyson.

• 42:17Paul Mecurio?

  A big, open-ended answer.

• 42:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I just want to make it clear, there's an entire field of study out there that has the name of something it has yet to find.

• 42:27Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, but here's what you sound like. My field of expertise has data and yours doesn't. That's what you sound like. You sound like a six-year-old.

• 42:36Speaker 01

  He's just jealous, he's just jealous because we're getting all the funding right now. That's all.

• 42:39Paul Mecurio?

  I know.

• 42:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Totally getting all the funding.

• 42:43Speaker 01

  What I love about astrobiology is I get to go all over the world and meet totally new crazy microbes and learn the extent of amazing things that life can figure out how to do. And I just think it's amazing that we don't even fully understand life here on Earth. And I think that's a fun part of my job.

• 42:59Paul Mecurio?

  I think you're being modest. I think the best part of your job is looking down your nose at anybody's garden and going, really? You call that a tomato?

• 43:08Paul Mecurio?

  Really? Well, let me show you my tomato.

• 43:12Paul Mecurio?

  I grew this using mouse feces and some french fries from McDonald's. Beat that.

• 43:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On Mars. On Mars. Boy, if you had Mars tomatoes, they would get prime.

• 43:24Paul Mecurio?

  I grew that on the Q line in Manhattan. Beat that.

• 43:29Speaker 01

  There's definitely some.

• 43:30Paul Mecurio?

  All right, one more?

• 43:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Last one, real fast.

• 43:32Paul Mecurio?

  All right. I'm gonna do the best with this name. It's Boyte Bedayou. Here, Mr. Doctors Neil and Kendra. This gentleman is Boyteb from Nice, south of France. What kind of interesting feature could we bring from a plant grown on Mars and brought back to Earth? Could it be genetically more resilient to low luminosity, for example?

• 43:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, nice.

• 43:55Speaker 01

  Mmm, that is nice.

• 43:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let me broaden that, and then you still have to answer it in half the time.

• 43:59Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 44:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Could studying life on Mars benefit life on Earth?

• 44:03Speaker 01

  100%. Because.

• 44:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Give me your best way that could happen.

• 44:07Speaker 01

  Because we're having climate change here. We're killing our soil here on Earth, and we're gonna have to figure out how to, in order to have food security, we're gonna have to figure out ways to kind of help soil grow, whether it's open air or if we have to make our own giant greenhouses where we basically process soil like we do on Mars to keep it healthy so we can keep growing plants so we have food security. 100%.

• 44:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What you're saying is if we can grow plants on Mars, nothing can stop us from growing plants anywhere on Earth, even if there's a blight.

• 44:34Speaker 01

  100%.

• 44:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 44:35Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 44:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, that's all the time we have for it. You did two within one question. Thank you. Two, each in half the time. Kendra, thanks for being back on StarTalk. Been a delight to have you. And weren't you in a documentary recently? What was that?

• 44:48Speaker 01

  Oh, I was in, um, the last one I was in was Alien Worlds. I was in Alien Worlds, episode 2, January, where I went to Ethiopia to study the Dallo hydrothermal system and the polyextreme environment there and the microbes.

• 45:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so hydrothermal is just heat from inside the Earth.

• 45:05Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 45:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Warming.

• 45:06Speaker 01

  Warming water.

• 45:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's a source of energy that doesn't even need the sun.

• 45:09Speaker 01

  Nope.

• 45:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so that would be, whatever's thriving there is way more exotic on Earth than anything else that just simply is founded on sunlight.

• 45:17Speaker 01

  Especially since they're living in a very acidic, salty environment that's also hot. That's like three, that's a trifecta of extremes.

• 45:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 45:25Speaker 01

  So, yeah.

• 45:25Paul Mecurio?

  And Kendra, let me say, I think you're doing great work despite the fact that your area of expertise has no data. I think you're doing great work. Don't you let anybody undercut you, young lady. You're strong, you're powerful, your data. But other than that.

• 45:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You tell me I sound like a sixth grader? I know you are, but what am I?

• 45:49Paul Mecurio?

  There you go.

• 45:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, Paul, good to have you, man.

• 45:53Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah.

• 45:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm still waiting for my next invitation for your podcast.

• 45:57Paul Mecurio?

  Okay, we'll get it going.

• 45:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, this has been another installment of StarTalk Cosmic Queries, the poop edition.

• 46:06Paul Mecurio?

  Don't say dirt, whatever you do.

• 46:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, as always, bidding you to keep working out.