:01:24. > :01:28.Welcome back to Jodrell for Stargazing Live, Back to Earth. We
:01:28. > :01:33.will try and answer more of your questions about Mars, the search
:01:33. > :01:39.for life and water and anything else you want to know about. Send
:01:39. > :01:49.in your questions to stargazing@bbc.co.uk. We have Dr
:01:49. > :01:49.
:01:49. > :01:57.Lewis Dartnell, he is still here, Dr Lucie Green, Professor Brian Cox,
:01:57. > :02:07.Dr Brian May and David Baddiel! LAUGHTER Thank you for joining us.
:02:07. > :02:11.You have a science background? dad was a scientist. He was a
:02:11. > :02:21.research biochemist. He had a pack of Periodic Table cards and each
:02:21. > :02:21.
:02:21. > :02:27.card had a different element on it. It was like Element Top Trumps. Me
:02:27. > :02:33.and my brother would have to say how many electrons. If we got it
:02:33. > :02:43.wrong, he would beat us to a pulp! That is why I'm not a scientist.
:02:43. > :02:47.
:02:47. > :02:57.I said TH? That's symbol for "the". LAUGHTER I'm going to go to the
:02:57. > :03:02.
:03:02. > :03:11.easy ones! We have a H at the end! MO? How dare you?! Ask me one
:03:11. > :03:21.about... AR? Is that gold? LAUGHTER Are you going to beat me
:03:21. > :03:26.
:03:26. > :03:34.to a pulp?! CL? Chlorine! LAUGHTER It might be a bad educational
:03:34. > :03:41.device! I'm going to give you booze instead! This is a cocktail known
:03:41. > :03:49.as the Moonwalk Cocktail. It was invented... By Michael Jackson?
:03:49. > :03:56.by Joe Gilmore. It was in honour of Neil Armstrong. He is a barman, not
:03:56. > :04:03.me! What are the ingredients? superb question! He hasn't got the
:04:03. > :04:09.right card in front of him! Grapefruit, rosewater, Grand
:04:09. > :04:18.Marnier and champagne. What is moonwalking about it? He is a
:04:18. > :04:24.cocktail guy. Enjoy the drink! LAUGHTER One of the few television
:04:24. > :04:29.shows that gives drink to people live on air! LAUGHTER We left - how
:04:29. > :04:33.many questions did we leave hanging? Most of them! Is there
:04:33. > :04:38.life on Mars? Yes. We touched on this idea. I would like to dig
:04:38. > :04:41.deeper into this idea there could have been a separate origin if we
:04:41. > :04:47.find life on Mars. That is surprising to many people. How
:04:47. > :04:54.could it have been? Let's say life began on Mars. How did it get to
:04:54. > :05:00.Earth? You can transfer life between the inner planets in the
:05:00. > :05:05.same Solar System. All this rubble was flying through space after the
:05:05. > :05:12.building of the planets and smashing down on to the rocky
:05:12. > :05:17.worlds. So if life was started by that point, you could transfer life
:05:17. > :05:21.from one planet to the next. It can survive the journey? You can do
:05:21. > :05:27.tests in laboratories and look at the conditions that you would have
:05:27. > :05:35.to survive. In fact, we have pieces of Mars - I have held a piece of
:05:35. > :05:39.another world in my hand. Was there an experiment done on the Space
:05:39. > :05:43.Station? You can put your samples on the outside of the Space Station
:05:43. > :05:53.and they are exposed to all the radiation and you can see if they
:05:53. > :05:54.
:05:54. > :05:59.survive. You don't tape a gerbil to the outside? What kind of things do
:05:59. > :06:06.they put outside? Mostly bacteria. They are pretty good at surviving
:06:06. > :06:11.those conditions. I read somewhere that Viking, that some of the tests
:06:11. > :06:17.it was doing to search for life might have killed life, apparently?
:06:17. > :06:25.We tend to bake the samples, that is not good for life. Life was
:06:25. > :06:31.there in the first place. Let's put it in an oven first! If you give us
:06:31. > :06:35.food and sugar and heat it... this guy in the car and I resisted
:06:35. > :06:39.asking him - do you think that it is one event we are talking about
:06:39. > :06:44.which produced life? Could it happen in another Solar System?
:06:44. > :06:52.interesting thing is that all life on Earth that we have come across,
:06:52. > :06:55.we are all related. You can draw this tree of life on Earth. That
:06:55. > :07:01.doesn't mean there was only one origin. There could have been
:07:01. > :07:10.several origins. We happen to be the only survivors that ate the
:07:10. > :07:15.other life forms. It could have happened spontaneously in another
:07:15. > :07:20.Solar System. It seems to me that the feeling now in the community is
:07:20. > :07:23.that given the right conditions, so given water, some kind of
:07:23. > :07:29.temperature gradient, the right minerals in the rock, life, the
:07:29. > :07:33.origin of simple life may be inevitable. Would you say that?
:07:33. > :07:38.may not. It is very close to zero or very close to one. We don't know.
:07:38. > :07:44.That is why Mars is so important. It has happened twice in the same
:07:44. > :07:47.Solar System. It is still independent. I think it depends
:07:47. > :07:53.whether you talk to a biologist or an astronomer whether it is a
:07:53. > :07:59.science game or a numbers game. You see 100 billion stars in our galaxy.
:07:59. > :08:08.Today, 17 billion Earth-like planets in the Milky Way galaxy
:08:08. > :08:11.alone is the new estimate. That is a lot. Yes. There is a small
:08:11. > :08:17.percentage chance... If there is any planets, there must be life
:08:17. > :08:20.somewhere. Not necessarily. The probability is that low. I'm by far
:08:20. > :08:25.the least educated about this person here. There is something
:08:25. > :08:29.which occurred to me when I was talking to Tim earlier. He was
:08:29. > :08:34.talking about water vapour being picked up from all over the galaxy.
:08:34. > :08:39.Our first instinct is to search for life. Is it not plausible within
:08:39. > :08:45.clouds of water vapour, if water is the building block for life, there
:08:45. > :08:48.might be microbes. Can they survive an intergalactic journey? I think
:08:48. > :08:53.they could. On Venus, the conditions are hundreds of degrees
:08:54. > :08:59.on the surface of the planet. In the clouds, it is a tantalising
:08:59. > :09:06.sense that the temperatures might be cool enough. Cloud-based life
:09:06. > :09:14.form. And the comets as well. need an energy source. That is
:09:14. > :09:20.where comets fall down. There's no flow of things through it. Yes.
:09:20. > :09:30.Could it be preserved within the comet? Do you give that theory
:09:30. > :09:40.
:09:40. > :09:45.credence? If we found life on Mars, would that not give that... The one
:09:45. > :09:55.we were talking about earlier of rocks being blasted off other
:09:55. > :09:57.
:09:57. > :10:01.planets and being transferred - that seems likely. Mark has been
:10:01. > :10:08.collating photographs that have been sent in over the course of the
:10:08. > :10:16.show. Thank you. And to the rest of you in the field. What photos have
:10:16. > :10:22.come in? We have some stunning pictures. There are some great
:10:22. > :10:32.pictures. There are some great images. This is for Brian May. This
:10:32. > :10:34.
:10:34. > :10:41.is the Zodiacal Light. We have another stunning picture of Jupiter.
:10:41. > :10:47.It shows the belts in the atmosphere, the red spot as well.
:10:47. > :10:57.That is Callisto there. That is a stunning picture. Then, finally,
:10:57. > :11:00.
:11:00. > :11:06.something a bit more extragalactic. This is called the Jellyfish Nebula.
:11:06. > :11:10.Keep the pictures coming in. If you want to send pictures, there are
:11:10. > :11:14.details on our website - details on our website -
:11:14. > :11:23.bbc.co.uk/stargazing. Back to you. You have a question? I remember -
:11:23. > :11:29.wasn't there a famous Sky At Night programme about Zodiacal light -
:11:29. > :11:39.Chris told me. Nothing to do with me. It was the difference between
:11:39. > :11:50.
:11:50. > :11:55.potato and po-tar-to! LAUGHTER very positive on potatoes! Po-tar-
:11:55. > :12:03.to - no! LAUGHTER So many questions. We will move on to manned missions.
:12:03. > :12:10.We have a question from Chris Coley who said, "Why should we send men
:12:10. > :12:18.to Mars?" I think we should be sending humans to Mars. All the
:12:18. > :12:22.major Space Agencys are working towards this. I think -- Space
:12:22. > :12:28.Agencies are working towards this. I think that is the way to go. How
:12:28. > :12:33.can you get humans there? Keep them alive and sane. You should bring
:12:33. > :12:37.them back. What is the journey time at the moment? Six to eight months
:12:37. > :12:44.with rocket technology. couldn't get... You go to Mars and
:12:44. > :12:49.you have to wait for the orbits to come back again. The amount of fuel
:12:49. > :12:55.required to go there, carry that fuel with you and then come back
:12:55. > :13:05.again. That is the argument for a one-way mission. You live your life
:13:05. > :13:05.
:13:05. > :13:14.there? A suicide mission? choose to die on Mars or die on
:13:14. > :13:21.Earth. Because of cosmic radiation, the other danger is you will go
:13:21. > :13:26.blind. It gets bounced away by the magnetic field? Yes. All astronauts
:13:26. > :13:31.see streaks passing before their eyes. There is a greater chance of
:13:31. > :13:35.getting cataracts and you would get to Mars. No-one has spent that long
:13:35. > :13:42.in space to find out what the effect of getting cancer or
:13:42. > :13:46.cataracts. What is the longest? Just over year on the Space Station.
:13:46. > :13:50.I watched the documentary on BBC Two about Neil Armstrong and
:13:50. > :13:55.there's a cultural issue as well. When I was seven, if you asked a
:13:55. > :14:00.boy what he wanted to be he would say "astronaut". I think because we
:14:00. > :14:04.don't have that many manned missions the concept of the
:14:04. > :14:14.astronaut as a modern superhero has gone. We should be sending manned
:14:14. > :14:18.or woman missions to re-create that. Yes. The idea of the superhero. The
:14:18. > :14:26.Curiosity Rover looks nice. He looks like a Christmas present. She
:14:26. > :14:35.does. That is not like having a human being. You know what I mean?
:14:35. > :14:39.That was a great motivating factor. I was born in '68. I remember
:14:39. > :14:49.Apollo Soyuz. You would remember Apollo? It was a lot earlier than
:14:49. > :14:51.
:14:51. > :14:55.that for me. I remember the Sputnik 1 in 1967. That is the reason we
:14:55. > :14:58.are here today, the Government gave Sir Bernard Lovell the money to
:14:59. > :15:08.track it. I remember it all. It seems like yesterday to me. It is
:15:09. > :15:12.
:15:12. > :15:18.Those men were heroes. In maybe that it is too dangerous, it is a
:15:18. > :15:24.one-way ticket and it is difficult to be a hero with a one-way ticket.
:15:24. > :15:31.Would you go? I wouldn't go now. When you are 70, you will be to
:15:31. > :15:37.world. This is a planet that you can send older people to! Also you
:15:37. > :15:41.need people who could stand the psychological pressures. I would
:15:42. > :15:48.take the Complete Works of Shakespeare and Megan fox.
:15:48. > :15:52.haven't read the complete works of Megan fox. It would take me a lot
:15:52. > :15:56.of the journey to cover them. We have a new member of the team here
:15:56. > :16:06.on Back To Earth, an interstellar icon who has travelled through
:16:06. > :16:09.
:16:09. > :16:12.space and time and now he's our brand new quiz master. So Curiosity,
:16:12. > :16:18.eat your plutonium-powered heart out, it's over to our very own
:16:18. > :16:22.rover for K9's Question Time. Hello master Dara, I am K9 and I have
:16:22. > :16:25.been tasked by the Doctor to provide you with a question. To do
:16:25. > :16:28.so I have travelled to Mars and have with me a jar of sodium
:16:28. > :16:31.chloride coated fruit of Arachis hypogaea. Or, as you might say,
:16:31. > :16:34.salted peanuts. I wish to know - what role did peanuts like these
:16:34. > :16:36.play in the launch of the Mars rover Curiosity? Answer well,
:16:36. > :16:45.master. I couldn't hear the question because that was the music
:16:45. > :16:49.to Rugby Special, wasn't it? That was his theme music. And that
:16:49. > :16:58.distracted you so sufficiently, you didn't listen to the question?
:16:58. > :17:08.heard it - what have salted peanuts got to do with Curiosity, is that
:17:08. > :17:18.
:17:18. > :17:21.right? Yes, do you know the answer? No, Curiosity likes Snickers? No.
:17:21. > :17:24.Here is the answer, Master Dara. Salted peanuts were eaten by the
:17:24. > :17:27.team in JPL mission control during the launch of the Mars rover
:17:27. > :17:29.Curiosity as part of a strange superstition they have honoured
:17:29. > :17:32.since 1964. They believe that eating peanuts during launch
:17:32. > :17:42.ensures good luck. If they don't, the mission will end in disaster.
:17:42. > :17:43.
:17:43. > :17:53.It is illogical, but it is true. is literally the only 1970s
:17:53. > :18:03.television star you can safely book on to a television show these days.
:18:03. > :18:05.
:18:05. > :18:10.What?! Too soon? In the launch centre, we have a still photograph,
:18:10. > :18:16.and they have these. It is a surprisingly superstitious world,
:18:16. > :18:20.the world of space travel. Lucky boxer shorts. The errors of Thai
:18:20. > :18:24.cutting ceremony. Russian cosmonauts, before they go on the
:18:24. > :18:29.ship, they have a beautiful superstition, where they get off
:18:29. > :18:37.the bus that leads them to the launch and they urinate on the
:18:37. > :18:44.tyres of the bus. Male or female. don't understand how the space suit
:18:44. > :18:50.allows them to do that. That is an excellent question actually.
:18:50. > :18:55.Presumably it has a fly. Do does not compromise the integrity of the
:18:55. > :19:01.seal? I think that might be a wind- up. Some extra questions coming on
:19:01. > :19:08.Twitter. David says if there was life on Mars, why haven't we found
:19:08. > :19:13.fossils? We haven't looked in many places. It is a big planet. The
:19:13. > :19:23.total coverage of Mars is about the same as the land mast on Earth so
:19:23. > :19:26.it is a massive area to search and it depends where you land. Some of
:19:26. > :19:34.the early signs of Earth are bacterial fossils and that is
:19:34. > :19:40.exactly what we are looking for. And some of them are about 8
:19:40. > :19:50.billion years old? It is contentious, but about that.
:19:50. > :19:53.
:19:53. > :20:01.hair there is the possibility of some of these fossils in meteorites.
:20:01. > :20:07.There was different pieces of the Duke -- jigsaw, but that is
:20:07. > :20:12.disputed now. There was some evidence from Mars showing the
:20:12. > :20:15.evidence of water, and the meteorite dates from about 2
:20:15. > :20:25.billion years ago so it is another piece of the puzzle looking at the
:20:25. > :20:30.conditions on Mars. And there was methane detector on Mars? Very tiny
:20:30. > :20:34.amounts but I'm not sure what that means. Some scientists say they can
:20:34. > :20:44.find it in their data, others do not. It is on the limit of what we
:20:44. > :20:46.
:20:46. > :20:56.can do. Virtually all the methane in our own atmosphere is biological,
:20:56. > :20:56.
:20:56. > :21:01.so it could be biological or meteorological. We are getting a
:21:01. > :21:06.lot of messages about contamination, discovering our own footprint as it
:21:06. > :21:11.were, having centre over microbes. The to something to take into
:21:11. > :21:17.account, so the laboratories we work inside, the people are suited
:21:18. > :21:23.up wearing gloves, and the legacy from studying the Antarctic as well
:21:23. > :21:27.that we can't contaminate areas of our own planet, we are using that
:21:27. > :21:33.with Mars. We also don't want to bring anything back from Mars in
:21:33. > :21:40.the future that will have an adverse effect here. There are
:21:40. > :21:46.plans for a sample return machines. That is the next step. If they
:21:46. > :21:49.survive, you are polluting something. Hope fully, but then you
:21:49. > :21:56.are bringing everything back to the surface of the Earth because at the
:21:56. > :22:05.moment that would be on the stays - - space station. Go layer, he was
:22:05. > :22:10.around Europe per, but they didn't want to crash that on to Europa, so
:22:10. > :22:15.we are aware of this already. Would it change anything for you if you
:22:15. > :22:24.found definite proof of life on Mars? A would it changed my life?
:22:24. > :22:30.Why did be excited? It would be disappointing if it was a tiny
:22:30. > :22:36.microbes, because we were after a little green man, some version of
:22:36. > :22:40.K9, and it is a microbe. If it showed there was a separate origin
:22:40. > :22:45.of life, so life had begun elsewhere, there has deep
:22:45. > :22:51.implications. The what would be the narrative of that? Life could have
:22:51. > :22:58.died when Mars died? It would tell us that we are not the only place
:22:58. > :23:04.in the universe where life began. Can I ask you to look at that?
:23:04. > :23:09.that is more interesting than the question of life on Mars. It is a
:23:10. > :23:16.piece of wire. Do you know what it does? It is important in terms of
:23:16. > :23:21.how we send rovers up in the future. Does it end in some way? It is it
:23:21. > :23:29.how they attached the Parachute? zipped and interesting material?
:23:30. > :23:35.Yes, it is. Is it carbon-based? Attention is enormous, and I am
:23:35. > :23:40.good at building it. We put hot- water on this, and we are excited
:23:40. > :23:45.about running an electric current through that as well. Hopefully it
:23:45. > :23:51.should spring back into shape. It is a memory metal, and when you run
:23:51. > :23:58.a charge through it or put it into boiling water, it turns into
:23:58. > :24:04.whatever shape you previously gave it. The idea is that there is a
:24:04. > :24:07.Chilean proposal that they will send couple Rover on which the
:24:07. > :24:12.wheels are squashed down. They create the shape of them first,
:24:12. > :24:21.squash them, then run a charge through them when they are all up
:24:21. > :24:26.and they will pop into shape. Here is your forecast.
:24:26. > :24:32.Earlier in the show we looked at the planet Jupiter, and if the sky
:24:32. > :24:40.is clear where you are after the programme, but is a good time - the
:24:40. > :24:44.brightest object in the sky, moving slowly west. You can also see a
:24:44. > :24:50.Ryan, look for the distinctive three stars that form in its belt.
:24:50. > :24:54.Above and left of that is a super giant star that forms the top
:24:54. > :25:00.corner of the triangular pattern formed from three bright stars best
:25:00. > :25:04.seen in the winter months. Each of these brilliant stars belonged to a
:25:04. > :25:14.different constellation. The lowest star of the triangle is the
:25:14. > :25:19.
:25:19. > :25:27.brightest, called Cirrius. The final star is at the top left, the
:25:27. > :25:31.brightest star in this constellation. If you draw a line
:25:31. > :25:38.up through the centre of the triangle, eventually you will come
:25:39. > :25:44.to two a similar stars, the brightest in the constellation of
:25:44. > :25:47.Gemini, the twins. They represent the mythological twin brothers come
:25:47. > :25:54.and according to legend they accompanied Jason And the Argonauts
:25:54. > :26:04.in the search of the Golden fleece. If you are at an early riser, you
:26:04. > :26:07.
:26:07. > :26:11.have an opportunity to observe the moon, Saturn will be visible. The
:26:12. > :26:18.thin crescent Moon pops up a but the south-east horizon at about six
:26:18. > :26:24.am. Venus makes an appearance of the south-east horizon in the
:26:24. > :26:28.brighter and dawn skies from 7:30am. The sun rises in the south-east
:26:28. > :26:33.about an-hour after Venus, so remember, please don't ever look
:26:33. > :26:38.directly at the sun. It is not a good idea. Lucy has recorded some
:26:38. > :26:43.audio guides that you can download, just like having her in your pocket,
:26:43. > :26:49.and you can get them on the website. Bbc.co.uk/stargazing.
:26:49. > :26:55.We briefly asked about life on Mars, but it could have a tangible effect
:26:55. > :26:58.on new thanks to the bet you made here. It I would lose money. Mars
:26:58. > :27:04.is not too unlike the Earth but I'm sure there is a certain amount of
:27:04. > :27:11.life on Mars. I will give you the odds of a million to one that they
:27:11. > :27:14.don't find it within 50 years. right, there is �1. It could be
:27:14. > :27:19.expensive. I wanted to be proved wrong, but I
:27:19. > :27:22.have this feeling that it is possible, in spite of the
:27:22. > :27:28.statistics. This is the only time it has ever happened so we had
:27:28. > :27:32.better get it right. This famous idea that if there were other civil
:27:32. > :27:36.a solutions are out there in the Milky Way to be found on these
:27:36. > :27:43.billions of Earth-like planet, where are they? Why haven't they
:27:43. > :27:49.visited Earth? You would like to be proved wrong as well, wouldn't you?
:27:50. > :27:54.I would love to be proved wrong, I will give you 10-1. You were very
:27:54. > :27:59.close to Sir Patrick Moore, weren't you? Yes, he was such a giving
:27:59. > :28:05.person, and really what he did for astronomy and young people's hopes
:28:05. > :28:11.his incomparable, and will miss him greatly. You worked with him
:28:11. > :28:16.presumably a great deal? I met him on the seven hundredth anniversary
:28:16. > :28:21.of the sky at night, and I think we have the same book of astronomy. I
:28:21. > :28:27.had it as a school prize and it was one of the things you find a lot of
:28:27. > :28:31.professional astronomers, a book like that which Patrick wrote.
:28:31. > :28:36.was reading it again over Christmas, and it is before a lot of the
:28:36. > :28:44.activity that I now study, but I could hear him as I was reading the
:28:44. > :28:50.words. He has a light touch, he draws you in. The final word can go
:28:50. > :28:57.to Patrick himself. Will you please close one eye. We have just had
:28:57. > :29:03.some amazing sightings. This, it has been cited for the first time
:29:03. > :29:13.in over 70 years. There is the moon, I can see it for a moment. No, it
:29:13. > :29:18.
:29:18. > :29:23.has gone again. When we get high tides, they are the biggest natural
:29:23. > :29:27.force in the entire world. From Brighton, where the sky is complete
:29:27. > :29:37.the overcast, good night. Patrick Moore trying to look at
:29:37. > :29:37.
:29:37. > :29:41.stars despite a cloudy sky. Thanks to my guests and all of our
:29:41. > :29:45.audience and stargazers here. Tomorrow, the history and future of
:29:45. > :29:49.absolutely everything when we contemplate the origins of the