Is there life on Mars? | Lucy Berthoud | TEDxUniversityofBristol

so I went for a walk on a beach the other day with my daughter and the dog because someone had told me that on this beach there were some rocks which were very similar to the ones on Mars I looked all along the shoreline looking looking looking and finally I found one here it is so you can see this is a mud stone and it has these veins just like these ones on Mars photograph recently so I was really excited and I shouted to my daughter hey Eva this rock it's really exciting it's just like the ones on Mars and she said no thanks mum that's your thing and ran off to play with the dog she was right space and other planets is my thing and ever since I was a kid I wanted to be an astronaut and I've been lucky enough I haven't become an astronaut yet but I've been lucky enough to work as a space engineer for various space agencies including NASA the European Space Agency space companies including Airbus and Talas Alania space who are currently work for and here at the University of Bristol where I get to teach young people about spacecraft design this is me coming to work in the morning and this is me going home in the evening tired but happy you can see I haven't let go of my dreams in this talk today I'd like to share with you some of the work that we've been doing in the search for life on Mars but first I'd like to ask you hands up if you think there is life on Mars whoa quite a lot of you ok I think I would say that's about half the audience thank you well today we're going to look at three things we can look at how can life survive that is what conditions are there on Mars and what kind of conditions do we need for life we can look at how can we look for life so that means the spacecraft missions and the instruments and why should we bother to look anyway okay let's start with how can life survive we know that Earth and Mars are very different for a start Mars is half the size and then the earth is much nearer to the Sun so it's warmer an average temperature on earth is about 15 degrees C and the average temperature on Mars is about minus 60 degrees C that's like a bad day in the Arctic another difference is this thin blue line that is our precious dense atmosphere and that means we have oxygen to breathe and water to drink Mars has a we D thin carbon dioxide atmosphere and it also has solid carbon dioxide on the ground in the highlands and I've got some of that to show you as well so it's very cold so I'm putting my cycle glove on I don't want to burn myself and you remember this stuff because it's the stuff they use in films and effects because if I throw some into some warm water like this then that happens okay so this solid carbon dioxide on the ground a last difference between Earth and Mars is that something invisible it's the Earth's magnetic field or the magnetosphere Mars doesn't have a magnetic field Mars lost its magnetic field so radiation rains down on the surface how could life possibly survive in this cold hostile environment flooded with radiation to find out we need to know the conditions for life and the people who study this are called EXO biologists and they think for for life to thrive we need three things we need nutrients or food we need a source of energy like the Sun and we need a liquid like water because Mars is so hostile any life there is likely to be microbial or really tiny and happiest in extreme conditions this kind of organism is called an extreme Oh file and as an example let's meet the tardigrade don't be deceived by it looking like an old dust bag this little creature is really tough it can survive freezing boiling starvation dehydration and radiation if you're still not impressed NASA launched some thrust them outside into the vacuum of space for things and they survived for ten days amazing creatures so we have answered our first question how can life survive it needs to be microbial and extreme Oh file our second question is how can we look for life we can do this in two ways we can go to Mars and look there or we can get some Mars rocks and bring them back to the earth let's start with going to Mars there have been of 41 missions to Mars 42 if you include the latest European mission which is called ExoMars which went up in March 2016 of those 42 missions only 17 have actually made it there getting to Mars is hard this is one of the missions that made it there successfully Mars Express and I worked on this mission a few years ago my job was to look after the instruments and they include a camera to take images of the surface a spectrometer to do chemical analysis of the surface and a radar to look beneath the surface on earth of course we have much more sophisticated instruments than anything we could possibly fit inside a space rocket but bringing a rock back is a massive mission which many of us have been working on we need to send a lander to Mars we need to dig out some bits of soil put them in a safe container like this one inside lots of other containers and then on a rocket like this one that rocket then leaves the surface of Mars to get back to the earth building this rocket is one of the trickiest bits of the mission but luckily all rockets work on the same principle the principle of conservation of Menten and I've got a demo of that to show you so I'm just gonna take my psycho class okay a few safety measures first why do I agree to do these things okay so regardless of whether we're in water on the earth or on Mars if we eject mass in one direction then as momentum is conserved then we should go in the other direction okay let's test it out as this is the sort of launch could you humor me with a countdown I'm going to count five four three two one so building the rocket is one tricky bit where I work we've been let me just get my thing where I work we've been working on as part of a European team called euro cares designing a building to house the Martian samples when they get back to the earth we have a great responsibility with this building as we need to protect the earth against any possible Martian biological material to do this we've been working with experts in bio containment and this is a high safety bio containment lab where they work with Ebola and other viruses these guys will help us from the s from stopping the Mars organisms or Mars material from getting out of the container but we also need to stop any earth material from getting into the container and to do this we're working with lunar sample experts like these guys this is a European NASA team these are actually rocks from the moon that were brought back by the Apollo missions okay so that's all in the future but what have we found so far we have found carbon and hydrogen molecules in the rocks okay that's really significant because that means there could be nutrients on the surface of Mars there's been lots of evidence of different kinds to show that there was liquid water in the past and this is a River Delta on Mars you remember that radar the radar found that there is water ice underneath the poles okay so together we have nutrients there's plenty of energy there's sources of energy like the Sun chemical reactions possible geothermal activity and there is evidence of liquid water in the past if we could find liquid water underground on Mars then there could be life now so that answers our second question how can we look for life I did an earlier version of this talks my sister who works in a council where there's serious cuts and she said to me you know Lucy I'd really like to care about whether there's life on Mars but couldn't we spend that money on solving our problems here on the earth it first and I know there'll be some of you out there who are thinking the same thing I could reply that the money that is spent on Mars and space exploration doesn't get launched into orbit most of it goes on the salaries of thousands of highly skilled workers here in a high-tech industry here on earth and they pay their taxes they support the economy and they develop amazing technologies like better breast cancer diagnosis hurricane monitoring weather prediction and so on and those benefit everyone I could reply that space and Mars exploration inspires our young people and helps them to dream if we tell them they might be a Mars astronaut or a dr mars rovers one day then it it'll help them to think about future science and engineering careers our young people need their dreams particularly in hard times it gives them hope for the future I could reply that exploring Mars is part of being human it's human to be curious to explore exploring Mars and looking for life on Mars will prepare us for human missions to Mars and my daughter may have said no thanks mum but would she change her mind if her daughter were living on Mars and she wanted to visit if it turns out there is no life on Mars then the first life on Mars could be the first humans who go there one of you could be the first life on Mars but for me it's personal for me it's spiritual thinking about space gives me perspective if I ever feel down then I think how small my problems are in the scale of the whole world of the solar system of the galaxy of the universe if I feel afraid I say to myself we've been to the moon if I ever feel alone then I remind myself that I am made of Stardust I am a part of the universe and everything in it I guess that I hope we're not alone and that's why I'm searching for life on Mars thank you very much

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 18,987

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United Kingdom, Technology, Exploration, Flight, Innovation, Life, Rocket science, Space

Id: KBqZ76qlbnY

Length: 15min 56sec (956 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 18 2016