Is It Okay to Touch Mars?

[Music] hey vauce Michael here no rocks from Mars have ever been brought back to Earth and no human has ever touched anything on Mars but that's about to change National Geographic has asked me and Jake and Kevin to talk about Mars because they have a show coming out soon all about how we are planning to turn Mars into a home a place where humans will soon be living and working it's a plan set to become a reality in the 2030s that's cool but beyond just how there are everyday life questions raised we would be literally

beginning Society all over again on a new planet whose laws will Martian colonists follow what kind of watches and calendars will they use and what will be lost if we as a species gain Mars is it okay to touch Mars what will its flag look like in 1998 Pascal Lee designed a flag for Mars that was flown at the Hutton Mars project research station where how humans might live and work on other planets was studied the flag is a nod to Kim Stanley Robinson's famous red Mars green Mars and blue Mars Trilogy should we have

the technological and political ability to do so at some point in the future we could terraform Mars from a red planet into a green with life and then blue watery earthlike one this flag has since been used by a number of Mars exploration societies and was even flown into space aboard Space Shuttle Discovery by Astronaut John M grunsfeld in 1999 that all makes it a pretty good Contender to be the first official flag of Mars the outer space Treaty of course prohibits National appropriation of celestial bodies but it doesn't necessarily stop private individuals or companies

from doing so but since it takes months at best to actually go between Earth and Mars and minutes to even communicate at light speed how would and who would enforce laws on Mars if Martian colonists did things that we here on Earth disagreed with what could we do to pressure them otherwise or punish them for being criminals one idea extraterrestrial Liberty is to just give up control and release those headed to Mars from all current earth-based laws their nationalities hold them to to allow them to become Mars citizens able to make laws elect live and

die the way they want free from any currently existing state that might be reasonable but it raises another question when when is Mars now what time is it there for colonists on Mars and earthwatch would be of very little help a day on Mars the time it takes the planet to turn around once Sunrise to Sunrise is about 2.7% longer than on Earth I mean that's pretty close but over time it adds up gradually an earth watch on Mars would drift and the time it said would tell you very little about night and day on

the red planet to combat this scientists on Earth who work with robotic Rovers on Mars use Mars time they actually live by it you can download a program that tells you solar times on mars or do what many scientists have done get yourself a watch that runs 2.7% slower than usual if every second every minute is 2.7% slower than it should be it'll be perfect for matching Mars's rotation that could spell trouble for Martian colonists though who wish to tune in to live events on earth like sports or award shows but again given the immense

travel time between the two earthlings and martians may find that having similar timekeeping systems just isn't really that necessary in their everyday lives okay right now on Earth it is um 20 16 as we know one trip through all the seasons from now will have been a year but in that same time Mars will have only traveled part of the way through its Seasons if Martian colonists continue to use Earth years that's okay but it would mean that for them years would feel a bit arbitrary they wouldn't contain environmental Cycles like ours do perhaps if

they feel disconnected and emancipated from Earth calendars they'll just use their own Martian year system as well a few such calendars have been proposed some divided into familiar week and month lengths but with about twice as many of each per year the thing however that fascinates me most about putting humans living things on Mars is a more touching topic literally humans will likely touch the red planet in our lifetimes and the first to do so will be famous but jokes on them I mean we me you we're all already touching Mars let me ask you

this where did you get that body that one you're in right now it's made of atoms and molecules but they come and go you eat and breathe and absorb things use them for a while but eventually shed or exhale or otherwise pass them through a month from now your skin will be completely different skin all new cells the red blood cells you've got now will only be with you for about another 4 months like a water wave you're a temporary arrangement of stuff a really neat thing that dirt does but not all of this dirt

that you are the Dust In from dust to dust is Earth dirt new stuff is always falling to Earth anywhere from 5,000 to 300,000 k of Space Rock Dust debris asteroid fragments a day some of which inevitably winds up being you part of your body for a while now that may sound like a lot of material but compared to the mass of Earth it's small some of these ET rocks are debris that's been floating around our Solar System since the planets formed some has come from asteroid collisions some has even come from Interstellar space beyond

our solar system what's neat is that because atoms and molecules are so small even the tiny amount of interstellar material Landing here adds up to a lot at the atomic scale ask a physicist estimated that if only 0.01% of all the Extraterrestrial material falling to Earth comes from beyond our solar system and even if only 10% of that stuff is water that would still mean that 50 billion 5 billion with a B of the water molecules in your body right now as you watch this video were in interstellar space fewer than 1,000 years ago some

of the space material falling to Earth comes from planets like Mars when powerful enough impacts occur on its surface Martian material can reach escape velocity and begin an interplanetary Journey rarely but occasionally this journey terminates on Earth it's been estimated that Martian meteorites only fall to Earth about once every 50 years or so that's a long time in human years but in Planet years that's nothing your physical body right now likely contains billions of atoms that used to be on Mars and arrived here on Earth in the last 1,000 years if you consider stuff from

Mars that's been here on on Earth for less than a millennium as being Martian well it's tenable to say that you are Point 00000000000000 00000000000000 1% Martian but before you get too excited there's a difference between Martian debris that was roasted and exploded in our atmosphere centuries ago and actual still on Mars material the difference might be small or it might be big when Apollo 11 astronauts returned from the Moon they didn't splash down and then run into the arms of family members instead they were locked away in quarantine for 3 weeks just in case

the moon harbored any kind of previously unknown or Unthinkable life form an organism or virus that could have come back to earth with them one that earthlife had never encountered and thus never been naturally selected to resist the threat of a moon bug pandemic wiping out life on Earth was just large enough that NASA took precautions though later buz Aldren admitted on Twitter that their quarantine facility wasn't perfectly sealed luckily no moon germs escaped and infected all Earth life probably because there weren't any to begin with after Apollo 14 the moon quarantine requirement was lifted

because it had become sufficiently clear that the moon was devoid of life but Mars well we still don't know exactly we haven't found macroscopic life on Mars but the possibility of tiny things hasn't yet been ruled out and the incredible consequences contamination could have means it remains a serious concern there's even an advocacy group of scientists from all over the world called the international Committee Against Mars sample return but it's not just back contamination that matters the transfer of extraterrestrial organisms to Earth there's also forward contamination the transfer of Earth organisms to things in space

any life that might currently exist on Mars could be incredibly vulnerable to things we here on Earth barely notice but accidentally bring there how sad would it be to one day find life on Mar Mars Only to realize that it's all dead everything it had to teach us about itself about Mars about the solar system about life wiped out just a few years ago by a virus stowed away unbeknownst to us on one of our robotic missions extremophile organisms have been found that may be able to survive such a trip life here on Earth may

have even arrived from space in that way a concept called panspermia so should we be scared of monsters beyond our atmosphere I'm reminded of the gloworm in their larval stage the gloworms stick to the tops of caves and leaves usually above water sources their glow resembles the night sky the tempting expanse of other worlds beyond our own like us bugs are attracted to this Vista believing it's a way out of the cave of course it's not the glowworms dangle sticky mucus strings from their perches snares that capture their prey are the real stars no different

a clever trap that keeps alien Predators fed probably not but that hasn't stopped space agencies like NASA from forming divisions like their office for planetary protection a group that oversees plans for Missions that might bring Earth and alien life into contact currently all missions to Mars must satisfy the Coleman Sean equation this sterilization restriction Works to ensure that the probability of us contaminating places like Mars with foreign Earthly organisms is not zero but at most 1 in 10,000 that was considered acceptable given the number of Mars missions we'd probably do before fully understanding its exobiology

so far we have no evidence that anything is alive on Mars right now or has ever been but that brings us to ansmet the Antarctic search for meteorites an effort that since 1976 has found more than 20,000 extraterrestrial rocks in Antarctica the first one they found in Allen Hills in 1984 was special for one thing it's believed to have originated on Mars it's estimated that about 17 million years ago this piece of rock was blasted off the surface of Mars by a meteor and reached terminal velocity about 5 km/s fast enough to leave Mars entirely

after flying through space for a very long time 13,000 years ago it got captured by Earth's gravity and fell to our planet's surface 12 years after its Discovery the presence of what looked like microscopic fossils were discovered on the Rock could they be evidence of Martian life the claim didn't convince everyone but to this day the structures exact Origins haven't been explained how exactly to tell whether they're caused by living things isn't agreed on either but the finding was a major event in the field of astrobiology and the Public's understanding of it the discovery was

possibly so momentous that US President Bill Clinton gave remarks about it saying today Rock 841 speaks to us across all those billions of years and millions of miles it speaks of the possibility of life if this discovery is confirmed it will surely be one of the most stunning insights into our universe that science has ever uncovered after his statement these are the two questions he was asked by the Press did he believe abortion rights were under attack and where did he get his tie the thing is alien nanobacteria Don't Wear Ties they don't legislate or

govern us or control our lives or look anything like us if they exist we'll most likely be in control of them and probably actually not even notice them under our boots so does protecting or preserving them not matter I mean should should we just not let them get in the way of our progress as a species well that's a fundamental question that touches upon what we want our purpose to be in this universe labeling parks of Mars don't touch as parks would be a great way to preserve it as it was before we came so

that our grandchildren and their children can see what Mars was like for well most of human history others have argued that we shouldn't go at all that Mars is best left to itself humans ruin things and what right do we have to alter Mars if we can help ourselves still others say why stop at Natural Parks if we find viable Life on Mars it may be struggling to survive a rare Relic uh perhaps from a time when Mars was more hospitable to life they argue that we should help change Mars so that those remaining Martian

organisms can Thrive and multiply and be their best selves with our technology intelligence and sapience we perhaps alone in the solar system have the power to help them and we should help our elves to Mars second these aren't just hypothetical philosophical Problems by the way with plans for M missions to Mars just a bit under two decades away their questions we will actually need to answer quite soon should humans go to Mars it would be a great way to spread out to diversify our habitats so we're still around should anything happen to Earth and of

course it does give us more space for more people but for what ultimately Jupiter doesn't care if there are 7 billion humans or 7 trillion the volcanoes of IO will continue erupting whether or not we write any more poems about love if humans were wiped out today the fundamental forces of the universe wouldn't change and distant galaxies would continue their Journeys into the abyss beyond the obs able Universe just as they already are and always will what good is life to the universe perhaps it has none but we are possibly its greatest and only hope

to find out we may not treat life as well as we could but whatever this darn life thing is keeping it around might very well be up to us we owe it at least that much and as always thanks for watching for more on how we plan to make Mars home check out National Geographics new Global event series Mars premiering Monday November 14th at 98 Central