Dava Newman: Life on Mars and Beyond

Again maybe a romanticized philosophical question. But when you look up at the stars, knowing that, you know there's at least 100 billion of them in the Milky Way galaxy, right? So we're really a small speck in this giant thing that's the visible universe. How does that make you feel about our efforts here?

I love the perspective, I love that perspective. I always open my public talks with the big Hubble Space Telescope. Imagine looking out until you mentioned just now the solar system, the Milky Way. Because I really, I think it's really important to know that we're just a small pale blue dot. We're really fortunate. We're on the best planet by far. Life is fantastic.

That we know of. You're confident this is the best planet?

I'm pretty sure it's the best planet, the best planet that we know of. I mean I searched my researches, you know, in mission worlds and when will we find life? I think actually probably the next decade. We find probably past life, probably the evidence of past life on Mars.

Let's say you think there was pretty light once life on Mars, or do.

You think there's currently I'm more comfortable saying probably 3.5 billion years ago. Feel pretty confident there was life on Mars just because then it had an electromagnetic shield, it had an atmosphere, has wonderful gravity. Level 3.3 HG is fantastic. You know, you're all superhuman human. We can all slam dunk a basketball. I mean it's going to be fun to play sports on Mars. But. So I think we'll find past the fossilized, probably the evidence of past life on Mars. Currently that's again we need the next decade. But the evidence is mounting for sure. We do have the organics. We're finding organics. We have water, seasonal water on Mars. We used to just know about the ice caps, you know, north and south pole. Now we have seasonal water. We do have the building blocks for life on Mars. We really need to dig down into the soil because everything on the top surface is radiated. But once we find down, will we see any life forms? Will we see any bugs? I leave it open as a possibility, but I feel pretty certain that past life or fossilized life forms will find. And then we have to get to all these ocean worlds, these beautiful moons of other planets. Since we know they have water and we're looking for since simple search for life, follow the water, carbon based life. That's the only life we know. There could be other life forms that we don't know about. But it's hard to search for them, because we don't know. So in our search for life in the solar system, it's definitely, you know, search, you know, follow the water and look for the building blocks of life.

So you think in the next decade we might see hints of past life or even current life?

I think so. That's pretty optimistic.

Love the optimism.

I'm pretty optimistic.

Do humans have to be involved or can this be robots and rovers and probably teams?

I mean, we've been at it on Mars in particular. 50 years. We've been exploring Mars for 50 years. Great data, right? Our images of Mars today are phenomenal. Now we know how Mars lost its atmosphere. You know, we're starting to know because of the lack of the electromagnetic shield. We know about the water, Mars. So We've been studying 50 years with our robots, we still haven't found it. So I think once we have a human mission there, we just accelerate things. It's always humans and our rovers and robots together. But we just have to think that 50 years we've been looking at Mars and taking images and doing the best science that we can. People need to realize Mars is really far away. It's really hard to get to. It says extreme, extreme exploration. We mentioned Magellan first or all of the wonderful explorers and sailors of the past, which kind of are lots of my inspiration for exploration. Mars is a different ball game. I mean, eight months to get there, year and a half to get home. I mean, it's really extreme environment in.

All kinds of ways. But the kind of organism we might be able to see hints of on Mars are kind of microorganisms, perhaps.

Yeah. Remember that humans, we're kind of, you know, we're host. Right. We're host to all of our bacteria and viruses. Right.

Do you think it's a big leap from the viruses and the bacteria to us humans? Put another way, do you think on all those moons, beautiful wet moons that you mentioned, you think there's intelligent life out there?

I hope so. I mean, that's the hope, but we don't have the scientific evidence for that now. I think all the evidence we have in terms of life existing is much more compelling again because we have the building blocks of life now, when that life turns into intelligence, that's a big unknown.

If we ever meet, do you think we'll be able to find a common language?

I hope so. We haven't met yet. It's just so far. I mean, do physics does play a role here. Look at all these exoplanets. 6,000 exoplanets I mean, even the couple dozen Earth like, planets that are exoplanets that really look like habitable planets. These are very Earth like, they look like they have all the building blocks. I can't wait to get there. The only thing is, they're 10 to 100 light years away. So scientifically, we know they're there. We know that they're habitable. They have, you know, everything going for them. Right. You know, we call them the Goldilocks Zone. Not too hot, not too cold. Just perfect for how habitability for life. But now the reality Is, if they're 10 at the best, to 100 to thousands of light years away. So what's out there? But I just. I can't think that we're not the only ones. So, absolutely life. Life in the universe, probably intelligent life as.