Search for life in Space

This is a podcast from BNR Newsradio. Space Cowboys is brought to you by people like you on Patreon. And who knows, maybe aliens support us too. Herbert, welcome to the second show. Yeah, welcome to you too. Yeah, welcome back everybody. Welcome back to Space Cowboys, where we explore the desert we call our universe. With me, your host, Thijs Roes, and host Herbert Blankesteijn. Okay. Here we are for the second time, right? Yeah, for the second time. And today we're going to talk about the search for life in our universe. Extraterrestrial life. Yes, extraterrestrial. Because we see life all around us, but are we the first? We do much sometimes. Exactly, exactly. Are we the only ones? That's right. Or do we come from a genesis somewhere else? Whoa. And we're going to talk to... Inge-Lou Stenkate. Astronomer. Astrobiologist. Astrobiologist. That's better. Okay. Welcome. Thank you. Welcome. That is a new term, astrobiologist. Did it exist 20, 30 years ago as a field? Well, 30 years not, 20 years just about, yeah. And you are with Utrecht University. Yes. Utrecht. Utrecht University. For those English speaking people. Yes. But before we're going to talk about the search for life with you, we're first going to talk about our story of the week. We all bring our own story to the table. Herbert. Who's first? You are. Yes. I'm first. Okay. Well, my story of the week is about a YouTube channel that I like very much. It's called Everyday Astronaut. Ah, love him. Yeah. Tim Dodd. His second name is Todd. Oh, sorry. Dodd. Dodd. Tim Dodd. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. What I like very much is his recent sub-series and it's called Cancelled. Cancelled. Abandoned. Space Hardware. And he has two episodes so far about abandoned space hardware, about projects that were started, sometimes even flew test flights, but never went on to fulfill their actual purpose. Example, the Buran Space Shuttle from Russia. Buran? B-U-R-A-N. Buran. They had a space shuttle. They had an actual space shuttle. It flew. It did one test flight flawlessly. Oh, yeah. I've seen pictures of it. I've seen a picture of it once. Yeah. And then the wall fell. They had this political turnaround and there was no money for real space flight development anymore. And the Buran was shelved. Wow. You can imagine a space shuttle on a shelf. No, of course. It went into a hangar somewhere. It only flew once? I thought. It only flew once. I have heard of a Russian space shuttle program. I thought it was more. Wow. No, no, no. It's really. Yeah. And the hangar even collapsed on the actual Buran spacecraft that was shelved there. And now there's only one. It's not a mock-up, but it's a prototype. That's the word. Which never flew. And this specimen was visited by Dutch. So, I don't know if you know this, but this is a very interesting story. It's a story about a man named Tim Dodd. But that's quite a different story. Yeah, exactly. And Tim Dodd also just did a story on it. He did a story on that. Lots of other abandoned space hardware projects. Very interesting. And I think there are more episodes coming up. So, go there. Yeah. Do his channel, Everyday Astronaut on YouTube. Yeah, I love him. He's always front and center when there's anything. Yeah. And the story I saw, somebody else who was always front and center, Elon Musk. I saw his new design for the Starship. Oh, wow. A complete 50s retro looking. Have you seen it, Inge-Los? No, I haven't. Oh, it's insane. It's insane. New Tintin associations. Yeah, totally. New Tintin Starship. That's what you can Google for, I think, Elon Musk. And he tweeted that, right? Yeah, he tweeted a picture. Because somebody, I think somebody saw a part of it. That's hilarious. It's beautiful. Maybe I should show the people at home. Put that in the show notes as well. Exactly. Oh, yeah. We'll put it in the show notes as well. And I just showed it to the camera because we're on YouTube as well. Yeah. Hey, YouTube. Go there if you want to see us. Also, hi, folks. Exactly. And Inge-Los, what did you see? Well, of course, I'm always eagerly looking for new news from InSight. But InSight is just busy measuring and deploying itself. The new Mars mission. The new Mars mission that's going to measure seismic waves and measure the interior of Mars. So, I'm going to show you a little bit of the data that I've got. And I'm going to show you a little bit of the data that I've got. But no news from them. But what I did see is that TESS, of course, was recently put into operation. And they detected already their first three exoplanets. TESS is a space telescope. Yeah, TESS is a space-based telescope. TESS stands for Transit Exoplanet Survey. And so what they do is they look at the dimming of the starlight. And by that, if the starlight dims and it dims periodically, there is something transiting or orbiting the starlight. And so what they do is they look at the dimming of the starlight. And so what they do is they look at the dimming of the starlight. And they're orbiting that star, which is most likely a planet. Yeah. The light just dips because the planet is right in front of it. So the intensity of the light dips because there's a planet in front of it. Something passes in front of it. Yeah. And so they already detected three new and not previously detected exoplanets. And what is nice is that at least one of those three is already different from the exoplanets that we have previously detected with missions like Kepler. So they now found one of the three exoplanets they found. And the one that we found is again a Neptune size. So we've found more Neptune size exoplanets. But this one is heavier. So that means it's denser than Neptune and quite a bit denser. It's still not so dense that it's rocky. So it's still a gas planet, but it's much, much denser. It's in a 36 day orbit. 36 days. Yeah. So that's still very close to the star, to the host star. That's super fast. Yeah. But that's incredible. Most exoplanets are very close to their host star just because it's very difficult to detect exoplanets that are further away from their host star. Because you also just have to be there right at the moment. Exactly. And if the orbit is too large, it also takes much more time before it's transiting. Yeah. So it's still relatively close to the host star with 36 days. But then this exoplanet has a... Yeah. It's still pretty hot. It's still pretty hot. But it's cooler than what would be anticipated. So that's... It's... And what is exciting about this is, of course, that we, again, detect new planets that we haven't seen before. So that gives us, again, more insight. And what an enormous range of planets. Yeah. And more of exoplanets and planets there exist in the universe. In the universe. There's so many planets. Yeah. And there's so many planets. So many different planets. Yeah. And I heard that Kepler sort of had a bias for large Jupiters or hot Jupiters. At one point, they found all these planets, right? And they were all sort of hot Jupiters, I believe. And then figured out, well, Kepler actually has a bias for that. And now you're saying we're instantly finding these new types of planets. Yeah. So TESS looks at a different... A little bit of different range. I'm also not a specialist on TESS. But they at least see a wider range than only the hot Jupiters. So we will see new and different types of exoplanets with TESS. And rocky planets. Rocky planets as well. Well, I don't know. Do we get some? That would be great. But about these crazy short orbital periods. Yeah. So most of the exoplanets, I believe even all of the exoplanets that have been detected, Yeah. now with Kepler, for example, are all still within the orbit of Mercury. So they're closer to their host star than Mercury is to the sun. It's all days or even hours that these planets go around. Yeah, they... Yeah. Exactly. It's crazy. It's incredible. I mean, in our solar system, well, Mercury is about 200 days or something. Yes. Or maybe 100 days. And that's the shortest. That order of magnitude, Mercury is the shortest. Yeah. Yeah. So I was thinking about that. And I thought... With measurements like TESS does, you may have a bigger probability to find these planets that are very close to their star. Yeah. Because if they're far away, like one astronomical unit or much more, there is only very slight probability that it passes in front of its star. Yeah, absolutely. So you have this bias. Yeah. And so it's no wonder that you find these very short orbital periods because you're actually looking for planets that are very close. Yeah. Yeah. So it's much more... I mean, on one hand, you could think maybe our solar system isn't standard and maybe it is more standard to have bigger gas planets closer to a star or more standard. More common is a better word, I think. Yeah. But on the other hand, yeah, there is this detection bias. So it makes it difficult. So we don't know what the standard... What normal is. No, we don't know. We have no idea. It's probably a question we're going to come... We have to find out. Yeah. We're going to talk about in the rest of the show as well as we... Sort of go through all the checkboxes in this show of where we can find life in our universe. And I think one of the biggest questions is indeed like how normal is this, what you see around you? Is this super abnormal or not? We're going to talk about that. But first... Yeah. I'd like to thank the viewer because thanks so much for listening. Viewers, listeners. Yes. Viewers, listeners. Yes. Sorry, I come from TV world. Podcasts are new to me. That's why I installed that camera. But I wanted to actually guide people. It doesn't matter where you listen to this podcast, whether it's on Spotify or your crazy app you found in your app store. It is a fairly... And... Yeah. We're going to listen to that in a second. But you can also follow us on YouTube because we have a YouTube channel. Just search for Space Cowboys and you'll find us. And then you can watch us too. But if you would like to support us in another way, you can also do that on Patreon. You can support us there by going to patreon.com slash space cowboys, helping us out. Your support. It makes this show possible. Thanks to BNR as well for... Thanks. Giving us... Lending us their studio and all their support. So now, without further ado, Inge Loes, you have done a lot of work in so many different types of fields. You were first a geologist, right? No. What did you first go to? Okay. I first studied aerospace engineering in Delft. Okay. So there I got my master's. And there... So I always wanted to study something space related. So when I was 10 years old at elementary school, I had to write this little, where do I see myself in the future? So I wrote down, okay, I'm going to go to this type of high school and then I'm going to study aerospace engineering and then I'm going to work for NASA. So that's what I said when I was 10. Did you want to be an astronaut? I don't know if I really wanted to be an astronaut. Of course. Because everybody does. And, well, I, you know, I'd be intrigued to go to space. Yeah. Because I would, you know, seeing the Earth from outside, being able to actually walk around on Mars. Yeah. That would, of course, be great. I can tell you I'm a failed astronaut. Well, who knows, Inge Loes? Who knows? Yeah. Well, that's, of course, dreaming about it is great. In 2008, there were the ESA astronaut application rounds. Of course, I tried. Right. Right. So I passed it through the first round. So I got to... You did. I went to Germany and did a computer test. And then they sent me this nice email. Thank you very much for your effort. And that was it. Oh, man. Okay. You passed the first hurdle. That's something. But your career is still, I mean, today, just to fast forward to the end, like you already said, nowadays, you're a senior researcher and assistant professor at Utrecht University. Yes. You're also the co-chair on the board of the Orbit. The Orbit. The Orbit. The Orbit. The Orbit. The Orbit. The Orbit. The Orbit. The Orbit. The Orbit. The Orbit. The Orbit. The Orbit. The Orbit. The Orbit. The Orbit. The Orbit. Yes. And you worked for years for NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. Yes. And so what were you doing there? So I've started my PhD here in astronomy. So in my PhD, I studied organic compounds and how stable they were on the surface of Mars. The idea behind that was we see these organic compounds, they can be delivered to all kinds of planetary surfaces, including Mars with meteorites and interplanetary dust particles. And are those organic compounds, when they get to that surface, are they stable enough? And could they then be involved in further organic reactions, be a source of nutrients for life or maybe starting material for origin of life? So that was kind of the bigger question behind it. So I studied this. I studied the stability of these organic compounds. And when I was done with my PhD, I indeed moved to NASA. And there I worked on an instrument called the Sample Analysis of Mars Instrument. And on three different other spin-offs of that instrument. But all these instruments were focused on detecting these kind of organic or a wide range of organic compounds on the Martian surface. So the Sample Analysis of Mars Instrument. The Sample Analysis of Mars Instrument is currently happily driving around on the surface of Mars on board of the Curiosity Rover. Awesome. Awesome. You're on Mars a little bit. I'm on Mars a little bit. And then with that, we also developed a smaller spin-off instrument for potential use and a portable instrument even, potentially used by astronauts when going to the moon. So there was a little bit of work. But that instrument is currently, well, part of it has been developed and currently it's shelved. So it would be... Oh, I'm dying of hardware. Abandoned hardware. It was not that far in the development yet, but you know, it's one of those things that you develop and then when there is an opportunity, you start developing it further. But what was the answer to the question? Was it possible for these molecules to be used as maybe a life source or...? Well, that's all. We haven't solved that question. Yeah. Not at all. So that's also partly what I'm still working on in Utrecht. So what you see is the molecules that I looked at, those were amino acids on the surface of Mars under the current day conditions. If you really look at the surface surface, they're pretty quickly destroyed by UV. So you wouldn't see these kinds of organic compounds stable. And sustaining long, very long on the surface of Mars. So they will probably be destroyed in hours to days. Oh yeah. Okay. But of course, amino acids are not the only organic compounds. And the other thing, of course, if you're on Mars, if you're a little bit in the subsurface, so if you're even a couple of millimeters under the surface, UV already doesn't really have much of an effect. Okay. You can have still some chemistry going on. So you can have oxidation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You can have radiation. You can have a photo catalysis where your mineral actually activates your, of your UV radiation activates the mineral and then the mineral acts as a catalyst and that can spur reactions with your organic compounds. So that can also below the surface, not too far below the surface, but have a little bit of an effect. So you can have some chemistry under the surface. Because if I can ask, what do you need for life? What do you, if we're looking for Mars, what do you need? What are we looking for? What are we looking for? Water? Water. Yeah. Well, you need an energy source. An energy source? The sun? Would that count? Well, yeah, but you can also have a pH gradient. Okay. Or for example, on Mars, what you see, especially now with Curiosity, you nicely see that Curiosity drills, but only about six centimeters, but you already see that the surface of Mars is red. And if you go only a few millimeters, even under the surface, it's gray. So you have an oxidation gradient. So the surface is very rusted. The red planet is secretly gray. Yeah. I'm so bummed for some reason. That's news. Yes, that's news. That'll be our headline. Mars turns out to be very gray, red on the outside, gray on the inside. Okay. So water, energy, and? Well, you need some nutrients, of course. Nutrients. Yeah. Something to live off of. Yeah. And then you have elements. To make proteins or something. Yeah. And then you have elements. So you have five, six elements, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur. So those are all elements that life is built up from. But of course, life needs- Life as we know it. Exactly. Life as we know it. Life as we know it. Okay. Yeah. And- So again, water, carbon- Nailed water. Hydrogen. Sorry. Yeah. Oh yeah. So you need water, but you need- This is about chemical elements. No, so chemical elements. Sorry. Yeah. So you need hydrogen- Yeah. Carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, sulfur. Sulfur, yeah. So those are the six basic elements you need. Yeah. But then you need more elements because you also need magnesium and iron and sodium and, well, there's a whole range of other elements that you need in addition to those- For complex life or even for simple life. For simple life. Even for simple life you need those things. Yeah. Okay. And so how's Mars looking so far? It's 2019 now. Where are we? Well, so far if- You could imagine that there are locations on Mars. If what we saw with Curiosity, for example, in the area where Curiosity is doing its research, around 3.6, 3.8 billion years ago, the conditions were much more friendly for life as we know it. There was liquid water. So that means- Yeah. So that means there was an atmosphere to keep the temperature up enough because if there's- If your temperature is too low, your water is not liquid. And if your atmosphere is not sufficiently dense, your water will evaporate. So the atmosphere was at least dense enough to keep the temperature warm enough and to keep the water from evaporating. Yeah. So we've also seen at locations there that water had a neutral pH, so it was not very acidic or very basic. And also at some locations, because we already saw before with, for example, Opportunity and Spirit, they found also locations where liquid water was present. There it was much saltier. And here we think it was fresh, maybe a bit briny, but very much towards the south. So it was very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very briny, but very much towards the fresh side. So not super salty. That is most life as we know it uses fresh water and not very salty water. Well, life in the oceans- Yeah, but I mean, there are halophiles that live in conditions with a very high salt concentration. And if you give them too little salt, they don't work. And so this is curiosity in sort of like- Yeah. It's right on top of soil that's 3.8 billion years old. Yeah. So yeah, some of the rock formations there is soil. If you go to Mars, you technically don't speak about soil because soil is the stuff that you have here on Earth. And that means soil is the kind of thing that you get when life interferes with the powdered rock. So we call it powdered rock? We call it regolith. Regolith. Yeah. Okay. Regolith. Does Mars have any geology? I mean, like tectonic plate movement? There is no active plate tectonics like we have on Earth. There used to be a lot of volcanism, which is hotspot volcanism. Of course, we see some of that hotspot volcanism here on Earth as well, like Hawaii or Iceland or the Azores or all those nice locations. I'm asking this because these rovers are sampling the dust now. Yeah. Would it be any use to start boring into the rock itself? Drilling? Yeah. Drilling. Sorry. That is what... I'm thinking Elon Musk boring. Yeah, boring. Exactly. Well, Curiosity already drills. Curiosity drills down to six centimeters. So that's very little, but at least it drills. But Spirit and Opportunity did not look for organic compounds. What they did is they had... For Opportunity, of course, we don't really know what's going on with Opportunity. But they did look for organic compounds. So they did look for organic compounds. But what they did is they had brushes. What they did is they had a lot of sand. They had all these little dust here and there. So they made sure to brush away the dust. To make sure that the dust was not getting into the rocks. To get rid of them. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. And then also, just to briefly of course, Curiosity has sampled some of the dust. But it's also using drilled samples, grinding that up, analyzing that. Because the point with the dust on Mars is it's very homogeneous. Because you have these huge dust storms. You have local dust storms, but you also have planet-wide dust storms. So some of the dust can be transported all over the planet. dust doesn't really tell you anything about the local environment. So for that you need to get rid of your dust and really look at the rocks. But then you're looking at the surface of the rocks. But on Earth you may find fossils inside the rock. Could you have that on Mars? You're not chopping into the rock, are you? With ExoMars we can drill down to two meters. Into rock? Yeah. Oh, wow. So we're eagerly waiting for ExoMars to finally get launched. So that's going to be very cool. And when will that be? Well, 2020. 2020. Okay. Two meters. Okay, nice. Yeah, nice. So that's going to be very exciting. And I'm thinking, Herbert, because is there volcanism? You often hear that maybe life on Earth started deep inside the oceans, near hydrothermal vents. And maybe I guess if there's an active geology, if it was there then, billions of years ago, or now, it could maybe help spur genesis? Well, the thing is yeah, so one of the leading theories for origin of life on Earth is indeed hydrothermal vents at ocean floors. One of the questions in this context is we find these hydrothermal vents currently at 10 kilometers below sea level. Did we already have 10 kilometer deep oceans at that time? Or was it much more shallow? Puddles. One of the things that makes these hydrothermal vents very attractive is is the pH gradient that you have. Because what happens at these hydrothermal vents is that ocean water seeps into the surface through cracks and then just goes into the a little bit deeper surface of the Earth. And then at some point it's heated enough that it is like a geyser, for example, is pushed back out. While it's percolating through the rock, it's actually like an espresso machine. It's extracting all kinds of elements from that rock. And it takes those elements, it takes with it while it's being pushed through the rock. And some of those elements are precipitating and they form these chimneys. And then the water, those chimneys grow and grow and the water is pushed out through these chimneys. The water itself at that point is extremely hot. This can be up to 400 degrees. Well, that's way too warm for life. But if you look now at ocean, temperatures and you have that with deeper water, water at sea floors and ocean floors equilibrates around four degrees. So what you get is a thermal gradient. So you get also areas on the slopes of those vents where your temperature is more moderate. So not 400 degrees, but more and also better than for chemical reactions. But what you see is that, the pH of the water that's being pumped out of the vents is different than the pH of the ocean water. And this pH gradient between those two, basically two types of water could also serve as an energy gradient. So that is what makes these hydrothermal vents a very, that is one of the reasons why these hydrothermal vents are. Can we find them on Mars? Well, we don't find these chimney type scenarios. But we do find them on Mars. But we do find evidence of some form of hydrothermal activity, because of course... Currently or in the past? No, in the past. Oh, in the past. We're all talking a very long time ago. Yeah, when there was still active volcanism and there was still liquid water on the surface. So if you had volcanism close to water, then you can get these kinds of scenarios as well. So I would assume that the main question on Mars is, has there ever been life? And not so much, is there life? The main question on Mars is, were the conditions such that life could have developed there? Yes. And what we see now at the site our curiosity drives around is we see that the conditions there were good for life to sustain. When it's there, life could have survived there for some time. The question is, of course, did life ever arise there? And is it maybe still tucked away somewhere on the planet? And then of course, then you get to the next question. And then of course, then you get to the next question. And then of course, then you get to the next question. It's the next step. I mean, if it did originate, there were episodes on Mars where life could have thrived. And then the question is, if there was life ever, could that life have adapted to the changing environment? Present environment. And then, yeah, of course. And then the thing is Mars lost the majority of its atmosphere. So now we have seven millibar and it might even have been up to a bar. So now we have seven millibar and it might even have been up to a bar. So now we have seven millibar and it might even have been up to a bar. So now we have seven millibar and it might even have been up to a bar. So it always has been predominantly CO2. So you always have more UV radiation than we have on Earth because now... But on the early Earth, we also did not have an ozone layer because in order to get an ozone layer, you need more oxygen. And that, you know... And Mars is further from the sun anyway, so... Yeah, so it's always cooler. Yeah, cooler and less UV. Either less strong UV, but then... Less need for protection. Probably, yes. But you still have those short wavelength range. But you still have those short wavelength range. But you still have those short wavelength range. Yeah. And... So you need more... You need... So it's quickly... If you have a different atmosphere on Mars... What I'm trying to say is if you have no protection, there would still be some chance for life to evolve. Yeah, yeah. Even then. Because the bad effects of the UV radiation are less than it would have been on Earth. Yeah, but still you have enough UV. And especially in the earlier... When the solar system just has formed, the sun put out more UV. The sun put out more UV. The sun put out more UV. It's more UV relative to the rest of its spectrum. Oh, is that so? And... Which... Or that's at least what we think right now. So there would have been quite a bit of UV. And maybe it is less intense. But in this case, also, the wavelength range counts. And the wavelength range, which we now have on Mars, and which we probably then had on Mars too, is down to 200 nanometer. And this part between 200 and what we have on Earth, 340, that is pretty... Yeah. Not very nice UV radiation. Okay. I have an entirely different question. Yeah. It seems NASA has... I heard this some time ago. NASA has a planetary protection officer. That's a fascinating story. To me it is. Somebody who is... Who is in charge of protecting the environment on Mars... Yeah. ...for the life that may be there. And I even heard... From us, basically. Yeah. Protecting it from us. That's right. Yeah. Infecting it. Yeah. That's right. And I even heard... Very curious to know what you can tell us about that. And that rovers from Earth can't go to the locations where the probability of life is highest, because there is more to protect there, even though we don't know if it's there anyhow. Yeah. So tell me what's... Yeah. That's entirely true. And that is, of course, there's always a big debate about that. Yeah. I know the planetary protection people actually quite well, especially the previous planetary protection officer. It's a difficult job to be in, because you have always on one hand, you want to protect the planet both ways. You don't want to bring back stuff from somewhere else. That could be... That could be dangerous to the Earth. And a lot of people say, well, there's no life and what will they do? Yeah. But on the other hand, this one thing that might be there and you bring it back and it causes mayhem, you know, so that's a little bit the way that... Destroys the Earth. Yeah. No, yeah. You don't want to be in that situation. No. So that is the... That's not destroy our health. This way... But that can't be an issue because we know that rocks from Mars have reached the Earth in the past. Yeah. And they turned up on Antarctica. Yeah. So we have Martian meteorites with nothing in there. So that's, you know, you don't know. But you also... But they actually have the authority to tell the rovers to stay away from this region and that region. Well, that's of course the point with this. Planetary protection, NASA has a planetary protection officer, ESA has a planetary protection officer. There are these, this is international organization, COSPAR, with a mission to protect the Earth. And they're doing it. Yeah. And in COSPAR, all spacefaring nations work together. And they also write treaties. And within COSPAR, there's a whole segment focusing on planetary protection. But it is a treaty. So the point with treaties is the same with wills. Not everybody signs them. If you don't sign it, you don't have to... Sometimes you sign it, but you still don't do anything. Chinese signed this? Yeah, I did. I don't know. Okay. And I think that I don't know means probably not. But... I think that's a good point. Yes. We're going to do a show on space law. So that's... Yeah, you should. That is very interesting. Not only that, but now for the first time I hear that ESA has a planetary protection officer as well. We need that person here. That's somebody whom we're going to have to invite. Yes, definitely. But it must be... One more thing about this. It must be frustrating for you and all the other searchers for life on Mars that the most fruitful areas, you can go there. Yeah, that is extremely, extremely frustrating. And on the other hand, you don't... And the thing is, if we go to Mars, especially within the NASA, JAXA, Japanese Space Agency, Russia doesn't have its own Mars missions, but collaborates, ESA, these agencies, they really make a point of cleaning their spacecraft as much as they can. That means, of course, that you clean to the detection limit. So everything that is less than the detection limit, you will take along. And that everything that is less than the detection limit is the reason that still those areas, people say, okay, we should stay away from that. So what's the use of cleaning? Well, yeah. But for other areas, you just don't... If it doesn't get to there. Yeah, and you don't want to bring terrestrial life to Mars and go to Mars again in a couple years and find something that is so... If I have life and it's Earth life. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You have to be from Earth to make sure that it is Mars or Earth life. And that's, of course, on one hand, we want to go to those regions. On the other hand, we don't want to detect terrestrial life or contaminate it. No, but we're almost in a hurry because maybe... Yeah, as soon as there's humans on Mars and basically... Right. It's really going to be a thing because if Elon Musk starts sending people to Mars, is he bound to a treaty that the United States have signed? I think... Yeah, well, it's... Yeah, there's another space law issue. Yeah, I think it depends on where he's launched from. So the space... I once found out that the space, wherever you launch from, that's the space law you have to adhere to. However, there's also been a new treaty in the past couple of years. So we really need an update on this because... Here's a business model for Panama again. Let's all go to Liechtenstein. Yes. Now you need to be on the equator. That's the most favorable... Oh, yeah, of course. ...spot to launch from, right? Of course, of course. Yeah. And I think that's a good thing. Yeah. Hey, because this question, of course, like, is there life on Mars? It's not the only spot we're looking at. I want to go to this quote that we have lined up by Ellen Stofan. She's the former head scientist of NASA, chief scientist. She now works for the Air and Space Museum, I believe. But she said something really wild two or three years ago. I think she's actually the director of the Air and Space Museum. She's the director now. Really? Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. New gig. I mean, yes, if you're the chief scientist of NASA, then, of course, you can do anything you want. What she said, well, Herbert. Here we go. Well, I'm going to go out a little bit on a limb here, and I'm going to say I think we're going to have strong indications of life beyond Earth within a decade. And I think we're going to have definitive evidence within 20 to 30 years. We know where to look. We know how to look. In most cases, we have the technology. And we're on a path to implementing it. It's a wild statement. Oh, absolutely. We know where to look and we know how to look. Can you enlighten us? What is she talking about? Is she right? And is she right? How do we all feel about this? And we're two years in also. So we're eight years down. We have eight years for strong indications. Yeah, exactly. Well, eight years. I think that is highly optimistic. I don't know if I'm as optimistic as she is. But what we see is, of course, now, not only with the detection of more exoplanets, because it's great that we have all those exoplanets, but we're not going to detect life there in the next 10, 15 years, because we just don't have the capability yet to detect science biosignatures on those planets. We're simply too far off. We're too far off there, but that doesn't matter. I mean, eventually, what we see now with all these developments that we have, we're going to have a lot of new things. Yeah. And so we have all these new technologies that we have with all the Earth-based and space-based telescopes, and you need to go through these rounds of technology development. And so we will get there. You are convinced someday we just have to look at some faraway exoplanet and decide, okay, there must be life there. Well, at least you will get more and more information about the composition of the atmospheres and move through that composition of the planets again. But while we're working on this, we will also start understanding more of those planetary systems. And so we have, over the last 20 years, we have accumulated a lot of knowledge about our own solar system, geysers on Europa, geysers on Enceladus. We've done very exciting detections of the water to deuterium ratio, but also organics in those geysers of Enceladus, for example. Those are the icy moons around other planets. I would first like to talk about the exoplanets because I... As opposed to moons of Saturn and Jupiter. Yes. Let's talk about that in a little bit. Okay. Sure. The first measuring those atmospheres, we already talked about exoplanets, right? How you can detect them. And now Lisa Kaltenegger from the Carl Sagan Institute in Ithaca, in New York at Cornell. She also, she told me, I once visited there and she told me about this idea that you can not only measure that there is an exoplanet, but you can subtract the difference between the light from the inside of the exoplanet from the outside, and you can get some sort of like signature of the atmosphere of that exoplanet. Even with the James Webb telescope, she said, and James Webb is launching, who knows when James Webb telescope is launching. This was 2021 now or something. I mean, you subtract the light from the planet itself. There is a difference. There's a gradient. Yeah, there's a gradient of light because the inside of that light will be just pitch dark because there's nothing there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you can get a different kind of light from, again, just the starlight. So you have three types of sort of layers. Let's call it that. And then you can- We're still talking about an exoplanet passing in front of the stars. We're still pausing. Yes. That is the only way to do exo- to do atmospheres because you need, in order to detect an exoplanet, you need the starlight of the star transiting through that atmosphere. That is the only- And then they do some- You're actually talking about something like zooming in and looking at the disk of this planet. Yes. Yes. That's just super, super- And what's happening there across that disk? They do some crazy science right then and then you can figure out the- Yeah, it changes up. Yeah. We will be able to measure or detect atmospheres and also probably measure at least the compounds with the strongest signature, which of course do not have necessarily to be the majority of that atmosphere because some compounds have a better signature even though they are only a few percent. While a compound that may make up 80% of the atmosphere, if that doesn't have a signature in- It's harder to find. Yeah. Okay. That's still possible. So you only see, you can only see the compounds that have a signature in the wavelength range that you're looking. But at least with that, you can have a feel for, okay, these compounds are at least in the atmosphere. Yeah. And then she wanted to match them to atmospheres of the earth back in the day. So she was, they are now building a database of- Yeah. Yeah. Of how the earth looked throughout the ages. And then sort of hoping that one day they will be able to match some sort of signature that they find on an exoplanet. Here we have an earth like it was three billion years ago. Yes, that was the earth. Here we have an earth like it was two billion years ago. Exactly. And this is what the conditions were so we can study the earth at that specific moment, match it to that exoplanet and then find out- That's wild. It's super wild. It's super wild. And, but, but so she, she said that the James Webb telescope would help her. It would start to help her out. But that doesn't, that doesn't necessarily mean that we will be able to detect life instantly that way. No, no, no, no. Okay. That's too bad. And the thing is that, yeah, that's very bad. I'm bummed again. Another disappointment. No, no. What it will tell us is which compounds are present in that atmosphere. Compounds by itself don't necessarily say something about life being present or not. Or many will say not life. Not life present. But, and of course, again, then we're looking at life as we don't know it, but what you should be looking for is, is there some disequilibrium in this atmosphere? Because it's- It's not supposed to be that way, sort of. Exactly. And so it's not necessarily the composition of the compounds, but also the ratio of different compounds and whether they're in equilibrium or disequilibrium. Okay. So if you have some composition that shouldn't be like that because there should be chemical reactions changing it, then you have an indication that there's life presence keeping it in this improbable state. Yeah. If you can, yeah, then you have an indication that there is a process. One of those processes could be life. Something there. Yeah. And then would we have to go there to make sure? Would we have to go there? Yeah. Or would we have to, like, send something? Or have them come visit us? Or send them an invite? Like, come over, we party at Earth. Yes. Yeah, but that's, of course, you know, sending something there. Sure. I'm talking in the 20,000 years, you know, timeframes. I'm not talking about our life. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. No, but I mean, do you, can we, can we make sure that just by basically radio astronomy- Can you be sure without going there? That's the question. Without going there. Can we be sure that it's there without being- Well, the thing is- Without being there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Without being able to go there. Well, the thing, the question is how sensitive can we make, how good will we get at, I think, especially analyzing atmospheres, because we're, anything else we will not be able to see because you have always have this overwhelming signal of your star. So whether there is liquid water present on the surface is something that we're, with our current technology, we're not able to see. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's what we're trying to do now. We're trying to do something with the current technology and also I think with the next, at least the next line of development, we will not be able to see. Or beautiful green forests. Yeah. Or, uh, built areas. Not going to happen. No, I don't think, no, no, at least not, not now. And you don't, I mean, whatever is developed in the future, uh, but right now that is something that we're not going to be capable of. So right now we're really relying on the composition of the atmosphere and then of course the other circumstantial evidence. So, yeah. Yeah. composition of the star temperature of the star how far is that planet is it a rocky planet or a gas planet so we need we're looking for rocky planets um is what is the distance of this rocky planet from its host star because from that distance we can infer um the temperature of the host star um if well if we know that there's an atmosphere that's a positive thing because that without an atmosphere there will never be liquid yeah well in order to have liquid water on the surface you need an atmosphere yeah and the planet needs to be what they call the habitable zone but i do believe that the habitable zone is being stretched wider and wider because well that's that's the thing with the habitable zone right but the habitable zone defines at which distance of a star and that distance again varies with the temperature of the star but at which distance of a certain star a planet would be able to have liquid water on the surface sustained liquid water for thousands hundred thousand maybe even millions of years on its surface so that if and and that will require an atmosphere because even if the temperature is so nice if there's no atmosphere all the water will just evaporate in the vacuum yeah so so that and that is basically what the habitable zone but the habitable zone is yeah right now really only for surface criteria because if you want to make the bridge already if we look at our own solar system of course we have back to our own solar system we have the icy moons yes well before we go there um we still don't want to talk about that about no no about this habitable zone um it's it's it's about surface it's about but it's also about temperature right um what what would the um temperature range be in your opinion that allows for life you mean you mean surface temperature or any solar yeah well yes uh temperature not not solar temperature but temperature on the surface of the planet yeah where life that's a good question has to live well i mean i mean i hear i don't think it should be plus 150 celsius or minus that's extreme so liquid water is good but this this is a nice bridge actually and saladus and europa because they are frozen frozen on on the outside sort of liquid water but they have liquid yeah photosynthesis yeah so just to first explain these are two icy moons and saladus goes around saturn and europa goes around jupiter and they are both basically well probably in it in its core there there's probably some something rocky going on yeah they've got a rocky core and then on top they got an ocean you have a rocky moon and then they have a layer of water and then they have a crust of ice exactly itself is rocky yes and now so when it comes to europa um have we found organic i don't think so because we never we didn't have the the equipment to do so but of course for uh and saladus they could yes yeah um cassini flow flew through one of the plumes of the so and saladus has geysers right one of the big finds of of of of cassini was that um and saladus has geysers and uh they flew it through one of those plumes and they found uh some basic materials already coming up from the underwater ocean for some reason they're not going to be able to get them out of the ocean so they're going to get them out of the ocean so they're going to get them out of the ocean so they're going to and everybody always talks about europa like let's go to europa there's a europa clipper mission coming up and saladus seems to be like we have more science that in order to go there so it's actually a better candidate this is one of saturn's moon yes europa is one of jupiter's and they both have a mission coming i think europa clipper is trying to figure out if we need another one and then and saladus has an unsolved life finder mission but they're not being we're still waiting for funding for both of them i believe yeah but of course uh you know we're still waiting for funding for both of them okay so jupiter is the one that is going to be a major part of the mission and jupiter will be a major part of the mission so they're both going to have a mission jupiter will be a major part of the mission and so jupiter will go and look at europa oh you're kidding but i'm not entirely sure juse mission you said juse yes yes okay and so what i don't know if they will do jupiter flyby i should know but are these right now i'm going to look at the juice jupiter icy moons explorer the first large first first large-class mission in isa's cosmic vision hey it's isa 2022 yeah it's isa 2022 it's the one you're talking about so the jupiter isa 2022 isa 2022 is the one you're talking about so i'm going to put it back in the box and Yeah, it's ESA 2020. It's ESA. And does that involve a lander? No. Because, okay. No, it's an orbiter, but it's an ESA mission. And now the US is coming with Clipper, but I don't know how, there's no launch date for Clipper yet. No. I mean, the instruments have been selected and they're working on it. And these are actually the best we have maybe, right? In our solar system to go and take a look at. Would you say life on Europa or Enceladus is more probable than life on Mars? Well, if you look at the origin of life in the hydrothermal vent scenario, then those two settings look very promising. Yeah. Because you can imagine that you have a similar scenario there and you don't need sunlight or photosynthesis for light. So there will be a way. The question is how evolved is it? But if life has... Wow, that already sounds like you're fairly convinced there's something there. No, but if life has started there, from what we know, those planets or those moons have not evolved tremendously after this ocean and the cross. Geologically. Geologically, no. It's not that they had an episode where they had an ice crust and liquid water and then all was gone and then they retained another ocean. Like happened to Mars with the atmosphere vanishing. And I think that Mars, of course... And Earth, the snowball Earth. We've been to snowball as well. Yeah, but also Earth, yeah, there has been through great episodes, but not so dramatically as Mars. Oh, yeah. Okay. And so Enceladus and Europa, it's impossible that there was once an atmosphere there and it's maybe too small. Too small for an atmosphere, right? Why would you... Don't necessarily... You need... What we think is you need liquid water. Also because you need some kind of a solvent for your chemical elements to do some of the chemistry. Yeah. I mean, it's not just like molecules that are somewhere attached to a rock and then somehow migrate to each other and start reacting, right? You need some solvent. Yes. Water is a very good solvent for these kind of reactions, especially... If you look at organics, because a lot of the organic compounds also easily dissolve in water. And we're looking for carbon-based life also because carbon is the most... Is a very versatile element. And especially if you look at our solar system, it's the most plausible element to base your life on. Yeah. So you... If you look at those scenarios... You don't need surface water to be... You don't need surface water. Yeah, you don't need surface water. You need... But also... You just need liquid water and somewhere. It doesn't matter where it is. Exactly. And what we're looking for at Earth, if we look at origin of life scenarios, there's basically two camps. And so one idea is hydrothermal vents. So ocean floor. So you don't need sunlight. You don't need UV. So it's those kind of scenarios. The other scenario is hydrothermal systems, but then... More on the surface. Warm ponds where you still have warm water, but then you do have some influence of the atmosphere, but especially UV can play a role there. And then, of course, on one hand, the UV is very destructive, but on the other hand, because it's destructive, it can also create... Evolution. Reactive molecules that can actually spur, again, chemistry. So it can also have a catalytic role. Yeah. So the question is, do you need UV or not? Did UV play a role? So on the surface of Mars, you probably would have had an influence of UV on Europa and Enceladus. Not, because you're just too far under the ice. But that's, you know, so there's two scenarios. And actually, one plays out nicely on one planet. The other one is more likely on the other. Oh, yeah? Okay. Well, on Mars, we never had these, most likely those deep oceans. But there's still hydrothermal systems that we see. So even on Mars, that could have been a plausible scenario. So Enceladus or Europa, which one should we put all our money on? Should we just put all our money on both and go there as soon as possible? Of course, I'd go to both. Man mission. You shouldn't have to choose, maybe. That's the... But that's the thing, of course, you know, we're all super excited about finding possibilities of life elsewhere, but not everybody is excited about this. And there's also still enough to other things, to sort out in our solar system that we don't know about. Yeah, but this one would be the big kahoony. Yeah. This would be so awesome. I fully agree. You don't have to convince me. I mean, if it's up to me, sure. Put all your money, go to Enceladus, go to Europa. Yeah. Of course, there... Those are the most exciting ideas to you, or could you think of something... Well, I'm still also very excited about Mars. Mars is okay. But no, I would put my money on those two then. But of course, there again, planetary protection. Because you want to drill into an unknown ocean. So... Oh, yeah. Good luck with that with the planetary. But this is crazy. I mean... Can I give one more crazy scenario? Sure. Okay. What if a meteorite hits the North or South Pole, or just any moment in the Earth's history, flips up, a chunk of ice has life, could it have infected Enceladus or Europa already? From Earth? Yeah. Just like we find Mars meteorites here, could we already have... Yeah. So, if it comes from Mars, what is the chance of finding terrestrial meteorites on Mars? Yeah. Or even Enceladus? So, you have to travel against the gravity field of the Sun. For us to travel to Mars, we actually have to do orbital corrections. Because if you go in the least energy... Or the most energy efficient, so the least energy using orbit, you go into this transfer orbit. If you stay in that transfer orbit, then you fly past Mars. So, you have to make orbital corrections. In order to get to Mars. Yeah. So, how do you kick off something from the Earth with so much energy that you actually accelerate it into an outward bound? So, you accelerate it from the Earth away towards... Yeah. Okay. I'll put it under highly unlikely. You need some escape velocity. Exactly. From Earth towards Enceladus or Europa, you have to travel through the asteroid belt. Yeah. No, okay. How thick is that? It's a little bit thicker. It's a little bit thicker. Yeah. It's a little bit thicker. Yeah. It's a little bit thicker. Yeah. It's a little bit thicker. Yeah. It's a little bit thicker. Yeah. It's a little bit thicker. Yeah. How thick is that ice crust on Enceladus and or Europa? It's seven to 10 kilometers. Seven to 10 kilometers. Yeah. So, our ice sheets on the North Pole is about three. Three? At the thickest, I think. At the... So, we... Okay. So, first somebody... It's some drilling operation. Yeah. So, some... Yeah. Exactly. So, what do you do? Do you drill? Autonomous drilling machine or something. No, you don't want to drill. I think what you... We have to send Elon Musk himself. Yeah. What you want is you want some melting probe. Yeah. And then with some feather with a lot of... Strength and rope. But also data cables. Okay. Yeah. So, while you're melting, you have your melting probe full of sensors. So, while you're melting, you're doing your analysis and you're sending your data up. Maybe there's some sensors on the... Meanwhile, you're going to have to make sure the ice doesn't freeze back above you. Exactly. This is some operation. So, you have to have a heated feather and a heated melting probe and that has... What are the planetary protectors going to say about a melting device? That's fine as long as you're right. I mean, you... You melt space through ET. Exactly. You mess up the local environment. Self-sterilizing melting device. Exactly. Oh, wow. Yeah. No, but it seems like something that we can at least do. But so far, I just heard nobody's going to land there. Nobody's going to land there. So far. For the time being. Yeah. So, what's the plan? What's the plan? What's the plan? What's the plan? What's the plan? What's the plan? What's the plan? What's the plan? What's the plan? For the time being. No, no, no, no. That's how they're... Yeah. Of course, with Enceladus, people are putting together a mission, but it's... I don't think it has even been proposed officially. Wow. With Enceladus, it's been... I happen to know that they submitted it for... There is a sort of NASA crazy... The NASA crazy program. Yeah. Program. It's sort of like they have one... I forgot what the title is. Yeah. It's called... There's a project where one mission that's sort of like a far, far out mission, so to speak. What totally hopeless project can we do? No. No. We don't have any money. We would like to fund them all, all of them, but we have to pick one because it's always a money thing. Yeah. And then they submitted it for this one and then it didn't go through and it was something else. I'll put it in the show notes as well, like which one did go through. Because in the end, I was talking to Jonathan Lunine, who shaped this whole mission. He was the head scientist, I believe, on the mission. Oh, I bet. Yeah. And so this life finder. And it just sounded so far advanced already. Like we flew through this plume. We have this evidence of organic material there. Let's go. Let's go. Like why wait? And it's crazy to me that I haven't even seen it being part of like a public debate or anything. It's just sort of tucked away there in his head. No, no. There's one thing. We should. It may be my fault. Maybe I haven't picked it up. What signs of life is a mission to Enceladus or Europa going to look for? If you don't land, what are you going to look for? Well, if you don't land, you can only look at the plumes. Well, you can do surface. Look at the chemicals in the plumes and the atmosphere. Yeah, you can look at what comes out of the plumes. Well, there's the exosphere. And while you can analyze the surface, but so yeah, if there's plenty of life, do we see any of that in the ice, even seven or 10 kilometers above where the life is actually interfering with this ice crust? But of course, eventually this ice crust, some of it is evaporating away. So I don't know how. It will grow. It will grow from the bottom most likely. But apart from that, I don't think from the surface we're going to see much. No, no, no. And then we're slowly moving towards the end and there's this one question, I guess, and which is completely a fingers crossed question. We are all sort of like three different generations. We're sort of the same age. Me? I'm 60. You're 60. What do you think? Will you see? Will it happen in your lifetime? Personally, I don't think so. Of course, I hope I will, but I think the chances are slim. And us, Inge-Loes? I think it requires a mindset and a money set. But I think in our lifetime, our biggest chance is... Yeah. I think that we will either look at some of the regions on Mars and go to the both icy moons in our solar system. For exoplanet detection, I think for that to be really, to really come with, well, if ever to really come with some good estimates of probability, I think the first missions that can do that may only fly in time. Yeah. I think that we may only fly in 20 years from now. Okay. 20 years. So we may... I'll be 60. I'll be dead and buried then. Oh, yeah. I can clarify my answer, I think, because for me to witness the finding of life somewhere outside Earth, it has to be there in the first place, like on Mars. And those chances are slim to begin with. And then it has to be found as well. Yeah. Absolutely. And for it to be found, there has to be a mission which has to be paid, et cetera, et cetera, and cannot fail because if it fails, we still don't find anything. So there's lots of problems, even if there is life that might cause you not finding it. Yeah, exactly. Imagine this James Webb telescope blowing up when it's launched. Oh, shit. I constantly have nightmares about that. I just see it launch on three, two, one, and then... Or have its optics turn out wrong. Or have its optics turn out wrong. Yes. I mean, just like Hubble being just blurry right when it's there. I don't know. A lot of things can go wrong. What's your personal outlook, Christ? I think for some reason I have a feeling that before my dead bed, I will... You will. Yes, I will. For some reason I think that, but that's just me. I hope you do. It's just me. I don't know. I'm working towards it. Let's say it that way. Thank you for all your hard work, Angelou, so that I get to enjoy it. I'm at least trying to figure out if we can and helping towards finding it. Yes. Good luck. Whenever you've got news on Mars, let us know. So we're ending on a hopeful note. Yes. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you, Angelou Stenkaerte, astrobiologist at Utrecht University. Thank you, Thijs Roes. And thank you so much, Herbert. Okay. Thank me too. This has been the second episode of Space Cowboys. Yes. And thank you, listener and viewer. Thank you guys and see you next time around. See you next time. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.