Surprising Findings About Radiation on Mars During a Manned Mission

hello wonderful person this is anton and today we're going to be discussing some of the new studies and new discoveries in regards to the potential men mission to mars with one major question being is it going to be safe for us to fly to mars and to live on mars long term and are we actually going to be able to create some sort of functioning colony but the question is being tackled in these particular studies mostly focuses on the safety on the idea of radiation is there any way for us to safely live on mars knowing that it has much higher radiation on the surface and so let's discuss this in more detail and find out exactly what the scientists believe today but also find out about one particular place on the planet here that seems to have the radiation that's somewhat equivalent to mars so let's start with the idea of radiation it's such an undefined word and it's a somewhat scary concept especially because of tv shows like chernobyl but in reality it's a very complicated topic and it's actually a topic that cannot really just be described in a single video radiation is not just one thing it's a lot of different things and they all have very different functions but when it comes to i guess dangerous types of radiation there are normally four types that are usually mentioned we have the alpha particles we have the beta particles we have the gamma rays and x-rays and then we have neutrons and they all tend to have slightly different origins as a matter of fact some of them have mysterious origins that we still don't really understand but let's start with what we have here on planet earth even right now a lot of you are being exposed to what's known as ionizing radiation and that's of course the irradiation that's powerful enough to possibly change your dna to possibly change certain particles inside your body or to transform an atom into a slightly different atom for example when it comes to the electromagnetic spectrum or light the ionizing radiation starts right here at the ultraviolet so everything after ultraviolet can be potentially dangerous but everything below that so the typical visible light the microwave the radio light and that's of course things emitted by microwaves and cell phones is pretty much safe and it doesn't really affect us but when it comes to the radiation that affects us the ionizing radiation of all four major sources it's really the alpha particles that are to some extent the biggest contributors to the radiation we are receiving right now these are normally the particles we're inhaling and the majority of these particles are the particles of radon or in other words the majority of radiation always are receiving every year comes from breathing and breathing the particles of radon that normally sips through the ground from certain types of minerals but we also receive a few beta particles which are normally electrons and are produced by various cosmic rays and also some gamma rays from the solar radiation and from the cosmic rays as well but in this case radon still represents the majority of radiation received but on mars this would be a completely different story here the radon would not actually come from anywhere so most of the radiation received for a person living on mars would be from either the cosmic radiation or from the solar radiation which would actually be a combination of different x-rays and gamma rays but also different fast-moving protons fast-moving electrons neutrons and even a lot of heavy particles that move really fast that we don't actually receive here on the planet because of the atmosphere so on mars due to the lack of a magnetosphere and a lack of atmosphere everything gets through and everything bombards the surface and as a result here the radiation levels are roughly around 50 times higher than the radiation levels on earth something that nasa has extensively studied by using the device right here known as red located on top of the curiosity rover that's still active with mars even today and for a long time now it's basically been measuring radiation on mars while also learning about different spots on mars that tend to have much lower radiation so for example if we were to take a look at the mars as a whole we'll discover several areas usually the much lower areas on the martian surface that have significantly lower amount of radiation compared to some of the higher areas also depending on the solar activity the levels of total radiation increase or decrease as well for example the levels are surprisingly lowest during the solar maximum when the sun is the most active and that's because the sun creates a kind of a powerful magnetosphere of its own that tends to deflect a lot of the cosmic rays but during the solar minimum the cosmic rays get through essentially doubling the total dose and so a few recent studies wanted to discover a few things about a potential manned mission how dangerous would it be well the first major discovery here is that if we were to do the mission it should not really take more than four years because the radiation levels can actually increase quite dramatically and make it very dangerous and to try to establish and calculate all of this the scientists focused on two major sources of radiation the solar energetic particles and the galactic cosmic rays and both sources of radiation are generally made out of similar stuff about 85 percent of everything in there is protons or basically highly charged hydrogen atoms without an electron about 14 are the electrons or beta particles and then the rest are usually alpha particles which is helium but generally galactic cosmic rays can also contain a lot of other very highly energetic stuff and sometimes even really heavy particles that can really get through anything their origins today are still not entirely well understood but what's understood pretty well is that the sun itself regulates the total radiation received by a planet so normally as i mentioned during solar maximum we don't really get a lot of galactic cosmic radiation and because of this it makes the mission a little bit safer to do during the solar maximum with the solar cycle itself of course taking approximately 11 years and so to try to figure all of this out the scientists behind the paper decided to run a lot of monte carlo simulations using different types of irrigation and also using different types of parameters and trying to see which of these simulations would result in the most effective mission or basically the least radiation received and in this case they've discovered that the most optimal mission would most likely have to start approximately 6 to 12 months right after the solar maximum after the peak activity from the sun and right after this we generally expect to have a pretty low galactic reactivity and also the solar activity starts to decrease as well with all this taken in roughly around 6 years and so after about 6 years we can pretty much expect the opposite a would have galactic cosmic rays not a lot of solar activity and so assuming that it takes approximately 9 months to reach mars and to return from mars it leaves about two years for the mission on the surface with the astronauts then returning to earth right before it becomes too dangerous but this is obviously an extremely basic analysis there are a lot of other factors to consider for example the spaceship itself if it were to have certain types of materials on the inside or if it was actually too thick on the inside or even in the habitat in this case it would unfortunately increase the amount of secondary particles produced because as the primary radiation goes through the material it sort of ends up bouncing around inside the capsule or inside the habitat and ends up producing even more radiation that way this is a very interesting phenomenon that was discovered on top of the international space station and has been studied quite extensively but assuming that the actual spaceship is safe and assuming that the astronauts land on mars what about living on mars are there any specific conditions here that could maybe make it a little bit safer and so obviously first of all they would have to land somewhere in the lower parts of mars somewhere where there's just a little bit more atmosphere to create more protection but second of all some of the recent discoveries from the curiosity especially as it was traveling across the surface around certain specific features made a really intriguing discovery that certain geological features and in this case the feature known as the butte this is the famous mittens and the merrick butte located in arizona surprisingly reduce the total radiation by at least five percent now this could be obviously because they're blocking radiation coming from space but at the same time they also seem to be affecting how certain types of radiation reflect from the surface as well and so building a potential base in the region surrounded by buttes or some other geological features that don't actually allow for the radiation to reflect and also tend to provide more protection from the galactic race would very likely reduce the total dose even lower in this particular case the scientists discovered that the martian buttes tend to unfortunately increase the reflection so even though they obstructed the night skies and prevented the galactic cosmic rays some of these rays ended up reflecting back to the curiosity from some of the features on top of debuts or in other words it's basically an extremely complex and a very challenging problem that would probably require decades of research on the surface of mars in order to figure out what would be the safest location for a potential human colony and although obviously some sort of lava tube or a cave would be even safer this still doesn't solve the problem for when the astronauts have to go outside and for when they have to do science under the martian skies okay so so far looks like a manned mission is possible but could be somewhat dangerous or is it though so let's come back here to planet earth and let's come back to a region that most of us will probably not really get to visit for political reasons we're going to iran and there's actually a city there or a small town known as ramsar the pictures i've seen so far make this place look extremely beautiful but wait anton why are you suddenly talking about persia are you trying to get political here well not at all wonderful viewer this has a point and it's actually a really important point ramsar is known as the most radioactive place on the planet naturally radioactive and it's been this way for many many generations the actual total levels of reactivity in some regions here are very very similar to what we would experience on mars here is actually one of the surveys conducted a few years ago with the levels being shown at 140 micro severe per hour that's not so far from what you would experience by standing on mars right now and the crazy thing about the city is that it's been like this for an extremely long time and so far it seems that no one is actually dying of any radiation poisoning or any genetic problems or really anything else usually associated with high radioactivity as a matter of fact a lot of the locals seem to think the opposite this apparently is a popular sea resort for a lot of iranian tourists it has hot springs as everything you would expect from a resort and it's actually the fact that it's been a resort that turned it so radioactive and so here's how all of this sort of works the region itself seems to be pretty rich in uranium but it's also quite enriched in radium as well a lot of the hot springs here seem to be responsible for carrying a lot of this radioactive material closer and closer to the surface with the water of the radioactive materials eventually being deposited in various types of rocks in the past when the city was being constructed a lot of this rock was used to create the city itself so basically a lot of these buildings right here are actually made out of a somewhat radioactive rock and the uranium rich rock combined with a lot of radium on the inside slowly sips through the material and ends up creating some of the most radioactive conditions on the planet way more radioactive than anything else you can find around you with the levels being approximately 30 to 50 times higher than the earth average and so this is a very intriguing place and actually an extremely important case study something that's both intriguing and of course somewhat mysterious the locals here and also several scientists believe that certain types of radiation levels can actually have almost the opposite effect instead of creating a lot of problems they tend to create a lot of protection for your body including better immune system yet at the same time we still don't really know what long-term facts living here might have on the locals the current studies have not been completed yet and so there's still quite a lot to learn either way though this is literally the most important place on earth right now when it comes to trying to understand the effects of radiation on human body and when trying to establish a colony somewhere on mars on the moon or really anywhere else in outer space the radiation here is really not that far off and so whatever happens to humans here and the way that humans adapted to living here is actually extremely important for us to understand but because of the politics the area is currently unavailable to us so maybe once iran opens up or once there is some sort of throwing of the relationship we might be able to go there and explore this scientifically for now we're just going to have to rely on the data from various probes on mars and from various studies conducted on the iss well it's a very intriguing topic there's quite a lot to cover and i'll actually be coming back to this in one of the future videos but for now what you have to sort of take away from all of this is that a manned mission to mars is definitely possible and not just possible very likely quite safe for at least 4 years but possibly even much longer assuming that we get more data from the city in iran anyway on that note once we learn something else or once i discover something else about the iranian city or the people living there i'll make sure to follow this up with another video until then check out the links in the description below subscribe if you still haven't share this with someone who has learned about space and sciences and maybe come back tomorrow to learn something else maybe support this channel on patreon by joining the channel membership or by buying the wonderful mars themed t-shirt you can find it in description stay wonderful i'll see you tomorrow and as always bye [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Anton Petrov

Views: 260,661

Keywords: anton petrov, science, physics, astrophysics, astronomy, universe, whatdamath, what da math, technology, steven universe, mars radiation, mars mission, is living on mars safe, martian radiation, radiation, alpha particles, beta particles, gamma particles, ionizing radiation, radon, radon on earth, radiation on mars, rad on curiosity, solar energetic particles, galactic rays, galactic cosmic ray, martian mission, butte, martian butte, ramsar, ramsar iran, iran, ramsar radiation

Id: aTBnjzpqsd8

Length: 15min 27sec (927 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 14 2021