¶ Mars Facts and Game
Hello science enthusiasts . My name is Jason Zakowski . I'm the dog dad of Bunsen and Beaker the science dogs on social media . If you're tuning in to side chat , welcome . My co-host is .
Hi there , i'm Chris Zakowski , and I am here as the dog mum to Bunsen and Beaker and the cat mum to Ginger .
Every week , in side chat , we bring you an amazing expert to enthrall you with their area of knowledge . And , without further ado , i'd like to welcome Dr Dabardi Doss to the space . Doc , how are you doing ?
Hi everyone , i'm so happy to be here . I'm doing good And , yeah , super excited to speak to you guys .
As I mentioned , Doc , we play a little game called Beat the Doc . Do you see the link up at the top of the nest ?
I am a fox with a witch hat .
Okay , here we go Mars facts . It's all about Mars .
You love Mars Jason .
I love Mars . Mars is about half the size of the Earth , one fifth the size of the Earth . The size of the Earth , two times the size of the Earth And again I'm using National Geographic . I could probably , I could probably . It's half the size of the Earth . That's how big Mars is . That's what National Geographic says .
Oh , we had people thinking it's bigger than Earth . That's interesting . Mars has a 12 hour day , 945 hour day , 48 hour day , roughly 24 hour day . So how long is an a day on Mars ? night It's a day And it's shocking , but it's roughly 24 hours , just a little bit more than a day on Earth . As the day on Mars , I think it's longer by 30 minutes .
Is that correct , Doc ?
Pretty much like that . I mean , if you see , the size is also pretty similar to that of Earth . So yeah , it's offset by a little bit .
Yeah , roughly 24 hour day . That's wild , that it's almost the same kind of day as we would have here on Earth . All right , slim Shady's in first . Does everybody We have to beat Chris ? This is Slim Shady . She's always does well at these . Then we've got the doc and Dr Liz , sarah B , tracy C . Okay , all right , here we go .
Next question What is one of the moons of Mars ? Phobie Callisto Deimos Io I hope I've said that correct . I didn't practice my pronunciation before that . Phobie Callisto Deimos Io . It's Deimos , and the moons of Mars are teeny , tiny , right . They're little tiny rocks compared to our moon .
Yeah , weird , little Weird , little shaped .
Yeah , weirdo shaped ones right , Like they're oddball football .
Weirdo shaped .
yeah , Okay , next question .
Carson 4, . the average temperature on Mars is Oh boy , 85 Fahrenheit or 30 degrees Celsius . That's right . I've got the Fahrenheit for the Americans there Minus 284 Fahrenheit minus 140 Celsius , minus 81 Fahrenheit minus 63 Celsius , minus 4 Fahrenheit minus 20 Celsius . So it's the average temperature . Oh no , oh no , you got that one wrong .
I did get that one wrong . Yeah , so the average according to National Geographic is minus 81 Fahrenheit minus 63 Celsius .
Wow , that's cold .
It's been colder here in Red Deer than it has been on Mars , then minus 63 , i don't think so .
Minus 63 . just better , it was colder here .
There are days in the winter where we live , doc , where it is colder on where we live than Mars . Yes , and it is very sad and we tell our students that and they pout and they're like this is the stupidest place to live .
That's motivation to forward science on Mars .
Okay , last question . Mars has an atmosphere mostly made of argon , oxygen , carbon monoxide , carbon dioxide . What is the atmosphere ?
I answered it so fast . I answered it wrong .
Oh no , you got the wrong . I bet you , i bet you , i know which one you picked . Mm-hmm , yep , yeah it's carbon dioxide , not carbon monoxide . Carbon dioxide is the atmosphere of Mars very , very thin atmosphere .
It's okay . Jason always puts distractors on there .
I do .
This is a stressful game . Let me tell you that .
In third place we have Dr Doss , in second place we have Dr Liz And , oh my God , christy , one again . How do you know so much about Mars ?
I used to teach the space unit in grade nine science .
That's right . Yeah , i knew you would do quite well at this because that's part of the curriculum in Alberta . Well , let's get back to the main show , because everybody Sarah Bram in the chat just said I just clicked the red color because you know it's Mars . That's a good way to go .
I was wondering if you could tell everybody a little bit about your science training . You have a doctorate . What's going on there ?
Yeah , so I started my school in India and I did my bachelors in science and I had a major in geology . From there I went on to study the Himalayas and I had a chance to study meteorites in Japan . I took that opportunity . That's where I did my second masters .
My first masters was on Himalayan geology , second masters being on the Shellyabinsk No , that was my internship , it was on the Uralite meteorite . That was my second masters And following that I found Mars and that's what my PhD was on past water activity in Gale Crater .
And now I'm doing a postdoc at Los Alamos National Broad Street , also studying geochemistry of Mars in Gale Crater .
Okay , when you were young I love asking this question When you were like a little little debarti , were you ? did you love space ? Were you into space or were you into other stuff ?
I was definitely into a lot of random stuff . You know , every time I go on a panel , or you know , when there are so many scientists , they're talking about how their childhood dream was to become an astronaut , become a scientist .
My dad was a scientist , but then as a kid , when someone asked me , what do you want to become , I would say , oh , I want to sell flowers by the side of the street . or I want to become an artist . And I think , growing up in India and not being , I think , kind of being a little bit neurodivergent it wasn't my picture , wasn't that ?
you know , I could become a scientist
¶ From Math Struggles to Mars Science
one day . I wasn't very good at math , So I'm I kind of I'm surprised that I am a Mars scientist , but little debarti was like a little weirdo who sat at the back of the class and doodled and didn't do well in math .
And so that's okay . You know I'm , i have science training , i teach science and I'm not great at math . Math is not my strong suit .
Yeah , i mean , did you have a good math teacher ?
I did My math teacher was the one of the one of my , one of the inspirations for me to become a teacher . actually .
Oh , that's so , that's . that's awesome , That's super inspiring .
But I was not very good at math , yeah .
Math's tricky , i would say , we can always study Mars .
Okay , there we go .
Turns out . You don't need to be amazing at math for that , but we do have some math .
Okay , i have a question . What was going on in Japan with meteorites ? Did they just have the ones you wanted to look at Like what's , what's with that ? Did you see an ad on like Facebook marketplace ?
No , So when I was studying for my , when I was doing my first masters on Himalayan geology , one of my one of my seniors sent this it wasn't an ad , it was like this information about an internship at this lab called the Planetary Materials Institute And they have a yearly internship , international internship program and they have a really good collection of different
kinds of meteorites And they have really high end instruments to study isotopes , to understand what's going on with these meteorites . And I applied for this internship and got it . And this was the first time I would . I traveled , i traveled out of India and it was super exciting .
The two months I was there with amazing students from all across the world , we did science on extraterrestrial materials and it was just extremely mind blowing for me . So I I went to the director . I went to the director and I asked him hey , can I do a you know , a graduate program here ? And he was like , yeah , you can apply for it . And I did .
And then I got in and then we changed our project a little bit to another meteorite that they had in their collection . And yeah , and that's what my second master's with .
So you , you were going from meteorite to meteorite . Was there anything wild about these that you found ?
Yeah , i my project kind of revolved around looking at about nine different uh urolyte meteorites that were collected from all across the world , um , somewhere from , uh northwest Africa , some are some , some of them were from Antarctica , and these were just , and what I was studying was like was the lithium isotope variation across the minerals inside these meteorites ,
and I was looking at trying to understand are these , have these undergone any kind of extraterrestrial , um aqueous alteration which which would mean like space weathering ?
And it was super interesting to see how these patterns kind of matched up , even if they were collected from Africa or Antarctica , which kind of gave us an idea that , huh , maybe this is not just earth . You know the , the rocks sitting out in the surface , surface off earth , um , so that that was something really cool that I found .
The meteorites were affected by space weather .
Space weathering Yeah , oh , space weathering . I was like oh man , what's the ?
five-day forecast for the oracle .
Right , yeah , I think probably affected by freeze thawing and Micro fractures and ice getting inside these meteorites and stuff .
Cool . Did you get to hold them or were they like ? Yeah how big were they ? How big were they Like ?
this is something from freaking outer space right , so we tried not to touch them . Oh . Extremely , extremely clean room and we had . So I didn't get to hold the full sample We did . We already had thin sections of it .
So you take a , take a little piece and you put it on a glass slide and you polish it so that it becomes a thin section that you can see under the microscope . So that those are the things that I had .
I had a collection of thin sections all , or in some cases , grain mounds that were polished really , really well so that we can see off the surface what it looked like . So yeah , that's kind of what my samples look like .
Wow , that's so cool . Now , from from little rocks to a big rock , you , you study Mars and specifically , you are a part of the curiosity rover team . Is that correct ?
That is correct .
Oh my goodness , do you ? do you wake up some mornings and can't believe what you're doing ?
Yeah , i definitely wake up some some mornings . I'm just like , oh , i have to reply to these emails . I'm , like you know , so stressed out , but then I have to , just , like you know , think about what I'm doing , like , oh , i'm actually today I have training on operations to Select a target , a rock target to shoot on fricking Mars .
That kind of changes My perspective of , like you know what . Having to eat answers any mail says fine , because this is amazing .
So , doc , could you specifically tell everybody like what ? what part of the rover team Are you ? Are you the driver ? Do you work on the rock part of it ? Are you the on the team chemistry , are you looking for a little green men like what ? what do you do with the rover team ?
Very good questions . So I am a part of , i'm a member of the Mars , nasa's Mars science laboratory team and I work with the group That has expertise in the chem cam instrument on board the curiosity rover , just the the laser instrument .
It's called libs , which stands for laser induced breakdown spectroscopy , and it shoots laser high powered laser beams on rock surface this to determine its chemistry . And I am a new addition to this , although I my whole PhD was looking for water soluble elements boron and lithium in salty minerals in gale crater .
So that was my PhD and I'm sort of continuing that work at Los Alamos as the postdoc with some amazing mentors and experts on my team .
Yeah , so I've been focusing on these water soluble elements and part of the team that focuses on a whole spectrum of elements , and I'm also looking at Mars , like environments on earth , to understand how the Earth is , to Understand how do these elements behave , how do they enrich , what do they tell us about , while Other movement underground on surface .
Yeah , that's , that's kind of what I'm doing so the There's a laser on the rover like is it like what dr Evil put on the sharks , like it's a freaking laser and it like lasers the rocksa little bit like that .
¶ Mars Geochemistry and Growing Food
And we always have this slide .
Oh , no , go ahead .
So it's . It's funny because often when we give presentations , we have this slide where the curiosity river is just like making this huge explosion And then we always have to have a disclaimer .
Haha , just kidding , it's an explosion like that , but you know , reduce it to like 1000 of that size and then you'll have something what's kind of closer to what we actually do on Mars , like the beam spot size is maybe like when you put a few of your hair strands together , that's how big the The laser Spots are on the rocks , so it's not very dramatic .
Oh , so you're not melting rocks into like liquid hot magma ?
I do a very small scale . Yes , we are in fact it not just magma , we're turning it into plasma . It's the fourth state of Nature ?
I guess yeah so you , the laser hits the rock . And what is the the curiosity ?
have a little smeller that comes out like slurps up the gases kind of like that , but for the , for the come , come and cement , it's basically a camera . So what happens is the high power laser Turns this very small area of rock into plasma and the plasma is basically extremely hot and also is emitting Characteristic wavelengths .
So as the plasma is cooling down , it gives off this fingerprint of different wavelengths and each wavelength is characteristic of a particular Element , for example the . On a wavelength spectrum , for example , we have these different ranges , uv , visible IR and for example , the element boron has peak in the UV spectrum around 249 nanometers . So we buy that signature .
We can tell that , oh , a few elements like iron or calcium or boron can be around this area And based on the relative intensity , we can say , oh , maybe there's a lot of it or maybe not so much of it .
So the laser tells you what's in the rocks .
Mm-hmm , yeah , and how much relatively ?
that's wild .
Right , yeah , pretty crazy .
If you're just tuning into side chat live . Hello Welcome . We are talking to dr Dabardi Doss , who is Are you an astrogeologist ? Is that a ? is that a cool Title that I just made up for you ? Is that accurate or not ? so much I .
Mean . It's pretty cool . I usually call myself a Martian Geochemist , But nobody believes that everyone's like . I used making that up Really my job . I do study Mars Geochemistry .
I Love it . That's amazing . And if you're , and if you're just joining us or if you're listening , thank you . We are gonna have some questions from the folks listening in about 15 minutes . I'm Chris . Did you want to ask your question ? if you're available .
Yeah , so one of Jason's favorite movies is the Martian with Matt Damon and also known as Mark Watley , and He was able to grow those potatoes . Yes , and so I think you know where my question is going .
You were talking about nutrients that are , or I guess you were talking about elements , but I guess I'm curious about Nutrients that we would find on Mars and if that is a plausible thing to grow those potatoes or other Things on Mars .
Right , that's such a great question . I think a lot of people have tried to answer that on earth , even without actually going to Mars .
So the things that limit us currently to grow When you foot on Mars is the presence of surface water , which isn't a lot I mean , it's nothing Because it doesn't have the atmosphere , like earth , to keep water in its liquid form , it doesn't have oxygen that plants require to grow any food , and also the Surface UV radiations are so harsh It would pretty much
kill off anything that's present . However , if you look at the chemistry of Martian soil , you can't really call it soil because soil on earth has organic mulch , let's say , and we don't really see that mulch on Mars So often we call it regolith .
So what people have done on earth is they've taken that Mars chemistry and they've tried to simulate a Mars like soil composition To see if anything would grow on that , and this was done by Vama Link at all . I think this was in 2014 .
They did it on Mars and moon soil simulants to see what grows on it and they found out just with the soil , if they provided water And you know , regular , non killer sun rays . They tried to plant tomatoes and watercress and mustard and these did . These actually did better in the Mars simulant soil than nutrient poor river soils on earth .
So no way really .
Yeah , yeah , yeah . I mean , if you , if we have the water carrying capacity , if we have the organics present , mars rocks are pretty dense and nutrients by themselves .
So , yeah , we , if we had that bio What what should I say the the production of biomass use through bacteria , i think plants would thrive , but it's a pretty Unhabitable situation going on on the surface right now .
That see , i did a story on the science podcast about growing stuff in regolith from the moon and It's struggled like . I think they used mustard , like some like really hearty Plant , and I don't know how long you can live off mustard if you're trapped .
I mean I guess you'll have to adapt .
You're pretty awful diet . Yeah , it grew , but it was like it struggled big time . That's that's wild about Mars . I didn't know that that's so cool .
I mean , some people also think that you know you'd need bacteria to turn stuff into other good stuff for plants . So if there was cyanobacteria which thrives in low pressure , a high carbon dioxide environment , it could get it , get get the soil a little bit less hostile , hmm .
But I think people think that initially you'd have to start the stuff hydroponically with artificial lights , protected from the , the pillar , pillar sun , sun rays on the surface , yeah .
So it was totally plausible that Watney was able to grow potatoes inside the dome using more .
Yeah wow .
Yeah , the dome . The dome would have worked and he got all that water too . Right Like he worked hard for that water and Maybe got some sign of got some , got his hands on some sign of bacteria to turn it into compost , turn stuff into compost .
Hmm , i just love being able to talk about the Martian , because Chris is right , that's one of my all-time favorite movies .
Yeah , he got to . He even got to hold a Mars meteorite . Isn't that cool .
Oh , mark , or Matt Damon . Matt Damon , sorry , what a lucky . He's not even a real scientist . Yeah , but it's pretty cool .
Yeah , holding Mars meteorites would be pretty cool .
It would be um . so here's a question What three items would you bring with you if you were to go tomorrow ?
Lots of water , for sure , and definitely some dehydrated . Yeah , water , i mean , it's pretty obvious and dehydrated foods you know , the ones that are extremely dense and nutrients , the ones that you , you know it's . It's just like , wow , this is just full of sugar , but You'd need that . Lots of beef jerky , i think , or jerky's of some kind .
So compressed foods and , yeah , i mean Oxygen tanks , or at least the blueprints of turning , you know whatever Matt Damon did , their blueprints of turning mass and Balance of carbon dioxide and oxygen , so that I can just hang around and chill After having done all that travel . I think those will be my top three for sure .
Yeah , maybe some kind of bacteria too , if I had a fourth option .
What about things that are not needed for survival , like three ? Three items not needed for survival , like you know , luxury items .
Luxury items I mean another human being would be like luxury , i think okay could be there . I would probably go insane if I was just by myself . Like you know , i can't . There's only so much meditation You can do by yourself , so a friend would be nice .
I mean , i understand it's like not an object , but definitely a luxury sign friend or a non , i don't know artist friend would be good . Hmm , what are the other two things ? I would bring some music , because That's awesome . You know , music is so inspiring and Tons of Abba , abba . Oh , my gosh , that's you hit the nail on the head out .
Tons of Abba , yeah , all kinds of stuff actually . It'll help me dance . So I love dancing . It motivates me in science , for sure . What's that ? the what's ? the third thing ? Oh , i would bring art supplies so that I could do some art . Yeah , I think I'd be sad .
Yeah , very cool . So when you were studying the rocks , was there anything you found that has blown you away so far , like , is there something you're like ? whoa , that's so cool .
Just think , finding things every day is kind of , when I think a little bit about it , i'm just kind of blown away that , wow , we are looking at At the chemistry of rocks on another , like we literally drilled a little hole on Rocks on another planet , like that blows my mind and To the fact that there used to be water and there , there , all these water
soluble elements that tell us this really cool story Of what possibly could have happened . It's just like super satisfying detective work that you get paid to do It . Just It's kind of blows my mind . So yeah , it sounds a little bit mundane , but it's literally the chemistry of another whole planet In our solar system .
So yeah , very cool next time on Detective de Bardi Doss .
Love that yeah .
You're uh , yeah , you're uh , you're uh . What kind of title would you be as a detective ? a Martian detective ?
Private I .
Very good .
Private Martian ? I don't know , uh , what would you say ? a private Martian ? I a private laser .
Would you have a hotheaded boss that you'd have to like go around to get the job done ? I ? Hope not 1980s , 1970s Detective shows where the like the gum shoes always got his boss breathing You can't do that Doss .
Doss , you can't do that and you're like , haha , yeah , actually , yeah , haha , i did that . I kind of like that , yeah , yeah , okay , that that makes academia sound like relatable and better . No shade , no shade .
So when it's time to laser a rock , like , do you Does ? do you ask the camera people to look around and then you just vote on which rock to laser ? or Or do you do what ? do you spin around in a circle and was ever pointing at the rock that one gets to go .
I mean pretty much so their Operations and you get schedules to do operations and the chem cam team . So I'm still in training . So There are all these teams that come together and there's the engineering team
¶ Choosing Targets for Life Detection
. So what the chem cam team does is like we do look around and see what's a really good target That's not too close to the , the rover .
In case , like you know , we don't want to hit the rover with the laser beam and it can't look directly at the Sun because , well , you know , mess up the detectors so we have something called the sun blob , so it can't be your You know , like how we can't , we shouldn't be looking directly at the Sun , we don't want the rover to directly look at the Sun .
So we have to be careful not to be in the sun blob . And Also , the target that we have chosen it can't be Too far because although we're doing a long distance , a Remote measurement , it still has to be within four meters . So there are these three criteria is that we have to follow and also we also we want to meet the science Goals of the .
Really we want to understand How is the rock changing from as we are moving along the traverse , and also what is exciting , what is something , what is new . So we have to have a balance of , like characterizing the whole past , staying , staying on on this .
You understand , this regimented documentation of the changing rock and Also a little bit of you know , fun with new things . It can't all be new things or can't just be Looking at the same rocks , the bedrock , all the time .
So , yeah , that's kind of how we like pick a target , then have a plan and then all the other instruments Have a plan and the engineers will come together , put that plan together , make sure all the , the rover cooling is in place and nothing is on fire , and then in the next , next date , the , the plan gets deployed and we find out the next time the
Orbiter is in place , whether the data was downloaded , downlinked or not , and then we discuss what they're , what we we saw on on Gil crater , yeah , Because the rover has to talk to the orbiter and the orbiter has to talk to NASA .
Is that right ? the , the Martian , the little rover thing , isn't beaming back itself ?
Yeah , exactly .
Okay , cool . So I have one more question for our guests , and I've left some pretty big ones out for folks if they are curious to ask The doc some more . So on purpose I've left some follow-up out . Maybe some people like , oh , i wish , i wish I would ask that question . Well , guess what ? you're gonna have a chance .
And my last one's more of a big picture question , doc , and that's Mm-hmm . People are always like looking for life outside the earth , and There I mean maybe we'll find it on Mars . I think as of yet there hasn't been life found on Mars . What are some other candidates for life that's close to home ?
That's a really good question . So we have a lot of places to look at , starting with our solar system , some of the key things that we need for life or water .
So I think for a lot of planetary scientists , the obvious choices are Planetary bodies that have a lot of water , and some of these planetary bodies tend to be icy moons , and I think some good candidates for this are Jupiter's moon which one is that Europa and Saturn's Moon and Solidus and I think Titan too .
So they have a lot of surface ice and below that it's Hypothesis to have a lot of . You know , it's like a ocean , ocean moon basically .
So , yeah , there are a lot of hypotheses on what possible life could exist here , and Terrestrial analogous like similar work to understand what kind of extremophiles as in life that likes likes to live in extreme environments a lot of research on that is ongoing in Alaskan or Arctic lakes and , yeah , on earth there is , extremophiles are abundant , so there's a lot
of hope to find out , find to at least do a lot of research on these IC moons to understand what is the potential of habitability in these areas , given there's so much water , and beyond our solar system .
I think exoplanet planetiers , exoplanetary scientists are doing a lot of research on something called the habitable zone in other solar systems , which is also known as the Goldilocks zone .
I think I'm not an expert at this , but I definitely studied this in my exoplanet class and when I was doing grad school , and this is one of the really cool things for me to realize , like , wow , you know , like we , sometimes we get so caught up in our like oh , we have these habitable planets in our solar system and that's so cool , we have to get there
. But then there are these other solar systems that also have this habitable zone , which is basically the distance from a sun to a planet where , you know , the temperature is just right And it is an Earth or Mars sized planet where life could be potential , and maybe they have a similar wobble like Earth and maybe they have seasons and stuff .
So that's definitely a potential to understand that these could be habitable planets that are outside our solar system , and maybe we can't really get there right now , but hey , it's there , you know .
Very cool . I know I think I'm still going to be alive when some of those missions launch to those different moons the Europa and the Enceladus ones And I think they're sending something to Titan like a weird chopper thing that's going to be flying around through Titan's atmosphere , which is very , very cool .
¶ Dragonfly Mission and Pet Dilemmas
Yeah , that's such an exciting mission .
I hope something reaches out and licks it . That's what I'm hoping Licking your key , some kind of ? weirdo alien thing just licks the chopper that's flying around on Titan .
Isn't that the dragonfly ?
Yeah , the dragonfly Yeah .
I love the name of the mission .
I love it to the very first science podcast episode , when I didn't know what I was doing . That was the first science story that I covered . I know , and because of that it's just in the back of my brain , that it'll eventually be here and it'll come full circle when we cover it on the science podcast .
Yeah , Yeah , I think it's like is that ? I think it's proposed somewhere in 2020 , something right ? I don't know .
I'd have to go back 2028 , but things keep moving around . Yeah , things moving around And it takes like a year to get there , a year and a half or something Like . it's a long hoof to get to Saturn .
Yep , it's not closed .
Well , we're at the time of the space where we take community questions , people that maybe have questions for Dr Doss about Mars , things that I left out . I see we have some speakers that we've brought up As we're getting ready . I want to give a shout out to our partner , indra .
Indra is our amazing partner who runs audio shows about mindfulness , meditation and wellness , and she runs them during the day and they have grown to have huge followings Just amazing . So congratulations , indra , and up in the nest . I've put Indra's latest one , which is happening tomorrow . Tomorrow , yeah , so it's about my mastering mindfulness tips .
That's some alliteration happening there . Okay , so I think we'll go to Tracy and then Richard Tracy go ahead . Hi , hello .
I just wanted to know if you have a pet story for us .
Yeah , i mean , i used to have a pet when I lived in Montreal . Unfortunately , i wasn't able to move with my pet because of limited resources and travel , and they don't let you take animals if you can't keep them in your apartment , so I had to leave my cat Kitty behind .
But there is this one cat that comes by on sunny days and I am trying to make friends with them . I don't know their gender And , yeah , once in a while Kitty will come by and sometimes I'll leave snacks out . But now I am in this conundrum because it is hummingbird season in New Mexico And I've put up this hummingbird feeder .
So I think the hummingbirds don't come by because they're scared of the kitty . So I have to have a balance of feeding the kitty versus feeding the hummingbirds , but I want both of them to be there , but I also don't want the kitty to be attacking native birds . So yeah , that's my dilemma , that story .
Thanks for asking that . Tracy , did you name ? do you have a name for the kitty ? Doc , it's Kitty , just Kitty . Okay , there was an outside Kitty at where we live .
They just randomly show up because we live on a farm and they're just strays that come by much the same as your situation And I believe one of them was this cat that they called okay , but he would , but that was short for outside Kitty , Was that ?
is that right , Chris ? Okay , We call them okay like orange kitty or outside Kitty . Yeah .
I kind of love that . I might steal that . Actually I like that , and then maybe I would have to have an inside Kitty . I K to have an outside Kitty , yeah .
I like that too .
Okay , i K .
Yeah , As we're bringing people up . There's somebody who requested and I'm sorry you don't have your DMs turned on and we don't know you . We're not saying that you would be a troll , but we have been burnt in the past . That's at Brook for life art . Maybe DM us with the question you'd like .
We won't ask , we won't let you up otherwise , So just keep that in mind . We want to make sure we only bring people up that we know , or we can ask if we're unfamiliar with the account . We're going to go over to Richard , Go ahead .
Yes , doctor , when you fire off the laser on the rover and do the analysis , does it take very long for the rover to re-carg ?
Ooh , that's a good question .
That's a really good question . So there are certain tasks that are pretty power hungry . On the rover , for example , drilling is extremely power hungry . So , compared to drilling , shooting a laser is not as power hungry . But yes , the rover definitely requires naps to charge .
Yeah , it needs to cut down on its power hungry tasks and often some tasks are not possible , so we get something called the power gift so we can do extra analysis with that . So , yeah , strategize with power . For sure It's a really good question .
Richard , are you cool ? Is that good ? Do you have a follow up question ? That was a really good question . I never even thought of that . Okay , richard's giving a thumbs up . How is the rover powered Like when you say it has to have a nap ? what is it ? What's going on there ?
I think it has to do with the overall lifetime . It is powered by a radioactive source . That's actually a really good question that I didn't think about myself . I have not . It's not solar powered , So I think it's either to preserve the lifetime of how long we can do the analysis Yeah , I think I would say that , but I should look that up .
Why we're taking these naps but it's also so that we can preserve the long term energy for all the science based analysis , I think .
Perfect , great question , richard . Okay , we're going to go over to Cece .
Thanks so much everybody , And thank you so much , Dr Doss , for giving this really fascinating talk . You mentioned early in the talk that some scientists are researching Mars-like environments on Earth And I was wondering what those were .
Also a very , very good question . Often people will ask what is the perfect Mars-like environment on Earth And to answer that I know that's not directly your question , but there is no perfect analog for Mars in one place on Earth , so it depends on what you're looking at on Mars .
So , pretty much like Earth , mars has lots of different areas and different areas experienced different physiochemical processes . So , based on what physiochemical process you are studying , if you want to look at basalts on Mars , you would probably have to go to a place that has a lot of basalts .
And if you are studying salts on Mars , you'd like to go to a place on Earth that has a lot of salts , that is dry , that has a bunch of dry lakes , where you can study all kinds of different salty rocks . So Mars has different kinds of iron-rich rocks . So there are some areas on Earth that show similar rock compositions .
But it's obviously not a one-to-one match because we have different atmospheres to account for different . There's life on Earth , there's biogenic activity going on , so it's never a one-to-one direct comparison . But we can always kind of understand what kind of physical and chemical processes could have happened if we changed the parameters a little bit .
So my area of study was based on dry lakes on Mars , so I went to Death Valley in California to understand what salts look like on Mars , or veins of salts in loose clay-like rocks would look like , and that was a really good comparison and helped me understand what Mars would do in a wet , dry seasonal cycle .
That's really cool . Thank you , that's really cool . Thank you so much , yay awesome .
Good question .
Great question . Thanks , Cece . Okay , we'll go to Sarah .
Hey everybody , thanks for letting me come up and speak . So I don't know if you all saw in the comments I've been plugged
¶ The Arc
. I am very nerding out during this space because I recently started watching the TV show The Arc . It came out and it started in February and just season one just ended a couple of year months ago and they just got renewed for season two . But it's basically exactly what you guys were talking about , jason and Chris .
I think you guys would love this if you get , i don't know , i don't know , in Canada Do you guys have peacock The streaming run by NBC ?
I think we probably could subscribe , chris , do you know anything more ?
I know zero things Okay .
So it's in the US . It's streaming on peacock , but it's basically the premise is it's 100 years in the future and Earth is dying And there are a group of people who are on this fancy spaceship headed for this mystery planet that is supposed to be the next Earth . Okay . Yeah , and it has turned me into a sci-fi fan .
I have never been a sci-fi fan until this show . I watched the pilot just to give it a chance , because its creative team is people who I like for other shows , and I got hooked .
Yay , a convert . Awesome Welcome to sci-fi .
But yeah , i mean the whole growing plants and space thing they have . I'm trying not to give things away . They figure out a way to grow plants on a spaceship . That's so inspiring . Yeah , no , really I'm glad , but I'm not going to give spoilers , but it's definitely . It's very interesting , especially to think about because it's 100 years in the future .
You know , like what happens on Earth between now and then , kind of it gets you thinking a bit about the environment . Besides it being a drama , it actually gets you thinking a little bit about like what's going to happen between now and then , kind of thing . And it's really it's really interesting . It is a drama , obviously , but it's .
it actually is quite thought provoking .
So yeah , I have to check it out . I haven't heard of that one before .
I don't know . I mean I think I'd assume it's fitting it will be in Canada . I don't know why not . I mean I know it's starting . It will be premiering in other countries soon and it's second season got announced the day the season finale aired . So I don't know , but hopefully .
Okay , Doc , have you heard ? have you heard of that one before , Doc ?
I have heard of it , i've just not watched it . Recently I have not . I don't know Something about my brain doesn't let me watch TV or movies anymore . I feel like I'll just kind of you know , wander away . But that sounds extremely interesting And I am highly motivated to watch it .
Is it a tough thing Like you work studying Mars all day and then you know people like me are like Hey , here's this Mars TV show you could watch here . Like wait , that kind of feels like work to me .
I mean , you know , on some days , for sure , on some days , some days are extremely heavy and something's so stressful And I just want to watch some , you know , extremely lightweight reality TV show that has nothing to do with science , but on some days I'm so motivated to watch sci-fi and things that really , really draw me to what I'm doing .
I think it depends on the day . There are some days where I'm just going to sit down and read like a whole book about possibility of life or Mars , science fiction , to understand , like , what people's imaginations have been on this super amazing study of our , you know , solar system . So I think it depends .
I was just mentioning that , because for for about how long was it , Chris ? Eight months I worked in the oil patch as a Oh wow . Yeah , And what was really funny is there's this game called Oil Man That's the name of the game And and so people would . People would work all day and then at night they would play Oil Man , which was like drilling for oil .
Oh my God , you're hooked like on site and off site .
Yeah , So I was just . that's the whole thing . It's like there's another game called Farmville that was really popular and , like some of the farm people would , Those farmers . Yeah , they'd like farm all day and then they play Farmville at night and I'm like , oh my goodness , so I can .
I can get it .
Yeah .
Yeah , yeah . Yeah , it definitely depends , because some days are definitely not . You know , on spy , i mean Mars science , where we're making big strides in humanity . It's just a lot of like why isn't my laptop working with this data , or something like that .
So we have one final question from Facebook . I think all of our speakers have asked or spoken , and it's from Madison Redford on Facebook . Madison says does Dr Doss think we can live on Mars , not Mars like Earth at one time ?
Very good question . I personally think that , yes , mars used to be like Earth And at that point it would have been habitable . But today it would be a really hard task to do that . It's way easier and way nicer to live on Earth .
So the appeal of , like you know , if Earth gets really polluted and we can just like hop off to another planet , it's actually way harder than maintaining the wonderful environment that we have on Earth . So it would start with a lot of you know one way trips there And it would , i mean , as all you know , like novel science missions , human science missions .
There's a possibility of , like life being sacrificed there . So it's not an easy path where we can just be like , oh , tomorrow we're just going to go colonize I don't like that word colonize We can go live on Mars . It's extremely complicated .
We don't have air to breathe , we don't have water to drink , the sun rays will probably kill you , if you know you don't have Mars grade sun protection . So theoretically you could , and based on movies , yes , imaginatively we can imagine a life on Mars . But will it be pleasant ? Probably not .
Yeah , Um , Madison , did that answer your question ? Oh , Madison says thanks . So we're at the top of the hour And as we have no more guests , I think it's time to do a little bit of wrap up . Uh , Dr Doss , we had an interview with you for the science podcast , So that will be coming out a little bit later .
This recording will go out right away And if you want to know more everybody , if you're like oh , I'd like to know more about what the doc is up to And then some more deep dives into what makes you tick , that that will be on the science podcast , the full episode .
Yay , awesome .
So you are still trucking along looking at the doing the rock thing for the next next little bit here , doc .
Yep , pretty much I love it .
That's amazing . Uh , thank you so much for being a guest with us tonight . This was so fun and so interesting .
Thank you for having me again . All the questions were amazing .
All right , wrap up music . There we go . Well , chris , that was pretty cool . Hey , i don't know if you can . Maybe you're wrangling the dogs , i don't know .
Yeah , i'm trying to settle the dogs . They are definitely toddlers , both of them tonight .
Oh well , you did a good , you did very good . I didn't hear a word from them , which was awesome . Uh .
Dr , What Bunsen was barking . You probably heard a bark from him .
It wasn't too bad . It wasn't too bad , it's all good . So to everybody who had great questions tonight , thank you , that is amazing . And again to our guests , dr Doss , thanks for being with us tonight .
Hey , thanks for having me .
A reminder to everybody that pet chat is every Saturday and that will be this Saturday at 6pm mountain time , 8pm Eastern .
¶ Science Podcast Updates and Sales Extension
Uh , a couple information items . We'd love for you , if you're listening , to check out the science podcast And I haven't checked where we are today , but , as I was mentioning on Saturday , we are one podcast ranking behind Bill Nye the Science Guy . So you know , amazing , yeah , we zipped on by Dr DeGrease Tyson . We're ahead of Star Talk on Good Pods .
Um , we're one behind Bill Nye the Science Guy right now . So , um , we just need to get more people listening to the show , uh , so we'd love for you to listen to the science podcast wherever you find podcasts , but Good Pods is amazing , it's a great place to listen to podcasts . And what's another information item ? Chris , did I get everything ?
Well , we had extended the ginger stuffy sale .
Oh yeah , we've extended that kind of indefinitely kind because we heard from people they just needed a bit more time to think about it or , um , it wasn't a great time to make a purchase . So we have extended the ginger stuffy and I'm I just need to reschedule some posts about that , chris . So , um , people will know I just need to get on my own .
I just need to do that . And if you're wondering who our guest is next week , we have Grant Steiner next week .