S27E94: Ancient Life on Mars? Perseverance's Groundbreaking Discovery

[00:00:00] This is SpaceTime Series 27 Episode 94 for broadcast on the 5th of August 2024. Coming up on SpaceTime, the first potential signs of what could be ancient life found on the red planet Mars. Meteorologists record planet Earth's hottest day on record.

[00:00:18] And SpaceX are looking at basing a Starship recovery team in Australian waters. All that and more coming up on SpaceTime. Welcome to SpaceTime with Stuart Gary. NASA's Mars Perseverance rover has discovered what could be the first potential signs of past life on the red planet.

[00:00:55] The car-sized six-wheeled mobile laboratory made the spectacular find in a vein-filled arrowhead-shaped rock nicknamed Che'Ava Falls. The rock contains some fascinating traits that may well bear on the question of whether Mars was once home to microscopic life in the distant past.

[00:01:12] An analysis by rover instruments indicates the rock does possess qualities which fit the definition of a possible indicator of ancient life. You see, the rock exhibits chemical signatures and structures that could possibly

[00:01:25] have been formed by life billions of years ago, when the area in Jezero crater being explored was a warmer, wetter world with flowing water. Of course, other possible explanations for the rock and its features are being looked at by mission scientists

[00:01:40] and future steps will be required to determine whether ancient life is in fact a valid explanation. The rock marked the rover's 22nd rock course sample. It was collected on July 21st as the rover explored the northern edge of Naritva Valleys, an ancient river valley measuring some 400 meters wide

[00:01:59] that was carved out by water rushing into Jezero crater long ago. NASA's Associate Administrator Nicola Fox from the agency's headquarters in Washington, D.C. says Perseverance mission managers designed the route in order to specifically ensure that the rover visits areas with the potential for interesting scientific finds.

[00:02:16] And it would certainly seem that the trip through the Naritva Valleys riverbed has paid off as scientists have found something that they've never seen before, something that will give scientists much to study. Multiple scans of Sheava Falls have been carried out by the rover scanning habitable environments

[00:02:34] with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemical Instrument, better known as SHERLOCK. And it does indicate that this rock contains organic compounds. Now, while such carbon-based molecules are considered the building blocks of life, they can also be formed by normal chemical and geological processes.

[00:02:51] In other words, they don't necessarily have to be biological. Perseverance Project scientist Ken Farley from Caltech says that Sheava Falls rock is the most puzzling, complex and potentially important rock yet investigated by Perseverance. On the one hand, we have our first compelling detection of organic material,

[00:03:10] distinctive colourful spots indicative of chemical reactions that microbial life could use as an energy source, and clear evidence that water, necessary for life as we know it, once passed through the rock. But on the other hand, we've been unable to determine exactly how this rock was formed,

[00:03:27] and to what extent other nearby rocks may have heated Sheava Falls and contributed to these features. And it doesn't end there. There are other features about the metre-by-half-metre rock, named after a Grand Canyon waterfall, that have also intrigued scientists.

[00:03:42] In its search for signs of ancient microbial life on Mars, Perseverance is focused on rocks that may have been created, or at least modified long ago, by the presence of water. And that's why the team homed in on Sheava Falls.

[00:03:56] Sherlock's principal investigator, Kevin Hand from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, says this is the kind of key observation that Sherlock was built for, to seek organic matter, an essential component in the search for past life.

[00:04:11] Running the length of the rock are large white calcium sulphate veins. And between these veins are bands of material whose reddish colour suggests the presence of hematite, one of the minerals that gives Mars its distinctive rusty hue. When Perseverance took a closer look at these red regions,

[00:04:28] it found dozens of irregularly shaped, millimetre-sized off-white splotches, each ringed with black material, akin to leopard spots. Perseverance's Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry, or PIXL, has determined that these black halos contain both iron and sulphate. Astrobiologist and Perseverance science team member David Flannery,

[00:04:48] from the Queensland University of Technology, says these spots were a big surprise. You see, here on Earth, these types of features in rocks are often associated with a fossilised record of microbes living in the subsurface. Spotting this type on sedimentary rocks here on Earth

[00:05:04] can occur when chemical reactions involving hematite turn the rocks from red to white. Now those same reactions can also release iron and phosphate, causing the black halos to form. Reactions of this type can be an energy source for microbes,

[00:05:19] thereby explaining the association between such features and microbes in an Earth setting. Now in one scenario, Chiava Falls was initially deposited as mud with organic compounds mixed in that eventually cemented into rock. Later, a second episode of fluid flow penetrated fissures in the rock,

[00:05:36] enabling mineral deposits that created the large white calcium sulphate veins seen today and resulting in the spots. While both the organic matter and the leopard spots are of great interest, they are not the only aspects of Chiava Falls rock confounding the science team.

[00:05:52] They were also surprised to find that these veins are filled with millimetre sized crystals of olivine. Now that's a mineral that forms from magma. The olivine might be related to rocks that were formed further up the rim of the river valley

[00:06:05] and that might have been produced by crystallisation of magma. Now if so, the team has another question to answer. Could the olivine and sulphate be introduced into the rock at uninhabitably high temperatures, creating an abiotic chemical reaction that resulted in the leopard spots?

[00:06:21] Perseverance has fired lasers and x-rays at the rock, imaging it literally day and night from just about every angle imaginable. Scientifically now, perseverance has nothing more to give. And so to fully understand what really happened in that Martian river valley in Jezero Crater

[00:06:37] billions of years ago, scientists will need to bring their Chiava Falls rock sample back to Earth so that it can be studied with more powerful instruments available in laboratories. And that is another reason why a sample return mission is so desperately needed.

[00:06:53] NASA scientist Morgan Cable says the observations we have of this rock now are fascinating. What does this rock have to do with our search for ancient life on Mars? Everything. Let's take a closer look. Three things about this rock jump out at us.

[00:07:08] Whitish veins of calcium sulphate are clear evidence that water once ran through the rock. Reddish middle area, the rover's SHERLOCK instrument detected organic compounds, tiny features that look like leopard spots? PIXL found they indicate chemical reactions which could have been an energy source for microbial life.

[00:07:26] We've never seen these three things together on Mars before. We have lots of questions about how this rock formed and whether it hosted microbial life billions of years ago. But to fully understand what's going on here, we need to get these rocks back to labs here on Earth.

[00:07:39] In the meantime, as the science community investigates this data, we've added a sample of this really compelling rock to Perseverance's collection. It's awaiting retrieval by a future mission and we can't wait to study it up close. That's NASA scientist Morgan Cable. And this is Space Time.

[00:07:56] Still to come, planet Earth records its hottest day on record And the success of the last SpaceX Starship test flight in June has now raised the possibility of recovery teams attempting to retrieve the next test article

[00:08:09] when it splashes down in the Indian Ocean just off the Western Australian coast. All that and more still to come on Space Time. An analysis by NASA has confirmed that July the 22nd was the hottest day on record on planet Earth, hitting a staggering 17.15 degrees Celsius on average.

[00:08:43] The claims are based on global daily temperature data using NASA's armada of over two dozen Earth observation satellites together with more than 60 years of historical data. The evidence also shows that both July the 21st and the 23rd also exceeded the previous daily record,

[00:09:00] which was 17.09 degrees Celsius set back in July of 2023. NASA says the record-breaking temperatures are all part of what appears to be a long-term warming trend, driven by human activities, primarily the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

[00:09:18] NASA Administrator Bill Nelson says that as part of the agency's mission to expand science's understanding of Earth, NASA collects critical long-term observations of the changing planet. He says in a year that's already set many records as the hottest on record, the last weeks of July were especially brutal.

[00:09:36] The findings come from data analyses of the MIRROR-2, or Modern Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications Version 2 system, and GEOS-FP, the Goddard Earth Observing System Forward Processing Program. The two combine millions of global observations from instruments on land, sea, air and in space using atmospheric models.

[00:09:58] GEOS-FP provides rapid near real-time weather analysis. While the MIRROR-2 climate reanalysis takes longer, it ensures the use of the best quality observations. These models are run by the Global Modeling Assimilation Office at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

[00:10:16] And the results agree with an independent analysis by the European Union's Copernicus Earth Observation Program. Scientists with NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York say these latest daily temperature records follow 13 months of consecutive monthly temperature records. Their analysis was based on records using surface instrumental data,

[00:10:38] which provides a longer-term view of changes in global temperatures at monthly and annual resolutions going back to the late 19th century. All in all, it doesn't look good for planet Earth. This is Space Time. Still to come, SpaceX debase a Starship recovery team in Australian waters,

[00:10:57] and later in the Science Report, a new study has confirmed that a vegan diet can actually make you biologically younger. All that and more still to come on Space Time. The success of the last SpaceX Starship test flight in June have raised the possibility of recovery teams

[00:11:30] attempting to retrieve the next test article when it splashes down in the Indian Ocean off the West Australian coast. Accordingly, SpaceX officials have now commenced negotiations with the Australian Government about mounting such a mission.

[00:11:43] The previous Starship flight profile saw the 122-metre-tall rocket launch from SpaceX's starbase in Texas before landing vertically in a soft splashdown in the eastern Indian Ocean off the coast of Western Australia. However, on that occasion, SpaceX didn't attempt to recover the Starship stage following its landing.

[00:12:03] Now, in the wake of the signing of new technology agreements between the United States and Australian Governments last week, SpaceX is looking at recovering the Starship following a future test flight. The new plan would see SpaceX recovery vessels collect Starship following splashdown

[00:12:18] and then tow her into port in Western Australia. A similar procedure was used to test a Falcon 9 a decade ago. Starship is the largest and most powerful rocket ever built. SpaceX boss Elon Musk sees the giant spacecraft as an interplanetary colonial transport vehicle

[00:12:36] capable of carrying people and cargo on deep space missions to the Moon, Mars and beyond. And NASA plans on using a modified version of Starship called the HLS to transport the Artemis III crew down to the lunar surface

[00:12:50] following their arrival in cislunar orbit aboard their Orion spacecraft in 2026. The Starship's test flight history, though short, has been fascinating. The first Starship orbital test flight failed to even reach orbit back in April last year. A second launch in November successfully achieved main engine cut-off and stage separation

[00:13:10] before both stages failed in mid-flight. The third test flight in March this year finally achieved orbit but failed a successful soft landing. However, the fourth test flight in June succeeded in most of its primary objectives

[00:13:24] with the Super Heavy booster lifting off successfully and completing a full-duration ascent burn. The mission then achieved another successful hot stage separation powering down all but three of the Super Heavy's 33 Raptor engines just as planned and successfully lighting the six Raptor engines on the upper stage Starship section

[00:13:42] before separating the two vehicles. Now, following this hot fire stage separation the Super Heavy booster successfully completed a flip-back maneuver and then a boost-back burn to send it towards its targeted splashdown zone. It also successfully jettisoned its hot stage adapter. The booster's flight ended just as planned

[00:14:02] with a landing burn and soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico seven minutes and 24 seconds after launch. Meanwhile, Starship's six second stage Raptor engines successfully powered the vehicle into space and placed it on a planned suborbital coasting trajectory designed to make a controlled re-entry over the Indian Ocean.

[00:14:21] And just as planned, Starship used its jets and control surfaces to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere at the correct angle and heat shield first in order to withstand peak heating and maximum aerodynamic pressure as it descended hypersonically through the atmosphere. Amazing real-time telemetry and live high-definition video streaming

[00:14:40] allowed mission managers and the general public to watch every phase of the entry, descent and landing although one of the flaps and an external camera were badly burnt during the descent. Importantly, Flight 4 ended with Starship igniting its three center Raptor engines once again

[00:14:56] and then executing a flip maneuver and finally a landing burn to undertake a vertical landing and soft splashdown in the Indian Ocean an hour and six minutes after launch. Preparations for Test Flight 5 are already underway

[00:15:10] with a 50-meter tall Starship upper stage undertaking a static test fire at Starbase ahead of what could be a launch sometime later this month. At this stage, Flight 5 could also attempt to recover the super-heavy booster

[00:15:23] by having it return to the launch pad instead of splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico. If it does return to the launch pad, SpaceX will use the launch tower's so-called chopstick arms to capture the rocket as it lands. Whatever happens, it's going to be a fascinating flight.

[00:15:39] Stand by... This is Space Time. And time now to take a brief look at some of the other stories making use in science this week with a science report. Scientists have found that a short-term vegan diet can actually make you biologically younger.

[00:16:10] A report in the journal BMC Medicine has shown that vegan diets are linked to reductions in your biological age. Scientists reached their conclusions after feeding 21 pairs of twins either a normal omnivore meal plan or a vegan diet over eight weeks.

[00:16:26] They found that the twin on the vegan diet had real reductions in their biological age estimates based on their DNA methylation. That's a kind of chemical modification of a person's DNA associated with aging. At the end of the study, the team found that those who ate vegan

[00:16:42] had lower ages to their hearts, hormones, livers and inflammatory and metabolic systems, which was not found in those eating the omnivore diet. The authors added that participants on the vegan diet lost 2 kilograms more on average than those on other more conventional diets,

[00:16:58] which might also be playing a part in the biological age changes. A new study warns that global populations of emperor penguins are now declining by around 1.3 percent every year. The findings reported in the journal The Proceedings of the Royal Society B

[00:17:15] weren't able to provide an explanation for the ongoing decline in species population. The authors found that in 2018 there were around 24,000 fewer adults at breeding colonies in spring compared to the 2009 numbers. The researchers found that changes across the Antarctic continent varied by region

[00:17:34] and the observed trends weren't linked to any known sea ice conditions. The first of the Australian Defence Force's long-awaited MQ-4C Triton surveillance and reconnaissance drones have finally arrived down under. Canberra has ordered an initial four of the aircraft with options for three more.

[00:17:52] The MQ-4C will provide real-time intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and targeting capabilities using a 360-degree integrated sensor suite. It's the same version currently operated by the US Navy. The sensor suites help track ships by gathering their speed, location and classification from operating altitudes of up to 60,000 feet.

[00:18:14] The Tritons will be based at the Tyndall Air Base near Catherine in the Northern Territory and they'll be piloted remotely from the Embra Air Base near Adelaide's northern suburbs in South Australia.

[00:18:24] Based on the earlier RQ-4C Global Hawk, the Triton offers longer duration flight times of over 30 hours allowing them to range over 15,200 kilometres helping to allow them to cover Australia's vast and remote coastal and maritime environments.

[00:18:40] The updates to the Triton over the Global Hawk also include a reinforced airframe and wing structure as well as new de-icing equipment and lightning protection systems which will allow the aircraft to descend rapidly through clouds to gain a closer look at ships and other targets at sea.

[00:18:56] Built by Northrop Grumman, the Triton is also designed to provide a force multiplier effect for the Air Force's manned Boeing P-8 Poseidon maritime surveillance patrol aircraft. From the United States' famous Project Blue Book to the UK's discreet Di-55

[00:19:12] many governments around the world have felt the need to undertake official investigations into the multitude of UFO sightings reported every year. Most of them have released their findings to the public yet surveys show 68% of UFO believers think governments aren't telling the full story.

[00:19:29] Tim Mendham from Australian Skeptic says these UFO programs have each been used to fuel conspiracy theories. But they've also excited ufologists and they do make great listicles. Listicles are a wonderful thing to get the audience in.

[00:19:43] Higgypop is a website that is, you could call it pop culture of the paranormal. It covers paranormal news, ghost hunting and eerie entertainment. It is a half-decent site. It covers a lot of the claims that's had through paranormal things

[00:19:56] but it is from a somewhat sceptical point of view. It mixes them. It mixes them up. But the editor of it has a pretty good approach to it. So if you're interested in pop paranormal melody, pop culture and some serious stuff it's worthwhile having a look.

[00:20:07] Anyway, 13 secret government UFO programs from around the world. You can tell that Higgypop is that wacky radical sort of organization because it has a list of 13 rather than 10 or the top 12 or whatever. It has 13. So it doesn't say this is the absolute definitive list.

[00:20:22] There are other ones but it goes through a whole range of past government investigations bodies that were set up to investigate flying saucers. Most of them are from the US and one of the ones that's often raised is Majestic 12 or MJ-12

[00:20:36] an alleged secret committee of scientists, military leaders and government officials formed in 1947 by an order of President Truman. The documents related to it have been widely debated and they're often co-hoaxes. Standards have been revealed that a lot of them, if not all, are hoaxes.

[00:20:51] So people used to go into libraries and insert these documents into a library and then they would be able to read them. People used to go into libraries and insert these documents into other documents and then someone would find them later and say, look at this secret information.

[00:21:04] Well, it wasn't. Some people believe in their authenticity. A lot of people in the skeptical community certainly regard them as hoaxes. But there's others. Project Blue Book was a real thing. United States Air Force investigating sightings, perfectly reasonable thing to do. We'd have no problem with it.

[00:21:17] They came down after a long, long time, after about 17 years looking over 12,000 UFO reports. They said there was nothing really exciting to find here. Projects followed. There was Canadian ones, there's UK ones, there's even a Brazilian one, French ones, you name it.

[00:21:31] So a lot of governments have done investigations of UFO sightings, et cetera. There's a lot of logic in that too because if they're not aliens, that means they're the enemy and you want to know what the enemy is up to. I think it's perfectly reasonable.

[00:21:45] To me, in fact, I would suggest they do it because if something skeptics would do and would support, investigate these phenomena and see where they are. Make sure you include Mick West in your analysis team. That's right.

[00:21:56] Mick West is very good at actually finding within five minutes what has befuddled a lot of government organizations. He's very good at investigating and normally debunking what are regarded as big sites like the recent Pentagon UFOs, et cetera.

[00:22:08] Most of these, I think all of these actually, I'm trying to think, have basically come down after years of investigation that's been going on for 50, 70 odd years as long as UFOs have been around or claims have been around. There's nothing they can point to.

[00:22:22] It's either there are things which are unknown. Yeah, sure. There's always things that are going to be unknown, but that doesn't mean they're automatically alien, extraterrestrial vehicles, et cetera. So with that going down this road, which we've gone down heaps of times before, what are the 13 nominees?

[00:22:36] Okay, 13 nominees. There's the Flying Saucer Working Party, which is a really terrible name, from the British Ministry of Defence and that started in 1950. Project Sign was the first official US Air Force investigation, started in 1948. There's Project Grudge, which followed Project Sign. That was from 1949, didn't last that long.

[00:22:53] Majestic 12, which we've mentioned, formed in 1947, which is not long after the… That's Roswell, yeah. Yeah, that's pretty much the era, yeah. And that went through a fair time. Again, that's one we've said has probably hoax documents. Project Blue Books, which ran from 1952 to 1969.

[00:23:09] That was pretty extensive and they came down finally saying there's nothing there we can see. Only a small percentage were unexplained. Project Magna, which was a Canadian one established in 1950 and had much the same outcome. DI55, which is Defence Intelligence 55, part of the UK again.

[00:23:26] That ran for a while. I haven't actually got a date for when that started, but it ran for a while and came out with very little information. One called, you'll have to pardon my French here,

[00:23:34] Groupe d'études et d'informations sur les phénomènes aérospatiaux non identifiés. So the group study… Very good. No, not very good. GEIPAN, G-E-I-P-A-N, investigating aerospatial phenomena non identified, which actually unidentified flying objects. That started in 77 and went for a while.

[00:23:52] Operation Prato was in Brazil, started in 77. Project Hessdalen, which is a, I think it's a Norwegian one, specifically about some unexplained lights, which have been worrying people for a while. Project Condine, a British one that started in, went from 97 to 2000. Final report 2006.

[00:24:09] The Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, AATIP. That's another secret American government one. It's kind of a secret if you know about it. Began in 2007, finished in 2017. And then the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force, which is the most recent thing.

[00:24:25] UAPTF, which has been working for a while since about 2020. These things, everyone says they're secret information. There's very few of them, which actually are. Most of them release their information. You can probably get a copy of Project Blue Book. They have huge output as you feel like.

[00:24:38] There's a story I was reading about, about the American UFO movement in the 50s or 60s or something complaining about the secret information. The CIA said, here you are, take it off our hands. It's all yours, do with it what you will. These are not very secret organizations.

[00:24:52] They're known. The secret organizations are the ones you don't know about. And we don't know about them, but they even exist. But all these ones, these 13, those that are genuine, have tend to come down finding that there's really no reason for further investigation.

[00:25:05] The vast majority of sites can be aircraft balloons, astronomical phenomena, meteorological phenomena or hoaxes. And it's a lot of hoaxes. So it's worthwhile. You can look at these things. It's nice to know that they exist. It's nice to get a list like this on Higgy Pop.

[00:25:19] But as this story says, they're really sort of explicable flying objects rather than unidentifiable. It's a lot of work people have put in over the years, over a lot of years. And you can say it's worthwhile if they find there's nothing worthwhile to look at.

[00:25:32] That's Tim Mendham from Australian Skeptics. And that's the show for now. Space Time is available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday through Apple Podcasts iTunes, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Pocket Casts, Spotify, Acast, Amazon Music, Bytes.com, SoundCloud, YouTube, your favourite podcast download provider and from Spacetimewithstuartgarry.com.

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[00:26:44] You've been listening to Space Time with Stuart Garry. This has been another quality podcast production from Bytes.com.