How Mars will change human evolution (big time) - Scott Solomon

What's the NASA Chapia experiment? It's just hit the 100 day mark. >> Yeah, it has. Yeah. So, this is basically a it's a simulation. Uh it's a way of trying to understand what life would actually be like for people living on Mars. And the way that they're doing this is by they've created an mockup of a space settlement um and they've built it in Johnson Space Center in in Houston. So, uh, just down the street from me here, really. And, uh, it's built to be kind of like what they think it would actually be like on Mars, right? So, they actually 3D printed it, which is one of the technologies that has been suggested for how we might build structures on Mars. And then a group of uh I believe it's four a crew of four people have uh entered it and they are living inside it uh as you said for 100 days so far but the plan is for it to last a full year. So this is kind of like a thing that people do when they're trying to understand what um different aspects of space settlement might actually be like is they create what are called analoges. basically a model that sort of replicates some aspect of a space environment, a space um settlement in this case and then they put people inside and uh and try to sort of understand what happens. So uh this is the second one that they've done. They did a a full year already. Um and uh and this is the second full year study of um people inside this kind of mockup of a Mars habitat. >> How much do you think they're testing physiological change versus psychological change? Yeah, I think a lot of um what these analog studies uh try to get at and and is true of this study as well is the psychology because of course they can't replicate a lot of the physical conditions of being on Mars. You know, there's one-third the Earth's gravity, right? They're not they're not simulating that. Uh there's probably going to be a lot higher radiation exposure on uh in a Mars habitat, and they're not they're not simulating that. Excuse me. Um, so some of the things that they can simulate are, of course, being in a confined space, uh, being in a area where, you know, you're limited to what you brought with you. They're not, um, they're not able to kind of come and go, and they're not able to bring new materials and supplies in or out. And, um, you know, another big part of it is sort of the the the interaction between the crew members. So, what is it like to be, you know, more or less stuck with just the other uh three folks that you brought with you for an extended time period? >> It's the most boring episode of Love Island ever filmed, but it lasts for an entire 12 months. >> I really think they could make uh some reality TV shows out of these analoges because there's a quite a few of these types of things that are in different places. I went and visited uh one of them actually when I was researching uh my first book which just touched on the idea of uh of how we might change in space. Um and that was out in Utah. It's called the Mars Desert Research Station and uh remote facility in a place in the desert that really kind of looks like Mars. And so I went out there and visited a crew that had just begun a simulation. Um, and it was fascinating to see kind of, you know, what they're doing and how the ways that they try to kind of make it feel realistic and and the kind of things that they try to learn. And there's a whole bunch of these. >> How much is space exploration an evolutionary event versus a technological one? >> Well, that's really the thing that I'm most interested in. So, my background, I'm, you know, I'm an evolutionary biologist, right? And so the thing that got me most interested in this topic of like how will people be affected by being in space is the question of would making a long-term settlement on Mars or or anywhere else lead to evolutionary change. From my perspective, you know, I think it's inevitable. I think basically if you are creating a a situation where people are not just going and coming back but they're going to live there. In other words, they're moving there. That's where their lives are. And most importantly, they're having families there. They're raising children there. Once you start talking about a multiple generation, you know, generational presence on another world, we should expect evolutionary change. That's that's how evolution works, right? Well, migration in the past has caused divergence, right? What was that? Uh uh homo florian florenius. >> Floriziansis. Yeah, floriziansis. The >> That's right. >> the pygmy pygmy people. >> So, can you You're an evolutionary biologist. I've been telling this story on the show for ages. Can you tell me if this is true or not? So, I'd [clears throat] heard uh there were uh Indonesia, right? >> Yeah, that's right. The island of Flores, which is today part of Indonesia. So Indonesia, if anyone looks at it on a map, it's kind of like someone's thrown crumbs over a table. It's very it's very broken up. And what it seemed like was a particular homminid homo previous species got split off and the island that they were on was very very restricted in terms of uh the calories that they could consume in in terms of the resources. So that meant that over time the smallest humans were the ones that were selected to survive because they needed the few fewest calories. Then one of the the story that I've always told is this restriction in resources wasn't just affecting the humans but it was affecting all of the other species as well. So there are sites of tiny 3t 4t high humans carrying tiny spears chasing tiny elephants or mammoths. So, all of the creatures had been deminitized down to this tiny little level uh because they were all on this little island. Is that [ __ ] or am I right? >> Well, that is one of the ways that we think about it and and you're you've got a lot of the story correct there. So, you're absolutely right that basically what people have found are the skeletal remains inside of a cave on this island of Flores of uh these very short statured smallbodied homminids. their the structure of their bones shows us that they were different from any other species that we know about anywhere else in the world that's ever been found. They're only ever been found from this one island. So based on that, we assume they were restricted to the island. Somebody could later find them somewhere else and that would change the story. But for now, you're absolutely right that our understanding is they only lived on this island. And because they're such uh shortbodied hominids in a you know it's very different from pretty much any other species. I'll tell you the actual twist to that in just a moment. But yeah, we we think what may have happened is that their ancestors made it there somehow. They were stranded on this island and basically they evolved to be shorter. And as you pointed out, they're not the only species that evolved to be smaller. Um, we actually know that this is a common phenomenon that happens to species that are isolated on islands is that they change size. So there's all over the world there's all of these examples of these miniature species that live on islands. And elephants are actually a good example. There's there's smallbodied fossil, you know, mammoths and and other elephant relatives on islands like in the Mediterranean and and elsewhere in Asia. Um, so that definitely is something that happens on islands, but there's more to it, which is actually fascinating because on that same island of Flores, not only were there other smallbodied species, but there were actually giants, too. So, you know, the Komodo dragon from Australia, this is sorry, not from Australia, from from Komodo. It's actually near the island of Flores. Um, so there were species that were closely related to Komodo dragons, but were enormous. These absolutely giant lizards. I mean, really like a like a real dragon uh on that same island at the same time as uh homo floriziansis. And that's the thing that happens on islands is, you know, a lot of times they'll get smaller, but sometimes they'll get much bigger. Think about, you know, giant tortoises like in the Galapagos Islands, right? So we call this the island rule and the idea is like things change size they either get much bigger or much smaller and that seems to be true of uh of hominids which are basically you know humans or humanlike species as well. Um and I promised I would give you the the twist. So, so there is actually since that discovery, there was another discovery of another homminid also smallbodied on an island in the Philippines and it's a different species. It's homo. >> Yeah. Homolusinis now Luzon. And so >> same effect but different speciation. >> That's the that's the interpretation. We think that this is like yet another instance where >> some type of homminid goes isolated and became smaller. So >> wasn't the wasn't the Flores man they were still alive 10,000 BC 12,000 BC I think. So, so the initial dates when those fossils were first discovered were were that they survived up until very recent recently by like you know historical not historical by by evolutionary standards by sort of the geological time scale that you know we scientists are used to. Um those dates have since been pushed back a bit as they've gotten more evidence. So still quite recently, I think it I want to say it's something like 50,000 years is now when they think they they finally disappeared. But the thing is about that that that still means that they probably overlapped with our species with homo sapiens, right? So like the first homo sapiens were arriving in that area right around the time that homo floresiansis disappears. So, >> coincidence, you know. Um, >> well, I mean, we we've always thought about this, right? Like, everyone's thought what would it be like to meet an alien? Uh, we don't look at any other species and think, "Oh, they're just like us." I think they're a bit like us. Look at chimpanzeee, you look at apes, you they're a little bit. I I went to a um the windy impenetrable forest which is uh shockingly penetrable actually that it's a it's a tourist it's a tourist destination. >> I've been there as well. My wife and I went there gorilla tracking thing. >> We did. One of the most amazing experiences I've ever had. >> It was it was I did the same thing as you and I'm five yard four yards away from this thousand pound monster. Um and you think wow it's so much like us right? But it's not, you know, it's not, you know, it's not us. I wonder what >> I wonder what would have happened culturally if we did have a different homminid species still floating around. Are they us or are they other? Would we have more kin protection over them or something else? Anyway, I I >> I think about this all the time. I I agree with you. It is because we're used to, as you said, we're used to a world where the closest thing to us is is pretty different. It's there's, you know, and uh and that is not the way the world has been for the vast majority of our species history. For most of our species history, there were multiple types of human on this planet and we interacted with them. >> Yeah, perhaps at varying degrees of peacefulness, but we'll see. So this is the first time if this is the case, if we go to Mars, if we settle Mars as humans, this will be the first time in history that a species will knowingly place itself in an environment that almost guarantees biological divergence. >> Yeah, I mean I think that's right. I mean, you know, you can think about how our species has gone to extreme places on Earth throughout history, right? Antarctica, the bottom of the ocean, these kinds of, you know, very high mountains, but we generally didn't go there to stay, right? There's nobody that is living on Antarctica, like raising their kids there and and these kinds of things. Um, and uh and even in those extreme environments, what we think of as extreme, you know, you can be in Antarctica and it's very cold, don't get me wrong, but you could still walk outside and breathe oxygen, right? uh your blood doesn't boil if uh if there's a leak in your habitat the way uh it it would on Mars. So, we're talking about a very different level of extreme when we talk about how extreme the environment is on Mars. So, yeah, I think you're right. I think that it would be the first time that we would be knowingly putting ourselves in that extreme of an environment and trying to actually live there. >> Okay. Before we even get to Mars, what happens during space flight? Yeah. So, um, you know, it's it's funny because we haven't been flying in space for that long, right? Like, you know, we've got what, like 70 years of of history of of human space. >> We're already looking past it. We're already thinking, ah, we've, you know, space, we've got that that's in the bag. What's next? >> Yeah. And, you know, in the early days, like we had no idea, like literally people thought like your eyes might pop out of your head if you go into space. Like that was a question. Could you swallow? These were unanswered questions uh when people first went to space. But we've learned a ton. Like we know quite a bit now about if you were to, you know, get on a a rocket, fly up to space, uh spend, you know, a couple days there and come back. I, you know, we could tell you with a lot of certainty kind of what is likely to happen to your body. And we know that like the main effects are the change in gravity, right? You're in a weightless environment typically when you're in space. And um and that does a lot to your body. it causes your your your muscles to weaken because they don't have to work as hard, right? Especially like in your lower body, your back. Um, and uh and and because your muscles aren't working as hard, your bones basically respond to muscle and so they start to kind of break down like they basically will start to absorb the body will absorb some of the minerals, right? The calcium and the potassium that makes up your bones. And >> is that is that just because they're not being strained? Is this kind of like atrophy for the muscles but for the structure? >> Exactly. And actually one of the ways that people have studied the effects of prolonged space flight is through bed rest studies. So just by not moving your body much, it's not the it's not a perfect replica, but it does simulate some of the the ways in which being in a lower gravity environment impacts um the the body, the circulatory system, right? your heart's not having to pump as much to get blood through the entire body, you know, to get blood up to your brain. Uh, you know, you got to work against gravity here, but in space, you don't. Um, so we know a lot about that. We know that, um, you know, the fluids in your body actually, not just your the blood, but all of your body fluids start to be redistributed because, you know, gravity normally pushes them down towards your lower body. So, you know, if you look at pictures of astronauts in space, you probably can tell like, especially at first, their faces look kind of puffy. >> Moon face. >> Yeah. >> Space. Space face. They've got space face. >> They have space face and they have what they call chicken legs, right? Cuz their legs look super skinny because they've lost all this flute. So, they look a little silly, at least at first. Um, >> what? Hang on. Just on that. At first, does that mean that the body somehow reaches a new kind of equilibrium? So, I'm going to guess a lot of this is kind of what glimpmphatic lymphatic clearance stuff. That's right. >> Right. >> Yeah. So, so um now that we've had people that have stayed for for longer flights, you know, up to a year and even a bit longer, um we have been able to see that like yeah, there are ways in which some of the systems in the body have like an initial adjustment period and then they start to kind of, you know, reach a a plateau or they start to kind of return to to normal. You know, like the body when it has all of this extra fluid in in the head or more fluid than you're used to having in the head, your body interprets that as too much fluid. And so, one of the things that, uh, the body does is it starts to reduce the amount of, uh, plasma in your blood. And so, uh, you're actually losing blood volume by being in space for a longer period of time. and you start to reduce the production of red blood cells because your body's thinking I don't need so much blood and so uh astronauts often come back from space anemic um and that has other health implications as as you know so um so that is something that is like an adjustment that the body makes and then when you come back to earth you go through yet another adjustment um and that's just gravity there's also radiation right so so um That's something that um is going to be really important for thinking about deep space um because actually what we know about how radiation affects astronauts is mostly from how astronauts are affected by being um in low earth orbit. So the international space station is in low earth orbit. It's, you know, orbiting the Earth, but it's close enough to the Earth that it's actually still inside the magnetic field that is surrounding our planet, which extends out quite far into space. >> And so that magnetic field actually traps a lot of the space radiation and prevents it from getting closer to the Earth. So astronauts on the International Space Station aren't exposed to as much radiation as astronauts on the moon, on Mars, or traveling uh anywhere beyond the limits of that magnetic field, the magnetosphere. Um those are called the Van Allen radiation belts. And >> interesting story how they were discovered. I I talk about that in my book. But um you know, yeah, we know that that radiation affects the body, right? I mean, the thing that you typically think about is cancer and um and the cancer risk for anybody traveling in space is certainly higher. It's one of the reasons that NASA limits the amount of time that uh astronauts are are able to go to space. Astronauts essentially will kind of time out uh at a certain point if they have reached a a radiation exposure that NASA deems to be, you know, uh uh too risky. And so um you know that's a known risk. Um but uh you know we also know that uh you know there's things other than cancer that radiation does right. So uh radiation can have cognitive effects. There's some really interesting research that uh looks at simulated space radiation and tries to understand like what does this do to um to our our nervous system, right? And research on on rodents, for example, shows that if they're exposed to simulated space radiation, they actually have slower responses to tasks that they've been taught how to do. That's pretty concerning for anybody planning on going deeper into space. >> Quick thinking, trying to problem solve, fix whatever this pipe is that's just broken. Oh, hang on. The environment has made me stupid. >> Yeah. I mean, there's a there's a thing that people call astronauts call um space fog or or space brain sometimes. And um >> space face and space brain. >> There you go. Yeah. Exactly. And and you know, it's sort of like you're just kind of a little bit uh a little out of it, a little a little slower to respond to to tasks that you would otherwise be able to do quickly. and um you know they can adjust but if that is something that gets worse with more radiation exposure that's important for us to know if we're going to spend more time in deep space. >> How reversible are these? >> We don't know. Uh so you know partly it's because the amount of radiation that those astronauts have been exposed to as I said isn't as great. It's actually a different type of radiation even then. So there's what's called these galactic cosmic rays that are out in space. This is, you know, radiation zipping around from other uh galaxies and it's largely trapped by our magnetic field. Um so once we get out to the moon, to Mars, you know, any place that we might want to travel that goes, you know, beyond low Earth orbit, we're talking about uh a lot more radiation exposure. We we just simply don't know what that will do to people or especially if they're being exposed to it for a much longer period of time. >> This episode is brought to you by Gym Shark. You want to look and feel good when you're in the gym and Gym Shark makes the best men's and girls gymwear on the planet. Let's face it, the more that you like your gym kit, the more likely you are to train. Their hybrid training shorts for men are the best men's shorts on the planet. Their crest hoodie and light gray Maul is what I fly in every single time I'm on a plane. The Geio Seamless T-shirt is a staple in the gym for me. Basically, everything they make, it's unbelievably well fitted, high quality, it's cheap. You get 30 days of free returns, global shipping, and a 10% discount sitewide if you go to the link in the description below or head to jim.sh/modernwisdom. Use the code modernwisdom10 at checkout. That's jim.sh/modernwisdomd and modernwisdom10 at checkout. What was that story about how the van van Allen >> Yeah, the van Allen radiation belts. So, so you know, it starts with basically trying to figure out like, you know, where is radiation coming from? we can detect on the surface of the earth that there's that there's, you know, some radiation. And the initial experiments were actually done by putting radiation detectors on hot air balloons and and allowing those balloons to go higher and higher. And the surprising thing was that the radiation exposure increased as they got higher and higher in the atmosphere. So, at first people thought like the radiation's probably coming from Earth, maybe from the center of the Earth. Um, no, it's coming from somewhere up high. And you know, even maybe it's maybe it's the sun, right? Well, if it's the sun, then those exposures should be higher during daytime than during night time. >> Um, and it wasn't. Um, they even would measured it during an eclipse. It should it should like decrease slightly when the sun is being blocked by the moon, right? It doesn't do that. And then um what ended up happening was uh once we were able to send satellites deeper into space uh the initial measurements this is done on a geer counter right so the thing that like clicks when you're trying to detect radiation it makes like a it's kind of sound like that right and the more rapid the clicks are the higher the the radiation exposure. Well, the very first time one of these was sent up on uh on a a satellite, uh it's clicking, clicking, clicking, the rate is getting higher, and then all of a sudden it just stops. So, it's like, what what the heck's going on? What is there just no suddenly no radiation? And it turned out, no, actually, there was so much radiation, it was just overwhelming the sensors of the counter. Yeah. >> Holy [ __ ] >> Exactly. So, I mean, I've I've heard this is like >> I'm using the dramatized uh series of Chernobyl as my Well, I've heard Geiger counters and they were in Chernobyl. Is okay. Um, but even at least in the and it was trying to be uh accurate, I think, scientifically and um even in that the Geiger counter still made a noise. It wasn't as if it blew out the top of it. It was just ticking super super fast. So yeah, if you think, well, there's an elephant's foot down there that's the most radioactive thing on the planet, but if you just go far enough away from us, you go to a point where geig counters just essentially top out. That's that that's pretty scary. >> Exactly. Yeah. So they, you know, what they did, they sent another uh uh satellite with a different, you know, type of device or calibrated differently or whatever, and then we're able to determine, oh yeah, you get to this certain kind of uh, you know, elevation in orbit around the Earth and all of a sudden there's just huge amounts of radiation. So we now know that there's uh these Van Allen radiation belts. There's like an inner belt and an outer belt. So you can kind of picture this as like, you know, imagine a ball. That's the Earth. And then you take a rubber band that's bigger than that ball and then you kind of pinch it in the middle around the ball. So you've got this kind of two sort of orbs coming out from uh from the Earth. And that's the shape of the Van Allen radiation belts. Well, that's why if we didn't have the iron core in the earth, uh the magnetosphere, magnetic sphere around us would all of these rays would just be able to pepper us. I mean, there would be a ton of other problems as well, but um one of them is that we would just get annihilated by radiation. Okay, so we've somehow me and you have survived our journey uh across space and we've managed to land in Mars. Some of the stuff may be reversible, some of the stuff may not be reversible. We'll see. We can't work walk too much. We got space face and space brain and chicken legs. Um, what will the different physics on Mars due to humans? Just more of the same from the the space flight. Is there anything else to say on the the sort of physics of the system? >> Yeah. So, you know, first of all, it takes something like six to n months just to get there. So you're talking about you've been traveling through space microgravity, right? Weightlessness for for you know let's say six months, right? So your body is going through all those things that we were just talking about. Your your your muscles have become weaker. Your bones have become more brittle. The fluids have redistributed. That has other effects like on our eyes. The vision actually uh has a tendency to get worse. So that's all happening. Then you arrive on Mars and let's assume that the landing goes well uh and you are now on the surface. Now all of the sudden you're in a onethird gravity environment, >> 38 about 1/3 gravity environment compared to to Earth's gravity. So you went from weightlessness to one/ird g. And so now all of a sudden there's all this weight, all this force on your body. normally even though it's onethird of what's on Earth, it's in infinity more than what was in space. >> Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And so, you know, if you look at like, you know, anytime astronauts come back from from being in space, uh they need a lot of help in order just to get out of the spacecraft to walk, it's like it there's a long adjustment period. So, um, one of the things is just immediately like that even though it's just one-third G, that's going to be hard on somebody that has been in a weightless environment for that amount of time. So, if there's nobody else there to help you, uh, just even getting out of your spacecraft might be tricky. Maybe some of those assistance things, devices. I mean, they're trying to offset this. I've seen um astronauts using the sort of hand crank cycling machines. You know, you can artificially recreate um force and and tension and pressure by using stuff that has it built into the system itself. But the globaleness of gravity, working on the spine, working on the organs, working on working on the lymph system, working on circulation, working on reproductive organs, working on, you know, D. Um, I don't think I don't think that you're going to be really trying to pick up pennies here when there's a [ __ ] ton of $100 bills that you've left behind you, >> right? Yeah. No, you're right. So, I mean, astronauts do a lot of exercise in space. You're absolutely right. Uh, you know, using kind of resistance because you can't use, you know, weightlifting doesn't make sense in a weightless environment. Um, and all of that is really meant to minimize the uh the the deconditioning that happens to the body, right? but it doesn't eliminate it. Uh if you didn't do that kind of exercise and and they exercise about two hours a day every day, so this is not like a small amount. Um if you didn't do that, you'd be in in in way worse shape. So, you know, we we we've we've arrived at Mars. We're we're we've done our our two hours a day uh every day. Still, it's going to be a challenge to just get up and move around. Who knows what the cognitive effects of of that radiation exposure? you've been exposed to galactic cosmic rays for 6 months. Nobody's ever had that happen. We we simply don't know what the effect will be. Um and then there's another factor. What have you been eating all this time? You know, astronauts, you know, we're all kind of familiar with the idea of like freeze-dried foods and stuff like that that that astronauts typically bring with them. um they are having to bring kind of you know shelf stable food um but even in the international space station they're able to occasionally resupply them with some kind of fresh food some fresh produce there's a story of uh Russian cosminauts the first to be um living for a longer period of time on a space station and uh and they smuggled in an onion and and it It was the first ever birthday that a person had in space and and they gave this cosmonaut an onion for his birthday and it was like the most wonderful thing. >> That is the most Russian [ __ ] I have ever heard in my entire life. >> Yeah, >> we have we have birthday. We have onion. >> Yep. Contraband onion. No, no less. Um >> legal onion. >> Yep. Yep. Um and but like the point is people really get excited about any kind of fresh uh produce that you can have. Um we have not made major advances in our ability to grow large amounts of food in um in any sort of space environment. This is something that people are actively trying to work on. Um they have grown plants on the International Space Station uh but at very small scales. Um and the astronauts tend to get really attached to those uh plants. Um, and so, you know, we think that's going to be a major limiting factor in our ability to to go deeper into space is what are we going to eat? You know, people nobody wants to go and eat, you know, canned food, packaged food for years at a time without, you know, mixing it up with, uh, with some fresh food. So, um, so that's another one of the challenges. >> Given the radiation issues, does that mean there's going to be higher mutation load just generally over time? I think it does. So, I think we should expect that people are going to be exposed to higher radiation even if they're living in um some kind of an environment that's trying to shield block that that radiation, you know, >> special 3D printed reflective anti-radiation, but they've already done the nine months to get out there. They're probably going in and out doing Mars walks or space walks or some sort of equivalent thing. And the 3D printing machines, at least for the first few centuries, are not going to be able to block everything. Uh, and there's more radiation. >> Yeah. I mean, even if you built a fully radiationp proof enclosure that you could live in on Mars, who wants to go to Mars and never go walk around outside, right? I mean, you know, what's the point? So, uh, I think people will be exposed to more radiation and yeah, radiation causes mutations, right? It causes damage to the DNA. And when the body repairs that damage, it's never a perfect process. there's always a risk that uh the the repair uh leads to a change in the sequence of DNA and and that's a mutation. So um so that's a that's a health risk. Um but it also has implications for our ability to adapt over a much longer time scale of uh many generations. >> What what does it do to adaptability? Well, adaptation comes from natural selection and natural selection on its own can only really sift through whatever variation there is. And so the only way you get new variation is through mutation. Mutation is the ultimate source of all diversity. >> This is not a good thing then. Does this does this not push the dice rolling more quickly? So I think that what we should expect if we do nothing else is that we're able to live for many generations in a space environment like on Mars. It would mean that basically you are kickstarting the evolutionary process. It would happen faster. Why that is something we should maybe be concerned about is that's a very messy and unpleasant process. You're basically talking about a lot. >> There's gonna be tons of errors. There's going to be shed tons of errors. That one doesn't work. That one doesn't work. That one doesn't work. That one kind of works. That one doesn't work. that one doesn't work. >> Yeah. I mean, you're talking about a lot of suffering. You're talking about a lot of death. Um, and uh, so that that's, you know, it would happen. I think what I try to argue is that's sort of the default that we should expect is that if we're living for many generations in this kind of an extreme environment, natural selection will do its thing. Mutation rates would be higher because of that radiation exposure. And so basically the process that we normally think of as being generally pretty slow uh would actually happen faster. >> Yeah. Wow. Okay. But what about selection bottlenecks? Cuz if Mars is going to accelerate this evolutionary roulette, you end up with selection bottlenecks. >> Yeah. uh the idea of bottlenecks. I think this is an important concept that uh that we have to think about if what we're trying to do is to create a long-term settlement because we know that anytime you take a large number of individuals and then you take a small number of them and put them somewhere else, right? You've gone through a population bottleneck. That's, you know, basically it's like pouring I do this simulation in my classes sometimes where you take like a a a bottle that's filled with like different colored gumballs, right? you know how many different colors there are and then you pour out a few of them and then you ask okay is the proportion of different colored gumballs the same as it was in the bottle at the starting point or is it different and of course it's going to be different it's never going to be exactly the same >> so you take a small number of individuals from a large group it's not going to be representative so that kind of of reduction in population size that happens when um you know when you found a new population it leads to rapid evolutionary change and we call that the founder effect in uh in evolutionary biology because it's a well-known phenomenon. Anytime you know a new population is founded uh you tend to get a reduction of genetic diversity and whoever the individuals are that are the founders have this like really disproportionate effect on what happens later like they're they're really influential. >> Have you ever read seven eaves by Neil Stevenson? >> I have. Yes. This is this is exactly what this the founder effect is. Right. >> That's right. Yep. >> Yeah. I don't want to spoil it. It's in my It's in my first reading list that that lots of people have downloaded. So maybe loads of people that are listening also know the spoiler too. Um actually skip forward if you haven't read 70. Skip forward by about 30 seconds. So halfway through the book after the moon explodes. There's seven women left. I think only one of them can't reproduce. I think one of them's like a matron marshall type lady or maybe there's eight and seven can reproduce. And yeah, you end up with these seven different races in future. and uh and and and each one is very distinct. And welcome back to the people that didn't read '7s. And uh [laughter] um you end up you end up with this sort of very distinct lineage and um that's the that's the best. This is why hard sci-fi rules because I get to learn about real real stuff and it's snuck in under the guise of it being a story. >> Oh, there's so many examples of how, you know, a science fiction author has already thought through a lot of the real challenges and the real consequences. Yeah. >> Um, >> do you remember on uh do you remember in 7 that there was such a scarcity of food halfway through that somebody invented the idea of soft cannibalism? >> Do you remember that? >> He ate his own he ate his own legs because he decided that in space legs were >> you don't need them. Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And he reduced his energy requirement and increased his energy intake by eating his own legs. So cool. >> This episode is brought to you by Whoop. I have been wearing Whoop for over 5 years now, way before they were a partner on the show. I've actually tracked over 1,600 days of my life with it, according to the app, which is insane. And it's the only wearable I've ever stuck with because it tracks everything that matters. Sleep, workouts, recovery, breathing, heart rate, even your steps. And the new 5.0 is the best version. You get all the benefits that make Whoop indispensable. 7% smaller, but now it's also got a 14day battery life and has health span to track your habits, how they affect your pace of aging. It's got hormonal insights for ladies. I'm a huge, huge fan of Whoop. That's why it's the only wearable that I've ever stuck with. And best of all, you can join for free. Pay nothing for the brand new Whoop 5.0 strap. Plus, you get your first month for free. And there's a 30-day money back guarantee. So, you can buy it for free, try it for free. If you do not like it after 29 days, they just give you your money back. Right now, you can get the brand new Whoop 5.0 and that 30-day trial by going to the link in the description below or heading to join.woop.com/modernwisdom. That's join.woop.com/modernwisdom. So, you've got habitats on Mars, 3D printed, hopefully protective, but closed systems magnify small errors even more. It it's basically like being in a closed system is more akin to being on an island than it is being in a city. >> That's right. Yeah. I mean, you are you are in an island, right? I mean, you're in a place where you can live, but you're surrounded by an inhospitable environment and and so yeah, I mean, that's an island. Um, yeah, I think that's a good way to think about it. So presumably there's going to be huge survival pressures on psychological traits maybe just as much as the physical ones. Psychological traits definitely and um and skills. I mean you know think about who who are the people you would want to send to establish a new you know a new human population on Mars. I mean you want people who are likely to be able to to handle tough situations but you also want people who know how to do all different sorts of things you know um you need different skills you need different uh you know uh personality traits but you also want to make sure you've enhanced the kind of you know probability of success by making sure it's also a genetically diverse group of people you know I mean uh the more genetically diverse it is the more opportunity there is for for natural selection to be able to help people to adapt in future generations. So, um yeah, you know, it's I think it would have to be quite different from how we have kind of historically chosen who gets to go to space, right? You know, >> I don't did you ever read >> you would actually want you would actually Oh, sorry. Go ahead. >> Well, so there's kind of this like famous uh book from I think in 1979 called The Right Stuff by Tom Wolf. I don't know if you ever read that. It's it's like one of the classic accounts of the early days of u of the US space program. But that that title, that idea of the right stuff, like who is it that has the right stuff that gets to be the the select few that go to space? And at least initially for the US, it was all um well, first of all, it was all it was all men. It was all white men. And then it was all like actually Navy uh uh test pilots, right? So they took them from the military. It was only people who were already in the military. Um, and they were chosen for their ability to be able to handle the physical aspects of uh of a launch and and being in space and also the psychological challenges and and you know, I mean, the US space program is was huge success clearly. Um, but if you use those same criteria to select people for who's going to found a new population on Mars, you'd get such a tiny fraction of human diversity. >> You you'd be setting yourself going to get more bottlenecked over time get tighter and tighter. So you need to make the base of this pyramid >> as broad as possible. I mean I was thinking as you were speaking you know um people who have uh brittle bones for instance maybe they have something which is actually useful in there because all of the selection pressures that we have currently we want someone who's big and strong. >> Why gravity is 30% of the maybe we actually want people who are really petite and therefore they need fewer calories and therefore they don't need to eat their own legs. >> That's right. So when it when it comes to the personalities, are there some personalities that are more suited for space colonization than others? >> Well, we do know from a lot of the uh studies that have been done in analoges like we were talking about earlier. Um and this includes things like people who are, you know, working in Antarctica in in the most sort of similar environment that exists on Earth to what it will be like that, right? you're in an isolated extreme confined environment surrounded by you know hostile conditions. So um you know what are the factors that lead to success especially for like people who are overwintering in Antarctica like they're staying you can't just you know leave whenever you want to because there's no way to kind of get a a ship or a plane in. Um people who uh who who do well in that environment are people who um are good team players are people who are um uh you know open about kind of how the experience is is going for them, willing to talk about it, willing to talk about it with others. Um you know, you also want a a good chemistry among the group, right? So you don't want uh you know all type A personalities because they're likely to to kind of clash, right? Um and um so there's all these studies that have like looked at the psychology of group dynamics. An interesting one is you don't want an even number of people. You want an [laughter] you want an you want an odd number. >> It's because it can split into Yeah. Basically it could split into factions and uh and and you need a tiebreaker, right? So uh there have been there have been examples of where that has happened and uh and and it hasn't always gone well. So yeah, so there's interesting lessons that can be learned from uh you know what happens here on Earth. >> That is so good. Wow. Okay. So you you mentioned before about who gets to go to Mars first? Sort of the best people, the strongest people, the richest people, the most obedient people. Who do you think should govern Mars? Is it Earth governments? Is it companies? Is it the colonists themselves? What about the politic? What about the astro Martian politics? >> You know, I think we have this tendency to think about going to space as being like an opportunity to to, you know, start completely fresh and get it right this time and and all, you know, this like we're going to have a utopia in space. I I'm not convinced by that way of thinking about I think, you know, humans are humans and we should we should learn from what has happened before and uh and not expect that it would be different there. So I think we need to to try to, you know, do the things that seem to work well here on Earth, right? I don't think you want to have, for example, like, you know, a government from Earth dictating what happens on Mars. Uh because we know that that doesn't work well. You know, we know that people uh need to have their own ability to to make their own decisions. You you want leaders who have skin in the game. >> Um >> it's also highly inefficient. >> Sure. And there's a communication delay. We haven't even talked about that. >> You can't you can't have this kind of conversation like we're having where one person is on Earth and the other person is on Mars because there's so far away that you'll have several minutes of delay between when you say something and when the person uh hears it on the other end and it could be up to 20 minutes uh depending on where Earth and Mars are in their respective orbits. So you can send emails, you know, or video messages back and forth, but you can't really have a conversation. So yeah, imagine a a government meeting where uh you know, you can't even like have a conversation, right? You think it's dysfunctional now, man. [laughter] >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, there was a a campaign when Elon first started floating around the administration uh to decolonize Mars. And what they meant by that was we don't want the same horrible inequity oligopoly powerful Matthew principle [ __ ] to go to this new planet. Uh it was pointed out that there's a little bit of an irony in talking about decolonizing a planet that we haven't yet colonized. Uh but yeah, the the the politics of this I think are just so so fascinating. And again, my my go-to seven from Neil Stevenson, they need to work out what happens with murder. What happens if somebody commits a crime in space? Is there a prison? Who's the adjudicator? What are the law? Everything needs to be reinstantiated again. And if you've got people from multiple different countries, well, the Russians do it this way, but the Americans do it that way, but the the Ukrainians do it a different way. Yeah. Well, we disagree with your well, we need to it's a new people aren't from nations anymore. And if they are that f those factions are just going to become splinters that start to fracture what is supposed to be a cohesive unit into something which is you know uh very individualized which you don't want. But do you want to say to people that you need to recant your current identity? Well after a few generations what does that mean? And then how do you avoid there being new splinter factions? You don't have that much tolerance for error with this stuff when it comes to governance. You know, you can have a good bit of tolerance for error if there's 156 countries or something. If you've got three pods in 200 people, like 10 people die, that's a lot of that's 5%. Right? That's a lot of people. So, yeah, just I I endlessly fascinate. All right. Going going back to the um the personality thing, this the psychological impact. What does long-term isolation in space do to the human mind? Why why a closed ecosystem so psychologically taxing? >> Well, I think there's a few things, right? I mean, one is just, you know, knowing that you can't leave, right? This is something that, you know, again, people in in Antarctica research stations or or you know, some of the remote field camps that they experience, you can't just, you know, go for a walk or say that's it. I'm done. I'm out of here. Um a similar kind of thing happens to uh people who are um on uh submarines like nuclear submarines that have to spend a long period of time uh submerged during military operations, right? Uh can't just step outside. Uh you're you're pretty much stuck there. Um the difference there is, you know, they're working within a a kind of a military hierarchy system is sort of, you know, built into to the nature of the experience. That's not the case so much in in Antarctica, but um you know it's uh knowing that you can't leave is um is something that that definitely um takes a toll you know and you have to you have to train for it. You have to be prepared for it and you have to have uh you know systems in place to allow people to to deal with whatever comes with it. Right? So you need to be able to have you know for example um you know uh a therapist available to speak with them. you need to have uh you know resources in place to to to deal with crises when they do take place as well. So so I think that's something that has to be built in. Um but there's an interesting other side to it, right? So so you know we think a lot about like oh how this is really going to be hard and it's going to be uh something that's going to have a maybe a negative impact on on a lot of folks. Um but there's also this idea that um going to space can have a profound positive impact on people. So some of the first accounts of um of astronauts really, you know, talk about like just the awe and wonder. I mean people still talk about that today. Everybody that goes to space talks about how incredible it is, >> including Katy Perry. Yeah. >> Yeah. Well, yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, everybody does. I mean, how could you not? the famed astronaut [laughter] >> and William Shatner. Did you see he when he went to space he talked about this too? Is it >> was it called the blue dot effect or the the whole earth effect or something? >> It's called the overview effect. Overview effect. >> Yeah. So that's the term that's been uh uh given to this phenomenon by by Frank White who's um a a philosopher of space who uh you know he did all these interviews with initially with with you know sort of NASA astronauts and and and cosminauts as well uh and and even um up to you know more recent flights where we have um you know people who are kind of everyday citizens that are going up on these commercial space flights now. And um and so he has basically argued that like people have this profound shift that happens to them by being in space and looking back at the earth and uh and you know seeing for example how thin the atmosphere is. It just looks so fragile and delicate. Um you know seeing how you you know the earth doesn't look like it does on the maps. There's no borders between nations. You know this sense that like we're really all in this together. And then just the vastness of space. So, you know, we're a tiny little dot, right, in in the vastness of space. And so, he has argued that basically, um, you know, it would be really good for as many people as possible to go into space and have that experience because it makes us, you know, better people. It makes us better stewards of of our planet, of our environment. >> Yeah, I I get it. But the the entire problem here is there's only one or two generations that are going to be actually traveling there. As soon as you have kids, the same tribal mechanism. Yeah. I mean, what makes you think that the steward of your planet would change because you can see your mom and dad's home planet over there and you're on a different one now. This the same psychological effects are just going to kick in and different atmosphere. >> I think you're right. So, this is one of the things I I write about is that you know what I think it would be a fundamentally different thing for children born on Mars or or born anywhere else, >> right? You won't have that same connection. I mean it's the same kind of phenomenon that happens with you know with immigrant families right the first generation they still feel very connected to their home country and culture and it and it lasts for a few generations but eventually you have this kind of like loose identity with that you know home country uh and maybe you go back and visit maybe you adopt some of the the you know the culture the cuisine the dress etc but um you know eventually people start to think of themselves as belonging to the place where they Look at me. I drive I drive a Camaro. I've only been here 4 years and I've gone completely [ __ ] feral. >> A quick aside. If your sleep's been off, you're taking ages to fall asleep. Waking up at random times feeling groggy in the morning. Momentous's sleep packs are here to help. They are not your typical knock you out supplement just overloaded with melatonin. It only has the most evidence-based ingredients. 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Modern wisdom at checkout. So, I think I think people understand that future humans will physically be different, right? It makes an awful lot of sense. And then if you understand how evolution works, there's going to be some speciation over time. What I think is really surprising, shocking to a lot of people will be to consider the idea that Martian human nature would be genetically distinct. Like the texture of their minds and the way that their brains function would be not only distinct, but maybe unrecognizable. That sounds wild. >> Yeah. Yeah. I think that's possible. I mean, one thing is look, I think the most likely kind of environment that we would be living in, like what we would build, where would we live on Mars would be underground because that is the easiest way to create a habitat that is >> you don't have to build anything. You protect it. >> You get you get rid of the stuff that's in there. You don't need building materials. You just need building holes. >> That's right. And you don't have to worry about the space radiation. You don't have to worry about We didn't even talk about like meteor impacts, right? without uh Mars has such a thin atmosphere, it has no magnetic field. Um its radiation is very high, but also with that thin atmosphere, it's getting bombarded by meteors uh much more so than um than Earth. Um you don't want a glass dome, you know, the way we often see depicted in in in sci-fi. Uh you want something much more uh protected. And so what's the to your point like what is the what is the psychology of an entire you know society underground? Yeah, that's right. That's right. >> Um you know what does that do to your sure physical features like your your eyes, your vision? I mean presumably using artificial light, but but what does it do to you psychologically? How do you think about your your spatial awareness and your your connection also with, you know, with the environment? I mean, for me, look, I'm a biologist. I love nature. I is I I love being outside in nature. I think most of us do in some way. You know, we have this idea that like going on a walk in in the woods or in a park, it it makes us feel better, right? There's a there's a benefit to being out in nature that that we can all recognize. And even just like having a, you know, an animal like a pet, right? Like I've got dogs. You know, we all love to be around animals. We have to think about what the world would be like if there wasn't nature around us. >> Yeah. >> I mean, living on Mars, there's no wildlife. There's no forests. Now, presumably we'll build habitats and environments that allow us to live and we'll have to grow crops and things like that, but I think we're unlikely to bring uh much in the way of animals with us. And so, you know, >> look at look at every sci-fi movie ever where they're trying to go to some new habitat. Yeah. The physical effects start to kick in and a few people do this thing. But the big issue like I mean justifying the future of Martian colonization through what I've seen in Hollywood. Um but the and but it's how I can see it that the psychological impacts are the things that are really really destructive. uh because they have a domino effect in a manner that that physical ailments are bounded I guess by you know I get sick you don't you don't necessarily get sick something happening to me but if I become psychotic I can take out an entire pot of people or I I can I can do something catastrophic to the air supply or I can run out and get blown up I do do whatever myself so okay uh continuing future people how how how are we going to do reproduction in space, what happens with what happens with keeping us going? >> Well, I I will say that in terms of like what we do know and what we don't know about like how space affects the the human body and our ability to actually live in in a space environment or on other worlds. I think this is the biggest black box, the biggest unknown. We have done so little amount of research on reproduction in in a lower gravity environment, in a space environment that the bottom line is we don't know. We're sort of assuming anytime we talk about like you know moving to Mars or building uh a space settlement we are assuming that reproduction is possible that it will work well enough and that's actually something that we can't be certain of without without doing more research. Um there have been some studies. So um there have been some studies in space going back to the the space shuttle days and and certainly through the uh international space station era. um some rodent studies, some studies on on fish, some studies on um other invertebrate animals like sea urchins. Uh but the bottom line is that it's kind of inconclusive. Like we really haven't done enough and we haven't done systematic enough studies to know that our own ability to you know um to get pregnant to have a uh a full pregnancy two-term child birth um and then child development like the entire process of growing you know what happens to a child's body as your your your bones are growing >> growing under in Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I asked I asked um uh Christopher Mason. You know him? >> Yes. >> Yeah. Yeah. Of course. Um he's been on the show once, maybe twice. He was great. And uh I asked him, "Has anybody ever had sex in space?" And he gave me this look. You're giving me the look as now as well. >> Well, it's a question everybody wants to know. Absolutely. And the bottom line is that uh officially the answer is no. We >> You've given me the same answer. Have you guys been given Have you guys been given some sort of talking sheet or something? That's exactly what >> this is. This is a topic that that comes up a lot. So So there's a there there's, you know, uh a lot that's been written about it, including I I I write about it in my book. Um so yeah, we don't know. We don't know. Nobody uh claims to have had sex in space, and there is definitely not any documentation of sex in space. There was a married couple uh two NASA astronauts that were on the space shuttle at the same time. If you think that a married couple are going to space and they're not going to they're not going to join the million mile high club, you are out of your mind. >> Yep. And so the that because of that there's been all this speculation that like surely they must have. But um you know NASA was very hush- hush about it. The the two astronauts in question were very hush hush. I've asked about this uh including you know contacts and friends of mine at at at NASA and in the space industry. And one of the things that I've been told is like look, if you know what it was like on the space shuttle, there was no privacy. Like there is like if that happened, it would not have been done in private. And so that uh maybe, you know, makes it a little less likely that it happened, but >> Okay. Okay. Well, someone's someone's got to be the first, right? And there's not many that that's the real territory to conquer. I don't care about being the first on Mars. I just want to be the first I want to be the first guy to bone in space. Okay. Um reproduction. We've already I've done a lot of episodes about um embryo selection, uh about IVG, uh some stuff with artificial wombs. Do you think it's realistic that reproduction will be technologically mediated to try and offset some of this stuff? How how is the reproduction process going to happen? Here's the thing that worries me. If what we're talking about is Mars, so you're talking about a one-/ird gravity environment, not a not a weightless environment, a one-/3 gravity environment. I think the risk is once we're talking about people who have lived their entire lives there, like a child born on Mars, right? Who then, you know, basically is uh, you know, growing in that one-third gravity environment their entire childhood by the time they get to adulthood and are uh, you know, childbearing age, right? Um, imagine a woman who gets pregnant and is going to give birth. She will have had her bones uh losing bone density her entire life because her genetics are the same genetics that you know we all have here on Earth. Meaning that you're born with a certain bone density. But in a one-/ird gravity environment, your entire life you're losing bone density. So her bones will have become more brittle and weak throughout her her childhood and into her adulthood. And now she is giving birth and experiencing yeah the the the you know forces of >> uh you know that a woman experiences during during childbirth. I think there's a real risk of uh fractures and we know that one of the parts of the body that's most prone to fractures from uh this kind of bone density loss is uh the hip and the pelvis. >> You know Pers you familiar with Pierers Morgan? You know who he is? British journalist guy. He fell off a single step and fractured his hip. Yeah. >> Uh so yeah, they are they're they're >> fragile things. And so, you know, the reason I bring it up is because that's a that's a kind of a a fracture that could be um could could actually be deadly if if we're talking about it in the context of um of of child birth. You know, that that baby might not survive uh the experience of of child birth. And so, what does that do then um you for if we're looking about you know the impact of this over multiple generations? >> Yeah. So one possibility is you just avoid the risk and so all births are done through C-section. >> Um but that actually creates other situations because now if all the births are through C-section because you know vaginal births are too risky now um >> you're selecting against women who can have vaginal births. >> Yeah. And and actually you've you've you've eliminated one of the constraints that has existed throughout human evolution. >> Get bigger and bigger and bigger babies. Yeah. So, uh, Dr. Anime, you familiar with her? >> No. >> Evolutionary biologist and psychologist. She's in Robin Dunar's lab at University of University of Oxford. She's wonderful. >> And um, she wrote a book called Life of Dad. She's written she's writing another one about dads actually as well. And she tells this story about how dads uh, saved the human race because babies heads got too big. And her point is that um babies get this massive head because it turns out that intelligence is really good for survival. But in order to get this big head out of that woman, it without breaking her in half, which would have happened for a good amount of time. There would have been many, many, many women died in child birth all the time. But just straight up, this baby is so big, it would it will not come out and we don't know how to do C-section because it's 5,000 BC or it's 50,000 BC. Um, dads were there to help along, not by pulling the baby out, but by the women who were able to get the baby out. This neotonous blob requires 6, 7, 8, 10 years of full-time monitoring so it doesn't get eaten by something or fall off a cliff. Uh, and that's where you need that's why humans have higher MPI, male parental investment, than many other species, but many other species. And uh yeah, she tells she tells that story. So you have basically the this uh reversion back to that situation where because the constraint for baby size is no longer limited by birth canal if everything's happening through C-section, you revisit this issue that was occurring a few hundred thousand years ago. And uh yeah, maybe you end up with ginormous babies that aren't being selected against because and then maybe maybe it causes some other thing. Maybe sex becomes difficult to do because we find out that some sort of selection pressure that birthing was having on women's physiology was in some way enhancing or productive towards the way that their other sexual function went. Like it's a real you change one it's a butterfly effect, right? You change one thing genetically and the whole house of cards can come down. >> Yeah, that's right. Yeah, exactly. And so I think, you know, because of that, that's why I bring up the this, you know, one specific challenge that I I think we maybe haven't thought through enough yet. And that, as you said, could lead to all sorts of other sort of downstream consequences. So, um, so you know, bottom line is we we don't know whether human reproduction is in fact possible in the in the conditions on Mars. So this is one thing I think you know it would actually be relatively straightforward to do a lot of uh research even in the low earth environment uh excuse me low earth orbit environment >> that would help us to kind of get a little bit more insight into that. We'll get back to talking in just one second but first if you have been feeling a bit sluggish your testosterone levels might be the problem. They play a huge role in your energy focus and performance but most people have no idea what theirs are or what to do if something's off. which is why I partnered with Function because I wanted a smarter and more comprehensive way to actually understand what's happening inside of my body. Twice a year they run lab tests that monitor over a 100 biomarkers. 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Um, it's not a black and white thing like, oh, now it's a new species, right? We as biologists debate constantly all the time about, you know, how to even define a species, where do you draw the boundaries between one species and another? So partly it depends on on that. But that's sort of dodging the question, which is not what I'm trying to do. Uh, I think the real question is like how rapidly would you get individuals on Mars that we would recognize as being distinct from us, right? Like in some recognizable, meaningful way. Um, and what I would say is I think it will happen much faster than what we would expect based on what we normally are used to here on Earth. >> Um, and and it boils down to this. So, you know, we've already talked about how being on Mars is going to make people different, right? Psychologically different, genetically different, culturally different, all of those things. As long as you have people who moving back and forth between Earth and Mars and able to travel freely between them and basically able to, you know, able to have sex, able to have children, able to reproduce. So if you can kind of move between those environments that will kind of reduce the differences between those populations, right? Like you're as long as people are exchanging genes, you don't get speciation happening very easily. So um so then the question becomes like well >> is that going to be the case? Will it be easy for people to move back and forth between Earth and Mars? And I don't think it will be. I think it will be much harder for people to move back and forth between planets than um we maybe have appreciated. And specifically, I mean like people born on Mars. I think even as soon as the first generation of people born on Mars will potentially have a great difficulty with coming back to Earth. For one thing, it's the gravity that we've talked about, right? A child born in a one-third gravity environment is unlikely to build a skeleton that is strong enough to be able to tolerate earth gravity. And this is and we've been talking about science fiction, right? So like this shows up in, you know, I don't know if you watched the expanse or read the the series, but it's like that's that's a a theme that comes up is like, you know, the idea that if you're from a lower gravity environment, high G is, you know, going to be painful if not >> torturous to you, right? >> That's right. Yeah. Gravity torture is a concept from from The Expanse. Um, that's one thing. >> Did I read that? Is it good? Cuz I watched the first season, maybe season and a half and then I kind of got a little bit lost in it. Is the book How do you rate the book? If Seven Eves if Seven Eves for me is a strong eight, where's the Xands? >> All right. Here here's my uh admission. So, I haven't read it. I've seen the series, but I haven't read the the I haven't read it. So, fair enough. >> Yeah, my bad. Um, but so, uh, gravity though is something that, uh, I think will be a limiting factor. But I think there's an even potentially bigger factor that will keep people from being able to move between planets, and that is, uh, microbes, germs, our immune systems. So, what happens to the immune system of a child born on Mars? They will only ever be exposed to whatever the microorganisms are that we bring with us. And that's going to be a tiny fraction, right? I mean, they're going through the same bottleneck. The microbes are going through the same kind of bottleneck. >> Oh, [ __ ] It's a big sterilization procedure for Yeah. for whatever you've brought with you, the the peanuts and the wheat and the gluten and the everything. >> Yep. Yep. Yep. Exactly. And so now you've got a kid who has never been exposed to the vast majority of what we're breathing in right now and and just all the microbes that are are surrounding us. I don't think they would be able to easily come back to Earth uh without a whole lot. >> Have you got a name? Have you got a name for this? Because this is this is a a unique kind of it's not speciation. It's a a hardcore sort of adaptation that's occurred due to being separated where you're no longer able to go back to your original Yeah. habitat. Is there a name for this? I don't know that there's a name for this specifically. I mean I I think that though this is basically the setup for speciation because what what do you do in that situation, right? [snorts] To your new environment. >> Yeah. You it would be too dangerous for people from Mars to interact with people from Earth. And the other thing that's going to happen is over time the microbes on Mars are going to be mutating, adapting, changing. You're going to get new infectious diseases on Mars that don't exist on Earth. They will evolve uniquely there. Even just the bacteria in our microbiome are going to change by being on Mars, right? I mean, they're also exposed to a lot of radiation. They've also gone through a population bottleneck. So now it becomes dangerous for people from Earth to interact with people from Mars because they've got germs that, you know, we're not used to. So what do you do? I think you enforce quarantine. You don't allow or you very greatly reduce >> quarantine. Yeah. >> Exactly. So if you don't have close contact between people from Earth and people from Mars, you are accelerating how fast speciation will happen. >> I think no cross. I mean when is this I guess you know the homo florenist uh would have had that too because they simply couldn't go back. It wasn't that they didn't choose to go back. It's that they couldn't go back. But that being said, are we really going to be able to get rockets that can do the round trip? That doesn't seem very likely until we start mining stuff on Mar. Well, you're going to have a rocket that's going to be able to take people and all the payload and all of the stuff that's needed out there and you're going to be able to have enough fuel. I guess getting off at one/ird Earth's gravity is probably a little easier. >> It's a little easier to get off of Mars because as you said, it's lower gravity. Um that's right. Um and uh and it is conceivable that we can uh just manufacture rocket fuel there, right? So you can actually take um you know carbon dioxide and split it. You've got oxygen that's your you know uh that's your accelerant. So um yeah. So you can you can potentially make rocket fuel there on Mars uh and get back. Um but again I don't think the challenge is going to be technological. I think it's going to be biological. I think the risk to uh people of going back and forth and getting sick is going to keep people from doing it. Well, there's the biological, there's the sort of immunological part here. Uh there's genes, but there's also memes. What What about a changing culture? What do you imagine a culture of Mars would look like? Cuz this is a culture that's going to be forged under scarcity and danger and dependence and darkness. Perhaps it's going to be pretty different. >> Yeah, I know. It's uh I mean, you know, I I think it's probably impossible for us to know. I think other than saying it would be very different right so yeah I think it would be it would have to be self-contained because there's not going to be as much interaction because of the communication delays um so I think it would be a unique thing and this you know humans have done this this type of thing over and over again we reinvent ourselves a culture rapidly changes uh when we have um you know people that go off to to a new place um even just you know for short periods of time I'm thinking about like you know you go on a trip with somebody and you come back with inside jokes, right? You know, it's uh it happens fast. But yeah, I think people would be culturally different uh quite rapidly if they're living on Mars. [gasps] >> Dude, it's so it's so fascinating. The opport the fact that I this is my job that I get to speak to you and call this a job is absolutely mind-blowing. This is so interesting to me. Um okay, but I guess the the cultural evolution thing is going to feed back into the biological evolution. So, you're tightening this divergence loop. You've got the concerns uh from the the biome, the concerns about getting infected, I guess. What are the interesting ethical challenges that we've got here? What Yeah, this is a well, there's some pretty serious ones. I mean, I here's the thing like you and I could uh could decide that we're comfortable with the risk of going to Mars, right? And and there are plenty of people who, you know, I've spoken with who are like, "Yep, I would absolutely >> sign up future project to the >> Exactly." What happens when you're talking about bringing a child into the world who not only is uh living in a a very uh dangerous environment, but they might not ever be able to go back to Earth. That to me is uh a totally different level of uh you know, of of ethical consideration. So, you know, one thing we haven't really talked about um is the idea that well, rather than just sort of let natural selection, let evolution do its thing. Maybe what we would do is, you know, take matters into our own hands and um and use, you know, use crisper, use uh you know, biological and genetic engineering techniques to facilitate to make it easier for people to deal with the extreme uh conditions there. Um, and you know, obviously there's important ethical considerations about, you know, altering our uh our genetics, especially if you're talking about altering unborn children, future generations. But you know in some ways though the ethics are sort of you know maybe reversed compared to how we would think about this on earth because if you had the ability to alleviate suffering of an unborn child or of you know future generations and if you didn't do that is that ethical this is the entire argument that is put forward by the embryo selection crowd which is as soon as you say that protecting against something that's really horrendous you some genetic defect that would cause you to be in a pain or not live a flourishing life or whatever. Even myopia, right? Even if you were to say, "We're able to select against people that don't have good eyesight." If if you had Why do you think that LASIC and glasses exist? Because people want those traits. So if you have the opportunity to select against negative ones, you immediately open up the door for it's a single parallel or it's a it's a single spectrum from select against negative traits to select for positive traits. And that does seem the ethical thing to do. Now as soon as you get into genetic enhancement that becomes a very different game to me ethically as of yet I haven't >> I'm convinced on the value of embryo selection. Parasite is is wonderful company that's doing great things in the space. The Johnny that runs it is just spectacular. I I'm yet to hear an argument for genetic enhancement that doesn't make my toes like curl underneath. >> Well, and part of it, I think, is because the question is, okay, you're you're arguing that this person's life is going to be better, but are there other ways that you could make that person's life better without making a genetic alteration, right? without making such a a a permanent change. And so I think you know any of the the potential changes that we might make for a person here on earth. Um in most cases we have other ways of uh of of protecting them from that risk or or improving their lives in that particular way. Uh for a child born on Mars thinking about the gravity environment or the or the radiation environment, right? There might not be any better way of doing it. So if that's the case and if they don't have a choice, if that's the only place that they can live, I think it's it might be different. Now, I'm not saying that we definitely should do that, but I think that the ethics are, I think, somewhat distinct when you're talking about um you know, having a situation where people don't have the option of of of getting out of that situation, right? You don't have a way to get away from the risk. Um but >> so there's there's multiple levels of ethics here. Is it ethical to condemn your future generations and progeny to live on this environment which is going to be really inhospitable and they've got to be underground and maybe they're going to flourish less. Well, as soon as you do that, is it now incumbent on you to start manipulating their genome so that they can survive this prison that you had put them into more effectively than if they, you know, it's a real domino domino. Well, and then and then there's the added on top of that is the possibility that by making those changes, you might be improving their ability to thrive in that environment, but you might simultaneously >> from being able to go back home. >> Exactly. >> Oh, dude. It's a mess. It's such a mess. >> Oh my lord. >> There's a lot to do. There's a lot of lot of thing. Well, you know, we don't have to go. [laughter] That's that's one. Well, then we're condemning ourselves to being single planetary species and we just need one neutron neutron star to go off in the wrong at the wrong angle and then we're we're done for. >> So, I mean this is the question that I ultimately wrestled with in in in researching and writing this book is, you know, I wanted to really understand what would happen, right? What would be if we go down this route of people living beyond Earth, what should we expect will happen to those people in future generations? That's what the book's all about. But throughout this I sort of really struggled with like okay given what we know is this a path we should be pursuing like is this the right thing to do and you're you're making a good point that like in the long run we might have to because we've got all our eggs in in one you know planetary basket here. So, um, that's risky. But the next question is when what's the time frame for this, right? And so, to me, it's not that we should never go. I think I think eventually if we didn't do that, we would be dooming ourselves to extinction. [snorts] It's a matter of how quickly should we be pushing this. And so you know that it people differ I think if you ask them about like how urgent how pressing a need is this. Um personally I think we need to have answers to some of these unanswered questions like reproduction right what happens to you know a child conceived and born and raised in a one-/ird gravity high radiation environment. I don't think it makes sense for us to go there until we really have good answers to those types of questions. Um but the ethical things the the the politics the psychology that we've been talking about all of these are things we should be studying this right like we need to know um and uh the technology is advancing the rockets are are are flying let's do the the experiments that and research that we need to uh you know to answer these questions that you know is more more life sciences more biology more you know psychology microbiology all these cool things. Yeah. Scott Solomon, ladies and gentlemen. Dude, you are you are spectacular. You are so fun. Uh I think Oh, thanks. This has been great. >> What a what an awesome topic to talk about. Where should people go? They're going to want to check out everything you're doing, buy the book, all the rest of it. >> Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, the book is is available now. It's Becoming Martian. Um and uh MIT Press. Um so, yeah, you know, check it out. Um we did a streaming series, too. It's also called Becoming Martian. that's on Curiosity Stream, which uh was a lot of fun. Um, but I've also got a podcast. My podcast is called WildWorld, and it's all about uh fieldwork and exploration right here on Earth. So, um, yeah, check that out, too. >> Heck yeah, Scott. I appreciate you, man. Until next time. >> Thank you so much. This has been so much fun. Congratulations. You made it to the end of an episode. Your brain has not been completely [music] destroyed by the internet just yet. Here's another one that you should watch. Come on.