Ultimately did win a second term. Now its really up to the sides. They have actually just yesterday called reading about the wall street hangs and say weve got to come up with something else. We need a true Interest Rate reflects reality. The book is open secrets. The author is aaron arvid lan. This is about an hour and a half. Good evening. Welcome to the men had labor. Tonights program is now Straight Talk based on the book titled mars up close inside the Curiosity Mission by marc kaufman, published by national geographic. Id like to ask you this time if your cell phone is on, please turn it off and please dont take any pictures during the presentation. Fyi, tomorrow in the new york times, it will be all about mars and featured we an article by the featured speaker mr. Coffman. Curiosity is a car sized robotic rover has been exploring craters on mars since landing in august 2012. Nasa launched curiosity in november 2011 from cape canaveral. It took a little over eight months to reach mars. The rovers goals are to investigate the climate and geology, determine whether gale craters have ever had environmental conditions favorable to life. This is quite an intriguing subject for those interested in the exploration of space and for Science Fiction readers, too. The matter what category you fall into, these evenings lecture is sure to fascinate. Marc kaufman has been a journalist for more than 35 years. He has worked as a science and space writer Foreign Correspondent and editor for the Washington Post for the past 12 years and has spoken extensively on astrobiology here in the u. S. And abroad. Mr. Kaufman is also the author of a book published in 2011 by Simon Schuster titled first contact, scientific breakthroughs and the hunt for life beyond earth. Please give a very warm welcome we are very pleased to have here tonight mr. Marc kaufman. [applause] thank you all so much for coming. Let me grab a drink and get started. This is a perfect time to be talking about mars because it turns out that a lot of events are taking place right now. Theres a lot of change and a lot of wonderful developments. So lets get started. A headshot of our character of the night mars, and approximate half the size of earth. One and a half times as far away from the sun as we are and as i will describe it is a place that has long lived in the imagination of people here probably more than any other planet, and for good reason. And right now we are just on the edge of learning just remarkable things about the place. In fact, we are learning remarkable things but the place that kind of brings back into the future some of the things that have been discussed for centuries. But first a little bit. Mars has been very much in the news. This was the comment that passed by mars a month and half ago. Comet. It struck me as one of those really kind of key moments in terms of how things have changed because there are two rovers on the ground and five orbiting satellites and so if it had had mars a lot of money wouldve gone down the drain. We are a face spacefaring society now, things like that can really matter. Also this is the capsule that someday will hopefully bring astronauts to mars. Just last week it was launched for the first time. Its called orion. It orbited twice and successfully landed. So this is, you know, many people are of the opinion that the American Space program is kind of sleeping or morbid to i would argue that is not the case at all. Just today, this is to some extent the subject of whatever it about or the times, but just today there was another report from curiosity Curiosity Team. And what they said was to remarkable. Later in the talk i will explain it a little bit more about what this proves in terms of what they see and what as geologists and geochemist Everything Else they know how to interpret. This is a delta, the end of river that look like is going to look the its right there in gale crater where they were, and we now have Proof Positive that maybe 4 billion years ago or more mars was very very wet and much warmer. And keep in mind the number 3. 8. Thats around the era when life began on earth and when earth was warm and kind of wet and i do know mars wasnt too different. And this is kind of a rendering of what perhaps mars looked like back then or just based on information that they have now. Lakes, rain, snow a water cycle. So any case thats the news that is happening now in terms of mars. What i want to do is go back in history a bit and then talk about curiosity in terms of how it is that we have come to this really, really exciting point. Jill vaughn those carpet holy famously in the 19th century looked at mars been a little bit too much and saw canals everywhere. And this became a major kind of cause celeb and a lull in the United States follow up on this and the started the whole notion that mars was not only inhabited, but it was inhabited by intelligent people who are making canals and doing all kinds of really exciting things. Ironically they kind of intuitive some things that turned out to be partially true but they were off on most things. But again the canals, the chronicles im how many of you have read. Im sure virtually everyone on the Curiosity Science Team came into science because of the martian chronicles. Its kind of the iconic tale. And again here we have the canals or some water, whatever. The water is key to our understanding of mars. This is carl sagan with the viking rover, or viking lander which there were two of them that landed on mars in 1977. And at the time, sagan was an iconic figure in continue to be for quite a while. The cosmos series was yet to come, but he was one of the first astrobiologists, people who thought the search for life beyond earth was possible and necessary and exciting. He took it pretty for. One of his jobs with viking was to look for visible life. It was explained to me that he got irate when nasa did not put lights on so they could see these things at night. And u. S. A. When they come at night we will not see the. In any case, they didnt come because this was where it landed, and this is what it was like. After all, of that build up a canals and water and life, you know, sagan talking about all kinds of living things coming to eat at the trough of viking this is what they found. It was really pretty bare and. There were some tests that seem to suggest they were living microbes in the soil but they were then debunked and the view is that they really did not find anything in certainly the way of biology. Heres another picture, and you can see not very enticing not something that just screams out, hey, life used to be here, or life is here now. And i think it would be fair to say that because the viking pictures and the story that he was able to tell was still kind of bleak. It was exciting in many ways, remarkable that the landed but what they reported back was kind of so depressing and so different than what people had anticipated that there was a very very little Mars Exploration for the next 20 years. It just kind of fell off the agenda. Then gradually nasa begin sending orbiting satellites there. They began sending back pictures and things started to change. This is a delta which is one of many features on mars that it if it was on earth people to pay that used to be a river. It took a long time youre this image was probably be taken in the mid 90s, and a lot of scientists would say, well, we really dont know what was. It couldve been just ice or it couldve been Carbon Dioxide and some kind of frozen form but there was a real reluctance to say that there was not only Running Water a standing water and water that would have run for a long time. They already knew that thered been some major damper aches and water would flow when that happened major dam breaks. This is the kind of thing you would find on earth. And one of the main reasons why they said it couldnt be just a delta like river delta on earth, because the understand was that the mars atmosphere back then couldnt handle the. It was much too thin and anything that was a standing water would quickly either evaporate or sublimate and freeze. But in any case this is what they begin to see, and some of the more daring scientist would say, what we are looking at is obviously a riverbed, and then a lake and other things. What they also begin to see after sending up some instruments that could read this kind of information, there are large classes of minerals that are formed only in water. No water, no carbonates, no sulfates. And yet now they are able to come with new technology from the orbiting satellites, they were able to determine that yes, there was quite a bit of clay. There was sulfates. A picture started to emerge of a place that now is very dry very barren, but maybe once was and. By the way this was taken by the high rise cameron on the mars reconnaissance orbiter and the colors are not true colors. What they do is they enhance them so you can see the future otherwise its just kind of a brown undistinguished kind of thing. But if youre interested in this kind of thing, go to the high rise site on the web and you can find thousands of these magnificent images of the mars is very different from what people would imagine. So in any case there begins to be more activity, more interest. Viking landed in 1977. The next lander was 1997, and then there were the two small rovers that landed i think in 2004 and one of them is still going, kind of remarkable thing. But they knew they needed more. These were little tiny things. The first lander after viking was basically the size of a small electric toy car. The others were bigger but they didnt have much capacity. So the trend of something much more sophisticated and they came up with what we now know as curiosity. It was given the name the curiosity. It is two tons as opposed to about 25 pounds, some of the earlier ones, or 500 pounds for some of the rovers and eight at 10 instruments and it is much much more sophisticated. So here ago. Because its much larger you have a problem. How do you find it . The little ones land it . They landed in big balls. They would literally drop onto the martian surface. They would bump along for a while and the ball would open and they would write out what you could do something that was more than two tons. So this gentleman, adam stelter was put in charge of figuring out how to do. He came up with the idea of sky crane. By the way, is part of a new generation of nasa and other engineers who are not what you would kind of think about old school engineers. He played for a long time in a rock band. He does have is the rings on now but he usually does. Is god and elvis kind of pompadour. He was a one hit guide and is also really. Anyway, he came up with this idea that they would come into the martian atmosphere, going 130, though 13point to 132000 miles an hour. Im sorry. Thats how fast theyre going and had seven minutes to go to zero. Without crashing. His job was to the how to do it. This sky crane is the very last stages that were basically there was a mechanism that would hover for a while over the ground and then slowly, slowly drop it down, curiosity, down to the surface. Never been done before and part of an extremely Important Development because in order for humans to be someday dropped onto mars, they need something that can land maybe 30 tons much more sophisticated than this but they are in the process of figuring it out. This is the first time there was a camera at the bottom of the rover. This is the heatshield at to the heat shield had been shot off and the camera started taking pictures but you can see it going down, going down. This is the very end of the sky crane. Engineers really, really happy. To be there that night which had the good fortune to do one of the happiest days of my life. To see that many people. They put so much time and effort into it and they cared really, really deeply about it. So this was an enormous success. Its interesting story about how they got into the habit of taking these selfies. Obviously, it looks like some of his theyre taking the picture. Theres not. It has an arm and the arm goes out and has a camera on it and it takes pictures and then they photoshop about arm out. But any case theres our guy. Its really cold. It gets down to like minus 200 degrees fahrenheit, and theres a lot of radiation that almost down. All in all its a very harsh environment so this has to be designed in order to be able to handle that. And so far its now two and half years. Its done a phenomenal job of doing that. This was the destination, gale crater. It was formed probably 3. 5 to 3. 8 billion years ago when a large meteorite hits. It digs a big call and then starts taking other things out. Theres a lot of debate as to this particular mountain in the middle of the crater came to be, but there is an unusual 3. 2mile high mound in the middle of the crater. They selected it because there were signs that there had been water, you know, some of those not a delta but a fan going down. And also there was a lot of minerals, the minerals that are formed only in water that was detected and then you have this mountain. No rover over machine of any type has ever gone to another planet and had a mountain like this to look at. It has lots of different layers. It will gradually climb later but it is utterly unique, and this is actually why i got involved in the whole story because this was something i hope people understand how unique this was. It struck me as a really single moment in the history of space science, and the fact it has a. So gale crater. So to put it into look at the context, and by the way there have been seven successful landings on mars. Not being hopefully not being nationalistic or but nasa has done all seven of them. Theres a lot of old metal on the planet from other efforts and nasa has had some unsuccessful ones as well, but if theres one thing that the United States does really, really well that no one else does, go to mars. It makes us exceptional. In any case, the blue is the northern will talk about this more later but it is about a mile to two miles below the green and yellow and hand allocations tan. There are other suggestions that perhaps there was once a huge ocean of their which would have enormous implications in terms of the potential for life. But you can see where curiosity gives. This is called the dichotomy where it cuts across and about a third of mars is this very low area and then twothirds is the highlands. After curiosity lands, it starts looking around. It has 17 cameras. Some of them are like really really spectacular. This is what it sees. Contrast this with what viking saw and you see why they got so excited. These are features that are very round now but you can imagine maybe once work somewhat different. And also you can see the fine layering. There are clear layers, and layers mean sedimentary rock as opposed to volcanic or whatever. The sedimentary rock has to be brought there by something, the water or wind or whatever, and then it becomes rock over time. But this is all sedimentary and was just what they Curiosity Team described mount sharp was the Promised Land. Took a while to get there but they are there now. One of the first things they found on lending, and by the way, they landed at a place that they named after ray bradbury, the author of the martian chronicles. And again thats what brought all these people into their jobs. But this is a conglomerate. Its kind of like the concrete almost and they founded within a month or so of lenny, a month and a half, and conglomerate requires water. It doesnt it cannot come about, it cant be formed without water. And in this case a lot of water. And also the are a lot of small pebbles in this. And the small pebbles the scientist interpreted something being the size that only water could bring down. So within like two months or so of arriving they had ground truth something had been speculated on for decades, which was there was Running Water on mars. And there it was. They could find in the conglomerates and they found in other things as well. This was a picture, kind of a more reallife picture, and doesnt maybe come across to you will hear but that is mount sharp on the other side. That is a channel a big canyon coming down the mount sharp. This is what was given the name peace balis and the fan the curiosity landed at the end of the thats what is so this conglomerate and other kinds of things. So you can see this is like it really, it makes sense. In terms of the location of it all. And this is, over on the side would be the rim of the crater. Just to backpedal for a second. Mars is named after the god of war, always kind of had this sanguine kind of bloody feel to it because its kind of read write . Everyone thinks its the red planet to i keep telling its not the red planet its like a tiny, tiny blush of red on top of what is a planet with the rocks very similar to ours. In fact, the same rock oftentimes. Curiosity ran over some rocks and you can see its kind of bluish agree. The red is just a blush on top and thats the case all over the planet. The red is iron oxide which became an important component after certain things happened in the planet, and it creates a lot of dust but it seemed to define the planet but, in fact, it doesnt. After landing they were supposed to go straight to the Promised Land to mount sharp but they saw this feature right here. Unfortunately, you cant see it too well but there are three different kinds of rock that come together and one of them is kind lower than the others. This is where they landed, and thats kind of the jet exhaust and this is the track that they took. Going the opposite way from mount sharp. This was kind of a daring thing for them to do. Their mission was to go to sharp, but they were officially also a mission of discovery. They decided that this was very, very promising and so they headed in the other direction. They have gotten some criticism for that over the years, but as you will see it was very successful and i believe a wonderful thing to have done. This is where they ended up. This is an area and you again remember those images that we saw from viking that was just volcanic, you know rocks strewn around to this looks like, and in fact, was the bottom of a lake. Look at this. These are the kinds of things, mud, mud stone as opposed to sandstone. And it looks very much like what would happen when a lake by what they call a low kind of marsh when it would dry up, and here you go. Thats what they found. And then they drilled into it but this never before on mars or any other planet as this kind of thing been found, and then researched. Just begin to backtrack for a second. This is the arm of curiosity. Its seven feet long. It has a number of cameras and collecting tools and a way to take what is drilled and put it into the ovens inside curiosity. All that is on there. Seven feet out. You can imagine kind of like its not easy. Fortunately, the gravity there is much less but in any case its a hard thing to do. But it has a drill. The first time theres been a drill on mars or another planet and this is what they have done. At this point i think theyve they have done five major drills but it takes a lot of time because it has to be calculated just right, and then also they want to do it at the right angle because they could easily kind of break or damage is very important tool. And also they want to make sure theyre doing it in a place that deserves that kind of attention. But the drill has worked extremely well. Goes down as we will see not very far but it turns out it is gone down far enough to find will be really interesting stuff. And here it is. This to me is interesting for a lot of different reasons. This is a drill hole with the width of a sharpie. That is what the drill does, and you can see somewhat here that there is a white line here. Theres also some holes that have gone down here. The holes come from one of the instruments on curiosity which has a laser cyber and it zaps stuff and theres a little bit of plasma and it analyzes what elements are there based on that. So they did the zapping and then they can see here a line which tells them there are geologists who know about these things, that this was an area that had water in it not once but probably many times. As you will see the surrounding mud stone clearly had water in it because it was Something Like 20 clay. And clay means water. It requires water. And then this is calcium sulfate and it would have come into that area after everything had dried out once and then now it was watery again. So you have an ability you know, from 100 million miles away to look with this incredibly fine detail. They have a camera on that tour it, again unlike anything thats been done before. Its like a geologist field camera or glass, and they were able to take this picture which is of something that is that big. So early on, or after theyve gone through this First Campaign which takes about a year, they conclude, well, you know gale crater was once really quite wet. At this point they were not willing to say there was a lake there, but they did say that water came down the cliff, would form a broad expanse of water and this happened over a period that at that point the estimated into thousands or tens of thousands of years. Which is important but it was not really enough time for anything resembling life to develop. And these were not yet the conditions for life. Just to backtrack, what they concluded here in this whole area was that there was not only water, and it was water that the project scientist famously said was water you could drink. It was that pure in terms of all the Different Things that would be in it but also in terms of being not acidic and not very basic. It was right kind of down the middle, what you want from life. So it had water. It had an Energy Source being the son, and it had all the chemical elements needed for life, carbon oxygen and so would. They declared this area was the first place found outside of earth that was habitable. Doesnt mean it was inhabited budget means that if there was life better, if life begins there, he could have survived. And there were conditions that could have allowed for that initial origin, just as likely can hear. This is about 3. 8 billion years ago, or 3. 5 and it was similar kind of conditions. After their time there they decided, they said okay its time to go to mount sharp which of course, was their destination to begin with. In this little graphic, mount sharp is this one. This is at first. This is not mckinley. Sorry, i forget what that was. Its a big mountain. On the top its kind of its not as sediment to come not as interesting. Its all kind of a hard form dust that is turned into rock. Here was the part were talking about before, and this is the Promised Land. Getting to the Promised Land was going to require about six or seven miles of travel and turned out to be very difficult. Rovers are incredibly versatile machines, but they are also very complex and they have a lot of moving parts. They had more than their share of problems, but as well see they made it. All right this is the rover at work. Everything, much of it is done autonomously in terms of the rover being able to take orders and do things itself, and sometimes can even not take orders but rather think for itself. It is that Artificial Intelligence has been built into it and usually the future of these kinds of rovers that theyre not going to necessarily need people like this woman who is, has the coolest job on earth. She is our rover driver. She puts on 3d glasses but she looks at these things and you can really see the contours of the land. At her job is to draw a safe path. And then understand the coordinates and look for obstacles and then that is reviewed by a lot of different committees who want to see whether the science is good and also want to make sure that they are being safe. But she is the one who is going, and there are 14 others, theyre going to write the program that is then sent up to mars and the next day the rover will do what it is told in terms of driving. Cant see it too well here but these are the wheels, and after about a year and a half or so, they noticed that there are big holes. Thats not good. There are six wheels. This was the front to end the middle to come and they didnt have a lot of traction built into these was because they going to be going uphill. But that document that this couldnt be too heavy. Theres the struts you can see diagonal, but behind it it is quite thin and somewhat unexpectedly to them as they we drive along they would be rocks that would be stuck in the sandstone and they would puncture the wheels. So unfortunately aaa does not go to mars or to gale crater. Maybe other parts of mars but not gale crater so they had to figure out what to do. And largely was this. They go backwards now. It turned out that that was less stressful on the wheels, and it is proven to be a decent way to go. I said earlier that there was a designed part of the program route and then theres and autonomous part where the rover can drive on its own. Because its going backward what they have to do is they do the program part and then they program a turnaround and it goes forward on its own. But any case, so its going backward into the future. On the way to mount sharp they come across all kinds of really to be very interesting things. This is an iron meteorite. Its actually the kind of thing that you find at the museum of Natural History and whatever. They land on mars just like they land here, and for that matter meteorites of all kinds land there and they bring organic material to mars, just like they bring it here. These are the Building Blocks of life, carbonbased Building Blocks of life that curiosity is searching for. Turns out the atmosphere there allows is a lot more radiation which then destroys the organics. But this kind of meteorite makes clear that yes there is a lot of meteoritic activity and organics are coming in. They just have defined in the again, organics are an important part of the life story. This is the salt basalt which is volcanic rock but again just look at in the context of mars up close to what could be more up close . This is a small piece of rock that theyre able to magnify to this enormous extent. You can see in here this is just little bits of dust and little bits of sand and whatever. When you contrast that against what is possible in the past, this is just a whole new generation and not only does it provide really phenomenal art as far as im concerned but also as we will see a lot of signs that was not possible without this. Good question. I dont recall. I can get it for you. I think its centimeters if not millimeters. This is crystal found also on the road to mount sharp. Kind of the overall back story here is that what theyre finding is that mars has basically the same chemistry as earth, and basically the same kind of interactions that rocks have the same kind of interactions with water and other elements as they do on earth, and come up with similar kind of results. The phenomena that are known better study understood and known here on earth they now feel quite comfortable if they see the same kind of structures, then they can assume properly that its the same thing they found on earth. Now here, i dont know if you can see this is a chicken bone. Actually no, its not. But there have been probably a dozen formations like this you know wind design bits of rock that have caught peoples attention and on the internet they found a gopher, rodent, all kinds of things. They didnt. This is not a chicken bone. Wish it was. [inaudible] there is a famous image of allegedly a human face taken from orbit. Maybe. But probably not. All right. Here is a friend again, another selfie. Loves taking these selfies of herself. Its like a large ocean liner to curiosity and other rovers are generally female. At this point its getting closer to mount sharp and it has made quite a few kilometers going backwards. It is once again finding the kind of sedimentary striated rock that is so interesting to the scientists because it means that there was water there. And that brings us to todays news. This was an image that was released today and what it shows is quite clearly that here there were layers layer upon layer upon layer of sedimentary deposit. And to have it is flat, they say, means that it was a lake. If it was more way the or whatever, then it would be a river or a delta or string. But this means this was a lake. They have come across quite a few of these and in fact, the whole way from Yellowknife Bay to the base of mount sharp has been going through one they found one delta after another after another. So there was water just pouring in here over what now johnson is was probably tens of millions of years. Dole longer tens of thousands but tens of millions of years forming lakes, deltas, streams. And this is the kind of Proof Positive that there was a lake. Probably not a super deep lake and it might have come and gone over a period of time but it was a large lake. Another aspect of this that its very exciting for the times this is completed early on i showed you a picture of Eberswalde Delta and over until just a few years ago a lot of people would say no that wasnt water, that wasnt a river. Now all of those kinds of permissions, and there are hundreds of them around mars can be pretty definitively identified as being the result of water which changes the whole nature of the discussion about mars because that means that it was like mobile water. And to do that welcome we would get to that in another slide. That requires a whole change in the paradigm in understanding what mars is about. Just . [inaudible] there . Kind of doubt it but you know it is beautiful. This is in detail, that same kind of layered rock that has the geologists so utterly delighted. And the way that they came to the tens of millions of years from thousands of years is that they are now, on the geological formations, that is the pace of mount sharp and vacancy that it gradually ascends about 150 meters and all of what is better than no from where they are now, its the same kind of stuff. They have built up 150 meters of this kind of layered material to say nothing of what is below takes a long, long time because it doesnt happen overnight. So thats how they begin to say okay, not thousands of years, not tens of thousands. Millions, maybe tens of millions and we may be getting into hundreds of millions. But they have also done is concluded based on these most recent discoveries but the water was running theyre probably much later than it had been anticipated. Its always been said or its long been said that there was water on mars if there was water it was in the early whats called him a lockin period from 4. 5 billion years ago which was about when the planet form to maybe four or 3. 8 billion years ago. Thats when it was still an atmosphere but they know that the gale crater didnt form until after that. And now you have millions of years of forming this via water so it is suddenly becoming clear that mars has the conditions for stable water well past where they thought initially, or they thought for a long time. And this is kind of a cool picture. This is a deposit of assault that they found in one of these areas. They dusted and thats what makes it blue again taking away the oxide and they tested it and it was assault. Just like it that drives up year and you salty deposits as well as those mud flats, thats what they found. And this is like within the last six months. Now, this is a picture that was just released today. This is now their current, you know, their current thinking about what happened. Heres gale crater. There is snow of the year. Water starts coming down because it comes up there is snow up here. There is a water cycle that allows for rivers to be coming down here and then theres this lake. It probably comes and goes over a long period of time, but even if there is no lake there is groundwater. This is again imported for the life story because as were discussing earlier in order for there to be a plausible origin of life and survival of organisms, there has to be water. But it doesnt have to be water on the surface. Water in the ground could also work. Turns out that there were a lot of microbes that live off of rocks. Thats where they get their Energy Source. Yes . So why didnt life developed on mars . We dont know that it didnt. I think that it would be fair to say that awful lot of the scientists think that it probably did. Finding it is really, really hard. The oldest microbial life found on earth was are sure or the consensus is was 3. 5 billion years ago. Some people say 3. 8 that these are little, this is microbes that interact with rock in such a way that theres a telltale kind of residue. They arguing about what they find in australia where they bring it into a lab and examine it for years and years. So its going to take a long time before they can do that. The supposition or the theory the hypothesis is that there was a habitable area. We dont know how life started here, but theres really no particular reason to think that it didnt start on mars. Yes . [inaudible] could you possibly find a microbe, go deeper, 10 20, 100 feet . Whats the technological problem that prevents them from doing that . Okay. And if so, ive been asked to repeat the question. The question was about the likelihood for the greater likelihood that it would be microbial life still perhaps existing away down 10 meters, whatever. Rather than on the service. And that is indeed accurate. The top probably half a meter or so is utterly kicked by the radiation. So it needs to go deeper. The answer is that it is really, really hard to bring instruments there that can do it. This is the first drill, curiosity has drilled the first one that is ever arrive there. The European Space agency has a mission that is supposed to land on mars in 2018. Although the rocket they will be said with the Russian Space agency and im not sure that will work anymore, but putting that aside, for politics that mobile will have a girl that can go down i think two meters and that is expected to be if it worked, to be potentially a lot richer in terms of finding that kind of stuff. But all this is like, its very very hard to determine what you found. Thats why what mars scientists are really excited about. In addition to all this. They want to bring back a rock. They want to bring back soil. Very hard to do. Getting there is something that the United States has done now seven times, and landed successfully. No one at this point as the technology cajun blast off again and come back. Thats something thats in process is going to require a lot of technological advance, a lot of money and a lot of support from the taxpayers. But any case, and here you can see this is after all the soil that is brought down creates this big fan of material and those are the kinds of things that they now see all around gale crater. Of course they dont see the water but they see where the water was. Now were going back to one of the pictures i started with the again, this was just released today, and perhaps now its more clear. Look at this. This tells us that there was a delta there. Its so obvious, you know . The structure of it and the shape. There also are common terms of the kind of rock and then the kind of grains, rocket grains tell the same kind of story. One of the things that was surprising about the announcement today was that they said since going since being at one of the lowest points in gale crater theyve been going up in elevation the whole time. And yet as they see all these deltas, they are not come the elevation is such that theyre going towards mount sharp and that makes no sense since the water we know came from the other side from the cliff. So what they were describing today is a gale crater that once had mount sharp in the middle of it. They had their theories as to how it was created. Again, they dont have plate tectonics. This was not volcanic. This was not created out of the bowels of morris. This is something that was created by layer after layer after layer. And to me this is one of the most fascinating parts. In order for, as we were saying earlier, for there to be as much water in mars around mars as there apparently was back in the good old days there needed to be a huge reservoir, or else if there was water it was just in a lake it would evaporate and then go away. It needs to be replenished there needs to be rain, there needs to be snow there needs to be a lot of moisture in the air. And the climate modelers who for the last sort of 15 years have said this is not possible. They were the ones who are saying the Eberswalde Delta or whatever could not be a real delta because the atmosphere would and off i it was too thin. Now the gentlemen is about to become project scientist was saying that theres a whole new interest in the idea of a Northern Ocean, which was again about a third of mars and if thats the case then the issue again for life, thats terrific to have that kind of water to have huge pools like that and some Little Islands in it. That is very much like what early earth was like around the period of 3. 8 billion years ago. So you will probably hear more about the Northern Ocean if youre interested in mars in the days ahead. Theres a lot of back and forth. They havent found anything that suggests that there was a short line. These are the kinds of things that you look for but they have found quite a few river, Valley Networks that empty here and that suggests that is going down, the water was going to into a big pool. So you got a Northern Ocean and you have an increasing possibility for life, and you have a story that says there was water all over and for a long period of time. If there was life on mars we know that it probably didnt last more than about 3. 5 3. 3 billion years ago because the climate change, it clearly got much colder. It got much more acidic. It got much more inhospitable and just the main reason why was because the Magnetic Field that surrounded mars. Magnetic fields or taxis offer radiation and having the same fate as mars did your rehab and Magnetic Field that we are proud of. They dont. They have remnants of Magnetic Fields. Because it has changed so much over the eons much of the history is gone for good. They will never be understood. We could push back some things in terms of whether mightve been microbial life, but a lot of things we cannot. I mars there hasnt been the same kind of turn. It is possible when they have the technology of two children on her one perhaps the young gentleman here becomes an astronaut and arrives on mars and thank you. We are her she ate your caring. They will find potentially, a lot of that get an insight to what happened on earth. And all the things that are now missing. That is why the image sharpness so important because mars is very much her kaizen nol tell us a lot. And that is the young. This is why to me is that beautiful supplementary lower bound probably the most interesting thing that ever researched nasa in my view. [applause] thank you. Any chance they can get to the cave . The question was the cave and if rovers can get there. The answer is yes. I dont know of any particular reason why there wouldnt be caves. Its easy to imagine there would have been cavelike structures they are. And they would have been for the radiation that wouldve had more organic that were still detectable. [inaudible] very good hush in. The taxpayers the primary benefactors who is 2. 6 billion. The structure of self would build large liotta gpl jet proportion labs in pasadena, which i had the very good fortune about spending a year and a half and i have to say, you would a proud of what your tax money is doing out there. These are brilliant people working incredibly hard, taking huge risk and doing spec tacky letter staff. There also are instruments on curiosity. There are other things that go up to about 2000 degrees fahrenheit and they cooked the samples and gases come off and read the gas. But there are also the radar will raise their anothers. Like not so many past programs, but missions going forward, theres a lot of international collaboration. The germans played a role. Theres a russian instrument. The french were very important. And theres a spanish instrument as well. But its kind of the future. Generally the u. S. Will send it up and create the capsule and maybe the structure itself. But the instruments will be international. [inaudible] it is largely aluminum. I take that back. I think that the structure itself has a lot of the women a man it, but other models as well. Yes. [inaudible] the question is why did they make the wheels out of kevlar. The answer is twofold. One, you will recall at the very end the wheels were actually part of the landing mechanism and said they had to be structured a certain way as a result of that. The second thing was because they were going to be driving uphill, they needed it to be the attraction that they would go up and go down. So they needed something very light. I think have letter would be heavier. Yes. The question is are there plans to send humans there at all. The answer is yes. However every president since i think Richard Nixon has said we are going to send astronauts to mars. Its very complicated, very expensive. You have to do quite a few missions see whether it destinations in order to learn how to get to mars. I think it would be fair to say now that the orion capsule is better, that theres more momentum than humans than ever before. One of the things i discovered its just like in my generation the Apollo Program was the quintessential kind of american achievement in no way. Today, a lot of young people see mars in the same way theyre going to mars come to sending humans to mars learning first and then sending germans to mars is a significant goal. Is it significant enough to have that decades long momentum that you need . Unclear. I sure hope so. [inaudible] canals ended to be figments of peoples imagination. One of the things that scientists often say about mars is that it will mislead you while the time. This is current scientists as well. Certainly going back to you think you see something. You are looking for your lands in seeing they are straight. You are project team on and that is what these folks tried so hard not to do. They gathered data. They have a team of 300 plus scientists. They go over the data. They put out papers. People criticize them or agree with none. Theres a process so its probably fair to say that when they conclude tonight in ancient large lake bear benefit ears. [inaudible] do you find these committees need to be synonymous in their goals or do you find theres a lot of bureaucracy and it takes a long time for every step . Some of both. Im sorry, i had mentioned the committees that play a role in deciding where the rover is going to go and then all so many committees that decide where the next rovers should go or what kind of instruments they should have and so on. Is it very slow moving and bureaucratic. Not so much the operational committees now because they have to make decisions in a short timeframe and they do so. In terms of committees that decide the kind of bigger question, the policy question, and theres another rover very similar to curiosity has now been scheduled to land in 2020 and the process of deciding where we tell them what of instruments they would have has been going on for a year. So theres a very long process. Also, nasa has a variety of layers of decision of oversight and there was the Senior Committee that recently look at a variety of missions and this was one of them. As they concluded, this was not doing what it was supposed to do, that it was traveling too much and not doing enough science. It is kind of a controversial conclusion because in the first year they found that mars had been habitable, which was kind of a plot buster discovery and turns out the committee had a grudge against a variety of different folks. Suffice it to say that todays announcement and a couple of other things that are coming put to rest that criticism because they were driving away to have the amount of junk they were doing science and they concluded there was this huge lake. It would be inaccurate to say theres not some of that necessary because its taxpayer money and its really expensive. Some attendants inviting. [inaudible] in the United States horoscope and also mars is very interesting the ancients describe it as a circle, which represents spirit of the cross on top of that represents the emergence of matter. They made narrow. When i think of the astrology what i find interesting is the desire, the intuition of human that there is life out there that other things beyond what happens on our. Is there a search for life er nurse. But the discovery of obviously meant, which there are no billions is almost impossible. So that intuition that humans have had here there is the intuition that there was water on mars. Yeah, there was. But not now. It was long ago. [inaudible] yes. Theres a couple of slides that appear to be water dribbling down flowing down a cliff in summer. But that is still the process of determining if its water or something underneath moving. [inaudible] [inaudible] yes. The understanding there were a lot of stars certainly goes back a long way. The estimate now in the milky way alone is there is Something Like 300 million stars. And probably most of them have plans for their solar system and planets that orbit. So that is just one of hundreds of billions of galaxies. So i think it would be fair to say that yes astrophysicist and other scientists are very much of the opinion that there is going to be life found. That is why mars is so important because so far we have an example of one planet where theres life. If it turned out that there was life on mars at some point, that we could get a pretty good handle even if it was microscopic and didnt have time to revolve, that then they would be potentially end of two. Once you have end of two, the likelihood, the probability of other planets having life goes up like this. So that is why you know theres so much attention being paid. One of the parallels i like to think about this for a long time, scientists have speculated, even assumes that there were planets beyond our solar system. But it wasnt until 1997 that they approved at. I kinder think that maybe there is the same kind of dynamic going on. They didnt have the technology before. They didnt have the intellectual pathway. But in 1997 several groups kind of came together and said this is an exit plan it and it picked up steam and now they find them everyday. People are looking for it and looking forward and cant find it. They dont know how to do it. They dont have the technology. But when we do and maybe well find it on a lot of planets. Yes. Is that possible [inaudible] remarkably, no. The chemistry appears to be really very similar. There probably are some elements that arent there. Chemistry is kind of not mayfield. But what the team says in general is that nothing has surprised them in terms of what they find chemically. Some of the things they have found there was a large deposit of a full. If youre in the opal market, you might want to go to mars. You could really do well. So the chemistry appears to be the same. Im sure there are some elements that are there but none that they have detect it better different. [inaudible] interesting you should ask. The question was methane. For my first book on my spent a lot of a lot of time with a gentleman named mike uma who was hired as the mass at nasa. Hed been looking for 15 years. I had the good fortune to go down with him to chile to the death there where a lot of the most powerful telescopes are and where you are high up and he had had he had detected what he understood to be an enormous plume of my same that had belched out from the planet, several places and then stopped. He wrote a paper about that. A journal who highlighted in science. It was highlighted by nasa. It was like a really big deal. If theres methane, which is an organic material coming from below the surface, putting two and two together suggest there might be more organic sound manner and the little organisms that live on methane and create methane. So methane gas, if they detect that would be a big deal. The paper is always happens in the world of science. It looks like that. Was on the ropes. The First Reading format then by curiosity or not at all promising. This gentleman says that curiosity couldnt find the kind of things he was looking for. Suffice it to say i think you hear something in the nottoodistant future about methane is going to make him happy. Embargoes. Friendship. I [inaudible] correct. This is the famous or infamous alan hale. It was found in antarctica. That is where they get most of the mars media right better cleanest and most pure. It doesnt land in a farm and immediately gets organic than them. It lands in antarctica and you can get much less. This was a paper and a view that was very, very high profile. They said there were five bio signatures and youre exactly right. Gradually scientists kind of took on each of the bio features and said this is not true. This is not true and this is why. I can tell you that robert mckay, who is the main author passed away recently, but he still has the team. They believe more strongly than they did back in 18 maybe seven. They believe more strongly that they did find organic live. So you can never quite tell. Sometimes issues in science get the bomb and the debunking goes too far. Sometimes they are debunked because there really isnt the substance there. But one of the people who was key in the debunking, a guy named andrew see how has now himself published a paper saying he is found a meteorite that did not have microbial fossils but it did have organic carbon in it which is a big step. This would be from mars that arrived here. If i could digress here for a second, also one of the things i find really interesting. Were talking about meteor rates. They had all the time. Some of them are really big. They kick up a lot of soil rock. We now know through the world of extreme files, these are microbial lifes, we know these survive long periods of time in hibernation. There is a theory developed called pittsburgh yet that life from earth potentially get the asteroid hits. They kick up a lot of rock. Some of it has microbial life in it. Over the eons that sales and maybe starts life. As it turns out from the perspective of the scientists mars and 3. 8 billion years ago was more conducive to life than earth. So the people who support this theory say it probably happens the other way around. Asteroid hits kicks up a lot of rock brings life. Which means were martians. [laughter] [applause] is there time for more questions . You mentioned the apathy around mars [inaudible] correct. Absolutely yes. And mars had a different atmosphere at one point and when it lost that Magnetic Field, it lost its atmosphere. Another way these astrophysicists are looking for expo planets as they can now do this. They can look at these planets and realize what in the atmosphere they detected Carbon Dioxide, Hydrogen Sulfide a thing. Oxygen it turns out about which we assume is great, but we need it for life. Oxygen bonds very quickly, so it has to be constantly replenished in order for there to be an oxygen atmosphere. So if they were to find and ask the planet that had a lot of oxygen in its atmosphere, that would eat, some believe like 95 prove that theres life spared. Oxygen has to be constantly replenished. [inaudible] the question is are there gases on mars and then also is this kind of material being shared with younger folks in school . In terms of the first, i think the answer is no. It is the same kind of gases that we find here. The general chemistry seems to be the same. In terms of the second part nasa does an awful lot of that reach there by law. That is part of their mission is to present information in all different kinds of ways. The reason i can show you these pictures as there is no copyright on them. They are all public domain. Truthfully, one of the reasons i wrote the book as i wrote it in a way that is accessible to a broad range of people. I didnt do things that were described as inaccurate. That i didnt go into that kind of mindnumbing detail but sometimes a science book could go into. I try to make it into a narrative and explain the science that way. To be honest when i go out and talk to people and sell my book the sales that are most pleasing to me is a young child that will hopefully read it in the future. [inaudible] sure. The organic carbonbased compounds. Those are the Building Blocks. The nucleic acid stuff like that. It turns out there is organic this is one of the relatively recent discoveries that all of that stuff is out there and falling on are they the kind of organic that come from the universe or are they the kind of things that life builds because organics come out way as well. That will be one of the big challenges if they find organics. I cant say too much about this, therell be some scores fairly soon. The issue over time is to these organic molecules, rows that are sent a living that brought them together