Daniel and Jorge Explain the UniverseWhere in the solar system might we find life? (ft. Katie Goldin of Creature Features)
Katie Goldin, host of the Creature Features pod, visits to talk about what's needed for life and where in the solar system it might be hiding.
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Hey, Daniel, I've got a tough question for you. Ooh, I love those, Well, you might not like this one.
I don't know. Bring it on right?
Would you prefer that we A never find life outside of Earth? Or B we find alien live but it's just tiny little microbes?
Oh man? You mean like we find aliens, but I don't get to ask them any physics questions.
Not unless you speak microbe no and ask. But I'm not sure that micros will reply.
Oh that's such a nightmare scenario. But even worse, what if alien physicists come here and find us, but we just seem like microbes to them?
Oh man, they might not even bother to ask us physics questions.
How dare they?
Hi?
Am orham a cartoonism, the creator of PhD Comics.
Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and if the aliens come, I demand an audience.
With them, even if they are microbes.
Hey, my wife is a microbiologist, so I think I've learned to speak microbe a little bit.
Oh, I see, might be funny of our first contact with adien life is that we accidentally breathe them and then kill them with our immune system.
That's right, Maybe they'd be inside us, right, we catch some alien disease. I think I've seen that movie.
But welcome to our podcast Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of iHeartRadio.
In which we take you on a tour of everything that's amazing and beautiful and squishy and dangerous in this universe and try to explain it all to you.
Or squishy and dangerous at the same time.
And amazing and bonkers. The universe is bizarre. It's stranger that fiction and what we discover out there is always weirder than what we imagine.
That's right, And it's also really big universe. And so a big question for us and for everyone is are we alone in the universe? In this huge giant cosmos. Are we the only Synthian life out there? Or are there other living things out there in this solar system or in this galaxy?
That's right, because we want to know are we the only ones thinking these questions? Are we the only ones trying to figure out how this universe works, why we're here, what we're supposed to do with our lives? And should we get out of bed in the morning? Are we the only ones or are there other people out there who have maybe made significant advances? And would you know, give us a clue? That would be fun.
Well, to be honest, Daniel, I record from my bed, so literally I don't have to get up well cover.
Well, maybe you answered the question, Jorge, but not everybody else out there has figured it out for themselves. And you know, this is a question that when we think about we wonder sometimes cosmically, like are there alien civilizations and minds out there deep, deep, far away in space? But it's also a question we could ask about our own neighborhood.
Yeah, because you know, I feel like most science fiction movies assume that when we find alien life, it's you know, from a galaxy far far away, or you know, maybe from another part of the galaxy or some are way out there in space. But maybe you know, there is a question of whether or not life could also be here in our own backyard, in our own Solar system.
Yeah, and I think historically it's a fascinating question because a long time ago, hundreds of years ago, we didn't know the answer to that question. People wondered, you know, is their life on Mars. And then more recently, like one hundred years ago, fifty years ago, it seemed to be sort of settled that there wasn't a place in the Solar System where we could find intelligent life or life at all. But then recently I think the question has changed again and now we have a new perspective on life in our own backyard.
So today on the podcast, we'll be asking the question, what's the most likely place in the Solar System to find life.
Other than of course here on Earth.
And I guess not Twitter. Twitter wouldn't be it, Daniel.
Not if we're talking about intelligent life.
Yeah, we'll be tackling this question of whether or not and where would we most likely find life in our own solar system. And so we have a special treed for you guys. Here today, we have a guest today to help us answer this question and to talk about the possible places in our solar system that we can find life. She's the guest of the podcast Creature Features, which you can also find on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you listen to podcasts, and so welcome Katie Golden.
Hey, guys, thank you so much for having me.
Thanks very much for being a guest on our podcast.
Yeah.
I was a guest on Creature Features last week or so and had a blast talking to Case about irradiating animals or animals that survive irradiation. No animals were intentionally irradiated for that podcast.
I was just gonna ask you can have Pete knocking on our podcast doors.
You know, although we did, of course create our own radiation. You know, the sound waves you are hearing in your ear right now are a form of non ionizing, non damaging intellectual radiation NERD radiation, pure nerd radiation.
It'll make your brain grow.
Yeah, good, crazy brain o Case. Okatie, you have a biology background, right.
Yeah, So I actually studied both psychology and biology at Harvard as an undergrad, and after that I went into the various fields of both science education and comedy, a natural mix.
Science comedy or science education kind of plus comedy.
Science education plus comedy. The comedy thing came after the science education because I think I having to do a bunch of learning modules about all these diseases and stuff. I was like, you know, I need a little comedy in my life.
And nothing says disease.
Like.
That's what I did when I would I would do these educational animations for pharmaceutical researchers and I would say, but you know what the best medicine is laughter?
Yeah, for sure, for sure. And so Katie, that's kind of what your podcast is about. And you talk about biology and creatures, but you also mix in comedians and a lot of funny stuff. You want to tell us a little bit about it.
Yeah, So it's called Creature Feature, And I like to explore what is it like to be an animal? And I think it's a lot easier to relate to animals when you think about it from a human lens. So it's fun to look at all this huge variety and great diversity of animal behaviors and kind of try to imagine yourself as that animal, Like imagine the rat that gets infected with toxoplasma Gandhi, And how it would be to suddenly be attracted to a cat, your most dreaded of predators, and nature is so full of incredible behaviors that there's no there's no better way to experience it than to imagine what it's like to be those animals and dive right in.
Those are some deep questions. You know, what is it like to be a bat? What is it like to be attracted to a cat? I mean, I don't know that anybody's ever going to answer those questions.
I thought you were going to rhyme that, Daniel, I don't know anything about that.
That's doctor Seu's right there.
That's what we should make comedy science and doctor Seuss all at the.
Same time, comedy science and children's education. That sounds like a great mixture, whore. Hey, we should do that sometimes.
Let's get on at Daniel cool. So, Katie, we're tackling today the question of whether there could be life in our solar system, and if there could, where might we find it? And so we're so glad to have it here as a biology guide as we talk about life and what it needs and where it can possibly thrive. But as usual, we sort of like to go out there and ask people what they think of this subject. And so Daniel went out there and he asked people on the internet what they thought was the most likely place in the Solar system to find.
Like, that's right, And so I got these questions answered from people on the internet. Now I assume they are people. Some of them may well be aliens that have slipped their way into human society trying to influence the direction of human thought. But so I can't attest.
Maybe they're irradiated animals. Could they be.
Irradiated birds from Chernobyl.
They could be, as they very well could be. So I cannot attest to their actually humanness. But I think you'll hear some quite interesting answers.
Here's what people had to say.
Depends what we define life. There's a frozen moon of Jupiter.
I think probably where is proper conditions?
Why they're not so hot?
I would say in Mars, or maybe some of them moons of Jupiter.
Probably by looking in the mirror.
Outside of Earth, I would say Mars.
Places where we have water and some kind of reasonable temperature, and the clouds on Peanut I think there's weird forms of life everywhere.
I know that Jupiter has a lot of moons, and one of them, Europa is it's said that there's like a lot of ice on that moon. And I read an article recently and it's some scientists are proposing or describing potential water that's like spewing out into space one of Jupiter's moons.
Of thinking Io for a minute there, but then realize that you really don't want to live on Io, I will say Europa.
Titan, which is a moon of Saturn. All right, Katie, what did you think of these answers from or birds?
These are very smart guesses, whether they come from people or birds. I think that people have the right idea that you want water and the right temperature and conditions for that water to both be warm enough to actually be flowing water and then also have enough sort of like chemistry going on for there to be life. But I think that's really although I'm not it's interesting in the clouds on Venus answer I thought was very intriguing. I don't know too much about the chemistry of the clouds on Venus, but that that seems like an interesting answer.
Yeah, we have some smart listeners. Right, congratulations listeners, you just got an A plus on your biology test.
All right, well, well let's just jump into this topic here, and so if you guys can answer maybe for me, this first question, which is what what are the conditions that you need for life? You know a lot of people should have talked about needing water, and you know, nobody said that the life could be in the sun, although that's an interesting idea. So step us through here. What do you think are the what are the basic things that life needs in order to exist? Tan too thrive?
Well, you know, as usual, I think we've got to take a digression even before we get to that interesting question, because the necessary question to ask first is like what do we even mean by life? Like life as we know it, or like any kind of life at all? So I thought maybe we could first ask Katie, like, what does it even mean, you know, life as we know it? How you define life?
Yeah, this is actually the question I think of first when when you ask what's the requirement for life? Is what? What even is life? And this is actually a much trickier question than it seems. It's not just kind of a hippie question to ask It's something that is tricky for biologists to answer because when you come up with criteria for what life is, it seems to not necessarily cover everything that does seem alive. So you could maybe come up with a list like, say, okay, to be alive, you have to respond to stimuli. You have to be able to grow, reproduce, and have offspring pass on traits to offspring. You have to be complex. You have to seek homeo stacy.
Wait, hold on a second, respond to stimuli. It does that mean if you don't answer your emails, you're not alive?
That's what I assume. I think it means alive, you're living more than anyone else.
I think you correctly understood that. To be a subtweet to you go ahead.
Yes, So you have to also grow, reproduce, and have offspring pass on traits to offspring. You have to be complex. Maybe maybe it's that you seek out homeostasis or equilibrium, or maybe it's that you're built with cells. But even this criteria doesn't really seem to be satisfactory. So a few examples. Crystals take energy to grow, they reproduce, they even respond to stimuli. If you change their environment, they will grow in a different way. They will respond to it by altering their growth. Does that mean that crystals are alive? And you might argue like, well, no, they don't have a nervous system, but neither do plants. And then you might say like, well, then they need to be built with cells. But then well, viruses aren't a cell. Are viruses alive? Are they not alive? So it's it's a very complicated question, and it's not one that I think we have a strictly neat and tidy little answer to.
And why is that? Why is it so hard to answer? Is it because they're just like different you know, sort of religious groups arguing this thing or that thing, or is it one of these things where the distinction is artificial, where there's sort of like a spectrum of different ways to be in the universe, and calling some things alive and something's not alive as an artificial distinction.
I think it's the latter. Mostly, it seems to be less that there are these very specific ideas in biology of like, well, I think life has to be you have to be green if you're alive, only frogs are alive. Like, I think it's it's just hard like basically once we get to okay, so our viruses all alive, like they they are able to replicate, reproduce, but they require a living self, so they could be are they like a parasite that's a live or are they not life because they can't exist on their own. But we also have plenty of clear you know, animals e. Caryotes that are alive by any definition, who are parasites and who require other organisms to live. I mean you could even say, like humans require other humans to live, So you know, to say that a virus isn't alive just because it requires a living cell to replicate and to extract energy is kind of an odd distinction, so I think it is. It does at a certain point become hard to make that cut off, as with many categories in biological science.
Yeah, and we're also kind of dependent on other organisms too, Like our guts are full of bacteria and viruses and we kind of depend on critically right exactly.
Yeah, we have a lot of gut bacteria that we actually have to develop soon after we're born to be able to digest things. And we actually the earliest forms of life were a symbiotic relationship, probably between these really early cells and the mitochondria, which may have been an entirely different organism that these early cells just kind of absorbed and formed this partnership, and now mitochondria are as everyone learned, you know, the powerhouse of the cells, the things that make most life on Earth possible.
Well, I guess the conclusion is, no matter what we discover out there, biologists will argue about it.
Yes, it's a lively debate about what it means to be alive. All right. Well, I think it's interesting because all of these is just sort of our discussions and talking points about life as we know it. But there's also kind of the question of what if there's life out there in ways that are that we don't know, you know, or can't even imagine at this point.
Yeah, I mean, I think that's sort of the role of like science fiction authors to be creative and think out of the bounds and imagine different ways to live life. And you know, I've been doing some research in that area, by which I mean reading science fiction novels, and you know, there's some crazy ideas out there. You know, life on galactic time scales, you know, where the constituent processes are like gravitational processes inside a galaxy that take millions of years, or life inside energy flow of stars.
It's like the galaxy could be sentient in itself.
Yeah, it's sort of could you know, very slowly thinking very deep thoughts.
But I guess maybe for our discussion, let's maybe talk about what are some of the basic things that we think right now, at least for life as we know it, that we need in order to have life. If we're going to talk about other planets and so, I think, you know, as somebody mentioned, water is kind of a pretty big requirement, right Katie.
Yeah, and specifically liquid water, because it is a very unique kind of molecule or large group of molecules that are essential for biochemical reactions to take place. It's basically like it's the work bench and tools and you know, everything you need to create these biochemical reactions that are requirement for life, at least life on Earth or life as we know it. And you also need chemicals plenty of plenty of things like carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen obviously oxygen that and then once you have water that is like this giant work bench that facilitates all of these chemical reactions, you can actually with some energy, turn these into proteins and also energy currency that life needs.
Right, and then that's when you get into things like DNA and sort of complex molecules that can then sort of I think the basic idea is to create something that can store information. Daniel, Is that kind of how you would put it?
Yeah, I think you need some way to write down your good ideas and pass them on to your offspring. And so, as Katie was saying, you need like basically the lego pieces of life, which are you know, these organic molecules, and then you need a way to put them together. But a question I have for you, Katie, is like, why is liquid water so unique? I mean, why can't you have all these logo pieces come together in like liquid methane or liquid some other kind of organic molecule.
Yeah, that's a really good question. And water is just a really unique molecule that it has these properties that kind of it's like it's one of the most incredible fluids ever. It's almost like a miracle liquid that can do it all. So first, just kind of on the molecular level, it is polar, so it has a positively charged side and a negatively charged side, so it binds really well to itself because it's polar, so that's why water kind of sticks together, but it also can bind to other polar molecules and this sticky cohesion which is great for all sorts of things that life needs, so transporting neutral transporting molecules that life needs. So like example on the macro level would be a plant being able to transport nutrients from its roots into the plant, but that also happens on the cellular level of nutrients being transferred to cells. And also it's great at breaking apart substances into these molecules because it has these strong bonds. Basically, you can think of oxygen as having these two little hands and it really wants to hold hands with each other, and then other molecules that are also willing to hold hands with it. So if if something gets in the way of it, like wanting to hold hands with itself or with another polar molecule, it'll actually break it apart, like you know, like you won't get in the way of me holding hands. And then that actually helps break down molecules, and that's why it's called like the universal solvent, and that can dissolve compounds, which allows them to be transported and used by cells. And basically it can also I mean you can think of it as like lazy river, but all of the inner tubes are like chemical molecules like oxygen that are important to life, and this lazy river water just like lets them be transported into cells and then also breaks them apart so that they can be actually used by cells.
So life is a lazy river.
You're saying, yes, yes, that's that's how I approach life.
Yeah, but what's in the lazy river water?
Water and a little bit of rum, Yes, rum and those lazy rivers.
I feel like we just got really metros point of view, Like, say you're going to use water, You're not gonna use methane or anything else.
Crazy. It can't be solid water because things don't flow, electricity doesn't conduct. Why can't you have life which has a basis of like water vapor like steam based life. Why can't you get the same kind of chemistry?
I think it has to do with equilibrium and the structure of cell membranes. So water inside of cells actually is this really important role, especially for cells that have a membrane instead of a cell wall. So it helps it maintain its shape without collapsing. So liquid water has enough movement that it's relatively like it's unlike frozen water, which is static and forms this like crystalline structure. Liquid water has movement, but it's stable enough that you can actually have basically like a little water balloon, which is the cell, and it doesn't explode or collapse. But with vapor I think that's too chaotic. It can't achieve that kind of equilibrium and that pressure.
So you don't want a frozen river, right, And then you don't want a crazy river. You want the lazy river, which is right in the middle.
You don't want white water rapids, right, just a lazy river.
Co All right, let's get into how rare it is to find water out there and these organic molecules, and also let's get into where in our sources and we might find these things. But first take a quick break.
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All right, we're talking to Katie Goolden from the podcast Creature Features. You can find it on iHeartRadio app or wherever you listen to podcasts. And Katie, we're talking to you a little bit about water and the things that the life as we know it needs, these organic materials like carbon, nitrogen, and so I guess my question I have is how rare are these in our solar system? Like is the Earth the only place you can find water and in these basic building blocks or are there a lot of places in this solar system where you might find these?
I mean, as far as I know, it is tough to find liquid water because we both have water on our planet, but we're also close enough to the Sun where we are nice and warm enough to have that liquid water. But I think recently we're finding that there may be liquid water, especially not necessarily on planets, although there's some it seems like maybe there's some recent discoveries like maybe we know Mars has frozen water, but we're not sure whether any of that water is actually a liquid And then also we may have some moons right that could have some liquid water.
Yeah, I think there's sort of two fascinating things to understand there. One is like that water itself as a substance is not rare at all in our solar system, Like in the form of ice, there are huge stores of it. They're like enormous asteroids that are basically just ice balls, and some of those planets out there, Neptune, they're referred to as ice giants. So we have like huge deposits of the actual chemical for water. Then the second part is like does it exist in liquid form anywhere? And here this is sort of fascinating because if you just look at the surfaces of other planets, you don't see oceans, right, no oceans of water except here on Earth. And so to have liquid water you need the water, which is everywhere, But then you also need a heat source. And so, as Katie said, recently people have been thinking about like having underground liquid water, which is a really fascinating way for little critters to potentially evolve.
Okay, so water is not that rare in our Solar system. And by the way, I really want to see that space comedy movie ice Balls. It sounds really fun. And so besides the Earth, I think, you know, there's no maybe oceans and liquid oceans out there but that you can see on the surface of other planets or moons. But there might be underground oceans out there, right, and several moons and places in the Solar System. So maybe Daniel, you want to set us through some of these fun places.
Yeah, one of my favorite is Europa. This is a moon of Jupiter, and it's amazing because if you look at its surface, it's totally frozen. It's just like it's an ice crust, right, It's like super thick ice ball. But the surface of itself is very smooth. And anytime you see something in the Solar System that's smooth, that means that it's new, it's fresh because things in the Solar System are always getting impacted by rocks and meteors and whatever. So if it's smooth, that means it's fresh. It's newly formed sort of on Solar system timescales. And they've done a bunch of flybys to try to understand what's going on in Europa. And they discovered that it's covered in a thick crust of ice, about one hundred colorometers thick, maybe thinner. And they've probed the inside of this moon. This is incredible science, and they're pretty sure that under that ice crust is liquid water.
So when you have a planet that is maybe kind of far from the Sun, so like the surface of the planet is frozen, how are you getting that liquid water under this frozen surface? Potentially?
Yeah, right, you can't get the energy from the Sun, right, you have an ice cube on the surface of Europa. It's not going to melt, right, It's going to be frozen forever. And so the heat comes from underneath, from the core of Europa, and the heat comes from Jupiter. Actually, because Jupiter is dumping energy into Europa using its gravitational field, it has tidal forces. Much the way the Moon tugs on the oceans of Earth. Jupiter is tugging on Europa. It's squeezing it with its gravity, and that squeezing creates a lot of energy, keeps the insides of Europa sort of fluid and hot, and so it's getting heated underneath, which is why the ocean is underneath the ice crust on Europa, so it's sort of underground heating.
Really, it's not because it has you know, like Earth has a molten core. It's not because we have left overheat. It's like it's all from the shaking that Jupiter gives the Europa.
Yeah, it's all from the tidal fluxes there. Remember, these tidal forces come about from the gravitational field. If you're farther from Jupiter, you feel less of a force, and if you're closer to Jupiter, you feel more of a force. And so if you're big enough that one side of you is feeling more of a force than the other side of you, then effectively Jupiter is like pulling you apart. And so as Europa spins, Jupiter is like squeezing different parts of it, and that keeps it hot and fresh. And so they think that there's a huge ocean under there. They think that under the ice of Europa there is as much liquid water as two to three times all of Earth's ocean.
That's incredible, but for life to exist, it's not just liquid water that you need, right, You need chemicals and you need energy input. So do we know what the chemical composition is in the water that is fluid in Europa.
We don't. We think that there's some salt in there. And they've done these measurements where they measure the electrical conductivity of the ocean, like, how do you know if there's liquid water under one hundred kilometers of ice? Right? You can't see it. And so what they do is they see the impact on Jupiter's magnetic field when Europa moves past it, and ice has a different conductivity than liquid water, which is a different conductivity than salt water. So you can measure sort of the phase of the water and how much salt there is in there by measuring its electromagnetic properties, which is sort of an incredible piece of science. So we think there's a little bit of salt in there, but we don't know the answer to your really good question, which is like are there the organic molecules we need? But we do have an awesome plan for figuring it out.
Are we gonna drill down, We're gonna send physicists over.
We're gonna send biologists. Katie, put on your helmet.
You're going to You're going to Europe.
Let me get my drama mean, well.
This sort of a two stage plan. The first one is to just fly by because this surface of Europa cracks fairly often and the water shoots up into space. And we've actually seen this from Earth using hubble. We can see these things, these water volcanoes, these cryo geysers, shooting the water out into space like up to one hundred or two hundred kilometers. So we're planning to send something in twenty twenty three. It's the Europa Clipper that will fly through these geysers and sample when the water from Europa and see are there things living in there?
Wow?
Wow? I know, is that's going to be so exciting.
That's like a simultaneous mind blowing there.
Well imagine be there right, are these going to be unmanned? Because I feel like this would be way more exciting than driving through a car wash to be able to fly through a geyser.
And d one wint wipers that you know, brush away the lad you're trying to detect.
I don't know. If you're flying through it and just like a fish lands on your windshield, you're like, well, there it.
Is an alien fish.
I guess there's life.
That's sort of the fantasy. Now much more likely, of course, is that they just get some like frozen bit of life. But it's you know, that's also a fascinating question. Like say you had a sample of water from underneath you Europa that was spewed out into space, how would you tell if there's life in there? I guess that's a question for you, Kny, Like what experiments would you do on this tea spoon of water from Europa to tell me whether there was life in there.
One of the things that you would be looking for would be some sort of organized structure of molecules. So it's I mean, obviously you could potentially identify if you had unicellular or multicellular life forms. You would, you know, take a look at the samples under a microscope and check it out. But if you want to see if it has if it is starting to form life, or is't, like has the capability of forming life, you would probably want to see what molecules it has in there, and if it's able to form any of these protein chains that are so important and amino acid chains, because we think that probably early on in the development of life, RNA chains, So that's similar to DNA, but it's just a single strand of amino acids we're able to form, and that is basically how you like you mentioned earlier, you need that ability to record data and pass it on in order to create complex life. And so if we saw any evidence of these these chains forming, I think that would be a really positive indicator that you know, there could be life or it has the possibility of life. And obviously if we found a big old alien fish that would be that would be pretty positive, but far more likely we wouldn't find any large life forms just probabilistically in terms of it would more likely be unicellular or maybe just like the beginnings of some protein chains that could eventually form life.
Really you don't think it's likely, you know, that's kind of where the science falls, is that there's a probability and it's it's more likely than not that it will be microscopic and not a big fish.
I think it's more about just the time scale, right like, because I think it's very likely that there is life in the universe, but for our like very short human time to be able to intersect with other complex life, especially this close by, when we know that complex life has been around much less time than these these sort of archaic unicellular organisms, small organisms have been around. So it's just it's more in terms of, like, you know, we have this little short flight through the universe US humans, and then for our little flash in the pan time to intersect with another flash in the pan time of other complex life, it would be very lucky. I would say, it's not impossible. I just think that we would be incredibly lucky to find complex life. But I think it's I think that in terms of whether it exists somewhere, even if we don't find it, I think it's almost inevitable that there is some life out there. Just the question is are we going to be lucky enough to you know, have a have a missed meeting on intergalactic Craigslist like misconnection.
I think that's a good point, and I mostly agree, But I think also it's important to remember that we just really don't know because everything we're basing this off of is one example, which is that on Earth life formed pretty quickly, and then complex life took a long time, as you say, and then intelligent life you know, still has yet to form here on Earth, and so we don't know how long it will take to form on another planet, but we don't know necessarily that it will follow the pattern here on Earth. Right, Maybe Earth was unlucky. It took us unusually long to make complex life, so we got to keep an open mind and believe in this spacefish man.
I mean, especially if it's not like life on Earth. Right, Like, if we have instead of it being carbon based, like being silicon based life, it may function entirely differently, have a totally different, much longer kind of time scale in terms of how it evolves and develops.
Yeah, But to get back to the original question, like are there organic molecules on Europa? We don't actually know. We could figure it out by flying something through these geysers, but in general, I think we do have a sense that there are organic molecules out there. It's not like it's super rare to find complex organic molecules in comets or in meat years, so probably there's a lot of them out there. Do you do you agree with that sentiment, Katie.
Oh, absolutely, yeah. I think finding the building blocks for life, it makes sense that it would exist. It's I think the reason that we don't have life on every asteroid, in every planet that has these these complex molecules, is that you need a lot of other conditions to be met as well. Like in terms of how life formed on Earth, it was this very potentially kind of complex interplay of having the right organic molecules, having just the right amount of water and just the right amount of energy, and maybe even like so you guys know the sort of primordial soup hypothesis.
Yeah, I had some this morning, for sure.
That's definitely the very back of your fridgimy.
I think there's done life growing there as well.
Extra chunky. Yeah, but yeah, there's there's other ideas about how life could have formed, and it's not incessarily. Like the idea that it just kind of formed in a big boiling pot of stew is a little bit hard to believe because once you start to get a complex chain of amino acids or protein to form and you have this chaotic environment, it could just get blasted apart by other molecules before it has a chance to form these complex structures. So there's actually a theory called the primordial soup and sandwich. I kind of like the term primordial bac leavah better because it's basically these thin sheets of mica that like are like these layers of a pastry or or if you want layers of a sandwich, and in between these sheets of mica, which is a type of thin sheeting mineral that then you could get these organic compounds to kind of like have these like little safe havens, these little Heidi holes, to be able to start forming these complex structure. Sure while also having access to enough chemicals and enough water and enough energy to actually have these biochemical processes take place.
I feel like we should just go for it and call it the primordial bignac, the primordial Club's handway.
This is what this is what happens when you charge your science just before life. So to wrap up on Europa, Katie, let me just ask you a really quick question. Say we have the organic molecules, and we have energy source that's heating this liquid water. What do you think do you think there is microbial life right now in the oceans of Europa.
I want there to be, so I would say yes, just because I'm very optimistic.
I'm taking it.
I think if we will it, it will happen.
Yes, exactly.
It's you were officially in the pro aliens column.
I think it's I mean, I think it's almost basically inevitable that there's alien life somewhere. Whether it's on Europa, I think it would be lucky for it to be there, But it seems like it's very, very possible, and I'm so excited for discoveries to be made from there. Like I hope that we are able to make some of these discoveries in my lifetime because that would be so exciting. But yeah, I think there is a definitely good chance that we have some form of life, especially if we see that all of these basic requirements are met.
Cool. Well, I'm glad, we're optimistic, and we'll send you our official Daniel and Jorge explain the universe alien button commemorative souvenir. All right, well right, let's get into other places where there could be life in our solar system and whether or not that is even remotely possible. But first, let's take another quick break.
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Hi, I'm David Eagleman from the podcast Inner Cosmos, which recently hit the number one science podcast in America. I mean neuroscientists at Stanford and I've spent my career exploring the three pound universe.
In our head. We're looking at a whole new.
Series of episodes this season to understand why and how our lives look the way they do. Why does your memory drift so much? Why is it so hard to keep a secret, When should you not trust your intuition?
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I'm hitting these questions and hundreds more because the more we know about what's running under the hood, the better we can steer our lives.
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All right, we're talking to Katie Golden, the host of the podcast Creature features about life and other places in our Solar system. And so we talked about Europa. Now, Daniel that maybe give us a quick rundown of maybe other places in the Solar System where we can find life and water and molecules.
Yeah.
Well, there's sort of three categories in general. One is like moons of really big planets, and then there are dwarf planets, and then there are like actual straight up possibility for life on planets in the Solar System. And so in the moon category, of course we had Europa that's maybe number one, But then there are other contenders. There's Titan. Titan is the largest moon of Saturn. It itself is actually bigger than mercury, So like, what, Yeah, if I was a Titan booster, I'd be like, how come I'm called a moon and mercury is a planet?
Whoa? And so there's water there too.
Well we don't know, but we think so. And Titan is fascinating because it has an atmosphere. It has a nitrogen atmosphere. You know on Earth is a lot of nitrogen, and they're active rivers and lakes and oceans on the surface of Titan. The problem is they're not oceans of water. They're oceans of like methane and ethane, which is why I was asking Katie earlier about whether you could have life in like methane oceans. But it's sort of awesome because there's activity, you know, it's like the surface of the plan It has motion on, it has stuff going on. But just like Europa, we think that underneath those oceans is a shell of ice, and underneath that is probably liquid water. So again we have subsurface oceans that are probably under the ice on Titan.
I don't know, a sea of methane that sounds like more like a smelly river more than a lazy river.
Have you been in a lazy river recently, they're mostly smelling.
There's a lot of methane there. I'm sure. All right, Well, what are some other places? So there might be moons that have also kind of like Europa, kind of a shell and an underground ocean. But you're saying there might be other kinds of places.
Yeah, So Ganymede is another moon like that, an icy crust, probably with a big ocean underneath. And you know, you add all these up and it tells you that most of the liquid water in the Solar System is probably not on Earth, which is kind of mind blowing because until recently we thought it might be the only place. But there are other things that are not moons. Like one of my favorite places in the Solar System is this dwarf planet called Series. And it's not a TV series.
It's you know, at first of a while, we have a dwarf planet in ours.
Oh yeah, I mean Pluto is now a dwarf planet, right, it got demoted. Oh, and there are others. There's an element of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter where some of the chunks are big enough that they could called dwarf planets and series. If you remember, we saw this weird feature on it a couple of years ago. They took a picture of it and it looked like a pyramid, and there was a moment there when I thought, this is like the opening act of every science fiction novel. You know, somebody sees a pyramid and an alien planet and they.
Go, what cure the soundtrack from two thousand.
And one, Well, this planet is amazing because it's twenty five percent water, Like this dwarf planet is not tiny. It's a big chunk of stuff, and it's one fourth water. You know, Earth is like a tiny fraction of Earth is water in comparison, So this thing is basically a big itea liquid Well again, it's a frozen crust, but we think that underneath there could be a salty ocean. So it's most of the oceans in the Solar System turned out to be under frozen ice crusts, and this is another place where we can have the same situation.
And it has a pyramid, so that that's really suspicious.
And it turns out there was this really shiny feature and it's this pyramid shaped. It looked really geometrical. But then you know, just like the face on Mars and other fascinating features. When you zoomed in and you got better pictures from other angles, it looked just like a wind shaped rock. So it turns out probably not a signal from the aliens, but another place in the Solar system where you have a lot of organic molecules and probably liquid water. So it's a great place to get started. I mean, if you're a young microbe you're looking to start a family, you know, this place is everything you're looking for.
If your life try series.
Welcome to series your new home, that's right.
And then you've got other couple of small moods like Calisto and Ensuladis, which I don't even know if are you supposed to pronounce insladis, like you know, like something you would see on the menu at a Takorea and.
So it is. I don't know, but I guess my question for you guys is you know a lot of these moons. It seems like Earth is the only place that you can like see from space liquid ocean, and so a lot of these places have like underground oceans, and that's how maybe life could be there. But could life exist in the underground ocean? You know without you know, sunlight or you know some sort of you know, heat and wind and things like that.
Yeah, I mean absolutely, we see it on our own planet right where we have deep sea life and we don't necessarily life doesn't necessarily need sunlight to provide it with energy as long as it's getting some kind of energy. So we see life around the clustered around these deep sea vents that are spewing energy and nutrients down at the bottom of the ocean where there's no light, and life drives there. And so you can, I definitely have a planet that is not getting any sunlight on its oceans, but if they have some form of energy down in like near the core of the planet, you know, maybe these deep se events viewing some heat and nutrients into these oceans, you can absolutely have life.
This sort of comes along for free, this source of energy because if you're asking for liquid water, if you're starting from that requirement, then to make the water liquid to avoid it being iceed, you need some energy source, and that's either solar energy or you know, internal energy from tidal forces or from having a hot core or something. So if you have liquid water, that by definition requires you have an energy source for life to get start interesting.
You just made me think that maybe I wonder whether there are aliens in the oceans of Europa having a podcast discussing whether or not life could exist on surface water like they have on Earth.
Well, you know, another fascinating question is if you are alien, intelligent life that grew up under an ocean, so you never saw the sky, right, then could you even imagine the vastness of the universe? What is it like to drill through that for the first time and stick your head out above the ocean and see that there's a whole universe out there. What a crazy sort of philosophical moment for those aliens.
Do you think they may made They could have like telescopes. Could you build a civilization with technology with telescopes that could see through the ice shell and so then maybe that's how they could know about the wider universe.
It's one hundred kilometers thick in a lot of places, so that'd be a pretty impressive telescope. I think you'd have to drill well.
I wonder how they would evolve in terms of sight and the use of light, especially if they're not getting light from the sun. So we do know that deep sea animals on Earth, while they don't get sunlight, they can have these biochemical processes that result in bioluminescence, which then provides them light to see and also light to potentially lure prey into their doom, like with the deep sea anglerfish. It's got that beautiful bulb of bioluminescence that it uses to lure prey. But basically what that means is you could have a group of life, or a group of animals or no, I don't want to call them animals, but life, whatever form it may take, that doesn't get to see sunlight. But if you have the right biochemical processes to create bioluminescence, they could potentially evolve eyes, because then they can use that bioluminescence to navigate and find prey or find mates. So I think that's a fascinating kind of idea of like, how would you evolve the ability to see if you don't have sunlight?
That sounds like a great science fiction novel. I'm looking forward to reading that. There's another possibility, which is that life could have started out on the surface. It could have been that the were liquid oceans in the Solar system, not on Earth, for example, on Mars, and life evolved in those scenarios and now is underground. So one of my favorite possibilities is Mars because, as listeners to podcasts know, Mars doesn't have a magnetic field, it really doesn't have much atmosphere, so any water on the surface of Mars will either just sublimate or freeze. But we do think that there is water again underground on Mars. They detected on Mars a subglacial lake. It's like just two kilometers below the surface and it's like twenty kilometers wide. So there's a stable body of liquid water on Mars. And if a billion years ago there were the conditions for life on the surface, that is possible that in that lake underground there are you know, remnants of that archaic life still swimming around.
Right, And they're seeing the theory that maybe life on Earth came from Mars, like maybe a meteor hid Mars and a chunk of water or rock or ice from there came to Earth with life, and that's how we have life.
It certainly would explain a lot about how weird people are.
Right, we're all Martians, we're alliens, But wouldn't we be Aliens too, Aliens.
Nice all right, Well, and I think there's a couple other places that sound interesting. Triton, even Venus, Daniel can have maybe water or life.
Yeah, And this is something that one of our listeners pointed out that the surface of Venus is crazy intense. It's you know, hundreds of degrees. It's covered with sulfuric acid. You do not want to be alive on the surface of Venus. But and the pressure is really intense. There's like so much atmosphere that you get instantly crushed. So it's not a place that's very hospitable to life. But if you go above the surface, like in the clouds, like fifty kilometers above the surface, then the pressure is lower. You're above the sulfuric acid clouds, and you might have life sort of floating in water droplets that far above the surface.
Does that sound plausible, Katie, to evolve, live or create life in a cloud.
I mean, if you have water droplets that are large enough to have tiny microbes floating around in liquid water, then I think that is certainly possible. That's that's crazy to think about, like these little tiny floating micro biomes of little water droplets but yeah, yeah, I mean life can be so teeny tiny. It can exist in a droplet of water. And we know that we can take a little drop of water, put it on a microscope slide and see a bunch of little guys swimming around in there. I've done that. I've looked at dinal flagelets. It's amazing how many of those guys you can cram into one little tiny drop of water. So if you have water in clouds, I think it would have to be the right temperature, it would have to be stable enough to actually, you know, have large enough droplets for enough life to be in. But yeah, I think it's possible.
Your whole entire species and civilization and life could just exist in a water droplet. It's kind of like a like a like a city in a bottle.
King Yeah, I mean you smash up against another droplet and you got all of a sudden, new neighbors or new roommates.
Maybe to them, that's like two galaxies colliding, or.
The premise for a good reality show on Venus.
Yeah, we'll call it ice balls too, just because you know, I like the name. All right, Well, it sounds like the ingredients for life are out there for sure, like in other planets and moons of other planets in our solar system. I guess, you know, maybe a larger question that we can just wrap up here is, you know, what are the chances of life? Like we have all the ingredients definitely for sure in our solar system, is it likely? I know, we optimistically think that there is probably life, but what does the sign say about the likelihood of their being life out there?
Yeah, I mean I think it is. I mean, you guys can speak more to the expansiveness of the universe, but I think because we have so many chances and so much time, that it's almost inevitable that there is going to be life somewhere else in the universe. I think the thing that is much more difficult is the timing of it. Whether our time in the universe is going to overlap with life somewhere where we can measure it. So there could be life out there simultaneously with us in an area where we can't find it and can't measure it. There could be life somewhere right next door, but it's just it happened either before or after our time here. But yeah, there is there is a chance for sure that we are going to overlap with some form of life, especially if we loosen our definition of what life is and it doesn't have to be some green, little aliens with funny hats.
I totally agree with what you said, and I think a lot about this question. You know, how do you go from the precursors to actually having life? And I just wish that we understood the science of that better, that we could reproduce that in the lab or understand whether it's likely or unlikely, because we only really have this one experiment, and as you say, it could be that life started many times on Earth and didn't take hold, then once actually got a foothold and then spread and became us. We just don't know. So I did a little informal survey where I asked basically all the biologists I know what they think about this question. And the thing that strikes me is that they're all optimistic, like they think the way you do that, like life is probably inevitable. I don't know if that's they're biased just because they are alive and so they're like pro life.
They've got a pro being alive bias.
Exactly, pro being alive, not pro life. That's a whole different philosophical discussion. But it makes me wonder why they all think that's true. We don't really have a solid scientific argument for the likelihood of life starting given these precursors, but everybody has this sense that it might be inevitable, or maybe they just want it to be inevitable, because the alternative is scary, that even with the precursors and our own solar system, we could be the only things alive. But the answer is that we you know, we won't know until we look, until we send these missions out to Europa and sample those cryogeysers, until we drill down underneath the ice on some of these moons, until we sample that lake on Mars. We won't actually know the answer. Until then, we're just you know, ill informed podcasters speculating wildly.
I think also the fact that our measly little planet has been capable of producing such incredible complexity over what is kind of a short period of time on the scale of the universe makes it really feel like that cannot be a fluke if you have the necessary ingredients, and our little tiny Earth was able to do all of this in just a few billion years. Like it has to be happening elsewhere. How could we possibly be that special? I think is, and I think there's a certain logic to that, like, how can we evolve this incredibly biodiverse planet with these ingredients and there not be some form of life elsewhere where they also have similar ingredients?
Yeah? How special can we be?
Really?
I feel like life may be inevitable. Is kind of like the optimis extrovert point of view, you know. I wonder if introverts out there might look at it more as life is unavoidable.
There's no escaping life.
But either way, it sounds like there's a lot to look forward to in terms of exploring our Solar System and learning more about what's on the surface of these frozen, crusty planets.
Yeah, and it's fascinating because it's either out there or it's not. Like right now, there are maybe things swimming around in liquid bodies in our Solar system, And the only thing that keeps us from knowing the answer, from cracking this crazy ancient mystery is our willingness to go and look. These things don't even cost that much money, you know, a few hundred million dollars we could know the answer to this question that every human has been asking basically forever. So if you think that's important, go talk to your elected officials and support this kind of research.
All right, Well that was super interesting. Thank you Katie for joining us today. Again. Katie, your podcast is called Creature Features, that's right, And so where can people find it?
Yeah, I mean it's on this network on iHeartRadio. You can find it on the iHeartRadio website, the app, or you know, on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And yeah, we answer a lot of questions about life here on Earth on that podcast.
Yeah, with comedy and diseases, right also.
That's right, more comedy than diseases generally.
Well, I mean you also talk about it to the viruses and fun and interesting things that affect animal behaviors.
Absolutely. Yeah, Like we talk about sometimes serious subjects about our health and the planet's health, but yeah, we always try to bring it back to the things that really bring us together and the common behaviors you can find in life on Earth and it's really fun.
Who knows, maybe in a couple of years in the future you'll be having an episode about life in other planets.
Yes, Spacefish don't get them on your windshield.
I like to eat buy spacefish with the side of ice ball.
All right, Thank you Katie and thank you guys for joining us. We hope you enjoyed Dad. See you next time.
Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio Apple Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. When you pop a piece of cheese into your mouth, you're probably not thinking about the environmental impact. But the people in the dairy industry are. That's why they're working hard every day to find new ways to reduce waste, conserve natural resources, and drive down greenhouse gas emissions. How is us dairy tackling greenhouse gases? Many farms use anaerobic digestors to turn the methane from maneure into renewable energy that can power farms, towns, and electric cars. Visit you as dairy dot COM's Last Sustainability to learn more.
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Hi, I'm David Eagleman from the podcast Inner Cosmos, which recently had the number one science podcast in America. I mean neuroscientists at Stanford, and I've spent my career exploring the three pound universe in our heads.
Join me weekly to explore the relationship between your brain and your life.
Because the more we know about what's running under the hood, better we can steer our lives. Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
