Back to Earth 1 Stargazing Live

Welcome back to Jodrell for Stargazing Live, Back to Earth. We

will try and answer more of your questions about Mars, the search

for life and water and anything else you want to know about. Send

in your questions to [email protected]. We have Dr

Lewis Dartnell, he is still here, Dr Lucie Green, Professor Brian Cox,

Dr Brian May and David Baddiel! LAUGHTER Thank you for joining us.

You have a science background? dad was a scientist. He was a

research biochemist. He had a pack of Periodic Table cards and each

card had a different element on it. It was like Element Top Trumps. Me

and my brother would have to say how many electrons. If we got it

wrong, he would beat us to a pulp! That is why I'm not a scientist.

I said TH? That's symbol for "the". LAUGHTER I'm going to go to the

easy ones! We have a H at the end! MO? How dare you?! Ask me one

about... AR? Is that gold? LAUGHTER Are you going to beat me

to a pulp?! CL? Chlorine! LAUGHTER It might be a bad educational

device! I'm going to give you booze instead! This is a cocktail known

as the Moonwalk Cocktail. It was invented... By Michael Jackson?

by Joe Gilmore. It was in honour of Neil Armstrong. He is a barman, not

me! What are the ingredients? superb question! He hasn't got the

right card in front of him! Grapefruit, rosewater, Grand

Marnier and champagne. What is moonwalking about it? He is a

cocktail guy. Enjoy the drink! LAUGHTER One of the few television

shows that gives drink to people live on air! LAUGHTER We left - how

many questions did we leave hanging? Most of them! Is there

life on Mars? Yes. We touched on this idea. I would like to dig

deeper into this idea there could have been a separate origin if we

find life on Mars. That is surprising to many people. How

could it have been? Let's say life began on Mars. How did it get to

Earth? You can transfer life between the inner planets in the

same Solar System. All this rubble was flying through space after the

building of the planets and smashing down on to the rocky

worlds. So if life was started by that point, you could transfer life

from one planet to the next. It can survive the journey? You can do

tests in laboratories and look at the conditions that you would have

to survive. In fact, we have pieces of Mars - I have held a piece of

another world in my hand. Was there an experiment done on the Space

Station? You can put your samples on the outside of the Space Station

and they are exposed to all the radiation and you can see if they

survive. You don't tape a gerbil to the outside? What kind of things do

they put outside? Mostly bacteria. They are pretty good at surviving

those conditions. I read somewhere that Viking, that some of the tests

it was doing to search for life might have killed life, apparently?

We tend to bake the samples, that is not good for life. Life was

there in the first place. Let's put it in an oven first! If you give us

food and sugar and heat it... this guy in the car and I resisted

asking him - do you think that it is one event we are talking about

which produced life? Could it happen in another Solar System?

interesting thing is that all life on Earth that we have come across,

we are all related. You can draw this tree of life on Earth. That

doesn't mean there was only one origin. There could have been

several origins. We happen to be the only survivors that ate the

other life forms. It could have happened spontaneously in another

Solar System. It seems to me that the feeling now in the community is

that given the right conditions, so given water, some kind of

temperature gradient, the right minerals in the rock, life, the

origin of simple life may be inevitable. Would you say that?

may not. It is very close to zero or very close to one. We don't know.

That is why Mars is so important. It has happened twice in the same

Solar System. It is still independent. I think it depends

whether you talk to a biologist or an astronomer whether it is a

science game or a numbers game. You see 100 billion stars in our galaxy.

Today, 17 billion Earth-like planets in the Milky Way galaxy

alone is the new estimate. That is a lot. Yes. There is a small

percentage chance... If there is any planets, there must be life

somewhere. Not necessarily. The probability is that low. I'm by far

the least educated about this person here. There is something

which occurred to me when I was talking to Tim earlier. He was

talking about water vapour being picked up from all over the galaxy.

Our first instinct is to search for life. Is it not plausible within

clouds of water vapour, if water is the building block for life, there

might be microbes. Can they survive an intergalactic journey? I think

they could. On Venus, the conditions are hundreds of degrees

on the surface of the planet. In the clouds, it is a tantalising

sense that the temperatures might be cool enough. Cloud-based life

form. And the comets as well. need an energy source. That is

where comets fall down. There's no flow of things through it. Yes.

Could it be preserved within the comet? Do you give that theory

credence? If we found life on Mars, would that not give that... The one

we were talking about earlier of rocks being blasted off other

planets and being transferred - that seems likely. Mark has been

collating photographs that have been sent in over the course of the

show. Thank you. And to the rest of you in the field. What photos have

come in? We have some stunning pictures. There are some great

pictures. There are some great images. This is for Brian May. This

is the Zodiacal Light. We have another stunning picture of Jupiter.

It shows the belts in the atmosphere, the red spot as well.

That is Callisto there. That is a stunning picture. Then, finally,

something a bit more extragalactic. This is called the Jellyfish Nebula.

Keep the pictures coming in. If you want to send pictures, there are

details on our website - details on our website -

bbc.co.uk/stargazing. Back to you. You have a question? I remember -

wasn't there a famous Sky At Night programme about Zodiacal light -

Chris told me. Nothing to do with me. It was the difference between

potato and po-tar-to! LAUGHTER very positive on potatoes! Po-tar-

to - no! LAUGHTER So many questions. We will move on to manned missions.

We have a question from Chris Coley who said, "Why should we send men

to Mars?" I think we should be sending humans to Mars. All the

major Space Agencys are working towards this. I think -- Space

Agencies are working towards this. I think that is the way to go. How

can you get humans there? Keep them alive and sane. You should bring

them back. What is the journey time at the moment? Six to eight months

with rocket technology. couldn't get... You go to Mars and

you have to wait for the orbits to come back again. The amount of fuel

required to go there, carry that fuel with you and then come back

again. That is the argument for a one-way mission. You live your life

there? A suicide mission? choose to die on Mars or die on

Earth. Because of cosmic radiation, the other danger is you will go

blind. It gets bounced away by the magnetic field? Yes. All astronauts

see streaks passing before their eyes. There is a greater chance of

getting cataracts and you would get to Mars. No-one has spent that long

in space to find out what the effect of getting cancer or

cataracts. What is the longest? Just over year on the Space Station.

I watched the documentary on BBC Two about Neil Armstrong and

there's a cultural issue as well. When I was seven, if you asked a

boy what he wanted to be he would say "astronaut". I think because we

don't have that many manned missions the concept of the

astronaut as a modern superhero has gone. We should be sending manned

or woman missions to re-create that. Yes. The idea of the superhero. The

Curiosity Rover looks nice. He looks like a Christmas present. She

does. That is not like having a human being. You know what I mean?

That was a great motivating factor. I was born in '68. I remember

Apollo Soyuz. You would remember Apollo? It was a lot earlier than

that for me. I remember the Sputnik 1 in 1967. That is the reason we

are here today, the Government gave Sir Bernard Lovell the money to

track it. I remember it all. It seems like yesterday to me. It is

Those men were heroes. In maybe that it is too dangerous, it is a

one-way ticket and it is difficult to be a hero with a one-way ticket.

Would you go? I wouldn't go now. When you are 70, you will be to

world. This is a planet that you can send older people to! Also you

need people who could stand the psychological pressures. I would

take the Complete Works of Shakespeare and Megan fox.

haven't read the complete works of Megan fox. It would take me a lot

of the journey to cover them. We have a new member of the team here

on Back To Earth, an interstellar icon who has travelled through

space and time and now he's our brand new quiz master. So Curiosity,

eat your plutonium-powered heart out, it's over to our very own

rover for K9's Question Time. Hello master Dara, I am K9 and I have

been tasked by the Doctor to provide you with a question. To do

so I have travelled to Mars and have with me a jar of sodium

chloride coated fruit of Arachis hypogaea. Or, as you might say,

salted peanuts. I wish to know - what role did peanuts like these

play in the launch of the Mars rover Curiosity? Answer well,

master. I couldn't hear the question because that was the music

to Rugby Special, wasn't it? That was his theme music. And that

distracted you so sufficiently, you didn't listen to the question?

heard it - what have salted peanuts got to do with Curiosity, is that

right? Yes, do you know the answer? No, Curiosity likes Snickers? No.

Here is the answer, Master Dara. Salted peanuts were eaten by the

team in JPL mission control during the launch of the Mars rover

Curiosity as part of a strange superstition they have honoured

since 1964. They believe that eating peanuts during launch

ensures good luck. If they don't, the mission will end in disaster.

It is illogical, but it is true. is literally the only 1970s

television star you can safely book on to a television show these days.

What?! Too soon? In the launch centre, we have a still photograph,

and they have these. It is a surprisingly superstitious world,

the world of space travel. Lucky boxer shorts. The errors of Thai

cutting ceremony. Russian cosmonauts, before they go on the

ship, they have a beautiful superstition, where they get off

the bus that leads them to the launch and they urinate on the

tyres of the bus. Male or female. don't understand how the space suit

allows them to do that. That is an excellent question actually.

Presumably it has a fly. Do does not compromise the integrity of the

seal? I think that might be a wind- up. Some extra questions coming on

Twitter. David says if there was life on Mars, why haven't we found

fossils? We haven't looked in many places. It is a big planet. The

total coverage of Mars is about the same as the land mast on Earth so

it is a massive area to search and it depends where you land. Some of

the early signs of Earth are bacterial fossils and that is

exactly what we are looking for. And some of them are about 8

billion years old? It is contentious, but about that.

hair there is the possibility of some of these fossils in meteorites.

There was different pieces of the Duke -- jigsaw, but that is

disputed now. There was some evidence from Mars showing the

evidence of water, and the meteorite dates from about 2

billion years ago so it is another piece of the puzzle looking at the

conditions on Mars. And there was methane detector on Mars? Very tiny

amounts but I'm not sure what that means. Some scientists say they can

find it in their data, others do not. It is on the limit of what we

can do. Virtually all the methane in our own atmosphere is biological,

so it could be biological or meteorological. We are getting a

lot of messages about contamination, discovering our own footprint as it

were, having centre over microbes. The to something to take into

account, so the laboratories we work inside, the people are suited

up wearing gloves, and the legacy from studying the Antarctic as well

that we can't contaminate areas of our own planet, we are using that

with Mars. We also don't want to bring anything back from Mars in

the future that will have an adverse effect here. There are

plans for a sample return machines. That is the next step. If they

survive, you are polluting something. Hope fully, but then you

are bringing everything back to the surface of the Earth because at the

moment that would be on the stays - - space station. Go layer, he was

around Europe per, but they didn't want to crash that on to Europa, so

we are aware of this already. Would it change anything for you if you

found definite proof of life on Mars? A would it changed my life?

Why did be excited? It would be disappointing if it was a tiny

microbes, because we were after a little green man, some version of

K9, and it is a microbe. If it showed there was a separate origin

of life, so life had begun elsewhere, there has deep

implications. The what would be the narrative of that? Life could have

died when Mars died? It would tell us that we are not the only place

in the universe where life began. Can I ask you to look at that?

that is more interesting than the question of life on Mars. It is a

piece of wire. Do you know what it does? It is important in terms of

how we send rovers up in the future. Does it end in some way? It is it

how they attached the Parachute? zipped and interesting material?

Yes, it is. Is it carbon-based? Attention is enormous, and I am

good at building it. We put hot- water on this, and we are excited

about running an electric current through that as well. Hopefully it

should spring back into shape. It is a memory metal, and when you run

a charge through it or put it into boiling water, it turns into

whatever shape you previously gave it. The idea is that there is a

Chilean proposal that they will send couple Rover on which the

wheels are squashed down. They create the shape of them first,

squash them, then run a charge through them when they are all up

and they will pop into shape. Here is your forecast.

Earlier in the show we looked at the planet Jupiter, and if the sky

is clear where you are after the programme, but is a good time - the

brightest object in the sky, moving slowly west. You can also see a

Ryan, look for the distinctive three stars that form in its belt.

Above and left of that is a super giant star that forms the top

corner of the triangular pattern formed from three bright stars best

seen in the winter months. Each of these brilliant stars belonged to a

different constellation. The lowest star of the triangle is the

brightest, called Cirrius. The final star is at the top left, the

brightest star in this constellation. If you draw a line

up through the centre of the triangle, eventually you will come

to two a similar stars, the brightest in the constellation of

Gemini, the twins. They represent the mythological twin brothers come

and according to legend they accompanied Jason And the Argonauts

in the search of the Golden fleece. If you are at an early riser, you

have an opportunity to observe the moon, Saturn will be visible. The

thin crescent Moon pops up a but the south-east horizon at about six

am. Venus makes an appearance of the south-east horizon in the

brighter and dawn skies from 7:30am. The sun rises in the south-east

about an-hour after Venus, so remember, please don't ever look

directly at the sun. It is not a good idea. Lucy has recorded some

audio guides that you can download, just like having her in your pocket,

and you can get them on the website. Bbc.co.uk/stargazing.

We briefly asked about life on Mars, but it could have a tangible effect

on new thanks to the bet you made here. It I would lose money. Mars

is not too unlike the Earth but I'm sure there is a certain amount of

life on Mars. I will give you the odds of a million to one that they

don't find it within 50 years. right, there is �1. It could be

expensive. I wanted to be proved wrong, but I

have this feeling that it is possible, in spite of the

statistics. This is the only time it has ever happened so we had

better get it right. This famous idea that if there were other civil

a solutions are out there in the Milky Way to be found on these

billions of Earth-like planet, where are they? Why haven't they

visited Earth? You would like to be proved wrong as well, wouldn't you?

I would love to be proved wrong, I will give you 10-1. You were very

close to Sir Patrick Moore, weren't you? Yes, he was such a giving

person, and really what he did for astronomy and young people's hopes

his incomparable, and will miss him greatly. You worked with him

presumably a great deal? I met him on the seven hundredth anniversary

of the sky at night, and I think we have the same book of astronomy. I

had it as a school prize and it was one of the things you find a lot of

professional astronomers, a book like that which Patrick wrote.

was reading it again over Christmas, and it is before a lot of the

activity that I now study, but I could hear him as I was reading the

words. He has a light touch, he draws you in. The final word can go

to Patrick himself. Will you please close one eye. We have just had

some amazing sightings. This, it has been cited for the first time

in over 70 years. There is the moon, I can see it for a moment. No, it

has gone again. When we get high tides, they are the biggest natural

force in the entire world. From Brighton, where the sky is complete

the overcast, good night. Patrick Moore trying to look at

stars despite a cloudy sky. Thanks to my guests and all of our

audience and stargazers here. Tomorrow, the history and future of

absolutely everything when we contemplate the origins of the