Selects: How Mars Works

Chuck Bryant, Jerry's over there. We all have um I boogers because this is an early morning, unusual, early morning edition of Stuff you Should Know. Welcome to the morning edition. We should just talk like this. We got on NPR, we got taken to task and it's nine an email from a morning talk show TV show host. Did you see it? Uh? About the Inquisition? Yeah? He's like, way to release the Inquisition on ash Wednesdays, kind of slapping the face. So I respond I said, actually it came

out on Fat Tuesday and by sheer coincidence. He's like, thanks for the reply. I responded to him too. I was like, man, I wish I was that clever and said I had no idea. It was like our our medical marijuana episode being our four utter complete coincidence guaranteed everybody. I think, over the course of six hundred plus shows, you're gonna have some weird coincidences like that, you know. Yes,

I certainly didn't know it was ash Wednesday. I didn't either until I went to the mall yesterday evening and a third of the people are were walking around with charcoal crosses on their forehead. Nice. It's like I had no idea Atlanta had this many Catholics good going there everywhere? They sure are well, I mean they didn't used to be got You know, I grew up Baptist here and I didn't know many Catholics growing up, But Atlanta became

a transplant towns instead, exactly. And I'll tell you about another transplant chuck, possibly life here on Earth from Mars? Oh yeah, is this your intro? Have you got breaking this? No? That was it. But do you remember we did an episode on UM the origin of life on Earth? Remember?

Oh yeah, yeah? And one of the possibilities that it was from Mars and one of the um pieces of evidence of this possibility was the Alan Hills Rock from Antarctica, a Martian meteorite that was discovered in that was studied and studied, and they thought in basically, Bill Clinton said, we found evidence of life on Mars. And then they studied it again and they were like, maybe not another

studying it again, they're saying, yeah, it's possible. It's very possible that this four point one billion year old rock is showing evidence of fosse realized nano bacteria. And this is all still Bill Clinton saying this. Yeah, it is underwear at home. He's the authority. He's talking to the TV again. Nice. Uh, but yeah, we're gonna do how Mars works. Tom Hanks, this one's for you, big space guy.

Oh yeah, sure, Okay. I didn't know if I was missing something there, like he did some movie that didn't know about. No, if I said, Gary Sinise, this one's for you, that would be a mission to Mars reference. I did not see that. Mind bogglingly odd and pretty bad. Yeah, I heard, That's why I didn't see it. That and Red Planet didn't see either. One of those. Red Planet

I don't know about. Yeah, but that kind of brings us to a point that we've long been fascinated with the red planet, going back to you know, War the World's and early science fiction and Martians and Mars has just always captivated us because you know, sometimes you can see it with a telescope and it's not like what's on the other side of a Venus Venus. Yeah, we don't know much about Venus, shrouded in mystery. There are no Venusians that we're afraid will come down here in

attack Us. I think it's Venusians Venetians, which is different from Venetians, which are people from Venice, which, strangely enough, Um kind of coincides with the guy named Giovanni Siaparelli. He might not have been from Venice, but that man was definitely from Italy. Do you think, yeah, he was. Can you say his name for everybody, Chuck, who Giovanni Sarelli. That was good that guy. Man, Have you been practicing at home? No, I just I've been even a lot

of pasta. That's good stuff, man, So um Schiaparelli in eighteen seventy seven decided to draw a map of Mars and his conception of Mars what became the popular conception if it wasn't already. UM was that Mars was a UM, a lush planet with civilizations, and he named the regions of Mars a corps lee like Elysium, which which UM culture believed that that was Heaven. I don't know, I can't remember, man, I haven't heard that. We you know,

we've discussed it before, Elysium. I haven't retained that. UM. Another part was called Utopia Arcadia. Basically, all these different names for paradise reflected the idea that Mars was a very similar to Earth, most likely inhabited by intelligent beings

and UM. As proof, uh, Schiaparelli drew canals that he noticed on the on Mars, which suggested that this advanced civilization had dug canals to UM route water from the polar ice caps which are visible here on Earth to the central locations where their civilizations were get water to the Martians. Yeah, and this established like what earth links

thought of Mars for a hundred years. Almost about forty years after that, a US astronomer named Percival lowell Um wrote a book also about Mars, where he actually talked about civilizations, and Uh, the problem was he he wasn't really based on anything, it might as well have been science fiction, right, And yet they named the Lowell Observatory after him. He was an astronomer, so it's not like he was. He wasn't just making stuff up, but he didn't have like hard evidence. He made a lot of

stuff up. Okay, he well, he interpreted it without any evidence. Yeah, and then wrote a book and that became the impetus for Mars based science fiction. Yeah, it really captured folks. And that's when like I talked about war the World's and uh, Edgar Rice Burrows the Princess of Mars, and it's just always been just out there staring down at us. Yeah, it's speaking of war the World's. It even says it in this article. It did not cause the national panic

in night. That's a myth. Did you know that? Um? I don't know. I'm not sure I knew the full stories. Supposedly when h when um uh who directed Citizen Kane? When Orson Welles carried out this radio. Yeah, yeah, it's scared everyone, right, it caused a panic. People were wild in the streets, committing suicide, like doing all sorts of stuff. No,

it isn't true. Um. Apparently the newspapers got wind of this rumor and played it up, and um, the reason they played it up was to prove that radio couldn't be trusted as a source of news because it was a big competitor to newspapers at the time. Have you done a Don't Be Dumb on that? No? Maybe I will? Can I plug that? Go ahead, Josh? As a web series called Don't Be Dumb? That is very funny and uh strange, and you learned stuff. It's like the perfect

one to three punch. Weird funny and you walk away with some knowledge. Thanks man, And everyone likes it that watches it, so we just need more people to watch it. Give me the weird sausage fingers. Steve McQueen, clap, that's that is weird? Oh the director? Oh yeah, he was clapping weird, wouldn't he at the Oscars? Apparently he and um, the screenwriter who won an oscar for that movie, Yeah for twelve Years of Slave do not like each other

over the writing credit. Oh yeah. The writer walked right past him, and Steve McQueen didn't even turn to look at him as he was walking up to get his oscar. I did kind of notice that Yeah, well, if you read delisted, he rooted it out and found out that it was over a writing credit. Is that why he was clapping weirdly? He was showing his disdain with sausage. Weird. Alright, So, UM, this weird early fascination with Mars, Like I said, we didn't have a lot of information other than just sort

of looking at it from Earth. UM. And it wasn't until the sixties and seventies that we started in many countries started exploring Mars, but we started sending UM orbiters to take a closer peak and then eventually orbiters led to landers and rovers and it's been like kind of a prime directive of NASA for a while. Yeah, one of them. And and it was UM. When they scrapped the Space Shuttle UM program. I remember NASA was saying like, don't worry everybody, We're gonna go to Mars. We're gonna

focus on Mars. That's why we're not doing the shuttle anymore. UM. And apparently they are. There was just as recently as yesterday NASA testified about its budget and UM and they were saying, well, we've got a really great thing plan. We're gonna get this asteroid. We're gonna maneuver it with a robot into lunar orbit so we can go visit it later. And the senators at this hearing basically said boring, like yeah, They're like, what's this backup Mars mission listed?

And they're like, oh, well, we're talking about doing a man fly by a venus and Mars. Sentators are like, Mars, Mars, Mars. So it looks like NASA is gonna be forced to go to Mars, whether they like it or not. So it's still captivating. If it's captivating. The dumb dums and Congress, well, they even said, like the asteroid mission, that's not gonna spur the public the public imagination, like going past sending a person past Mars, that's what you want to do NASA.

And NASA is like, all right, but there's gonna we could probably mind the asteroid and the senators I went Mars Mars Mars and they all went to a bar afterward. Yeah, okay, Jim, you want to go to Mars And he was like all right, yeah, I guess so. Um alright, so where should we start here? Um, well, let's start with the origin of Mars. It seems pretty appropriate. Yeah, it's pretty fascinating.

I love how scientists piece together ancient history of the cosmos, you know, yeah, without having ever sent a geologist there. It's all I mean, even before the rovers, it was basically all just based on photographs and and surmising from those. Now we've got the Curiosity rover, the third rover up there. It's still up there, right yeah, yeah, or it doesn't come home, does it. No, it will, but it's still operational. Yeah. Um. And they were thinking, I think it was a two

year mission, but it could go longer than that. I think it's already gone a little longer than that, because I think it went wasn't really already. I think it went up in late two thousand eleven. So I think it's been there a little over two years. Well, good going, Curiosity. I might be wrong. Um. All right, So there's basically five things that they surmise happened to four Mars, which

will will list and then get into in more detail. Um. It initially formed from clumping together of little, tiny objects until it made a big round planet. It was an accretion disc. Yeah, like just like Earth, Just like Earth. Uh. Then there was a lot of meteor bombardment all over the Solar System, and Mars was of course affected just like Earth. Just like Earth. In the Moon, the mantle was very hot and pushed through the crust, lifting up

portions of it. And then there were a couple of uh they don't know how many, but at least a couple of periods of lots of volcanoes going on, say it just like lava flows. And then finally the planet cooled down and the atmosphere thinned out to leave this with Mars unlike Earth, right, uh, And it Mars formation was virtually identical of the process that formed Earth. It's about half the size, but there in the beginning as far as makeup and the processes that they were undergoing, yeah,

they were virtually identical. Yeah. And being half the size is pretty key to uh, why it's not like Earth more um one of the reasons. So I guess we should get into some more detail about this, Huh. I think we should. The accretion that you talked about, the small objects about it took about a hundred thousand years, and as the gravitational field got stronger, it kept pulling in more of this stuff and it would crash into the planet and uh and get hot basically and just

sort of meld together. Yeah. I was like, oh, Mars, and that was interesting. I looked at why planets are around, and the reason why is because the gravitational field and the spin. Uh it's sucking everything into the dense core. Yeah. Well it's the core. The gravitational field behaves like it's coming from the center, and everything else thinks it's coming

from the center. So the only way to get everything is close to the center as possible is to make a sphere like Obviously, if you had a square, that would be a corner that's not as close as other parts. That would be a creepy planet like a cube. Yeah, but I wondered, you know, or why doesn't it look like an asteroid, Let's say, but asteroids don't have the kind of gravitational force to draw everything in like that

to form that sphere. It's called isotactic adjustment. Yeah. I just thought, wait a minute, all these things are perfectly round. We're not perfectly around. Want more pyramid shaped planet would be kind of cool? Um. All right, So that was the acretion, and now you have gas being released from cooling after the core and mantle and crust have formed in this hot ball. Right, and as the as the gases are being released in the hot ball, um, they

are forming this atmosphere. They're supporting an atmosphere. They're floating out and um kind of hanging around. Yeah, you know. And um, so you've got an atmosphere in place. You have a molten core, you have a softer mantle, and then a crust that formed. Yeah. And um, as that that softer mantle and the woont and core press up, you have volcanic activity, yeah, which releases even more heat and gas, which makes the atmosphere even thicker. And at this point they think that there is a period of

um water presence on Mars where it was raining. So then after you've got a primitive atmosphere. And then, as it says in the article by Craig he's a great writer for us. Yeah, PhD, that's right. Uh he said March Mars couldn't catch a break, which was pretty accurate, And it was pounded by meteors in the Solar system, forming craters and basins and all sorts of interesting landforms. And you know, the same thing happened here. But we had like water and things like that too, cause erosion

and fill it, fill it in. On the Moon, there isn't anything like that, so you still see those craters. And but the same thing happened on Mars. Yeah, and actually there was water on Mars um that bombard it, and the that caused the magma to come up out of the core of of Mars, creating volcanic activity and shifts in the mantle and the crust. Um all released hot gas into the Martian atmosphere, which thickened it and increased its temperature, which led to rain, yes, rain, flooding, erosion.

So there was like a period at least for a little while of um the presence of water on Mars. There still list, dude, the presence of unfrozen flowing water. Uh yeah, there's not flowing water right as of September last year, they found water in the dirt. Yeah, it's pretty exciting. Two points per cubic foot. Yeah, but but it's a spoiler. Sorry, actually it can't be a spoiler.

But that happened in the bat right, Yeah, but if if you haven't heard of it any yeah, alright, sorry, Uh so, then Craig likens to Mars at this point is a soft boiled and as the eggshell is cooling, uh, the the yoke is gonna start busting through the mantle. And that's like on Earth is what is going to form things like volcanoes. And again those volcanoes and that activity led to that atmosphere in the periods of rain and flooding and erosion Olympus Mons. Yeah, that's a good

pixie song. Was that a pixie song for a dream of the Olympus Mons? Nice? Yeah, I don't think I did that one. What's that on? Uh? Yeah, okay, Uh. Olympus Mons is the largest volcano there and it's like it makes Mountain Everest look like a mole hill. As a matter of fact, it's the largest point in the known Solar system, the highest point. Yeah, yeah, the tallest um. Remember our myth busting episode where we showed that Mount Everest wasn't the tallest mountain. It's mounta Loa Yeah. Yeah. Um,

on Earth, mounta Looa is um something like it. It's six miles from the ocean floor. Uh, yes, the rises six nice chuck and um it's a hundred and forty miles wide at its base. That's a big mountain. On Earth on Mars, which is again half the size of Earth in diameter. Olympus mons is sixteen miles tall. And and that's not from an ocean floor either, Yeah, you know,

because there is no ocean on Mars exactly. But if you want to see something cool, type in Mars, what would Mars look like with ocean and people have done like um simulations of it. It looks really neat, like vacation worthy, like you would want to go there to vacam. I mean, it's like a sunny beach with it looks like Earth, but with weird continents um. And then it's three seventy miles across Olympus mons Is. That's large. It's big.

And they have like pictures if you google it, uh, compare it to Everest and it just dwarfs it, that's right. And you can see pictures of it too, you know, they snapped photos of it. It's pretty impressive. It's been large volcano which eventually went dormant. All the volcanoes on Mars went dormant, that's right, somewhere possibly about three billion years ago, and um as the volcanoes went dormant, the

the the heat was released. Basically Mars had no more heat to give from its core um, which meant the atmosphere wasn't being fed any longer, so it thin, which led to a drop in temperatures. Yeah, and how we mentioned earlier, how the the fact that it was smaller than Earth is one reason why it's not more like Earth. That's the reason it cooled so fast, like Earth wouldn't have cold nearly as fast, no, huh. And um it also kept a magnetic field going thanks to its molten core.

Mars did not any longer, so you got a thin atmosphere, cold temperatures. Um. The atmosphere that was there started freezing and falling two Mars and was stored as ice. Any water that was already on the planet's surface turned into perma frost, and um Mars became it underwent what's called the Great desiccation event, where it became a barren, deserted

desert planet. Yeah, and before that, these were this kind of happened in cycles for a while, like the volcanic action and then the gas is being released and like major flooding from water, until like you said, eventually it's the cold, not hot, but cold, dusty place that we love today. Yeah, And what's um interesting is that Earth and Mars were so similar as they formed and about

at the same time. About three billion years ago, Mars underwent the Great Desiccation Event and Earth underwent the Great Oxygenation Event, which gave rise to all life here on Earth. The the appearance of algae, which created a breathable atmosphere almost at about the same time. So they totally diverse, two different paths that have around the same time. I wonder if the main reason was because of its size. Yeah,

the cooling another Earth. Yes, it's interesting. Had it been the exact same size, who knows, maybe we'd be like going there and back right now, right on vacation like Swarnegger. That was a good one, or Colin Farrell. Did you see the remake? No? Although I heard the Robo Cup remake was like surprisingly good, I haven't seen expecting that. I haven't seen it either. Yeah, that's why I'll definitely wait for TV for that one. You know, Uh, you really don't care about seeing that one. Not even DVD

like TV. Well, I don't watch DVDs, Okay, I'm streaming like the rest of the modern world. Not even a laser disk Uh, should we talk about what it's like there. Yeah, on the surface, Yes, the surface of Mars Um scientists have divided into three major parts, the Southern Highlands, the northern plains, and the polar regions, which we already said you can actually see from Earth polar ice caps. Yeah, just like Earth, but the ice caps are made of carbon dioxide, so it's dry ice ice caps, and then

underneath there's water ice yea. So the southern highlands are vast. I love our morning shows. It's always a little more like laid back. I feel like, yeah, like I'm sleepy. Yeah, you're not riddled with anxieties yet. That comes on about noon. Yeah, I haven't had enough coffee yet. So you've got your Southern Highlands, and like I said, they are extensive and vast,

and uh, it is elevated. It's the the highest part of Mars and heavily cratered and again the highest part of the solar system, right, because that's where Olympus Moms is. That's right in the southern region, the Southern highlands. Uh. And they scientists think it's ancient um these highlands because of the craters, because the cratering happened close to four billion years ago, and that was just meteors kind of

just pounding the solar system all over the place. So the southern Highlands are high and then there's a very um pronounced drop of several kilometers down to the um northern plains, which are low lying regions. There are a lot like the seas on the Moon um but they do feature raised areas plateaus, a couple of them. Yeah, the cinder cones. Yeah, well, the cinder cones are on the plateaus. I think basically the mantle bulged up through the crust. It's thinner in the northern region and the

mantle just pushed up and formed like continent sized plateaus. Um. That are called crustal upwarps. That's a great word. Yeah, I kept thinking I was reading it wrong. Nope, crystal upwarps. Uh. And the these crystal upwarps, there's two of them. One is the smaller it's Elysium membered Paradise that right, and the other one is called Tharsis. Arcis in the Northern Hemisphere is divided into eastern and western hemispheres. Tharsis is

in the west and Elysium is in the east. Yes, celestial names are so cool, it really are You know, what do we have on earth? New Jersey not thar No, we start a campaign to rename New Jersey tharsus Um and then like the main city could be Tharsist City, which sounds super futuristic, and in fact it's Newark. Every citizens issued to sparkly silver jumps. Oh. U, so you've

called out Olympus Mons is the highest point. That is where in the it's in the region which this article is confusing because it mentions the sarsest Reason region in the southern um the hemisphere and in the northern hemisphere. Uh. And I looked all over the place to find definitively where it is. And I think the discrepancy comes from the fact that it's equatory. Okay, it's pretty close to

the equator. Olympus Mons definitely is. So maybe it's both right, But it's about at that point, um that the uh, the highlands drop off into the northern plains. That's right. And Uh, in Tharcis you have some pretty impressive canyons um, a system called the Vallis Marineris and it makes the Grand Canyon look like a tiny little hole in the ground.

It is three hundred and seventy miles wide and twenty six thousand, four hundred feet deep, not to slam the Grand Canyon, but if you've ever been there, imagine something dwarfing that even, right, And again, Mars is half the size of Earth, right, and it doesn't even just dwarf the Grand Canyon. It's bigger than the Mariana Trench, which is eighty miles long. So it's a good thousand miles longer than the Mariana Trench. And the Mariana Trench is

forty three miles wide. The Vallis Marina Harris is seventy miles wide. Yeah, that's nuts. Yeah, So it's a big old trench. Like you can't even comprehend that kind of size when you're standing there, No, imagine when you're in it. You can't see the edges or anything like that. So you're just of course, you can't be in it because you know, people can't go to Mars. But you know, I know what you mean, we will eventually, you think Elon Musk predicts he will retire and die and be

buried on Mars. That's what he's he said. It's not a certainty, but it's a possibility, but that's his goal. Yeah. Wow, Well he's got the dough to make it happen, I guess, and the vision, Like you say the same thing, but you've just got the vision, right, you don't have the billions of dollars. And it's not even my vision. I'm just reporting what Elon Musk said. You know, oh I thought you wanted to do that as well. Now go to Mars. You want to get shot out of a cannon.

I would I abandoned that a long time ago. Yeah, Um, what's the new plan? Just to be cremated? Yeah, distributed with youmi? Okay, that's nice. Yeah, she's really calmed you down. She is like, first, first things first, this cannonball thing, right, it's gotta go. Um, the polar regions you can see from Earth, like we said, and it is surrounded by a bunch of dunes and they are like I think you said, it was frozen carbon dioxide, right, So it's

not like the ice we have here on Earth. No, it's well, we have it here on Earth, dry ice. Well yeah, but just it's not our polar ice cap. And like Earth, depending on the season, the ice caps are going to change shape in the summertime, the CEO two from the northern caps uh melt away and and there's water ice below that, so not dry ice as they call it in Spanish agua ice. And that's why

apparently we sent the Phoenix there. Uh. They were like, send that thing up there and dig down into the frozen dirt and let's see what what it's made up of. And they found water. They found uh two points. Phoenix didn't find it. Phoenix found like found uh that the Martian soil is filled with perchlorate, which is a big problem for Mars missions. Yeah, that's like very bad for

human beings. It's extremely toxic. It's a thyroid toxin has a very quick effect um as a developmental effect on infants and um fetuses, So reproducing on Mars would be a big problem. And even in adults, it has a big effect on your thyroid, which affects your hormone production function UM. And it's everywhere. It's in the light Martian dust and Mars has tons of dust storms that enveloped the whole planet, which we'll talk about for like weeks at a time. Yeah, and there there's pe chloric in

those dust storms, so it would get everywhere. So they just found out like a couple of months ago that this is everywhere and it's going to be a huge challenge to Mars missions in the future. But they're saying, now that we know about it, we can design around it. Yeah, it's just seems so uninhabitable, Like, I don't know if our lifetime we're going to see it a manned mission. Maybe we'll definitely see a fly by. Yeah, yeah, a man fly by. Yeah. Okay, you and Elon Musk, we will.

That's not even just for this Elon Musk in the Senate Okay, yeah, Marr. They're all so excited. So Chucker's up next. We're going to talk about the interior of Mars. Okay, so we're back and we're talking about Mars's interior. And to talk about Mars interior is really boring unless you compare to Earth, and then all of a sudden you're like, oh,

this is cool. So let's compare to Earth. The Earth's core is um has a radius of about from the center to the surface, and is made up of iron in two parts, the solid core and the liquid outer core, and the interplay between those two creates Earth's magnetic field, which allows for the northern lights. Oh yeah, encompasses what else, Ah, that's about it. Okay. Mars's core radius is only about nine um and between nine miles and it is probably made up also of iron, but throwing some sulfur, maybe

a little oxygen. And they believe, Uh, I don't. I didn't get this. He said it may be made up maybe maybe molten, but it's unlikely. So they still don't know. I guess. And they think that The reason they don't think that it's molten, though, is because Mars has a very weak magnetic field. Um, but maybe not always. Yeah, it probably had a strong magnetic field and the and before the great desiccation event, um, but now it doesn't have. When they think that if it is molten, it's not.

There's not a lot to it. Okay, Yeah, that makes sense. Around the Earth, score is softer mantle like toothpaste, and it's way less dense than it is iron and magnesium silicate about eighteen hundred miles thick. And that's when you see a volcano and lava flowing from a volcano. That's where that's coming from. Well, it comes from the magma through there the liquid all right, isn't it. I think

so we did a podcast on volcanos. You think you remember that was a good one, the volcanos one, I thought, so. I was worried about it and chuck the mantle pushing up through the through the surface. Yeah, counts for those

crustal uplifts, up up warps, up warps, that's right. Um. And here on Earth we have things like volcanoes, active volcanoes and earthquakes, and they're largely due to, if not exclusively due to, um, the fact that we have continental plates like the crust of Earth, which Mars also has a crust, but Earth's crust is broken up into these plates that drift and move around slowly and rub up against one another. Um. And that's where the fault lines exist.

And along those fault lines you have volcanoes and earthquakes. Mars that's not the case as a crust, but it's not broken into plates. It's solid. Yeah. I thought that was pretty interesting. And that's why there's no active volcanoes right now for one reason. Yeah. Yeah. Um. And we while we're talking about Mars, well we probably should have mentioned it on the surface, but it's a neat little tidbit if you ask me, do you know I Mars

is rust colored? Uh no, because it's coated in rust. Yeah. Yeah, it's oxidized iron in the soil, which makes it rusted. It's a rusty old planet, a rusty, dusty, cold, windy, uninhabitable perhaps planet. And again the reason why it's probably uninhabitable is it lacks an atmosphere, or it practically lacks an atmosphere. There is a very thin one still, Yeah, I guess we can compare that to Earth to um. Mars's atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide. On Earth it's less

than one percent, right, Like you could just stop right there. Toxic, a lot less nitrogen two point seven percent compared to Earth seventy eight. Not much oxygen at all, only point one three. That's a big factor. It's toxic again and um about one as much water vapor as on Earth. Yeah, you need that too, inhospitable, which is why they there

are proposals to seed Mars to terraform it. Yeah, basically going and like artificially stimulate an atmosphere to form so that in ten thousand and fifty hundred thousand years it could conceivably be habitable. Yeah, and we we did a show on that too. Is all coming together. It's a long term plan, but sure, which means we'll never do it. Elon Musk will maybe his grandchildren. Uh So. The atmospheric

pressure in Mars is interesting too. It's super low and super cold, and that's why there is no water liquid flowing because it's either going to freeze or evaporate. They can't just exist as water these days. Nope. But like we said, possibly probably did at one point. So you've got a thin atmosphere, which means a lot of um solar radiation is not blocked, is not reflected um, which means that you have very wild swings in daily average

temperature on Mars. Because Mars does have a day, it does rotate, and actually it rotates it about the same rate as Earth. The Mars salt which is short for solar day, it's just about forty three minutes longer than um Earth's day. Yeah, but because it's further out away from the Sun, it's orbit around the Sun takes longer. So it's year is about twice as long as a year on Earth. Six hundred and eighty six point nine eight Earth days, which means the seasons last longer, which

makes them more extreme as we'll see. Yeah, and you talked about the temperature fluctuation. It's almost a hundred degrees fahrenheit on a daily basis. The difference in temperature, that's enormous. Again, not very friendly for us humans. No, well figure it out. You have to pack a big suitcase. You know, you have to pack your your thong as well as your Arctic explorer. Well, you could just wear a thong under your artic explore coast there, it's the key to Mars.

Where layers pack big where layers. But like you said, there are seasons in the spring and early summer, the sun heats up the atmosphere and the dust lifts up and and makes it even hotter once that dust is in the atmosphere, and it basically is what causes those big dust storms we're talking about. Yeah, the dust, the dust particles get suspended and invite more heat, which suspends

more particles than um. It creates wind there winds. Yeah, well, just like here on Earth, it creates convection cells, which creates wind. And as those wind speeds whip up because the atmosphere is thinner, you have to have higher speeds because the wind has less to push against air to push against, so it takes higher speed winds. But once they do hit something like a hundred and twenty miles an hour, the entire planet can become enveloped in a

dust storm that can last months. That's crazy. And again it's not just dust. It's dust with one of the more toxic compounds known to humanity in every bit of it. Yeah, and it's not going to blow off a Mars rover these things, you know, way like in the tons. Yeah, I think theirsities one ton one ton. And actually what's strange is the dust storms, it says, are um beneficial because they will blow the any um Martian dirt caked

on the solar panels. Yeah, that makes sense too, or maybe it might reveal something, Yeah that wasn't there before, like a pyramid. That'd be pretty cool, Chuck, I want to talk about water on Mars. That was NASA's directive. Follow the water for many years and still as because they think they're in holds. The key to the big question is there possibilities of having life on Mars? Is there? Life? Was their life on Mars and we're not talking about Martians. Unfortunately,

we're talking about maybe bacteria which could be Martians. I mean, if it lives on Mars, it's Martian. I guess it's a good point. Everybody just basically needs to lower the bar for their expectations of what a Martian is. Yeah, right, you know what I mean, instead of little green men, right, it's bacteria and um. When this article was written, it was pre curiosity, but it just a couple of months ago Curiosity confirmed, uh that there is water present in

the soil. Yeah, and they think it's everywhere. Yeah, it's basically the soil has a very big leaching property, yeah, where it absorbs water from the atmosphere and locks it in there, so that if if we went up there, we could extract um about, like A said, two pints of water from every cubic foot of soil that's mine. It's pretty cool. It is pretty cool. Again, though, we

have that per chlorate problem. It's everywhere. It would get in the water, and one of the ways that it transfers to humans and becomes toxic is through drinking water, so we'd have to deal with that. But ironically, the thing about per chlorate being there, it's also used in solid rocket fuel here on Earth. So we would need it to get to Mars, but once we got to Mars, we wouldn't want to have it. Interesting, that is very ironic. Thanks.

So you're talking, Chuck about how water could consuerably lead to life on Mars. We it's vital to life. It's one of the um vital parts of life. I can't remember the term for him. Not a building block, one of the essential some things for life component? Yes, yeah, I think that is it essential component for life. We worked that out together. This has been morning condition and no. No. Now they found water on Mars and confirmed that it is there, and they knew all along that there was

water ice on Mars. Um. It makes that Martian rock from four billion years ago seem all the more likely that it is displaying evidence of fossilized microbes. Yeah. And they used to think that there was methane uh in the atmosphere or trace amounts, but I think that has

been debunked now with upon further research. Yeah. Yeah, because again when this article was written, it sounds like they thought it was still like they still head detective methane and they didn't know whether it was from of biological or chemical origin. Yeah, more recent studies UM as of October two thousand twelve, UM, they analyzed the atmosphere uh for methane six times and basically found no more than one point three parts per billion. Yeah, that's not good

for evidence of life. Yeah, and that's about one six as much as they had previously estimated. And they thought, well, maybe it went some where, you know, and and they NASA said no, it wouldn't. UM. It would have been super exciting, but it's methane doesn't uh distribute and leave like that that quickly, like it would still be around. So unfortunately, no methane. Speaking of methane UM as evidence

of life. Remember our termite episode, somebody wrote in to say, did you know termites or like a huge contributor of methane to on Earth. They're the second largest contributor of methane after five stock. Yeah. Wow, even beating out humans. Wow, that's crazy. Yeah, because we shoot a lot of ducks, we humans, some of us termites have flatulent insects uh so bacteria UM. Martian soil has been known to be like formally chemically active, but maybe not biologically, but it

is possible maybe because they have a good example in Greenland. Um, they found bacteria that was dormant for a hundred twenty tho years frozen in the ice, and when they unfroze it, it started multiplying again in the beginning of the apocalypse. Yeah, it's kind of creepy. Yeah, but like it's not stopping. Possibly in the polar ice caps on Mars. Maybe that's

going on to Yeah, we just don't know yet. Yeah, they think that, um, it is very possible that you could take some of them, the extreme of file bacteria, ones that live like in um volcanic vents undersea and things like that, and transplant them two Mars and some of them would survive, especially mineral thriving um bacteria ones that like eat minerals. You could put them on Mars

and they would they would do Okay. Possibly well spaceships like if we could possibly bring our own bacteria there by accident as well, you know, just from like I think the International Space Station had E. Colid in it. Yeah, and possibly lee Jonella retainers disease on the I S I Wow, Yeah, or the I S S. That sounds like a like a movie waiting to happen. Sure, I guess we sort of did that with Outland. Was there? Was it a disease? A disease? It was just a

cop chasing a bad guy. Again. I wonder if it holds up. I doubt it. Yeah, if it held up, it'd be alien like, it would still be in the rotation. But Outline doesn't play on cable very often, you know, it really doesn't. That is pretty good evidence too. I remember the Outland Mad magazine. Um, but I didn't have

that one. Yeah, that was a good one. Um So Chuck, You remember we were talking about way back how the um Viking and um mariner and Mars orbiters provided this evidence that Mars was just a dead, barren planet and really undermine the idea that there was possibly life there

and that it was lush. Yeah. Well it also provided some conspiracy theorists pretty solid evidence that there was or is some sort of civilization on Mars, because yeah, Viking one in nineteen seventies six produced a photo that looked a whole lot like a fernic type face, like the face on Mars. Pretty clearly a face if you look at it. Uh, it was two miles from head to toe from tip to bottom. So it wasn't like Jesus

on a piece of toast. No, I mean it looked like it looked like a artificially constructed monument, a face of a monument. Maybe when that had toppled, it was now just poking out from the Martian soul soil. Um. So they looked uh, closer in, but there's a lot of cloud cover, so they got kind of a garbled look. And they looked again more recently, maybe two thousand eight or two thousand eleven, and it's very clearly just a

mesa that's disappointing. It is, especially like when you look at that original Yeah, yeah, when you look at the Viking one photo, Yeah, it looks like a top old statue head. Yeah it does. It actually factored into that terrible movie um Mission to Mars, Yeah wow, which I saw with hippie rob By the way. Oh really yeah? Nice? Was that is the last time you saw him? It was among that he just walked into the woods after that, never to be seen. Wasn't that that was Brian to Palm,

I wasn't it. I think it might have been so disappointing. I mean, it had an all starcust Gary Sinise, don Cheetle. I think Bill Paxton Maybe I don't think it was Pullman, but I might be confusing Bill Paxton from Apollo thirteen. Anyway, it didn't pan out very well. What do you got anything else? Yeah? Um, I don't know why this article doesn't mention if Mars has two moons, phobos and demos. Yeah, they didn't get into that at all. No, um and uh, Mars popped up and pops up in pop culture a lot.

There's um, the Mars Volta the band. Yeah. Uh. David Bowie had a song called Life on Mars, one of the great songs. The Misfits had the greatest Mars song, Teenagers from Mars. That's a great song. Yeah. Oh what's his name? Jared Leto right thirty seconds to Mars. Yeah, they're going on tour right after his oscar Win. I had never heard any of his music until the other day. I was like, what are they like? And Emily tried

to describe it. Then she just played a song. Yeah, it's not my bag, mine anything, but good for him. Oh yeah, I think they're like huge internationally. Yeah, he's got gout. Did you know that? I did not know that he needs to lay off the pet Noah, I think he um. I think it was had to do with his weight gain and loss for the John Lennon

Um the Mark David Chapman movie. He did, Oh really, Yeah, he got all fat to play Mark David Chapman, then like got all skinny again, I think, got gout because of it, and then got even anywhere to play Rayon in Dallas Buyers Club. Dude, have you seen it? Yes? How thin can two people get? And they were pretty thin? Like the two of them together make me. And there's gotta be like that. There's gotta be a safe way

to lose and regain weight. Yeah, but I'll bet there's not very many safe ways to gain weight to make yourself look pudgy, no, I mean, and then to lose it again, I'll bet when it's been done, like from DeNiro to Fat mac On always sunny. I think they say they just eat like lots of garbage and just pile it on. Yeah, that's not I'll beat at all now.

But you know that's one of my pet peeves. When you take a fit person in like the game thirty Pounds for a movie and it it's like you don't look like a fatter person, and you look like a fit person who like has a distended belly. You know, it takes years to get this look. You know you gotta work at it, sculpt this. Yeah, Um, okay, you got anything else? I got nothing else. I think this is better than the sun. Oh yeah. As far as our our celestial episodes go far less physics that we

had to deal with. We haven't done the moon straight up? Have we? I think we have? Have we, Jerry? Have we done the moon? I think we did because we talked about its origin, whether it was calved, whether it was a separate decreation. I'm pretty sure we've done the moon. All right, we'll look it up. Is getting bad? We need we need to get a list together, so we quit boring everyone with this. Yeah, you'd think we'd edited out,

but we just don't. Well, if you want to learn more about Mars, you can type that word into the search bar at how stuff works dot com. And Uh, since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. Uh, Josh, I'm gonna call this um your theory on eating what you crave? Did you see this email? No? Um, just listen to the Salt podcast Dude and Josh posture that you could get along just fine eating only what you crave.

I'm not sure how serious he was, though fairly serious, fairly okay, I'll agree that if it depends on whether the right I'll agree that a hundred and fifty years ago this may have been pretty viable. But these days it's a different story. There's a lot of evidence that points to food manufacturers actually designing junk foods that make you crave more of them, mainly sugar and fat heavy foods.

There's one great book in particular called Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Tobbs, basically tells the story of how a lot of what the f d A in U s d A recommends as wrong and how it got that way. For instance, the guy who conducted the seven country study, which is what caused the government to say fat will kill you, simply throughout data that contradicted the result he was looking for. Throwing the fact that corn is subsidized and super cheap, we have the recipe for

an obese, misinformed population that's addicted to sugar. Has been fed terribly wrong information about health for a long time. Yeah, I've learned recently, like you're supposed to have fats, and there are good fats and there are bad fats, but like low fat is a not a good way to go, and it has been kind of foisted on us, foisted Jerry. Jerry likes the value that word uh. And that is from Steve Baum, the bomber in what he calls good Old New Jersey or as we calls Parsis. Is he

from Tharsus City, That is Steeve Bomb. I don't know if he's from Sarcas City or not, but he's from somewhere in dars There is a really good article about um, how food scientists engineer foods to make us crave them is on the New York Times. It was a couple of years ago by a guy named Michael Moss. Yeah,

and in your defense, I don't think you were. I think you meant it more along the lines of craving real foods and not necessarily I'm craving ben and Jerry's or pretzels, you know, i' meant like like craving a steak or something like that, not ignoring that and going with you know, ahead of lettuce Um. I can't find the name of that article, but it's a Michael Moss article and it's from the New York Times, and dude,

it is good. It's one of those really extensive long form ones that like should be long form because there's just so much great information in it by opening ye So look it up, everybody. It will open your eyes. Uh. If you want to get in touch with Chucking Me, you can tweet to us at s y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know, or you can send us an email to stuff Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com. Stuff

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