Cosmic Queries – Alien Worlds and Extremophiles with Kennda Lynch

Summary

StarTalk Radio: Cosmic Queries – Alien Worlds and Extremophiles with Kenda Lynch

Episode Release Date: June 6, 2025

Podcast Information:

• Title: StarTalk Radio
• Host: Neil deGrasse Tyson
• Description: Science, pop culture, and comedy collide on StarTalk Radio! Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist and Director of New York's Hayden Planetarium, along with comic co-hosts, guest celebrities, and scientific experts, explore astronomy, physics, and life in the universe.

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Introduction

In this special edition of StarTalk Radio, titled "Cosmic Queries – Alien Worlds and Extremophiles," host Neil deGrasse Tyson delves into the fascinating world of extremophiles and their implications for the search for extraterrestrial life. Joining him is Kenda Lynch, a renowned astrobiologist and expert in extremophiles, alongside co-host Chuck Nice. The episode intertwines scientific exploration with humor, making complex topics accessible and engaging for listeners.

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Guest Introduction: Kenda Lynch

Neil introduces Kenda Lynch as one of the world's leading experts on extremophiles and astrobiology. With a rich academic background that combines geology, biology, and engineering, Kenda brings a multidisciplinary approach to understanding life in extreme environments, both on Earth and potentially on other planets.

Neil deGrasse Tyson [02:04]:

"Extremophiles, I love me this subject a little bit of this subject and. But we have one of the world's experts on it on StarTalk today, Kendall Lynch."

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Understanding Extremophiles

The conversation kicks off with Chuck Nice's humorous take on extremophiles, likening them to "aliens gone wild." Kenda elaborates on the adaptability and resilience of these organisms, highlighting their ability to thrive in environments previously thought uninhabitable.

Chuck Nice [01:53]:

"Kind of sounds like aliens gone wild."

Kenda Lynch [02:53]:

"It's called astrobiology. You do have to know. Yeah. I mean, so, yeah, it's kind of this interesting thing where you just gotta learn to wear a lot of hats."

---

Extremophiles as Analogues for Alien Life

Kenda discusses how studying extremophiles on Earth provides valuable insights into the potential for life on other planets. Since Earth is our only data point, understanding the limits of life here helps in defining search parameters elsewhere in the universe.

Kenda Lynch [04:19]:

"But when we really try to understand looking for life in the universe, a logical first question... understand life here on Earth... what kind of environments did it live in?"

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Exploration of Alien Worlds: Europa and Enceladus

A significant portion of the discussion centers around icy moons like Europa and Enceladus, both of which are prime candidates in the search for extraterrestrial life due to their subsurface oceans. Kenda explains the hydrothermal systems beneath the ice and their role in possibly supporting life.

Kenda Lynch [07:40]:

"We have to know enough about the others to kind of pull those pieces in because ultimately they all are really interconnected."

Neil deGrasse Tyson [08:59]:

"And that's where you want to find life."

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Planetary Protection and Ethical Considerations

The ethical implications of exploring and potentially contaminating alien worlds are addressed. Kenda emphasizes NASA's protocols for planetary protection, ensuring that any missions to these moons are carried out with utmost care to prevent biological contamination.

Neil deGrasse Tyson [36:35]:

"Like Europa or Enceladus, it's protected by NASA laws... can we bring something back home and cut them open for science?"

Kenda Lynch [38:14]:

"We're trying to bring things back to be able to study them better... to find evidence for possible biosignatures of life."

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The Allan Hills Meteorite and Mars

The discussion shifts to the Allan Hills meteorite, a significant find believed to originate from Mars. Kenda recounts the debates surrounding its potential biological origins and how advancements in understanding extremophiles have influenced interpretations of such findings.

Kenda Lynch [49:26]:

"We started learning more about extremophiles and the RNA world... started learning more about biotechnology."

Neil deGrasse Tyson [55:04]:

"And I was thinking, wow, the biologist must know a lot to know that that can't be."

---

Evolution of Astrobiology

Kenda elaborates on the transition from "exobiology" to "astrobiology," explaining how the field has broadened to encompass not just the search for extraterrestrial life but also understanding the origins and sustainability of life on Earth.

Kenda Lynch [53:38]:

"Astrobiology includes understanding how life on Earth also came to be. How did we become the data point that we have now."

Neil deGrasse Tyson [53:58]:

"Astro, we're the quarterback for it all."

---

Listener Questions and Discussions

The latter part of the episode features a series of listener-submitted questions, which Kenda addresses with both scientific insight and her characteristic humor.

1. Multicellular Resilience After a Microbial Extinction

Listener William Da [45:26]:

"Given that humans have always been fighting a war with tiny bacteria, viruses... how likely do you think it is that there's a planet out there with a tiny microscopic organism that wiped out the more complex life?"

Kenda Lynch [46:15]:

"Life eventually kind of worked its way back to multicellularity... life would probably go back to being multicellular."

2. Finite Chemistry in the Universe

Listener Nander Sirkel [24:29]:

"Is there a finite chemistry in the universe? Anything outside the periodic table?"

Kenda Lynch [28:22]:

"No, because all life begins with stars... Ingredients in the kitchen are the same across the universe."

3. Studying Life on Protected Bodies

Listener Akhilesh Kashyap [33:36]:

"If we discover life on Europa or Enceladus, can we bring it back to Earth for study?"

Kenda Lynch [36:40]:

"We're trying to fly through the plumes of Enceladus... Environmental context that made the geology is probably different."

---

Notable Quotes

• Kenda Lynch [09:33]:

  "Every time we think we got bugs figured out, they do something crazy."

• Neil deGrasse Tyson [23:05]:

  "We got this. We got this."

• Kenda Lynch [35:35]:

  "Dinococcus radiodurans... they can live on nuclear reactors."

• Chuck Nice [32:41]:

  "Because, if it takes 100,000 years to scratch an itch, just imagine how uncomfortable it would be when its underwear gets stuck in its butt."

---

Conclusion

The episode wraps up with reflections on the dynamic interplay between scientific rigor and creative exploration in the field of astrobiology. Neil commends Kenda for her contributions and highlights the importance of interdisciplinary approaches in unraveling the mysteries of life beyond Earth.

Neil deGrasse Tyson [56:47]:

"It's such an honor to be here and I'm so glad that you remember me."

Kenda Lynch [56:47]:

"Keep looking up."

---

Key Takeaways:

• Extremophiles serve as crucial analogs in the search for extraterrestrial life, demonstrating life's resilience in extreme conditions.
• Astrobiology has evolved to not only seek life beyond Earth but also to deepen our understanding of life's origins and sustainability here.
• Planetary Protection is paramount in ensuring that exploration missions do not contaminate potential biospheres on other celestial bodies.
• Interdisciplinary Collaboration is essential in advancing our knowledge of astrobiology, combining geology, biology, engineering, and more.

Timestamp Highlights:

• 02:04: Introduction of Kenda Lynch as an expert in extremophiles.
• 04:19: Discussion on understanding life's limits on Earth to search for alien life.
• 07:40: Exploration of hydrothermal systems on Dallol and their significance.
• 36:35: Ethical considerations in studying life on protected celestial bodies.
• 49:26: Insights into the Allan Hills meteorite and its implications for Martian life.
• 53:38: Evolution from exobiology to astrobiology.
• 24:29 - 39:18: Listener questions addressing the scalability of life, finite chemistry, and methodologies for studying alien organisms.
• 56:47: Conclusion and final thoughts by Neil and Kenda.

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For More Information:

• Subscribe: Listen to new episodes of StarTalk Radio here.
• Follow on Patreon: Support StarTalk and gain exclusive access to content by becoming a patron here.
• Watch on Netflix: Catch Kenda Lynch featured in episode 2 of Alien Worlds.

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Keep Looking Up!

Transcript

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[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Hey, StarTalkians. Neil here. You're about to listen to an episode specially drawn from our archives to serve your cosmic curiosities. Check it out. Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk Cosmic Queries Edition, and today's subject is Extremophiles an alien world. One of my favorite subjects. Chuck, what do you think about that topic?

[Chuck Nice]

Kind of sounds like aliens gone wild.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Call right now.

[Chuck Nice]

It's aliens gone wild. You've never seen aliens like this before.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Extremophiles, I love me this sub a little bit of this subject and. But we have one of the world's experts on it on StarTalk today, Kendall Lynch. Kenda. Welcome to StarTalk.

[Kenda Lynch]

Thanks for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Excellent, excellent. You have a PhD in this stuff, but let me just alert people that your expertise is some kind of amalgam of whole fields that were previously distinct from one another. Because I think of geology and I think of biology and I think of modern astrophysics, and you just took a big fat stapler and crammed them together and you do all three of these all at once. How is that even possible?

[Kenda Lynch]

Um, it's called astrobiology.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No, but you gotta know your geology too, right?

[Kenda Lynch]

You do have to know. Yeah. I mean, so, yeah, it's kind of this interesting thing where you just gotta learn to wear a lot of hats. And you don't necessarily. You should have. I mean, ultimately you have expertise in one thing a little bit more than the other, but you have to know enough about the others to kind of pull those pieces in because ultimately they all are really interconnected. And you also have to know when you don't know something and pull in the right people to work with you, but you have to be able to speak their language. So having that understanding of geology, so I can talk to a hard rock geologist about, you know, how I think my bugs are eating their rock, you know, is important. And being able to have the same, you know, same conversation about it is really important.

[Chuck Nice]

Let me tell you something. This is why I love being on this show. It's the only time you will ever hear somebody say, and I have to talk to them about how their bugs are eating my rocks.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I did not see that sentence coming.

[Chuck Nice]

Not either.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

But Kenda, you work on Earth, so what does that have anything to do with aliens on other worlds?

[Kenda Lynch]

Well, I mean, the reality is when we're trying to understand life in the universe right now, we only have one data point and that's Earth. So, you know, we have to kind of work on Earth and try to understand life here. And really, when we think about it, it's a big question. How did life even come to be on Earth? How did Earth come to be this big cross where there's lots of life just kind of crawling all over it and in it and everywhere?

[Chuck Nice]

Let me help you with that, Kenda. Bugs started eating rocks.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Chuck is not gonna shake that sentence for the next five years. Yum, yum, yum. Tasty rocks.

[Kenda Lynch]

But when we really try to understand looking for life in the universe, a logical first question, and especially since we've tried and, and hadn't been too successful in the past, looking for life on other planets was, well, how do we. How well do we understand life here on Earth? Do we understand the extent of where life can live on Earth? Do we understand how life arose on Earth and kind of what did early life look like on Earth? And, and, you know, where can we go to look for it and what kind of environments did it live in? And those are a lot of the questions.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, I'm an old man here. When I learned about this, it was, we need the 72 degree tide pool for life to thrive on Earth. Yeah, that's how old I am. That's how old I am.

[Kenda Lynch]

One of the things that we have.

[Chuck Nice]

Learned, life is not comfortable unless it's room temperature.

[Kenda Lynch]

And it Needs just the right amount of sugars, and it needs this special kind of media.

[Chuck Nice]

No, what we have learned is every once in a while, life is just like, who touched that thermostat?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's exactly.

[Chuck Nice]

Now, which one of y' all touched.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That thermostat on its Barco lounger?

[Kenda Lynch]

That would be us as the life. We're the ones that kind of need to. We need. We are the ones that glamp, right? But. But microbial life, man, every time we think we got those bugs figured out, they do something crazy, and we're like, wait, what do you mean you can live on a nuclear reactor? Wait, what do you mean you can live 2km down? In a subsurface. In the subsurface. And we find you when we're mining for gold. What do you mean? In like. Like super hot water that's also salty and acidic? What do you mean?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So, okay, wait a minute. Three sentences ago, you used the word glamp. Could you please, for anyone over 50, could you just tell people what that word means?

[Kenda Lynch]

It's like camping, but glamour camping. Like, bringing your house with you camping. So you. You maybe have, like, you're not really camping. You're in the wild. Not really, because maybe you, like, tow a big old trailer with you, and that's your camper.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You know, if you can still watch HBO in your trailer, you're not camping, basically.

[Kenda Lynch]

You know, if you've got. Yeah, if you've got a hot tub and, you know, and you've got your Keurig or your Tassimo or your. What's the other one? You got that making your coffee. You're not camping.

[Chuck Nice]

That's why I camp at the Ritz Carlton.

[Kenda Lynch]

There you go.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, so you're a staff scientist at the storied Lunar and Planetary Science Institute. Is that right? Is that. No, just Lunar and Planetary Institute. Is that what they call it? Right, right. And that's based in Houston. Houston, Texas. And we're especially interested in you today because you're featured in episode 2 of Netflix's docu series, what's it called? Alien Worlds. So pick up the action for us. Where do we find you?

[Kenda Lynch]

You find me. As far as in the episode right. When we open up, right in the beginning, you see this alien landscape that kind of looks, in my opinion, it looks like Mars. But we're actually in the Dallol hydrothermal system, which is in the Danakil Depression in Ethiopia. And the Danakil Depression.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So hydrothermal, this would be heat emerging from Earth's Crust manifesting on the surface somehow?

[Kenda Lynch]

Yeah, hydrothermal, meaning that it's heat coming from the Earth's subsurface. And in this case, a hydrothermal system usually meets heat generated waters like geo generated water manifesting up in the surface. So there's water flowing the subsurface, passing over usually like what we call a magma pocket. There's a big pocket of lava and there's water flowing over it, getting superheated and then pushing up to the Earth's surface and boiling out and spewing out all sorts of hot gases and everything like that. And that's called a high.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So at those high temperatures, does it absorb a lot of minerals from the rocks that it passes through?

[Kenda Lynch]

It does. It absorbs a lot of minerals. So there's a lot of what we call anions and cations. There's a lot of dissolved constituents, chemical constituents. And especially in the Dallow system, it also goes through a subsurface salt deposit. So not only is it getting minerals from like the, from just like the ground, the subsurface rock, like over the magma pocket, but it's also picking up all these minerals and dissolving all these salt minerals. And so Dalol is amazing because it is hydrothermal, really hot and super salty, hypersaline. And it's also acidic because there's also all this iron and sulfur that make it super acidic. So.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And that's where you want to find life.

[Kenda Lynch]

Yeah, it's what we call a poly extreme environment. And it's so amazing. And it's a crazy challenge for life. And yet, you know, there's multiple teams of us working there that are finding evidence for life in this environment.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, so the Dead Sea, which is a highly salinic body of water, could only have been named that by people who did not have access to a microscope.

[Kenda Lynch]

Yeah. Cause there's a lot of life in the Dead Sea. Salt.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Just no fishes, no vertebrate fishes.

[Chuck Nice]

Kind of get the feeling that the Dead Sea was named cause somebody drank it. And then everybody else was like, you see what happened? Everybody.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You see what just happened?

[Kenda Lynch]

There you go.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Water, water all around and not a drop to drink.

[Chuck Nice]

There you go.

[Kenda Lynch]

There you go.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So tell me about that. I read something about there's an algae pool nearby or in some other parts of your work.

[Kenda Lynch]

What's going on there in Dallol or in other sites that I work at?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Well, I just have notes that I'm piecing together here. Just pools of algae in a toxic liquid. What's going on there?

[Kenda Lynch]

Pools of algae. So we have these bubbling pools, right? And they're literally like. You literally have elemental sulfur precipitating out of these waters. And you can see, like sulfur.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So it stinks.

[Kenda Lynch]

Oh, it stinks. And it's like. You think the Dead Sea is deadly? Oh, no, Dallow's deadly. You'll see when we're walking through there. You literally see if you get too close in the ground, there's so much hydrogen sulfide gas and carbon dioxide gas. And if you get too.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Ooh, wait, you gotta tell Chuck. Tell Chuck what? Hydrogen sulfide gas smells like rotting eggs.

[Chuck Nice]

Listen.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No, no, he's a comedian. You can do better than that.

[Chuck Nice]

I knew what it was that I'm sitting here. I'm sitting here, like, holding himself through, trying my best. You have no idea the amount of restraint I just exercised. I have 15 fart jokes right now that are bubbling up in me. I shouldn't say that's the wrong way to talk about a fart joke, but.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

The chunk has fart jokes. Then that whole time you're talking about.

[Chuck Nice]

This, Kenda, I was ready to explode with fart. This is all I'm saying.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, so hydrogen sulfide, H2, SO4. Is that correct?

[Kenda Lynch]

H2s, actually.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, just H2s. Oh, H2s. O4 is sulfuric acid.

[Kenda Lynch]

And that's what's in the water is the H2S. The sulfuric acid is actually, there's H2S low molarity. So, I mean. Well, I don't know. I haven't touched the water. But in other acidic environments, usually the H2S is kind of low molarity. Because I've also worked in the Rio Tinto acid river system. And so the H2S is pretty low. Like, it's not going to, like, immediately burn your skin off, you know, you'll get a nice peel, though, from it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, so that's the place if you're going to eat beans. No one will blame you for anything because you got. Yeah, you got total. The whole landscape to blame it on.

[Chuck Nice]

Right. I would do very well there.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes.

[Chuck Nice]

I would do very well.

[Kenda Lynch]

Yeah. Nobody.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Nobody's going to Chuck for one night only, an evening of fart jokes. Right. So, Kenda, where did you grow up?

[Kenda Lynch]

I grew up. I'm a Midwestern kid. I grew up in a town called Rockford, Illinois, which is just west of Chicago, about 90. About 90 miles. I went into Chicago a lot for going to see shows.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Well, just to be clear, if you were just 90 miles west of New York City, you were across New Jersey into Pennsylvania. So to index your location to be 90 miles in any direction from Chicago, does that mean there's no other big city you can tell us what you're near?

[Kenda Lynch]

No, not. Not where I am. If I was east, I could say, you know, Detroit's not far away.

[Chuck Nice]

Detroit.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Detroit.

[Kenda Lynch]

All right, But I'm west, so. No, it's kind of open plains and cornfields and stuff. North of me, though, is Green Bay. If I had straight north, you'd be in great Bay in a.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And we've all heard of Green Bay.

[Kenda Lynch]

So, you know, let's not go there.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

The bears. So how did you. So how do you land on extremophiles as a career goal?

[Kenda Lynch]

Oh, well, you know, this is interesting because I had a different hat on when I started my career. I actually started learning how to try to grow food and keep astronauts alive on other planets. I started out as a.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's cool too. Both of these are cool.

[Kenda Lynch]

I started out as a systems engineer, working on space station and trying to keep people alive. But in my education, I dual. I was. I'm nuts. And I did a dual degree. I literally have two bachelor's degrees, one in engineering, one in biology.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

But generally, if you're nuts, you don't have to tell that to other people because it's just completely clear.

[Chuck Nice]

It is true, by the way. All you have to do is say I got two bachelor degrees at the same time, and people will look at me and go, you must be nuts.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Kenda Lynch]

And so part of. Yeah, so. Yeah, well, yeah, and I like pain, apparently. So, you know, there's that part of it. Part of my training was to also learn about microbes because when growing. Trying to grow plants and develop Earth microcosms, you know, microcosms, you have to understand, you know, not only how humans live, but how everything else that's going to interact lives. So I took classes in aquatic ecology, I took classes in lake ecology. I took classes. Classes in plant biology, and I took classes in microbiology.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So at the end of the day, you realize you took two different majors worth of courses. Is that what happened there?

[Kenda Lynch]

Yep.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So what are the two majors? What were the two?

[Kenda Lynch]

The first one was basically systems engineering. So it was all of. I took a full course of engineering classes, and then I took a full course of general biology classes. And my engineering degree lets me specialize. So I was able to use a couple of my upper level biology classes for my specialization in engineering.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So wait, wait, so your PhD, what was the title of your PhD thesis?

[Kenda Lynch]

A geobiological investigation of the hypersaline sediments of Pilot Valley, Utah. A terrestrial analog to ancient lake basins on Mars.

[Chuck Nice]

Wow.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Wow.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Kenda Lynch]

That's why I had to read it. I couldn't remember.

[Chuck Nice]

I gotta tell you right now. I'm sorry. He asked.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I retract the question.

[Kenda Lynch]

The funny thing is, my PhD was still an engineering degree. I unintentionally got three engineering degrees along the way.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I'm liking it. The master's along the way.

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[Kenda Lynch]

Aerospace engineering for my master's.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, so you were totally loaded.

[Chuck Nice]

Since you're a microbiologist and you were talking about growing food as one of your tasks when you were working on space stations, what do you think about Matt Damon growing poop potatoes on Mars?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Poop potatoes on Mars. We need the final word there.

[Kenda Lynch]

He would have had some problems with his thyroid because of all the perchlorate in the. In the regolith. So, yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

Wow. So basically.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, wait, just to be clear. Wait, wait. I gotta unpack that. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. So on Earth, we have soil. Right. Which is rich in microbes that participate in the ecosystem.

[Kenda Lynch]

Yep.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

On the moon and on Mars, there is no soil.

[Kenda Lynch]

Yep.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No, there's not. Whatever the dust is, there is, like, powder ground up rock, basically. And so. And you call it regolith.

[Kenda Lynch]

We call it regolith because it has not been processed by microbes that we know of. Definitely not on the Moon and on Mars. Not that we know of. And we're not sure what the origin is of the organic matter that we have found so far on Mars. So we call it regolith because it's not soil like we know it on Earth that has been processed over years by microbes and other life elements. And there's not a significant amount of organic matter making it kind of.

[Chuck Nice]

So he would have had a thyroid problem. So when they picked him up to save him, he basically would have had.

[Kenda Lynch]

A goiter, probably, or some other crazy issues. His metabolic system would have been having some weird issues, because perchlorate actually kind of competes with iodine to bind on your thyroid. And we know that Mars has an abundance of perchlorate in the regolith. And that's actually something that, you know, I'm working on with other scientists. I'm. It's kind of funny. In my astrobiology life, I'm starting to kind of go back to my. To my human spaceflight roots and bringing my astrology knowledge and my human spaceflight knowledge together as we're getting ready to go back to the Moon.

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[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Hi, I'm Ernie Carducci from Columbus, Ohio. I'm here with my son Ernie because we listen to StarTalk every night and support StarTalk on Patreon.

[Chuck Nice]

This is StarTalking with Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So, Chuck, this is a cosmic query. So we put out the call and. So what did you get?

[Chuck Nice]

Well, we got, we got a bunch of people who actually, believe it or not, are super interested in this subject.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I believe it. I believe it. It's like weirdly interesting, you know. It really is.

[Chuck Nice]

It really is. Okay, let's start off with our, with our favorite. This is Violetta and her mom. It says, hello, Ain't that child grown.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Up by now in college by now? Violetta, she, she used to write it when she was like 11 and 12 and. No, when she was 11 and 11 and a half and 12 and 12 and a half.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, well, here we go. This is. Hi, Neil. Hi, Chuck. Hi, Kenda. Violeta here, the 13 and a half year old. Thirteen, he's up to 13 and a half.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

She's a full up teenager.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, so you said it, Neil. She did 11 and then 12. 12 and a half. Now she's 13 and a half.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And a half. All right.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay. She says, I'm writing in from Washington, D.C. and my question is, what is the most surprising, fascinating life form or trait about a life form here on Earth that you have discovered or learned about in your career so far? How did this impact the way you think about what life might look like elsewhere in the universe? Thanks, guys. And I just want to say to Dr. Lynch that the world needs more scientists that look like you.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Whoa.

[Chuck Nice]

By that she means fabulous looking.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Fabulous, fabulous.

[Chuck Nice]

She says, thank you so much for doing and being and inspiration.

[Kenda Lynch]

Thank you so much, Violetta. So. Oh, my gosh. There's so many. There's so many crazy.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

What's the weirdest bug out there? You probably have posters that rank the weirdest. Don't tell me that you don't know what your answer is.

[Kenda Lynch]

I'll give you my number one favorite because I just think it's so crazy. The thought of it is just so crazy. My favorite bug is the one that can live on nuclear reactors. It's literally this.

[Chuck Nice]

And does it have a name?

[Kenda Lynch]

Yes, and I'm trying to remember the name.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It's not the tardigrade.

[Chuck Nice]

It's not the tardigrade.

[Kenda Lynch]

Not the tardigrade, because the tardigrade is not. It's a. That tardigrade is a micro. Is a small organism, but it's a multicellular organism. It's. Oh, my gosh. My brain is. It's. But it's.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, but tell us more about it. So it can live like inside a nuclear reaction.

[Kenda Lynch]

They found it living on nuclear reactions. It could take these high doses of radiation and it's got this cool shape. It's actually kind of like a cube almost shaped. And that's what.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay. In Japan, those things turn into Godzillas. I was gonna say that's how you got all of those Japanese monsters.

[Chuck Nice]

You're talking about a Marvel origin story right now.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes.

[Kenda Lynch]

So somebody ate some. Oh, yeah. The name will come to me and I'll spit it out at some point later. Okay, I know I will.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right. So you like the radiation resistance of that?

[Kenda Lynch]

I just think it's amazing that again, it's this whole thing about every time we think we got bugs figured out, like, okay, here's their radiation limit, here's their life water limit, here's their cold limit, here's their hot. And then bugs would Be like, yeah, no. And they blow us right away. And they're like, nah, we can do that.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, we got this. We got this. All right, so this is a single celled organism.

[Kenda Lynch]

This is a single celled organism. Yes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Got it. Okay. Whereas the tardigrade is a whole macroscopic object with legs, and it's a multicellular.

[Kenda Lynch]

Organism, but it's still small. And it's still something that has amazing, amazing resilience and can survive incredible, incredible environments. So I'd be excited if we could find something like the tardigrade, like, on another planet, because it definitely has developed strategies to live in crazy environments. It kind of basically desiccates itself and, like, goes dormant and goes into, like, a. It's like, you know, they call it a water bear. So it goes into hibernation, this really crazy, like, dehydrated hibernation. And it can survive all sorts of insane environments, including being exposed to space.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, man. There's a whole episode of Star Trek Discovery devoted to a space tardigrade that they find that helps them navigate the mycelium network. And the mycelium cosmic Mycelium network is this thing that allows you to move faster than light because you enter this network that kind of transports you almost instantaneously to different locations throughout the universe.

[Kenda Lynch]

I love it. They found a tardigrade in there.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Who would have thought tardigrades were also space fairies? Well, if they came from space initially, that's the big thing there. Cool. Let's get the next question. Chuck, what else you got?

[Chuck Nice]

All righty. Let's do it. Here we go. This is, uh. Oh, Nander. Nander Sirkel.

[Kenda Lynch]

Okay, okay.

[Chuck Nice]

All right. That's your name now, man.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Take it or leave it.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, here we go. He says, I often wonder, when we're looking for life out there. Aren't we a bit biased by our own conditions for life itself, like water or breathable air? Even when considering silicon life forms, this still assumes creatures living on planets. Do you think it would be reasonable to consider, for example, other scales of life and size and spacetime? Maybe some life forms would be the size of planets, even galaxy or quantum particles moving in time so fast that we, as slowpokes, can't even see them.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Whoa. So, Kendra, what part of your PhD thesis dealt with quantum.

[Chuck Nice]

Quantum life forms?

[Kenda Lynch]

Not much of it, but I'll tell you, I was a fan of Star Trek Next Generation, so I'm there with this person's questions, you know, but quantum life forms, so not part of that. But in astrobiology, we really do think about what we call as life as we don't know it, or what some people like to call weird life. And we try to think, when we're looking for life, we try to do. We're developing this way to try to think what we call agnostically about life, which means life is. We don't know it are weird life. So, yeah, there's the problem. We only have one data point, Earth and life. And life on Earth has these.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And even your extremophiles are part of.

[Kenda Lynch]

That one data point, even though they're extreme and they can live on radio, you know, live on reactors or breathe iron or, you know, eat other crazy, you know, metals and things like that.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Rocks.

[Kenda Lynch]

Eat rocks. Yeah. Even though they can do these crazy things, they all still have the same amino acids as we do. They have the same stereochemistry as we do. And we all have the same fundamental, basically, code. We have DNA and rna, they all have the same fundamentals. We all have that same base code of life that kind of builds the structure of life. So, yeah, when we think about life on another planet, we have to think about life as we don't know. What if they use a completely different stereo economy? What if they use a different set of amino acids to build their proteins? What if they have a different liquid? I was just getting asked this in a previous conversation about, you know, what about Titan, where we have lakes of methane? It's a fluid, and life needs fluid for chemistry.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Titan, Saturn's largest moon. Yeah, we've actually been there.

[Kenda Lynch]

And we're sending a beautiful little helicopter that's going to go and land and study the surface and those lakes and some of the organic sands there and try to understand the possibility for prebiotic chemistry on Titan. And that's the question is, is prebiotic chemistry possible in, you know, that kind of environment? And what would it look like and what could life look like being, you know, arising in that kind of environment?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So, yeah, one of my favorite New Yorker comics was there's a crashed flying saucer in the desert, and these two aliens are just crawling along the sands, and one says to the other, ammonia. Ammonia.

[Kenda Lynch]

I mean, that's totally it, right? I mean, it doesn't. I mean, on Earth, it just happened that water was the thing that was gonna be, you know, the basis for life's chemistry. But that doesn't necessarily mean that that's how it's gonna work on other planets. And that's something that we do have to think about, you know, and then thinking about the larger scale of life. We do have scientists that are, you know, they look at things called technosignatures. So we try to understand the scale of, you know, contacting other intelligent, you know, what we call intelligent, I mean, forms of life. And get me started on the intelligent comment. You know, I don't know.

[Chuck Nice]

We're not even that yet.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right, right.

[Chuck Nice]

The jury's still out on us.

[Kenda Lynch]

Yeah, so. Yeah, exactly.

[Chuck Nice]

So can I ask both of you this? Is there a finite chemistry in the universe? I know we have the pretty periodic table. Is there anything that could be outside of that that could actually contribute to life that is not on our periodic table? No, no, that can't be.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Next question.

[Kenda Lynch]

No, no, Everything that we know. Now there may be other elements that we haven't discovered just because we haven't discovered them yet. But no, I mean, because all life begins with stars, you know. You know, all of our elements come from stars. So the star stuff, that's the one common thing that makes it possible for us to really think about this question.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Is that that's the ingredients in the kitchen are all the same.

[Kenda Lynch]

Ingredients in the kitchen are the same across the universe. So that's helpful.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It's just, in fact, Chuck, we're doing better than that because we have created elements that the universe has never seen before in our laboratories. So we created two dozen more elements. Yeah, about 20 more elements than were currently there. So let me ask you this, Kenda. If chemistry is the same and basically geology is the same, Right. You put a geologist on a planet, oh, I know what rock this is. Or we might have a different kind of minerality, but it won't be so foreign to them that they'll be befuddled.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Is there any reason. And the physics is obviously the same. So if I have the same physics, the same chemistry, the same geology, why can't we think that maybe biology will go. Will all focus towards the same forms as we have here, if everything else does that in the other branches of science?

[Kenda Lynch]

I mean, that's a loaded question because it's not. It's. I mean, we can expect some of the same problem principal things to happen. Like there's going to be some kind of cell wall structure, there's going to be an encoding system, there's going to be some way to transfer information. There's going to be some way to move energy and generate energy. There's going to be some way to move things in and out of an interior environment, those kind of things. Yeah, we can kind of figure out that Those kind of are the common elements that are going to make life happen for biology. And those are the kind of things that we agree that we agree that we actually kind of agree. There's a common set of about. About eight things that all life, you know, anything that we call life would probably have going on now. How they get it and how they put it together, that's where that chemistry is different, and that's where the. The environmental context that made the geology is probably different. You know, that's going to be. And that's where, you know, you know, and that's where maybe some of the physics, because the gravity is a little different. So some things are slightly different that help, you know, drive that environmental context. So does that make sense?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I can say that you're not going to expect life forms the size of galaxies.

[Kenda Lynch]

No.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Can I tell you why? I'll tell you why. Okay. Okay. So our galaxy is 100,000 light years across. Okay, 100,000. If that were a life form and one part of it had an itch, how long would it take to scratch that itch? If you can't, you can't move faster than the speed of light. So it has an itch, and then it brings one part of it over to the other part to scratch it. 100,000 years later, it scratches the itch. This is not very effective. This is not a coherently functioning organism. And if evolution requires a lot of experimenting, then the life form has to be able to change, either on purpose or by accident, fast enough so that you can have enough of these experiments for it to take on interesting forms. And if you're really, really big, that doesn't help.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, because, I mean, and if it takes 100,000 years to scratch an itch, just imagine how uncomfortable it would be when its underwear gets stuck in its butt.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Kenda Lynch]

I'm more thinking about the size of the underwear at this point, you know, so.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I know.

[Kenda Lynch]

Sorry.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Well, just to be clear, I wear boxer briefs, and boxer briefs don't get stuck in your box. Oh, okay.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, look at you. Sexy bragging.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Let's see if we can squeeze one more in before the breakup.

[Chuck Nice]

All righty. Let's do it. Here we go. This is Achillasha Kashyap. Man, y' all just messing with me now. Man, that ain't a real name, okay? It's a K H I L E S H Akhilesh. Akilesh. Kashyap. C K A S H Y A P. Kashyap, I hope. Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

Hello, Dr. Tyson.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I'll give you a B minus on that one.

[Chuck Nice]

I get an A minus.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, a B minus.

[Chuck Nice]

Damn. You just keep, I keep going down. Before you know it, just like you're expelled. Hello Dr. Tyson. Hello Dr. Lynch and Lord. Nice. Oh, okay. I am a first time Patreon member.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Nice.

[Chuck Nice]

And my question is, if we discover life on a restricted body like Europa or Enceladus, are we allowed to study them only through orbiting satellites or can we bring something back home and cut them open for science? Of course. I mean you went dark there, you went dark at the end, bro. Okay, you started off with real good. You started off with our continuing mission to seek out new life, new civilizations. And then you ended up with, let's just cut these things suckers open.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Well, well be careful. There's some folks around where Kendra hangs out in Texas. Where can we bring it back and barbecue? Yeah, yeah, we will, we, we will get to that answer after. After the break on Star Talk. Cosmic queries with Astrobiologist Ke. We're back for the third and final segment of StarTalk Cosmic Aquaries. Kenda lynch is with us who's an expert in microbes on Earth as possible analogs to microbes in the universe. So Kenda, over the break you remembered this radioactivity loving microbes, the name of it, what's it called?

[Kenda Lynch]

Dinococcus radiodurans. And they love, they literally can live on, they found them on nuclear reactors and they are very, you know, Deinococcus. Dinococcus, yes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Radio durance this sounds like a rock group.

[Chuck Nice]

It does.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Does it?

[Chuck Nice]

It really does, you know. Chicago, are you ready?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Dinococcus Rad.

[Chuck Nice]

Wow, that's cool.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, so we left off with a question about what was it, Chuck?

[Chuck Nice]

So he wants to know that if we discover life on a restricted body.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Like Europa or Enceladus, it's protected by NASA laws. Basically, yes.

[Chuck Nice]

So you know, can we actually study it just through satellites orbiting or can we bring back something and cut it open?

[Kenda Lynch]

Well, I mean, you know, to cut it open. Wow.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So I mean, let me just back up for a second. So NASA has a Department of Planetary Protection and there's a code within them, which is not a computer code but a behavioral code. Whereas they're the selected objects in the solar system that may have life. We don't mess with them or if we do, we go in a highly sterilized way. And if we bring anything back to Earth, we want to keep that quarantine to make sure it doesn't kill us. That's their job.

[Kenda Lynch]

Yeah. And that's the planetary protection office. And the answer is we're moving into this phase of science where we are trying to bring things back because we realize that we need to bring things back to be able to study them better, to understand if there's life in them or not. Right now we're in the process with the Perseverance rover in Jezero Crater for the Mars 2020 mission. They're caching samples that we're going to send a lander to go and pick up those samples and hand them off from the rover and we're going to bring those samples back to Earth from Mars. And we actually are have missions that are being developed to go to try to land on both Europa and Enceladus. Enceladus is my favorite. It's one of my favorite icy moons, by the way. I love Enceladus to try to understand, to look at the surface and maybe eventually try to get a sample that came up from the subsurface ocean on both of those planets that we can study in situ. And maybe someday we can figure out how to bring those back. But right now the goal is to just try to get to land on the surface and try to study samples in situ to see if we can find evidence for possible biosignatures of life.

[Chuck Nice]

So I may be mistaken with this question, but I'm just going to ask it. Did we not learn from what's Madam Saturn Carolyn Porco, that they're gonna try to fly something through one of the plumes of Enceladus and maybe collect what's being pushed out of the ice?

[Kenda Lynch]

Yeah, we have a mission that's gonna try to do that. Well, we also have Europra Clipper that's going back to Europa that might even be able to do that with Europra Clipper. But we're also trying to fly through the plumes of Enceladus. We have the Enceladus Orbilander concept that is looking at doing that like orbiting, but also sending a lander down to the surface to pick up to do some in situ science on the surface of Enceladus. Hopefully near one of the tiger claws where all this stuff is spewing out.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, so that's the third time you said in situ. Sorry, in five sentences. In situ means in situ. Excuse me mad in Latin there.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay?

[Kenda Lynch]

That's all science, especially biology. We like throwing Latin around everywhere.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You throw Latin.

[Kenda Lynch]

Give me some Latin as a Latin name in biology.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, yeah, it's Latin So let me emphasize something that I think you said, but just wafted by it. The ice on Europa is very thick, but it also cracks, and then water seeps up in the cracks and refreezes. So you're gonna be astrophysically lazy, and instead of trying to dig through the ice, you're gonna try to see if there's anything that came up through the ice and froze there that requires no digging at all.

[Kenda Lynch]

Well, I mean, yeah, I mean, there's. It might require some digging for the, you know, the subsurface. But there are, you know, we have some really brilliant scientists. Not me, but some of my colleagues that are really brilliant that study the kind of the ice.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Other brilliant scientists.

[Kenda Lynch]

Other brilliant scientists. Not me, because I don't study ice dynamics. I'm a, you know, I'm the biology one. But they study kind of that geology of those ice dynamics. And they found that there is likely water that is seeping up from the ocean and kind of connecting in the shallow subsurface and doing things that they can actually see on the surface from remote sensing.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And if that water below the surface had life, it would have gurgled up and frozen in place. You'd have freeze dried life.

[Kenda Lynch]

Exactly. If we can access some of those areas where that life would have kind of gurgled up. And then Enceladus, of course, we've got, you know, the tiger claws just spewing, you know, stuff out into space. So we can try to capture some of that. And then we can also land on the space for free that maybe kind of fell back down if anything, you know.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, so how sterilized do your probes have to be to land on a protected body?

[Kenda Lynch]

Oh, very sterile. That's the challenge of doing this, is that. Yeah, you've got to make sure not only that the lander is very sterile, but that, you know, all the instruments that you're working on are very sterile.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Everything, everything.

[Kenda Lynch]

They're even working on concepts.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

A coronavirus found on.

[Kenda Lynch]

Yeah, yeah, just make.

[Chuck Nice]

Make the land to wear a mask. Yeah, that's everything. It's just like. Make sure you wear your mask lander.

[Kenda Lynch]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Use hand sanitizer and show us your vax card before you touch that.

[Kenda Lynch]

So. Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right, Chuck, give me another one. Another question, Johnny.

[Chuck Nice]

All right, before. You know what, I gotta ask this just before we go. I know I'm not a Patreon, but. So when you talk about this water underneath, this basically, you know, this planet, you got the ice like a crust, and then the water underneath. But Then you have other bodies in space that are just frozen solid pieces of water. Why doesn't the planet just freeze all the way down? Why is there water underneath that ice that can.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

On the moon?

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, on the moons, not the planet. I'm sorry.

[Kenda Lynch]

Why do we have these ocean worlds on moons around Jupiter?

[Chuck Nice]

On moons.

[Kenda Lynch]

Well, first of all, a couple of different things. First of all, we get heating from the gravity, the extreme gravity that causes what we call tidal heating. And Neil could probably explain that better. That kind of pushes and flexes and causes heating that kind of adds some heating to the planet and keeps it warm. Plus, these waters have lots and lots and lots and lots of salt, lots of salt that are depressing the freezing point. So the water is able to stay liquid because there's so much salt in it that that freezing point gets lowered because there's so much salt in it, keeping it liquid.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It's been rumored that zero on the Fahrenheit scale is the freezing temperature of a supersaturated solution of brine of salt water. It's been rumored. And so that's where you get a zero. That's the coldest liquid they could get. That would freeze. And then regular water just goes. Freezes at the warmth of 32 degrees on the Fahrenheit scale. But, yeah, no, you said it perfectly, Kenda. Just the tidal stress between Jupiter and the tugs of other surrounding moons are pumping energy in. And so now there's a heat source that has nothing to do with the sun. I learned in my biology books you need sunlight for life. What you really need is just energy to take the physics angle on it, you just need energy, and you pump energy in from tidal forces. You got it.

[Kenda Lynch]

And what they think is going on in Enceladus is they actually think that heat is also generating kind of. And maybe it may be some residual heat, but probably more of the tidal forces on Enceladus generating heat that's causing hydrothermal vents, like what we see on Earth. You know, the deep sea hydrothermal vents with the black smokers and things that you see, like on the National Geographic videos. They think that that's what they're seeing in Enceladus. And that's kind of what's kind of helping to kind of possibly generate the tire claws pushing that energy out. And that is creating a lot of cool chemistry that life could take advantage of.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So, Kenda, we've had Natalie Starkey on the show, who wrote a book recently on all the cool, literally and figuratively, things in the universe. Volcanoes hot and cold. And she describes Enceladus as an ice volcano world. Yeah, cryovolcanism. And the plumes are just where you just need extra pressure buildup. It didn't have to be hot compared to us. It could just be pressure in its own environment, even if it's very cold. So very cool, Chuck. Keep it coming.

[Chuck Nice]

You can't keep it coming than that. That's so cool. Cryovolcanism.

[Kenda Lynch]

Yes.

[Chuck Nice]

If that doesn't. If that doesn't make you love science, you're dead inside.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I want that on my business card.

[Chuck Nice]

Exactly.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I'm a cryovolcanist. You know what? Are you. Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

All right, here we go. This is William. Da. Thank you, William. Thank you. He says, given that humans have always been fighting a war with tiny bacteria, viruses and prions, et cetera, how likely do you think it is that there's a planet out there with a tiny microscopic organism and it wiped out the more complex life? What would such a planet look like long term? And so that's what he said. So if we're in a war, if we all got killed by a virus here, then what happens long term? Even if it's just here on Earth?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. Ultimately, do all the little things kill all the big things and you just have a planet full of viruses or single celled organisms? Yeah. Where does biology go?

[Chuck Nice]

Hey, what's up? Corona. What's up? Strepococcus.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Hey. Rhinovirus. How you doing today? Yeah, everybody's just chilling.

[Chuck Nice]

Autovirus.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

They got cities and things.

[Chuck Nice]

Get out of here. Herpes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You were invited to the party.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, you got invited.

[Kenda Lynch]

You know, given that we've already had multiple mass extinction events on the planet already, where we've, we're like, not necessarily microbes have taken out our bigger organism, but something else, usually an asteroid or something else, took out our larger organisms, Life has just kind of rebounded. And yeah, for a while, the little guys were, you know, the little guys were in charge. But life eventually kind of picked back up and. And organisms got more, you know, there's. There's an advantage on Earth for multicellular. Multicellularity. And so life eventually kind of worked its way back to multicellularity at some point, you know, and those small guys got bigger and bigger and more complex and more complex each time. But we've, you know, so I would say is if we had a micro generated mash extinction event, my guess is, yeah, for a while the little guys would be in charge. But then eventually, you know, depending on the environment of Earth, if it's advantageous to take advantage of resources and to keep yourself alive to become multicellular, life would probably go back to being multicellular or having a multicellular component on the planet.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's an excellent argument, because if we've done it multiple times in the past, why not again? I mean, after the KT extinction, nothing bigger than, you know, a suitcase or something, like rats and, like, small duffel bag, which biggest size life form. And now we have, you know, the blue whale swim in the ocean, the largest animal there ever was. So a very good argument there. Yeah, I'm with you on that.

[Chuck Nice]

That's very cool.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Very cool. Chuck, we got time for, like, one more, I think. What do you got?

[Chuck Nice]

Right. Let's. Let's go to Kevin, the sommelier. Oh, Kevin says.

[Kenda Lynch]

I like Kevin.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes, Kevin, we're gonna party with you, Kevin.

[Chuck Nice]

Exactly. Kevin says, you know, when I'm sitting around drinking a Chateauneuf du Pas, I often. But no, this doesn't.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No, no, no, no.

[Chuck Nice]

I just threw that in there.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

I thought that'd be cool.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It was cool.

[Chuck Nice]

I wish he did start like that. Kevin says astrobiology used to be termed exobiology. Was this just a rebranding to make people more interested in it? Like when Coke introduced New Coke but had to go back to Classic Coke? Well, keep drinking up Kevin the Samunier.

[Kenda Lynch]

That's a very good question that I'm thinking about here. Because, you know, the reality is, is that when I fell in love with this, it was exobiology when I was. And I'm not going to date myself, but when I got my first lecture, it was from this gentleman named Donald DeFincenzi, who was a part of what was called the exobiology office at NASA. And FYI, NASA always had an exobiology office. NASA started with an exobiology office. So this has been a question that NASA has wanted answered since the beginning of NASA. So this has been kind of part of our charter from the beginning. And so I think the big transition came obviously after the Viking results, but I think the big transition came after the Allan Hills rock and the discovery of the organics in the Allen Hills rock. And, you know, the hypothesis that these organics were made by Martian microbes and these kind of microbes made these special. You know, the whole argument about the biogenicity of the organic structures in the Allen Hills rock.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right. The Allan Hills rock is about the size of a Idaho potato. Been sitting on the shelf for years. We knew it was a meteorite, but no one really knew much about it until, like you said, the Viking mission, we have accurate measurements of the atmosphere of Mars from that mission. And air pockets trapped in that rock matched that air exactly. And, oh, my gosh, a rock from.

[Kenda Lynch]

Mars sitting on the shelf, SNC Rocks meteorites, was born.

[Chuck Nice]

I never mind looking ignorant because it's my specialty. Please tell me what the Allan Hills rock is.

[Kenda Lynch]

The Allan Hills is a Mars meteorite. We know, as Neil said, that it came from Mars because we look at these little, little bubbles in it that keep gases in it, and we're able to extract the gas and look at the gas composition, and it tells us it has the exact same composition of the gases on Mars from our Viking results. And so we know that this meteorite was a piece of Mars that got blasted off and traveled to Earth and kind of landed on Earth. And so Allan Hills is one of what we call an SNC or a Mars meteorite that came from Mars.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And cool, just for background, there's a set of hills in Antarctica called the Allan Hills, where the glacier that is like permanently on Antarctica for now, as it migrates, it comes up against the hills. And if any rock fell from space and landed on this glacier, it gets dragged to these hills and deposited there. So it's a really convenient way to scoop up meteorites without having to comb thousands of square miles of area. You let the glacier do it for you. So it's an Allen Hills and was found in 1984.

[Chuck Nice]

Wow.

[Kenda Lynch]

And they still do. And they do still do annual trips or they had been. I don't know if they stopped because of COVID for a while to Antarctica to look. To go out and look on the glaciers for meteorites, because anywhere else you actually have to watch it fall to kind of go look for it, or you have to, you know, and we've had. We have people send us rocks, especially at the LPI all the time. I think it's a meteorite and it's not.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, it's here we call the meteor.

[Kenda Lynch]

Exactly. The meteor wrongs. Yeah, exactly.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No, the point is, is it most certainly, possibly as much as half of all meteorites in our collections come from these ice sheets. And people wonder, well, do the meteorite. Do the meteors aim for the ice sheets? No, that's the only place you would find them if they fell. Otherwise you have to sift through countless other rocks in the forest to know which one came from space and which ones.

[Kenda Lynch]

And most of the ones that are verified that weren't fallen on the glacier is because Somebody watched it fall and tracked it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, exactly.

[Kenda Lynch]

Exactly. But the point is that after we got Allan Hills and this was back in 92, 93. Is that right? When this study came out and they thought that this happened and everybody kind of disagreed and we had arguments back and forth about, are they life? Are they not life? And then we realized, do we really understand what life is? And this is about the time that we started learning about. We started learning more about extremophiles and the RNA world, the vastness of the RNA world, and we started learning more about biotechnology and our capabilities for higher sample resolution and sample detectability in our instruments got higher. So all of this kind of stuff made us start to question when instruments got more sensitive. Yes, thank you. More sensitive. Can't find my words today.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's fine. Okay.

[Kenda Lynch]

But all of these things kind of together kind of, you know, with that Allen Hills discovery. And at that time they went back and looked at the Viking results and realized that Viking would not have necessarily caught everything because of the sensitivity. Wasn't high enough. Right. So there's all of these things going on. You know, we started asking the question, like, what do we really know about life? Do we really understand life on Earth? Do we really understand the extent of life or what is alive on Earth? And so that's where astrobiology, because it was looking exobiology, was like looking for life elsewhere. But astrobiology includes understanding how life on Earth also came to be. How did we become to be a living planet? So that's where the new term astrobiology came from, because it became about looking for life on Earth, looking for life in the universe, but also trying to understand how do we become the data point that we have now.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So I take the meta view, which is everything the astrophysicist does in space has a counterpart here on Earth. And so you want to glue together astro in front of each of those words. So we have astro chemistry, astrobiology, astroparticle physics. So astro, we're the push cart for it all.

[Kenda Lynch]

I like that one, too.

[Chuck Nice]

Funny how the astrophysicists become the quarterback of the team.

[Kenda Lynch]

Oh, I can't.

[Chuck Nice]

I'm just saying.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

We got appointed by the universe itself to be that role.

[Kenda Lynch]

Come on now.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So, Kenda, I remember when that Alan Hills rock made news, and it was a research paper by some folks at Johnson Space center making the claim that maybe this has evidence for life, which meant life was on Mars. I remember it like it was yesterday. And there was some chemistry within the rock, and then there was a photo of a worm looking thing on the surface. And we didn't know what it was. It was really tiny, but it was just kind of intriguing. It made a good headline photo. But the better evidence was from the other chemistry going on in the rock. I was on a talk show to comment on this rock, and they had me, a philosopher and a biologist. And the philosopher said, how do we know whether the rock itself is not alive? Okay, we got that out of the way. Got to make that sound.

[Chuck Nice]

Stop smoking again, dude.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

We have to get past that. And then. So then they put up the photo of this worm thing. And the biologist says, that can't possibly be life. And I'm thinking, wow, the biologist must know a lot to know that that can't be. So I said, well, how come? And he says, oh, because that's one tenth the size of the smallest microbes on earth. And I then said, last I checked, this is from Mars.

[Chuck Nice]

It was like.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And I realized how narrow the thinking was of biologists because, like, you began this program, Kenda, if all you have is a Data sample of 1, you have no capacity to think differently. Everything has to be shoehorned into your own understanding of the world. And I was perfectly happy to have it be a life form that we don't know anything about. Deal with it.

[Chuck Nice]

And that biologist today is working at McDonald's.

[Kenda Lynch]

I don't remember who that was, but I don't know. Probably not.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

We gotta call it quits there, Ken. It has been delight to have you on the show. I remember you when you were in graduate school. You all grown up now. She's all grown up.

[Kenda Lynch]

It's such an honor to be here and I'm so glad that you remember me.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And actually, we finally found you in the ether. And we can find you on Netflix episode two of Alien World. And we're loving it. And Chuck, always good to have you there. My co host, always a pleasure. All right, Emil Degrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist. Keep looking up.

[Kenda Lynch]

Sam.