 Welcome back to Think Tech. It's one o'clock, one o'clock rock here on a given Monday, and that means it's time for research in Manoa on our favorite shows. And that's provided to us by HIGP, the Hawaii Institute of Geophysical Planetology, which is part of the School of Ocean Earth Science at UH Manoa. And we have two special people from HIGP. We have Professor Jeff Taylor from HIGP and Linda Martell. She's a researcher there. We're going to talk today about science stories. I'm not sure exactly what that means, or how those are going to hang together, but I think it's important that we cover stories, because stories have, you know, the idea of history. History. So let's talk first about history. Welcome to the show, Linda. Welcome, Jeff. Hi, Jay. Good to be here, Jay. We're celebrating this month 20 years of writing science stories for NASA. Wow. That is a long time. Yeah. So we're going to recite Planetary Science Research Discoveries, and it's... Planetary Science Research Discoveries. Oh, it's P-S-R-D. P-S-R-D. .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... Yeah, and it's one of the ways we... one of the questions people will always ask, is, well, what... what good is this? Well, our job is to say what good it is, and also just to say, here's a greater world around us. We aren't just... just Honolulu, or just Oahu, just the Hawaiian Islands, or even just the Earth. It's a much bigger thing we occupy. You know, it's a risk of living on an island where you sort of fold in on a small world and not see the outside. It reminds me of the King and I where you remember there's a there's a scene in the King and I will you'll Brenna has a map of the world and the whole world is Siam. You know you fold in on yourself but you need to look outside we need to look outside. It's important to see the whole. There's also another map as long as you mentioned map the New Yorkers map of the United States where where the Mississippi is is actually the Hudson. We have that in my office. You know exactly what you mean. There's two of them. One looks east from California West from New York and it makes everything in between small. I know and but they aren't small and the whole thing needs to come together and I think that's to have telling the getting the public to learn those that concept that this is a big big world a big universe interrelated world and universe and that's true we have to teach students that and and to look at things in different angles different viewpoints different data sets even you know some you can look at the United States and think of it in terms of its population and diversity of the population it's its education level or you can even look bigger that there's diseases to solve there's exploration to do you know it's there's all different levels that we can look at things yeah this takes you away from the basins things that take you into more negative things like war and terrorism and all that it's better to look big it's better to see the challenges of humanity earth as a whole planet yeah yeah we haven't taken care of it yeah sure taking care of it and environmental climate you look at the earth from afar you really think boy the people living there really should be taking care of each other instead of fighting with each other and and so the perspective planetary science gives us an astronomy to is is very important it is it's a message to everyone think big you know and take care of each other so when we started to PSRD we wanted to be and a source for people that they would know that the science is correct like we're reporting good science to be that kind of mm-hmm yeah yeah so what's what's on their articles they have many features we take we find a story that has just come out in a scientific journal that that frankly moves us one of us at least is gonna write it that is really something yeah yeah it's hard to get a consensus but we once you get an article and you want to explain it you got to read it understand it yourself now we are scientists so that that's not so hard to do but some of these things are really hard tricky so and then you have to explain it and so we I like to say we translated into English from the original geek and and it's it's it's fun to do to try to get it to to explain things and people the public we have gotten good response from the public we've gotten great response from college students who use them as the basis beginning at least the term paper you can read our summary and then go to the science journal sure because you link to the science journal and a glossary although we try not to use scientific jargon sometimes you can't help it so at least we have a glossary so you can learn you know yeah you can't help you know sometimes but go out about jargon and it happens a legal profession too you know you use a word and you do not know anymore that is jargon you forgot already you forgot that that word is actually a technical word and because you use it so much it's kind of interesting so if I find a stiff acronym in there somewhere the glossary should lead the way to to its definition so how often you know do you write you know this sounds like a lot of work to me because there's a lot of articles come out and and it's not easy to interpret some of them or you know make them understandable to the public how often do you do that we try to do one a month when big article and we have short features to that just give the highlight of an article and give a reference to the article and that's kind of a way just leading just give more we can do more diverse topics that way too and they are easier to write quicker to write than the longer articles are sometimes we know when a article will will come out like next week and we'll have something ready so with that when the embargo is lifted then we can go right right so you get an advanced copy embargo and then you're ready to spring yeah so are you getting better at it that's an interesting question is the getting better or quicker I think we are our first story was this huge announcement in 1996 about potential evidence for past life on Mars they caught everyone's attention do you remember this it was really did hit it was even the president which was Bill Clinton at the time got involved and made a statement about this and it was a big press conference and we have a picture actually the number one two number two picture is this press conference the border and NASA photo I think that rock in the box is a Martian meteorite that had the pieces in it that they said organic material of some kind it was some organic material definitely it was organic material in it there were things that look like fossils two of the chief discoverers of the ones they're back or mostly to us there one's kind of in the middle Dave McKay and Everett Gibson and they there were some prime movers on it and they've told me Dave McKay who by the way was on my PhD dissertation committee when I was nice and he knows you well yeah he said that this whole thing was just a zoo he had never experienced anything like this before because from everyone was so excited about it all the press you see them gathered there and it's quite interesting so they found multiple lines of evidence that if you interpret it them all one way you could say oh maybe these were fossils but that was only one way to interpret all the data yeah yeah what was the other way and it was not formed by it was just a regular it was a terrific debate about it some things like the picture number four shows a little thing that looks for all the world like a fossil really there's a little worm there looks like a bacteria those however ten times shorter in length and one argument was we kind of there's not enough room for all the DNA or even is RNA to fit in it that was a big debate another was well actually that's an artifact of sample preparation and one of the people who said that is now on our faculty the guy named John Bradley and he who does electron microscopy and really well and he said that you know it's it's an artifact of coating these things with gold and looking at him they had an electron microscope so that was better it was it was better than any use previously on looking at this kind of objects and they they may have picked up an artifact now it was disputed and it's hard to prove but it is saying here's another alternative another one was one of the lines of evidence where they had tiny magnetite that's the iron oxide grains which make magnets you know lodestone and they were only 10 micrometer 10 10 nanometers in size and they like less than a human hair yeah way less and they were pure iron and oxygen there was no impurities in it and they said that's a hallmark of back to magnetite made by bacteria on the earth and several many types of bacteria make it presumably it has to do with navigation you know which way is up or something like that I don't know I've never I've never asked the bacteria no but no but if they know it that that's better than some people I know yeah and well and it turns out other mechanisms can make these and one of the great things that they have to be really pure magnets and the way to do that has nothing but iron in it no other elements except for oxygen of course but and well other people started making these pure things by taking solutions and evaporating it and you get pure magnetite others took a carbonate that had iron iron carbonate and shocked it heated it by high pressure shock like a meteorite impact would do and out drops little magnetites so you're sure that it's bacteria at all no and here's a really fun fact a lot of it ready for a fun fact I'm actually great today McKay he's the leader of this group who looked at this meteorite and one of the people opposed that really opposed in the idea real or testing it thoroughly including the idea that magnetize conformed by solution chemistry without the role of bacteria Gordon McKay days brother another HIGP researcher at Scott also found other ways for things in this rock to form besides but it all sounds good for the process though oh you know you're faced with a what could be a phenomenal discovery and now you have to think of alternatives oh yeah and it also sparked I think astrobiology as a whole field really people interested in it but this gave them something much more concrete and something to build around and it also showed consider you the debate about this these observations which there were good observations they were also aware of things like contamination they tested for it themselves at the original team well they it was just it shows that you have to test things thoroughly and how hard it is to test it we have the rock I mean really how hard is it but you know there's a worry about contamination in the area the tools the thought process the yeah logic and external phenomenon that might bear on it in some parallel way I mean it's enough to give you a headache and when we come back from this break Jeff and Linda I'm gonna ask you whether there are any undisputed signs of what life anywhere other than earth who don't answer that yet we're gonna come back and see what you do we'll think of the answer I'll Google I'm Stan energy man and I want you to be here every Friday noon think tech Hawaii comm watch the show be there I'm Ethan Allen host of likeable science here on think tech Hawaii every Friday afternoon at 2 p.m. you'll have a chance to come and listen and learn from scientists around the world scientists who talk about their work in meaningful easy to understand ways they'll come to appreciate science as a wonderful way of thinking way of knowing about the world you'll learn interesting facts interesting ideas you'll be stimulated to think more please come join us every Friday afternoon at 2 p.m. here on think tech Hawaii for a likeable science with me your host Ethan Allen you're watching think tech Hawaii offering lifelong learning from passionate hosts and fascinating guests ready to explore and explain Hawaii's place in the 21st century great content for Hawaii from think tech bingo we're back the one o'clock rock research in Manoa with Jeff Taylor and Linda Marcel a regular visitor is here on research thank you guys so we'll be talking about during during the break about education can we talk about that for a minute yeah I was harping on that I think we need to teach more something people need to appreciate the science is equal in importance including its historical aspects to to all the humanities and which are are important both literature history anthropology the study of the human condition sociology to see what we're doing now all these things are important all can be quantified to some degree summer's pure art and that's that is has its own sense you know in fact art for its own sake is not much different than fundamental science for its own I don't think we're giving enough of the science part because I think people perceive it to be too hard when in fact it doesn't have to be which is why we have our web page to try to say well this isn't that hard even though you have this the wackiest title of imaginable very creative people can go into the arts and can go into science that I think they blend and not only does the PSRD website tell stories about science but there's a whole other way to get science into people's minds and that's their books you could for example here this book here in fact we have this the cover in its new incarnation as a Kindle product available from Amazon feel free to buy it $4.99 worth it's a novel by impact it's by it looks like J. G. Taylor that's me and my friend Ron photo we wrote this late 70s published in 1978 or nine still relevant and it's still relevant is a thread of a big impact and we came up with the idea because we were both like to write he had just written a book about meteorites it was a meteorite book for children stones from the sky and he we were talking you know and it was he was making a little money on it but he was we were saying well if you really want to make a lot of money you want a meteorite book with sex and violence so that that strains the imagination you know meteorite well but you do have people involved in the meteorites and they're prone to both of those activities something about the quality of that science hey and so we included that in telling the story about the the problems with a thread of a meteorite impact on Amazon right it's on Amazon just when I can download it on Kindle you can download along Kindle that's what that's what kids like me do you know no it's really is it's fun to write it and it's it's we bring this up to plug the book this face that fact but the excuse is that actually it is another way of telling science stories you know you can tell because this is this was classified as science fiction but you know it isn't it is a story about a scientific real threat and so you get science background about this and how do the characters try to save the world from it all and you could do the same with science in a moon base where you would teach true accurate lunar science as we know it now yeah in the context of a fictional story and I think that that is a whole nother way of doing it you know our web page does it through nonfiction we know we explain an article but this fiction idea is that and you may just reach people differently and there may be different people or maybe the same people just differently is there a reference on your website to the book there should be there is we do have some little way we've made a little report about it yeah okay report but we know it's impact exclamation point photo or and Taylor and you can get it on Amazon what watchers sales skyrocket no pun intended yeah what's interesting you know it's an old book it's some things the real technology being used as a bit out of date so rather than change it off you know it's it was easier to simply make a Kindle edition with small edits of things that we didn't like the way we had written oh so the edition with the changes is the Kindle and kind of with small changes but not updated so it is set back at that time so it has kind of outdated technology but the meteorite side and the impact science is cool it's still good so you may think that I forgot the question I posed just before the break but I didn't so is there really any hard indication that there has been life in this solar system or anywhere outside of earth do we have organic material do we have fossils that we believe how and how do you feel about the level of science a level of discovery on this question so no fossils but there's there's chemical elements and there's things like this on comets and asteroids and there's but nothing has been shown to be made by something biological it's all sort of the building blocks of what life could become came to earth on rocks or in the water and then somehow life began as far as I know there's no evidence the best evidence was this Martian meteorite and it just didn't it didn't hold up to scrutiny so at the end of the day scientific community was not generally convinced the original authors still were yeah but what are we looking for if we will look you know what what would convince you oh that's a good question I don't know because you know there's debate and I don't know the status now but 20 years ago when we wrote this article there's a lot of debate about the oldest fossils on the earth how old were they because you had a rocket and you knew it was old and some some almost four billion years and they had fossils in them but you know they had to come up with rules to say those fossils were in the rock when it formed and were not added a billion years later and and even that then is a hard job this or this is a contaminated planet I mean it's just life everywhere I mean die every every single drop of water that's cooler than than 110 Celsius a little bit above boiling that's something limited that's that's the magic that's the magic isn't it our contamination is our strength yeah something you said a minute ago was it that we do know that there are things which are the building blocks are present in you know in stellar stellar connection amino acids amino acids it's a building blocks so it's seductive to think well if the building blocks are there we know that for a fact no no argument about that then the possibility clearly exists that these things either have or are or will someday be be generating life although the earth is so unique because they call it the Goldilocks you know we're a Goldilocks planet not too far away from the Sun not too close to the Sun perfect for our soul perfect I'm so glad we live here I would not be as as happy any any any other plan so we got more pictures oh or we want to move on we have another story another story the other story in the last 20 years this that's the Martian meteorite that's up on the screen now but number five we've shown this another visit do you think tech that's a this is a graduate student of ours now out in the world in England she worked on water in moon rocks and after Paul came back we looked at the rocks they were really did seem to be bone-dry and there was all kinds of perfectly sound arguments but the technology was not up to the task of saying how bone dry and in 2008 some people who were completely naive to this idea of no water on the moon measured it unambiguously no contamination issues in volcanic glasses and so there's been a lot of study done since then including some by us here because of that graduate student Katie Robinson and others by by postdoctoral fellows we've had people in other labs it's really been a big deal and then not only is a water in the moon when it and which is important for the how the how can you tell this water in the moon I mean it's it's bone dry but there are signs that convince you scientifically that there has been yeah minerals that contain what are those minerals one is appetite the same thing our teeth are made of and and then there are appetite like a meal you use your teeth for a meal so I think there's a relationship I think the name is some Greek name anyway settle the periodic table appetite it was a phosphate mineral it's a fertilizer and all right you heard it here and think that fertilizer on my mind because we've been working on a proposal so that that demonstrates to your scientific satisfaction that there has been water there's water in the chemical formula of these minerals but it's not water I could put in my hand and feel wet it's not water that's H2O dissolved in it was dissolved in magma's and end up in minerals many years ago yeah it was early on when the basalts on the moon for me over three billion years ago but they were in the moon when it formed is there an alternative logical solution for the presence of this stuff no not that stuff but there's other water on the moon is water in the polls and there are areas in the polls at the moon or polls because the moon is because it's its orbit still did a bit compared to the earth's orbit anyway it stays straight up and down and the sun's rays at the bottom and the top north and south and with craters making topography there areas that are in permanent shadow that's more stable than it's rotations are more stable than yeah and so they say we like instability relatively in unstable place to a certain extent but actually the presence of the moon has presented prevented the earth from wobbling too much over time over million year cycles which makes a steadier climate yeah so so you don't have big climate swings which some people argue you don't have any climate you don't have any climate but you do have permanent shadow regions that are are cold they're they're 25 degrees always cold I mean they really are cold and the water if say you add somebody an impact a comet impact it a lot of it gets lost because it's it's flying around it gets disassociated to by but then it might go to the polar regions get trapped and it has been measured there by spacecraft trapped by the cold by the cold so what does it mean in a word what does it mean that you have concluded scientifically there there had there was not anymore right there's only was there oh well the signs that water as we know it water H2O water did it at one point exist on them what does this mean in the larger sense since we're looking larger to know and probably never existed was actually water it's H2O and it ends up in the form in minerals or it ends up in the in ices so it's solid H2O but you never probably never had liquor swimming never drink but that ice could be used as rocket fuel someday we and when we go to the moon and we stay it could be a resource for us and and that opens the whole question of how many other things on the moon resources right it's all it's all it's fantastic possibilities isn't it oh it's fabulous you know let your mind fly every day it may be maybe the thing that opens up the whole solar system for exploration because you have this big gas station nearby that's why we've decided to do this show research seminar with you guys Jeff Taylor and Linda Martell for the next nine billion years because we know that material out there keep us busy right