Ciencia y ética de la terraformación de Marte | Coloquio de astronomía | Planetario de Medellín

Ajouté : 2026-05-12

[00:01:27]Welcome to a new astronomy colloquium here from the Explora Park auditorium. Let's remember that last month we didn't have an astronomy colloquium because that week's Friday was a holiday, but we're back with you today to bring you a somewhat unique colloquium, a slightly different one because it turns out that these days, while reading articles to prepare the astronomy podcast that we undergraduate astronomy professors make, I came across a paper, but one of those good ones, one of those articles that makes you say, "Wow, finally someone sat down to write something about this."

[00:02:16]And this month, for the astronomy colloquium, we thought of doing it, let's say, as a little chat here with those who listen to us on Expanding Universe, with my recording studio colleagues, with Andrés, Andrés Ruiz, a biologist from the University of Antioquia, I've also included, obviously, all the time here at Parque Explora and the Planetarium, and with Professor Dara Hincapié, who hasn't arrived yet because she's a school teacher, she hasn't finished her afternoon shift yet, but we're waiting for her here because today we wanted to talk about a topic that until now had been more of a science fiction topic, right, Andrés? That's right, Pablo.

[00:03:07]This paper that Pablo found, which is a review of about 60 pages, is a study and we got really into it, we took it to the Amea astrobiology group and started to work on it and well, it was really cool and Pablo was the author of this whole thing, so no, the authors are some gentlemen from the University of Chicago.

[00:03:29]Correct. But hey, you brought it.

[00:03:31]Yes, exactly. Look, the idea was that, as I say, we have always talked about the possibility, at least since science fiction, of turning Mars into a place similar to Earth.

[00:03:45]And that has been, well, let's say, a fantasy, as I say, from science fiction. When Dara arrives, we'll talk a little about the TV series, movies, and books that have talked about terraforming, but we hadn't found—at least I hadn't—a scientific, technical, engineering, and planetary science publication that told us, well, so what needs to be done, right? show the following Pablo. You said something very important there, which is that when science fiction shows us this issue of terraforming and it's the only thing they talk about, they show us this, right?

[00:04:27]It's about turning Mars into a place similar to Earth.

[00:04:29]On a land.

[00:04:30]Exact. The paradoxical thing is that we are turning Earth into a place similar to Venus because there is no Mars left.

[00:04:36]Mars is frozen. Venus, which is a hell. That's where we're headed, and we're continuing to release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

[00:04:43]But Mars is the planet most similar to Earth.

[00:04:45]Yes. And in fact, Andrés, there are places on Earth that, let's say, are somewhat similar to Mars. Mars is extreme. Mars is a frozen desert. Mars is at -60º Celsius, that is, about 210 gravin average temperature and obviously has a very thin atmosphere, which makes it very cold. Think of the atmospheres of planets, like when you put a blanket over yourself, right? In other words, the blanket isn't for keeping you warm, it's for making you lose a lot of heat. Rather, the blanket acts as a greenhouse, allowing one to look around in peace.

[00:05:27]If you are going to Santa Elena, you need about five tigers, that is, a thick atmosphere. But if you are on the coast or in the Tatacoa, you throw a thin sheet over yourself and it's a thin atmosphere. The atmosphere on Mars is so thin that it's like sleeping with one of those thin silk sheets, but at the south pole, you know what I mean? Then the cold dies.

[00:05:50]Venus's atmosphere is as thick as if you threw five sleeping tigers into Santa Marta. So, in a good mood.

[00:05:58]Imagine one in Monpó, in the tatacoa.

[00:06:01]On the tata with five five tigers on top. That is the atmosphere of Venus.

[00:06:05]So, it's a five-tiger for those who don't know.

[00:06:07]Ah, it's one of those thick Ecuadorian blankets that had five tigers on them.

[00:06:12]Uh, those prints. Exact. Everyone knows the five tigers. Well, I imagine that somewhere in the world you do n't know about the five tigers. So, look at this paper that's in the archive and as soon as we mentioned it, they submitted it for publication. It's written by a planetary scientist, as I told you, from the University of Chicago, whose last name is Kaite. But look at all the people who are, let's say, committed to what Andrés called this review. The archive where it is published is an archive of scientific papers that are freely accessible and known as preprints, that is, before they are published. Well, I came across it, as I said, and the wonderful thing about this paper is that it tells us, step by step, to see if we're really going to go to Mars at some point, and how much it costs, and it also calculates how much it costs. None of them had ever seen that, that's for sure. Well, they always said, "No, we have to heat Mars, no, we have to give it a thicker atmosphere, and besides, the costs debunk other myths we had, like that we ca n't, that it can't be done, when are we going to go, right?

[00:07:39]These people say, the only thing we need—and this is science fiction—is for all the space agencies in the world to join forces, but this is relatively inexpensive.

[00:07:50]Look, so Andrés and I are going, and Dar will arrive as soon as he does.

[00:07:55]What we're going to do in this colloquium today is kind of travel through this review, as I said, which is a technical and scientific review of the possibilities of Mars being a place more like Earth.

[00:08:12]Wait, let's look at this image.

[00:08:13]This image shows Mars. This is Mars 3.8 billion years ago.

[00:08:19]Why? Because 3.8 billion years ago is a long time, isn't it?

[00:08:24]Trees, right? We don't know. We haven't found anything petrified or fossilized there." Mars, but what we do know is that it was hotter, it had a thicker atmosphere—I don't know if it had clouds, this is a bit like Earth, because the Martian atmosphere has most likely been rich in carbon dioxide throughout its history— but there was liquid water. There was liquid water on the surface of Mars.

[00:08:52]There was a gigantic ocean in the northern hemisphere.

[00:08:56]There were lakes, there were rivers, and we've seen that through exploration missions. The other astronaut from this spacecraft has arrived.

[00:09:07]Come on, we almost left you, my dear.

[00:09:11]How awful.

[00:09:14]Land, then, and grab the microphone.

[00:09:17]Where's your mic?

[00:09:18]Here it is.

[00:09:20]Hello.

[00:09:22]And so Mars was actually a place similar to Earth. 3.8 billion years ago, it had a thick atmosphere. Mars was warmer, there was liquid water on its surface. The problem is that Mars slowly lost its magnetic field and its atmosphere over the last 3.5 billion years. And so it stopped having a thick, hotter atmosphere. Imagine like the blanket... It keeps losing wool, wool, and wool until all that's left are two little threads. It affects the blanket, right?

[00:10:00]Yes. You hear, there's a little beep there, like an alarm should sound. Very good. So this image is an image of ancient Mars, and now we imagine again how to turn it into something similar to Earth. But this image also tells us a story: there are ancient riverbeds on Mars that are now dry, which flowed precisely into craters, into craters, and became lakes, into lakes. The gypsum crater.

[00:10:28]That was the closest thing to an ocean there was, right? But there was an ocean. I mean, Mars had an ocean in the northern hemisphere, an ocean like if you were to see the Pacific or the Atlantic. In fact, there's a characteristic of Mars, and that is that the Martian crust in the northern hemisphere is thinner and denser than the crust in the southern hemisphere. And also, the entire southern hemisphere of Mars is full of craters.

[00:11:03]The northern hemisphere, which also had some volcanic activity and was filled with basaltic plains like Tarsis, for example, where the volcanoes of Mars are located, has far fewer impacts. This means two things: one, that it has a younger crust, and two, that there was something there, so to speak, cushioning the blow. This is called the Martian dichotomy, and it's a mystery in terms of planetary geology, but one of the models that can explain the dichotomy is that Mars had an ocean of liquid water covering almost the entire northern hemisphere. And we have seen this: the deltas, the meanders of the rivers, the pebbles, those little stones that fall into a ravine and become round.

[00:12:05]Rolling and rolling and rolling. They keep becoming round.

[00:12:07]Exactly. Like a ranchera song, rolling and rolling.

[00:12:10]Correct. Just the Rolling Stones. Leave the Rolling Stones alone. Stones. Sure, rolling rocks, but also our robot girls on Mars, opportunity, curiosity, perseverance, spirituality.

[00:12:27]Exactly. And curiosity has led them to find mineralogical evidence that there was liquid water there. So, in a way, we have that with a certain degree of certainty. But the interesting thing again is that we, having only arrived 3.5 billion years later, want to go to Mars, and now we want, Andrés, for Mars to be a place more like Earth, what needs to be done? There's something very interesting, and that is that we have at least two great tools to develop—not that we have them yet, we have to develop them—which are planetary engineering and planetary ecosynthesis, and that, in sum, will result in future terraforming. Of course, we have to recognize that they are different things, and right now we're going to see that we have to go, let's say, step by step, terraforming, which is what many works of science fiction propose.

[00:13:31]Turning Mars into a place similar to Earth is talking about transforming a planet. Think of it this way. I mean, transforming a planet takes billions of years. Nature does it constantly, but that's a problem, and we think we're so great, right? But it's a small planet, is n't it?

[00:13:53]But it doesn't matter, even though it's small, it's half the size of Earth.

[00:13:58]Well, it should be half the work.

[00:14:00]Still, how do we transform a whole planet?

[00:14:06]Slowly but surely, as they say.

[00:14:07]So, indeed, we have to add engineering, a lot of engineering, and we have to add biology, a lot of biology, to see how we get there.

[00:14:18]So, look, Andrés, and I'm going to give Andrés credit, Andrés prepared this presentation.

[00:14:25]This is really beautiful. I don't make such beautiful things.

[00:14:28]I drew it by hand.

[00:14:30]Exactly. This is pure, pure art. Those of you here who have worked with AI already know that. Exactly. It doesn't matter, that's what it's for. Look, and you don't know how much it's going to help us go to Mars.

[00:14:40]Will it?

[00:14:41]We can't do it alone. Look, This is estimated to be the amount of work needed to terraform Mars in the terms outlined in this article, which, as Andrés mentioned, is a roadmap, a course of action. It involves serious scientists and engineers who sit down and say, "Okay, so, what are we going to do?" Unlike those people here who can't even build a road or a decent bridge—they'd drop a piece of wax.

[00:15:10]These people sat down to do calculations and figure out what we need. We need 70% engineering and 30% biology so that at the end of this process, which could last centuries or thousands of years, we have a Mars that is, in principle, more hospitable to the human species. This is very anthropocentric, it has to be said.

[00:15:37]But it's fine, it's more terracentric, because when we go into space, we humans can't just go off on our own to colonize some rock out there on Earth.

[00:15:49]We are not individuals; we are ecosystems, ecosystems inside and out, and we depend entirely on those ecosystems. So, we have to... We have to go there with everything.

[00:16:00]Chickens, avocados, tomatoes, potatoes. We have to take tons of bacteria. So, ready.

[00:16:10]What are we going to do, mushrooms? Let's see, Andrés, what's the idea for this?

[00:16:16]So, the first thing is to intervene in the atmosphere, right?

[00:16:19]That is, to be able to make the atmosphere of Mars, which is so thin, much thicker.

[00:16:26]And how do you thicken the atmosphere?

[00:16:28]Well, where do we get more air? We've seen a lot in science fiction, for example, and we've said a lot about what if we go to the asteroid belt and deflect all those asteroids that are there between Mars and Jupiter and start bombarding Mars.

[00:16:43]Well, not all of them, but many.

[00:16:45]Isaac Asimov's Martian Way. That's called The Martian Way.

[00:16:53]Isaac Asimov's story, where we have people who are inhabiting Mars very precariously, because Mars is very unlivable, obviously, and all the time they They have to buy water from Earth.

[00:17:05]Oh, and it's expensive.

[00:17:06]Well, of course. And then there are the people from Earth. Oh no, but there won't be enough water for us. What are we going to do? Then, well, the people from Mars say, "Come on, we don't have the belt right here next door." "Let's go for water and ice." Of course, in the story, the asteroid doesn't crash directly into the Martian surface, but rather it's gently placed there because it has to be done, and then the water is extracted. Of course, because water has to be extracted. If I crash it, it loses all that water. I mean, like asteroid tankers.

[00:17:34]You bring the tanker, park it there, and start pouring on the ice.

[00:17:38]But what we need here is to release the water, right?

[00:17:40]But we also need to thicken it. I mean, look, the process is this: warm Mars. To warm Mars, you have to put on a thicker blanket. You have to get the tiger-striped one, the three-striped one, the five-striped one, look.

[00:17:52]Yes, you know what the five-striped ones are.

[00:17:54]So, you have to put on a thicker blanket. And where do you get the money to start thickening Mars?

[00:18:03]But you also have to get it from here, right? No, from here it's very complicated.

[00:18:07]I mean, how are we going to transfer carbon dioxide to Mars? Well, look, that idea... This article knocked it out. In this article, they show us why they would be so tall, of course.

[00:18:16]So immense, going all the way to the asteroid belt and starting to deflect each of those asteroids to impact Mars. Furthermore, with good aim, with this program that Césarocampo designed, what's it called again?

[00:18:27]Copericus, right? Exactly.

[00:18:36]But it's not just about thickening the atmosphere, it's also about retaining it. How do we prevent that atmosphere from escaping?

[00:18:47]Because Mars no longer has a magnetic field, and what does that have to do with anything? That's what's bothering me about this plan. I don't understand why we're adding the atmosphere first and then protecting it with a magnetic field. Because if I add the atmosphere and haven't yet added the magnetic field, it's going to escape, and we won't be able to activate the field. I saw a movie once where they dropped all the nuclear bombs on the planet into the Earth's core, and then the core, which was shutting down, was reactivated and went back to... to work, and then we would accelerate the rotation of the core again, all the nuclear bombs. That's possible, right?

[00:19:22]Why?

[00:19:23]Well, because we can't go into the Earth's core, Andrés.

[00:19:26]But also because the energy of all the nuclear bombs in Earth's arsenal is minuscule.

[00:19:32]It's a drop in the ocean compared to the energy released by the core. Cupita there.

[00:19:38]Okay, and what does the core have to do with it?

[00:19:39]For those of us who might not be aware of it, what does the core have to do with the field? The problem with Mars is that its core cooled down and no longer has the convection, the energy, the heat that our core releases, and so it no longer has the capacity to move ionized iron to create a magnetic field. We still have a pile of ionized iron there in Earth's core, but Mars ran out of fuel for its stew.

[00:20:11]And when will the magnetic field go out? Ours could still last as long as the sun, let's say, lives.

[00:20:18]As long as the sun is calm, we We still have a heat flow from the planet's core that can sustain the magnetic field, but because Mars is smaller, it cooled down faster, so it no longer has enough internal heat to sustain that convection. The problem on Mars is that we have to heat it from the outside, and I also have the same question that Dara raised: how are we going to protect the atmosphere?

[00:20:46]I have another question. Um, what does the magnetic field have to do with the atmosphere again? I mean, just like our magnetic field protects the atmosphere from the solar wind.

[00:20:56]The solar wind consists of charged particles that the sun emits all the time, mainly protons, but also electrons and helium nuclei and a lot of other things, that travel through the interplanetary medium. And then they hit the magnetic field, and since these particles are charged, if you have a magnetic field, the magnetic field deflects the charged particles. That's like having a shield.

[00:21:23]Mars doesn't have a shield, and since it's been without one for 3.5 billion years, that solar wind hits it directly. The atmosphere erodes it and carries it away. So, what are we going to do about it? Later we'll see what they propose. The thing is, heating this thing up, and one of the ideas in this article is to bring life there. How do we bring life there, Andrés?

[00:21:56]Well, that's the thing. We have to start looking for what kind of life could survive on Mars.

[00:22:03]On Mars. And the problem is that Mars has some chemicals in the Martian soil, in the Martian regolith, that are super toxic to life. It's not just the radiation that hits it directly because, well, it doesn't have, for example, an ozone layer, right? It does n't have a magnetic field to protect it from the solar wind, right?

[00:22:23]So it's a surface that is constantly bombarded not only with particles, but also with ultraviolet rays.

[00:22:29]Correct. So, what kind of life? And why ultraviolet rays? Because ultraviolet rays have the exact wavelength to penetrate DNA and mutate it, and other molecules; that is, they break molecules apart. It's radiation.

[00:22:42]ionizing radiation. So, it's very difficult for life to survive there. So, what you were saying earlier is that here on Earth there are places that are very similar to Martian environments, places we could call Martian analogs, to start looking for, for example, Exactly. What organisms are found at the extremes?

[00:23:01]Extremophiles.

[00:23:04]But we would also have to do biological engineering to be able to get some of these little critters that we want to take there, with some specific functions, to survive. For example, genetic engineering.

[00:23:16]Of course, it's biological engineering in its... I mean, I think, well, yes, okay. With genetic engineering we can modify, I don't know, some bacteria so that they survive strange things in... uh, humans, extremophiles.

[00:23:31]Not really, but we're already getting into a lot of, I don't know, tardigrades or little things like that. So, tardigrades, bacteria, and one thing or another. But for fungi, yes, fungi must already have something capable of living on Mars, I'm sure. But of the You're talking, right? But look at this.

[00:23:52]Indeed, it's very likely that during this century genetic engineering will manage, for example, to recognize the capabilities of bacteria like Deinococcus, radiodurability. Wow, you can imagine this bug that survives space, impacts, right? It's not there. That's a Deinococcus, right? That's a bacterium that Andrés drew. But, I mean, extremophiles, the fundamental basis, it's essential to bring extremophiles that are somehow capable of surviving the Martian environment and to start the process slowly. You see, the article talks about a progressive approach and we're going step by step. There it is. The idea is to start from a Mars where there's still nothing that breathes, at least as far as we know, Red Mars, until we can get there.

[00:24:49]So, first, if you want you can point it out there with the mouse.

[00:24:52]Oh, for those who are in the area where it does n't let you.

[00:24:56]Here I have the mouse. This is Mars. The first thing is to increase the temperature, create a greenhouse effect.

[00:25:02]Greenhouse. We have to warm the planet.

[00:25:05]And for that, we need to thicken the atmosphere. Right. That 's clear. We need to put on a thicker blanket again.

[00:25:12]And so that we animals can go there, we need to generate oxygen or have it stored somewhere.

[00:25:19]I think that's better because there's a problem with oxygen.

[00:25:21]But wouldn't it be better to take some cyanobacteria there?

[00:25:24]Of course, of course. That's the idea. There's water on Mars. They can photosynthesize, but they need water. Some controlled lakes.

[00:25:30]They need water to photosynthesize.

[00:25:33]To capture that carbon dioxide from the atmosphere that has already been released by other processes. Listen, look.

[00:25:37]But Pablo, what happens when the carbon dioxide is captured and photosynthesis occurs and oxygen is released?

[00:25:45]Mars freezes, Mars cools down again, and all the money we spent to warm it is wasted. That's why the first thing is that we animals who are there shouldn't use up that oxygen, or we should do it locally. Because, you see, when When you go to the North Pole, you don't just stay out there camping, or to the South Pole, like we're on Saint Helena, right? You take a place to live and stay warm. We all saw what happened in Marsh, right? We did n't take a tent.

[00:26:16]You take a Martian habitat, a dome. So the idea is to start small.

[00:26:28]Yes. Okay. First, Andrés, who will explore that? Making small biospheres. Here at Explora, you haven't made biospheres in enclosures.

[00:26:39]We had them in the planetarium, some biospheres that were closed for a long time. They were there on the third floor in the astrobiology area where the frogs were, right? The frogs are here in the planetarium. In the planetarium.

[00:26:51]In the planetarium. But so, first, let's take small things, keep them under control, take care of them, and let them start to develop hydroponics, things like that. That is, in different places on the planet, let's build domes Where we can be, yes, biospheres, localized biospheres, also where we can be temporarily, that we can pressurize, that we can control the temperature, that is, a habitat, a research base. Of course. All of this has to happen. In fact, what this article is telling us is what research needs to be done to get there and how much it costs.

[00:27:34]Well, when we get there, we also have to continue researching and all that.

[00:27:38]And at what point are we going to get to planetary engineering?

[00:27:43]I love that intermediate phase.

[00:27:44]What do we have to do? Uh, we have to have a, uh, what was that era of humanity called where we polluted and polluted?

[00:27:52]Industrialization, we need an industrial revolution, that is, to build coal-fired power plants, not just any coal, not just any vegetable waste. We'll see about that. What do we need? To free the atmosphere so that it helps us to, uh, it 's very paradoxical, Andrés, that what we need is to pollute the Martian atmosphere.

[00:28:15]Yes. How awful.

[00:28:17]Yes, no, let's look, let's... No, no, no. Not with carbon dioxide.

[00:28:20]Remember what Sergio Mejía told us in past meetings, right?

[00:28:25]In "Expanding Universe," in Amea, carbon dioxide is the mother of any life form that can appear anywhere, right?

[00:28:34]Yes, it's the first gas, a primordial gas, and it's super important for the greenhouse effects that sustain us. The thing is, Mars has a huge energy deficit.

[00:28:44]That's the problem.

[00:28:46]First, less radiation arrives from the sun; second, there's no internal heat, let's say, geothermal heat. This would be Marsthermal. And third, what is that? That. Cont. I brought you the air quality sensor.

[00:29:02]There it is. The air quality sensor that measures the amount of carbon dioxide.

[00:29:07]Carbon dioxide. There it is. And third, it lost its atmosphere. So, indeed, a lot of energy is required. Energy has to be produced in Mars. And how are we going to do that?

[00:29:18]Ah, we can't just carry batteries around.

[00:29:21]That's the crux of the matter. How are we going to do that? We have to heat Mars. Ultimately, the final stage will be terraforming, right? But that's when Mars is a paradise, and in 2,000 or 3,000 years, when we're already at—it says on the Kardachev scale, number one—we were 1.3, so we reach one. That's when we control all the energy of planet Earth, and since we 're already managing Mars's energy, we would be one, and since Mars is half the size of Earth, then 1.5.

[00:29:56]There you have it. But we still won't have the solar energy we want.

[00:30:01]So, look at some examples of what we're going to do, or what's being proposed, because we're going to tell you how much this costs so you can start saving.

[00:30:08]First, because the ticket to Mars is going to be ridiculously expensive. And besides, we were going to go with Elon, right?

[00:30:15]We sent Elon from First. Let the colony go. We'll send it there so it can become extremophile food and fertilize.

[00:30:21]Exactly. And so the microbes can recycle themselves and release carbon dioxide.

[00:30:28]There are many, let's say, carbon deposits on Mars. One important one, the paradise of ice cream vendors, as Jorge Solago says.

[00:30:38]The poles.

[00:30:39]The poles. And why the poles? Or the Martian ones, the Martian polar ice caps are full of carbon dioxide ice.

[00:30:47]That's first. Second, put mirrors in orbit that start to bombard Mars with extra radiation. Obviously, bring extremophiles.

[00:30:59]Now, we'll talk about the mirrors, the ones that start to convert. I think fungi are the way to go.

[00:31:05]We have to talk with the group. The fungi have to be anything that can survive on Mars and that generates greenhouse gases, that also do bioremediation because, let's remember again, the Martian regolith, the Martian soil, is rich in things like perchlorate.

[00:31:22]Perchlorate is super toxic, right? So, what kind of microorganism is it? Surely there are fungi that eat perchlorate, go in there and bore through, do what they did here in the soil, bore through the rocks to produce soil.

[00:31:38]Well, look, and this is really interesting, biofilms. What does that sound like? We're getting to that.

[00:31:43]That's a movie about... a biofilm. I'll give you an example of a biofilm. When you're in your backyard, you take a brush and put soap on it and scrub and scrub, and that mold that's in one corner doesn't come off, and halfway through you say, "I need a pressure washer."

[00:32:00]Right. And it doesn't come off with the pressure washer either. That's a biofilm, right?

[00:32:05]A... thing there that's a community of super-slime organisms, or rather, an extremophile. And then, obviously, you see the greenhouse for sea potatoes, and finally, after a long time of being... By heating it, by introducing radiation, by changing, let's say, the environments, we could get liquid water to flow on the Martian surface again in thousands of years.

[00:32:36]So, I don't think that, well, if that sky is a gigantic dome, maybe so, but then the magnetic field comes into play again, where are we going to get it from, right? But, let's say, protected inside a dome, we could have a habitat.

[00:32:51]That's why inside the dome. But that atmosphere is in Total Recall. Total Recall.

[00:32:58]Yes.

[00:32:58]Uh, the one with Sweegger or the one with Sweegger.

[00:33:01]Yes, because that one was on Mars. Yes, because that one is on Mars. The other one isn't on Mars, the other one is here. In the other one, you know what I like, excuse me, um? You know what I like about the new Total Recall? It's this idea of traveling from England to Australia passing through the core, passing through the Earth's core.

[00:33:19]That was the exercise we did in Physics at university to calculate The potential at the center.

[00:33:25]That's it, the potential, the time, and the time it took to travel to the other side, but no. I mean, look, in Total Recall, the humans, who are already mutants, X-Men, the humans live on Mars in caves.

[00:33:42]First, we have to get to live in caves, of course. We have to protect ourselves from the radiation, we have to stay warm.

[00:33:49]That's how, let's say, our ancestors lived. They lived in warm caves.

[00:33:53]And from there, well, the idea of ​​Total Recall is that there was a very ancient Martian civilization that had left us the machine to terraform Mars, and we hadn't used it.

[00:34:05]Half the movies about Mars have an ancient civilization.

[00:34:07]But then, look, let's start there.

[00:34:10]First, let's make greenhouses, let's make localized, small habitats, where, let's say, what do they call these?

[00:34:19]Single-family homes, right?

[00:34:22]Ah, very small.

[00:34:23]Now, how long does an apartment last?

[00:34:27]30 50 m². You could fit a matchbox in there. So, look, Martian single-family habitats. But this requires some serious engineering because you have to use a special material. Andrés, aerogel.

[00:34:42]Aerogel. Let's see, the one I don't know if you've seen, it's like a little plastic, a plastic that's super resistant, very transparent, very lightweight, or less, but they're not tiles, let's see, they're not tiles, they're almost like tiles, they could serve two purposes, one is to protect inside domes or inside blankets, which we'll see in a moment, to protect, let's say, a small habitat where, well, the transparency can even increase the temperature locally, allowing the light to enter and the water to be released and maintain the temperature. This aerogel creates a greenhouse effect, and so that's the tiger blanket. Yes, sir. Imagine, I was reading in the article that the aerogel layer It can retain enough infrared radiation to raise the temperature to between 60 and 70 degrees. There you go.

[00:35:53]Exactly. Because then there's something really cool about it, and that is that it doesn't heat the ice by just a few degrees because it doesn't need to. Because on Mars it's not like here on Earth.

[00:36:04]Here on Earth, because there's lower pressure, you put ice to work and it turns into vapor, and you have to wait for it to melt completely.

[00:36:11]After it melts, it starts to evaporate. But on Mars, the ice immediately starts to turn into vapor, very quickly.

[00:36:19]And if you increase the pressure inside these small domes, you can get liquid water and plant cyanobacteria there.

[00:36:27]We're planting cyanobacteria, not fungi yet, no, first the fungi because at this stage we haven't introduced any yet. We're introducing cyanobacteria, we're introducing extremophiles so they release oxygen.

[00:36:43]And those that are there still... They have to wear spacesuits, they still have to live in a space laboratory environment, but the idea is that the environment will be warm because the aerogel retains infrared radiation, and pressurized. So, we can have artificial environments where we can have liquid water and start cultivating bacteria.

[00:37:12]Right. Like that, gently, slowly.

[00:37:14]Okay, and then we go to the second stage, which is a slightly more ambitious stage, and it's now we're going to release dioxin, we did n't mention something.

[00:37:26]We couldn't bring the aerogel from here to Earth because it would be very expensive. It has to be made there with materials from there, right? That's one of the big challenges. We have to bring the industries that manufacture all these materials. What is it made of? What is it made of?

[00:37:41]They're made with silicates.

[00:37:43]Silicates are a type of plastic, but it's not the same as glass, but it's a plastic that has a special type of silicate that retains infrared radiation. So it's like A silicate plastic, yes, but the materials engineering for that already exists. In other words, the important thing is that we're not inventing some super-duper-mega-play thing that nobody uses. We can do it with the materials that are already available. there. It 's not extraterrestrial technology, then, but it is very expensive technology.

[00:38:16]Exact. And we need to build the aerogel factory on Mars. So, but that helps because we started releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

[00:38:25]Look, I have another piece of information for you, what is it?

[00:38:27]And since we are extracting materials from the Martian soil for different things, natural resources that we will need, equipment, the aerogel itself and all this, those gaps that are left behind are going to be very good caverns for housing.

[00:38:45]Ah, yes, of course. That's it, once and for all.

[00:38:47]You're getting settled in.

[00:38:49]That's the idea. We need to start moving that thing. Look, that's another problem, man.

[00:38:54]That? So, we'll move furniture there. They do it there with a "we think," then they think about where they sleep. Listen, this one is more complicated because this is technology that's almost on a planetary level. This is planetary engineering, and this is how we're going to melt the poles.

[00:39:13]Well, I don't know if you guys have ever played with magnifying glasses. From little girls and little boys, right? They would take magnifying glasses and concentrate the sun's rays, eh, to burn the leaves of the trees, please. I already saw their faces on the pages of the notebook for the subject that one didn't like ants, no ants. They weren't leaves from the trees, they were the pages of the notebooks from the subject you didn't like, the ones that lost a few leaves from the trees, right? Super.

[00:39:42]That's more or less the idea, right? Not with a magnifying glass, but rather with a gigantic, reflective candle that can concentrate sunlight and focus it on a single point on the Martian landscape.

[00:39:53]At the North Pole and the South Pole of Mars. They are carbon dioxide ice, but there is also water there, there is a lot of water. So, that would be, let's say, the second stage, a more planetary stage, and the third, but you know that second stage makes me doubt myself because if we do that, we immediately start releasing all those gases from the atmosphere and we immediately start losing them.

[00:40:20]But no, we have to play the magnetosphere. There is no magnetosphere. That's the third one.

[00:40:27]No, no, but there is a way to retain atmosphere as long as it is thick enough like Venus's.

[00:40:32]Venus doesn't have a magnetic field either. It has much more gravity than Mars.

[00:40:37]The third one is, look, put aerosol particles into the Martian atmosphere.

[00:40:42]This is absolutely insane. This article blew my mind. to recover the hairsprays of the 80s, which surely had many particles, which had the most powerful chemicals in the world.

[00:40:58]These even have aluminum.

[00:41:00]Yes, they are nanoparticles that are, we're going to make little tufts of them, designed so that these gases don't escape. In other words, the idea is to create greenhouse particles, like the ozone layer that surrounds the entire planet, to create a layer of these types of nanoparticles that have a thermal mirror effect, and that thermal retention layer would help us contain the atmosphere so that it does n't escape, that is, it protects it against the solar wind, right? It reflects some ionizing radiation, which is what would destroy, for example, water.

[00:41:36]But it also retains the gases inside.

[00:41:39]There it is.

[00:41:40]So, we went from macro mirrors like the style of Expans, the big mirrors in the greenhouses on Ganimes and ah, mini mirrors, nano mirrors. They do it in The Expans too.

[00:41:55]In The Expans it's great because it's there. I know the books in the TV series are very good. And on one hand we have the terraforming effort on Mars, and it's beautiful to see all the people living in their little caves, isn't it?

[00:42:10]Under the domes. But also everyone with bushes, bushes, bushes in the corridors, mother-in-law's tongue, aloe vera, you see some bushes that one knows, that one knows are very good for producing oxygen.

[00:42:22]Okay.

[00:42:23]So, we are in the midst of our terraforming effort. I have a mother-in- law's tongue. It's something very nice. And adopt your mother-in-law's tongue. Adopt your mother-in-law's tongue, collaborate in the terraforming of Mars and for the outer solar system, where sunlight is so weak, they use giant mirrors like these that we have planned for Mars.

[00:42:46]Sure, it projects sunlight, but it's weak. So, it's not to burn or melt anything, it's to heat the greenhouses so we can grow soybeans.

[00:42:56]What are those books called, Dara? What are the books called? The expanse de expans. The expansion.

[00:43:01]How many books are there in the 10-book series? Where is the series?

[00:43:05]Nine novels and an anthology of short stories.

[00:43:07]There's the series that has six seasons and covers the first six books.

[00:43:12]The last three are not to be read. Look at them, what we're seeing here is the idea of ​​using aerogel to heat certain places where one can have, ah, you can point it out there in the crosshairs.

[00:43:27]So, these are the aerogel layers that would heat, let's say, places with water, keep the water liquid, and obviously we would be here in the, let's say, pressurized and warm habitats for us.

[00:43:47]What can we do in those habitats? And these sheets, wait, go back a second.

[00:43:52]These aerogel sheets on top, these caverns, besides being blankets, remind me of these acrylic panels that are placed over archaeological sites to preserve them so that one can admire them without contaminating them, right?

[00:44:13]Here in downtown Medellín we have a very beautiful old aqueduct that is covered with a layer like this. I think it's beautiful. I'm looking into whether to put it like this so we can point it out. He didn't give up.

[00:44:28]Don't leave. Ah, don't bother me. We need artificial intelligence for this. So, there's the potato cultivation of mat.

[00:44:37]So, this is in a dome, Pablo.

[00:44:38]This is a Sunday.

[00:44:41]That? This is one. It took us out of the other presentation mode. Actually, this is a dome, but when you see those other ones, uh, let's see, duplicated, enlarge that, when you see those blankets that we saw in the previous slide, what they are actually are areas that are exposed to the atmosphere on the sides, but areas where it heats up, the ice is released and small experiments can be done. Airtight, they don't have to be airtight, but these are also airtight because they have to be pressurized. Correct.

[00:45:18]It needs to be pressurized. Do you remember what happened to Mat when the door broke and the habitat depressurized? His potatoes froze.

[00:45:27]The potatoes turned into a puree. Look at that. And then there are the mirrors.

[00:45:32]Look, these mirrors are the most incredible thing in engineering, because let's just say we know what material they should be made of. But this thing is a fabric that measures hundreds of kilometers, I mean, that's not a small mirror, so it's a full-length mirror, as they say.

[00:45:51]But we have to put them, we have to manage to put them, Pablo, in a place where they won't fall, right? That it is not in a gestational orbit. In this, a stationary Martian orbit.

[00:46:01]That's right, Mars is stationary, but it's with the poles, so it's not possible to make a stationary hour. You would have a little spaceship, that is, a spaceship with gigantic solar sails.

[00:46:14]But the light pushes, Pablo, the light pushes. So how would the ship have to correct its trajectory?

[00:46:22]Point, there's no point on the granch where you can put that candle and it can point directly to the very far away, is there? That would be very far away, wouldn't it? This is in orbit. This is in orbit. And so what they have is what they call a sun-synchronous orbit that is constantly correcting its trajectory and keeping the sails reflecting light directly onto the poles. Now, how long does it take to melt the Martian north pole? Can you imagine?

[00:46:55]But then with that lysosynchronous orbit in which the reflected ray is permanently over the pole or goes by, they put it or they put it to sweep the pole from one side to the other, well, that is, yes, there you have to put a lot of celestial mechanics, aerospace engineering, that which we know here in Antioquia. Hey, so what about the materials? What's that thing going to be made of? That means, as I said, we send aluminum foil, it does n't have to be a very thin material, very resistant and very reflective, but also materials engineering.

[00:47:32]And that one would have to be transported from Earth. It has to be taken from here. Yes sir.

[00:47:37]And to assemble it there because on Mars we don't have such a reflective type of material.

[00:47:42]No, that's something you do have to carry around to build it. That's about nanomaterials and well, let's move on to this. Look, then, and then atmosphere as raw material.

[00:47:56]After we melt the poles, after we have our individual, warm habitats, where there is water, then we'll have potatoes and lettuce and that kind of stuff. The other thing is to manufacture the nanoparticles.

[00:48:11]Exact. Set up factories.

[00:48:15]Martian industrial factories.

[00:48:17]Exact. And the idea is that the industrialization of Mars, which is very paradoxical, is that we are going to go to Mars, man. In other words, we need to industrialize, but we have to go slowly to see if it works or not. There are no irreversible things, there are things we can do, even the article doesn't say so to a certain extent and it can be reversible, but there are things that as soon as we start and pass certain points, we've already lost, right? But. Um, we would have to calculate, I do n't remember if the data was in the article, but how much carbon dioxide we are going to release when we irritate the poles. But we still have to set up, let's say, the era of Martian industrialization to build the nanoparticles that will thicken, that will increase the density of the Martian atmosphere. So, we have to send a lot of equipment to Mars from here, but we're not even talking about robots, not because of that, but because of that we have to find the printers that are going to build the particles there, the particles that are going to build the domes, that are going to build a lot of things.

[00:49:30]They're Bon Newman machines, remember? OK.

[00:49:34]The thing is, there is an answer to the Fermi paradox. I don't know if you remember that the Fermi paradox tells us, "Hey, if the universe is so old, if there are so many planets, if we've had so much time, why haven't they come?" No, because look, they have n't come, I mean, the aliens didn't come to terraform us a long time ago.

[00:50:03]Perhaps the most basic answer is because this is far away.

[00:50:06]Yes, exactly. So, imagine that one way, let's say, to answer Fermi's pair is simply because there are no extraterrestrials, we are the only ones. And another thing they did was Tipler, who was a scientist from the 70s. He did a calculation and said, "Look, if there were a civilization with a certain level of development like ours in the galaxy, and in addition to colonizing, there's a type of colonization called coral colonization, like corals that establish colonies, and from there, two more colonies emerge, and so it's exponential.

[00:50:46]But also, if they use robots—imagine we send intelligent robots to Mars, we're already doing that—but these robots, in addition to taking samples and analyzing the air, manufacture things.

[00:51:01]So it's a robot that goes and sets up a factory and does all the work. According to Tipler, it would have taken them 2 million years to colonize the entire galaxy, which is why they have n't arrived.

[00:51:14]Here, these factories have a source of carbon dioxide, the atmosphere, right? To then carry out some long processes that would manufacture graphene, those nanoparticles, graphene that are released back into the atmosphere, which are basically carbon nanoparticles. Wait a minute." Just a moment.

[00:51:34]So, graphene, right? It's like slicing a pencil, uh, similar to graphite. Similar to graphite, but it's much better organized, it's super flat, it's, imagine, the perfect honeycomb, it's a thin sheet of carbon atoms arranged in hexagons, just carbon atoms, nothing else, zero oxygen, no hydrogen, just carbons in hexagons, and that's useful for everything. But we have to build or manufacture 3 million tons and release it. Yes, ma'am.

[00:52:10]We're going to use up all the carbon here.

[00:52:12]No, we're not going to take it, it's over there.

[00:52:15]Ah, we're going to get it from over there and manufacture it there, either from the atmosphere when we've melted the poles or from the Martian soil, which is also rich in carbonates like Earth's rocks. That's something that's going to take us a long time, but in principle, if we fill the atmosphere From Mars with about 3 million tons of particles, so, well, right away, Perera, and it doesn't cost much.

[00:52:47]Here's the picture so we're going to heat Mars enough so that, for example, we wouldn't need— well, we'd still need to breathe, we wouldn't have oxygen to breathe in the atmosphere—but it would be thick and hot enough. Then rich enough in graphene to breathe graphene.

[00:53:07]Exactly. But now we can put photosynthesis into this thing, right? But wait, Pablo, the question is, how are we going to retain those particles in the upper atmosphere? Because, we're releasing carbon dioxide and graphene particles into the upper atmosphere to increase the temperature, right?

[00:53:25]And they're going to fall.

[00:53:26]But how do they not fall? No, how do they not fall?

[00:53:28]How do they not escape or how do they not fall?

[00:53:30]Exactly. How, how don't they fall? By the effect of gravity or does the wind carry them away? We ca n't put an attitude control engine on them, it would be very expensive, right? Because they are Nanoscale particles, I mean, they're not spaceships. It does n't work out.

[00:53:43]The idea, what would be the way to keep this there?

[00:53:47]No, that's the idea that blew my mind the most.

[00:53:50]Yes, because they don't explain that.

[00:53:52]They don't say how we're going to keep the graphene particles in the atmosphere. Do we somehow take out a bowl, wait for them to fall, and then throw it back in, right? What they're saying is that there has to be a climate there and a cycle that's somehow feeding back into the atmosphere. There's like a little window in the radiation. That is, these particles could allow only infrared radiation to pass through, or rather, trap it, right?

[00:54:25]Right, and prevent it from escaping. And then that infrared radiation, on the one hand, pushes the trapped particles upwards with the planet's heat, right? In other words, it's creating an artificial ozone layer that doesn't allow low- wavelength radiation, that is, high-frequency radiation, to enter, a heat trap, and doesn't let the infrared radiation escape.

[00:54:54]Somehow it would keep it at a certain altitude within the atmosphere. Look at it here. Let's see, let's put in the arrow you mentioned.

[00:55:02]This, look, a thermal blanket of graphene particles is nothing less than 3 million tons that we need, you hear? Well, and then we're ready. Can we live there right now or not?

[00:55:14]No, we're still missing something.

[00:55:16]And what's missing? We need to be able to create cycles.

[00:55:20]Atmospheric cycles. The nitrogen cycle, the water cycle, the carbon dioxide cycle.

[00:55:25]The nitrogen cycles aren't going to work.

[00:55:28]And how are we going to do that?

[00:55:30]Well, the first thing is to heat the planet and start releasing these gases to see what happens. Logically, the gases are going to enter cycles within the planet, but we still need to see if those cycles work, right?

[00:55:42]If they don't stagnate, if they don't stop, we have to achieve a balance between two cycles, and that's very difficult on a planetary scale.

[00:55:48]I think we still need a lot of engineering work. There's a lot of science missing too.

[00:55:54]Here on Earth, we did a lot of engineering without knowing what we were doing, and we've made a mess of things, right? So, that's what we're going to do there, that's what we're going to do: make a mess of things.

[00:56:03]Look, terraforming is destroying Mars, I mean. But, uh, I saw a question recently, and it was, look, if we sit down and terraform Mars, right? With all this atmosphere we're going to throw away and all these 3 million tons of stuff and the graphene and the aerogel and all this stuff, we'd be destroying an archaeological site in a way.

[00:56:29]Yes, but if there were any, why not? No, I don't mean archaeological in the sense of ancient archaeology, right? Yes, no, no, no, not human, not anthropological, right, but the ancient craters, all these ancient geological features of Mars that we could study to analyze the formation of the solar system, we're going to damage them.

[00:56:53]We're destroying a geological record of planetary history. There are two... there are two Positions on this.

[00:56:59]So, let's have the ethical and moral debate.

[00:57:03]Of course, let them vote and raise their hands.

[00:57:06]Who would go and terraform Mars right now?

[00:57:12]We're going to put forests, plants, lakes, everything there, right? Who would keep Mars as it is so we can study it geologically?

[00:57:22]We're divided.

[00:57:23]There it is.

[00:57:23]50/50.

[00:57:25]So, we take 50% to Mars and leave the other 50% here. Okay, we transform the bit up there.

[00:57:31]That's the idea.

[00:57:32]Pablo, but there's a problem with overpopulation, there's a very big problem. It's not that the idea of ​​terraforming Mars isn't because of human overpopulation. Well, the problem is, what if we start landing on Mars, inoculating Earth life on Mars?

[00:57:47]Panspermia without knowing. Yes, panspermia, without knowing if there's actually any microbiota thriving.

[00:57:53]We haven't found any specifically Martian ones. Yes, that's the idea. Well, I imagine that the moment we find a literal Martian bacterium, all those plans will fall apart; we'd have to think about something else.

[00:58:06]Sure, if we find a virus on a ship now and we all die of fright, can you imagine what would happen with a Martian bacterium?

[00:58:13]But let's say the bacterium is terrestrial, right? We take some cineobacterium and other little critters, and they colonize Mars and thrive there for centuries, changing, right? And adapting to the planet. How are we going to go there and throw ourselves into this new ecosystem that's already Martian?

[00:58:31]Yes, in fact, we planted perseverance, curiosity, and... naiveté; they all carried bacteria.

[00:58:40]Of course, but then, yes, right? Just a few, very few, but they're still there. The protocol of keeping ships absolutely clean before traveling to other planets is recent, is n't it? It's been around for a long time, but it makes you say something: things fell on Mars that weren't supposed to be there. Clean.

[00:58:58]But no, they also went into the JPL and NASA labs where they assemble the spacecraft, and supposedly that place doesn't have a single bacterium, and they found bacteria.

[00:59:10]Where on this planet, here on Earth, are there no bacteria? Nowhere. Look, you put on antibacterial gel. And what does the antibacterial gel tell you? No, we eliminate 99.99%.

[00:59:23]What antibacterial gel eliminates 100%?

[00:59:26]None.

[00:59:27]Just deal with the megabacteria because the competition has already sent them.

[00:59:30]There are always bacteria, and indeed, the spacecraft that are already on Mars carried terrestrial bacteria. They're there. Let's say they've survived, that they're multiplying because the conditions aren't ideal.

[00:59:48]Hey, Andrés, did you understand how we're going to create a water cycle? No, the truth is that they were proposing that these possibilities of gas exchange with the poles could somehow make the poles grow during certain periods on Mars.

[01:00:06]Winter and receded in other periods, and that little by little, this retreat and growth made it like a natural cycle. Of course, but the truth is, since this is a review, we wouldn't have to go and find the papers that talked precisely about these cycles before and after this new greenhouse period.

[01:00:31]Okay, time for a commercial break.

[01:00:34]Scan the code, please. Commercial break. Please scan the QR code to see the programming for Explora Park, the Planetarium, and the Exploratorio for the month of May, which was about 50 items this month. Uh, that's 50 items, 50 events this month.

[01:00:58]50 events. So, there's the code. That code will take you to an Instagram group. What? To the channel, right? And on the channel, you can subscribe, and you'll receive the programming for the park and the planetarium permanently.

[01:01:15]And when people ask me, "Look what's for kids and what's for adults and all that," there it is, just take the Body.

[01:01:21]Look, we have a very interesting talk. It's the launch of a book by this wonderful scientist who was with us last year telling us about her work on breast cancer and all the advances that have been made in this area, and she's going to be with us again. Going into a little more detail on the topic, Dr. Catalina López Correa will be talking with our colleague Daniela Jiménez about this subject that has also touched their lives very closely. And well, they overcame it, and she has worked on it.

[01:01:58]Breast cancer is a serious thing.

[01:02:02]My family already had a screening on Saturday the 16th. They also have to do the self-exam.

[01:02:07]Yes, ma'am.

[01:02:07]Saturday the 16th here at the theater at 4 in the afternoon. You are cordially invited.

[01:02:12]Scan the QR code to come in. Look, Beatriz Gonzalo González. We're going to have a beautiful documentary with Beatriz González, which we're going to project here at the planetarium. This is on Thursday. On the 28th of this month at 2 p.m., and then we're going to have a conversation with her, right? And with him, sorry, with him, with the director, Diego García. The documentary is about Beatriz González, and then we're going to talk with Diego García about how this documentary was produced. It's very, very beautiful.

[01:02:48]And on Friday the 29th, Andrés.

[01:02:49]And on Friday the 29th, the colloquium again.

[01:02:52]Colloquium on climate crisis and biodiversity.

[01:02:55]On biodiversity. We're going to be talking about wildlife roadkill.

[01:03:00]Yes, it's a very delicate issue, right? Right now, for example, with this new highway that many of us love because it has greatly shortened travel time from Antioquia to the coast, there are some very difficult cases of wildlife roadkill, but they're also going to give us some figures on what it means, for example, for someone driving their car when an animal runs in front of them, which is also causing many human deaths. So, we're going to talk about how we can Regular, and also, what's being done to somehow allow this wildlife to cross these roads?

[01:03:45]Anyway, you know, talking about roads, tunnels, and things like that? Right, you know, talking about roads and human needs?

[01:03:58]Actually, we don't think, we shouldn't call this terraforming, but anthropophorization. That's all it is for us. How horrible. Well, you already know us, here we are. Look, it's the same ones.

[01:04:11]Expanding Universe, we're almost at 600 programs. We're older now, we have more glasses, huh? Yes, of course. And less hair on Radio Bolivariana. Every week we're also on iBox, remember, obviously there's the podcast from the observatory that we professors of undergraduate astronomy make every week, also with news and interesting articles. And there's the podcast of Dr. Z and Antonio, the vernal point, which also brings you a very interesting topic every week, so stay tuned and keep listening. Radio Bolivariana, iBox, and Spotify, all three. You can find all three on Spotify, Expanding Universe from the observatory and Bernal Point. And the commercial break ended. Let's continue with this. Hey, now we're talking. Andrés, hi.

[01:05:15]Will it be worth it?

[01:05:16]Come on. And put on some music for Mars.

[01:05:19]Music. What do you mean? Yes, it's just that today we're not recording, today we're not recording Expanding Universe.

[01:05:25]Oh, ha ha.

[01:05:28]Oh, but anyone who wants to listen to music is welcome. Look at this. Would it be a good idea to go to Mars? It scares me a little.

[01:05:37]Me too. I like it because I'm a bit of a romantic in terms of exploration, that we left Africa 140,000 years ago, but then I definitely get my, let's say, rational side and I say, we should have stayed in Ethiopia.

[01:05:52]Well, I'm going to make a point in favor, and that is that after a certain age you want them to lower the gravity.

[01:06:00]The gravity. Oh, so, do me a favor and... Exactly. I don't want any more than 9.8 m/ s². No, I don't want to strain myself climbing stairs. I'm incredibly lazy. Turn down the gravity. For that, I'd... Then let's turn Mars into a retirement home. We'll send everyone there to retire. I mean, no, me too. I imagine someone retired on Mars, saying, "Let's live on Mars." I mean, for the first time, someone gets up without having to... But look, here's what we were saying earlier: perseverance, curiosity, opportunity, the precious things.

[01:06:37]They took all these girls, they took their bacteria to Mars. But look, again, there we have a geological record that tells us the story of a very important planet that may also have its own life, right? That is, its own microorganisms that we haven't discovered. And so the debate is whether we should expand life from Earth in the solar system. We once had the hypothesis in Amea that, given life on one body in a solar system, that life sooner or later spreads throughout the entire star system, right? To the moons, to the... Planets, I mean, the shockwave is natural.

[01:07:19]Like any impact, it stirs up bacteria, tardigrades, and extremophiles, and they go off on a piece of debris, a meteorite, fall somewhere else, and that's where we end up. Besides, the life that gets there will take its own evolutionary paths because it's a completely different environment, a bunch of environments totally different from Earth's, no matter how much we want to make them resemble Earth's. Even on Earth, we have a bunch of different environments where life evolves differently. Mars would be another one, I mean, I'm sure they already brought the bacteria.

[01:07:58]Let's go to Mars. And if we want to learn about Martian geology, we have to go there too and do experiments, right? But with these robots, what are they doing with Apollo 17?

[01:08:14]Apollo 17 is the reason, and we already know why.

[01:08:17]Apollo 17 because of Harrison Smith.

[01:08:20]Exactly.

[01:08:21]Okay. Because We need to take scientists.

[01:08:22]Because we need to take scientists with trained eyes. Our robots, however beautiful they may be and however well they connect with our people here on the ground, don't have the trained skill of a human being, a scientist, a geologist, who can get there and say, "Look, study that little spot over there until we have the Harry Son I."

[01:08:45]Oh, no.

[01:08:47]Listen, then. And how much does it cost? Start saving to see how much it costs to go to Mars. I'll put it in right now.

[01:08:56]No, it's not that expensive. Look, actually, these scientists, engineers, who participated, let's say, in this study of how to terraform Mars did the calculations. Look at these graphs here. How much does it cost, for example, to assemble the particles that will generate the greenhouse effect in the Martian atmosphere? Depending on the area covered in square kilometers, that starts to go into billions or trillions. That's millions, billions, trillions of dollars. Remember that... These are billions in English, which are smaller. Yes, of course. I mean, those billions are thousands of millions, and those trillions are billions for us, 10 to the 12th power. But that's not much. Look, to build the first little houses and be there in areas on the order of 100 km², uh, because 100 km² is a city.

[01:09:58]Yes, yes, or what? Let's say 1 square kilometer, that's a neighborhood. Yes. Let's build a little neighborhood on Mars there, let's say, as they say, on the outskirts of Mount Olympus in the plain of Tarshish. So, if someone goes there and builds a, let's see, I'll point it out here, and builds a little neighborhood, that's 1 km², 1 km² well built, it costs 10,0... Dollars, that's nothing.

[01:10:33]I'm going to throw some figures at you. For example, uh, in global warming, uh, one trillion dollars per degree Kelvin per year.

[01:10:44]One million dollars to warm the planet one degree each year. One trillion, trillion, 10,000 million, 1,000 million, million dollars.

[01:10:54]That is, one-tenth of what it cost new.

[01:10:58]Again, it costs us one trillion dollars to warm or maintain the temperature by 1 degree Kelvin each year on Mars, according to this plan. To keep it 1 degree above the average, that is, to increase the temperature, costs one trillion dollars. To maintain this plan of nanoparticles in the air, producing them and preventing them from falling, but that's already planetary engineering.

[01:11:24]That's not the Bethlehem neighborhood on Mars that we want to build; that's the pink one.

[01:11:29]That's clear; we're already talking about trillions. Look, there's a... But trillions in English are billions, in Spanish, that is, millions of millions. The initial human base costs a lot.

[01:11:40]Listen, it doesn't cost like a aircraft carrier or something like that.

[01:11:43]Actually, it costs less.

[01:11:44]Another fact, guys. 1 km² of aerogel is worth about 6 billion dollars.

[01:11:53]6 billion dollars.

[01:11:54]1 km² is about half a space telescope. Well, how much is that worth? I don't know. The James Webb cost 12 billion dollars.

[01:12:02]Okay.

[01:12:03]There you go. So, no, but now the problem is this. A nuclear submarine, just one, one, is worth 30 billion dollars.

[01:12:14]Right.

[01:12:14]So, what's the problem? How much is a day of war worth, Andrés?

[01:12:20]Uh. Ah, I don't know, but I was reading, I don't know, a solar sail, right? That's why, look, I was reading that this well-organized program, at least the program of having little neighborhoods, housing units There are buildings on Mars, covered with aerogels and with Yes, let them be social housing on Mars. So you set up what's called a social interest habitat on Mars, that's a 30 m² apartment, things of 30 m² cost less than a day of war.

[01:12:55]It's true.

[01:12:56]There it is.

[01:12:57]There it is.

[01:12:57]The United States spends more on a single day of bombing Iran than it costs to build a habitat on Mars. One last piece of information, one last cost so as not to bore you, because I'm selling a lot of money that you won't have if you get bored.

[01:13:14]750 km² of mirrors in the mirrors for the mirrors, the sails the poles, right? It's worth between 2 and 3 billion dollars.

[01:13:26]That's not expensive. I mean, look, it's not really expensive compared to what humanity spends on stupid things. Think of it this way. to all of humanity. Exact. Yes. And as humanity, we spend a lot of money on silly things.

[01:13:38]Exact. In silly things. In other words, we'll give you little things.

[01:13:41]You go to Minisu and waste your money on stupid things. But no, getting back to this, if you actually put together the Chinese, the Russians, the Indians, the Americans, the Europeans, and instead of them killing each other, you tell them, "Come on, give me 10%, give me your annual defense spending. With that, we'll put together this project."

[01:14:09]Tell me. And no Andrés, I think we're running out of time so we can move on to the questions and wrap things up. The idea is, what is it? This article, this scientific and engineering work that we liked so much and that's why, let's say, we took it to Expanding Universe and that's why we brought it to the colloquium today and took it to MEA.

[01:14:35]And we took it to MEVA too. It is somehow, from our point of view, we may not be so, let's say, not so on the right track, but it is the first time we have found a serious scientific, technical work regarding the real possibility of a habitable place for the human species. If we're talking about a concrete, scientific, viable plan, even if it's very long-term, it 's viable and it's well put in place.

[01:15:19]And again they add, let's say, all the engineering that is required, they assign costs to the engineering that is required, they assign timelines to what is required to be on Mars. And I honestly, well, let's say again from a somewhat romantic point of view, I think it's going to happen at some point. At some point, if in the next 50 years we don't end up with ourselves here on this planet, it's very likely that many of you sitting here or watching us through the channel will have the opportunity to see these first steps, these islands, these islands, this would be the Martian Hawaiian Island.

[01:16:03]The Martian Hawaiian island, do you know what the problem was with this image, Andrés, that they made Mount Olympus active? Marvelous. It was paid for 3.5 billion years ago. Can you imagine Mount Olympus like this? It would be amazing! This is what Mars looked like 3.5 billion years ago: forests. Green, except for green.

[01:16:20]Except for the green, obviously, because there were no forests. But the idea again of this colloquium today, which was a special, space-themed colloquium, was to bring you this scientific, technical, and engineering work in terms of the real possibilities that our species and other species have of migrating to our neighboring planet, this red planet that for now is a desert and that for now we don't know if it has any kind of inhabitants, but that very likely we will be in the next, I do n't know, 100, 200, 1000 years.

[01:17:06]Well, here we are receiving the first questions on social media. I'm going to show you some that our colleague highlighted for us.

[01:17:14]The first one is from Alain Gomez Zapata, he says, "Mars still has a magnetic field, even if it is of low intensity, or it has lost it completely."

[01:17:23]Not like us. There are still magnetized regions, but that's basically due to minerals that somehow retain the old magnetic field. But planetary magnetic field. Yes, exactly.

[01:17:37]Mars no longer has a planetary magnetic field. Well, here it says, I don't understand the name, it says, "What about sending robots that generate gases to Mars to produce something like the greenhouse effect?" That, that's part of the proposal.

[01:17:53]But not just any gas is gas, right?

[01:17:56]Unclear.

[01:17:58]Ah, okay. The principle was marked, it is not the cow that releases the greenhouse gas. Not yet. We could bring them, and the same person tells us that the cows won't survive, but we do need something like a cow, a robot cow, something like that that produces methanobacterium.

[01:18:18]Yes. Well, I think it's English classes.

[01:18:21]He says, "In fact, that plan to bring habitats will be tested first on the moon." Of course, that's exactly what would be done in Artemis's idea.

[01:18:30]So, we are returning to a habitable atmosphere on the moon.

[01:18:33]Yes. Artemis's idea is to start going to the moon.

[01:18:36]Learn to build these habitats near the lunar south pole and use what would be the lunar space station.

[01:18:47]Gateway, the Gateway.

[01:18:49]Exact. As a launch platform for Martian missions.

[01:18:55]Okay, one last question here before we give way to the live audience.

[01:18:58]She says, "What can be understood by clean if bacteria are part of life itself?", Laura says again, because all those terms are absolutely anthropocentric.

[01:19:10]We talk about asepsis, cleaning, and antibacterial in terms of things that we think are harmful to us, but in fact, we are a permanent bacterial ecosystem. So, while that is absolutely subjective, the idea is to try to find any chance that life might appear, or that ancient life or things like that might still exist, on other objects in the solar system, even if they are not ours. TRUE?

[01:19:48]There's a movie.

[01:19:49]Because if we brought the bug in and then found it, we didn't do anything. You had a red planet with Valkmer.

[01:19:56]Ah, of course.

[01:19:57]Oh, there we found some Martian creatures.

[01:20:02]There is a question from the audience.

[01:20:03]Hello good evening.

[01:20:05]How are you?

[01:20:05]So today's colloquium wasn't about astrology, but about science fiction and astronomy.

[01:20:11]Oh ok. Uh, it's the little party. They've talked a lot, a lot about utopias, but incredibly, for example, you haven't analyzed the fact that going to Mars takes months and we arrive at such a hostile place that we need to fight against gravity and a number of other things, and by doing that, practically as human beings, we would be almost finished. I would suggest instead rescuing places like the Sahara or the North Pole, where we don't have to fight against such hostile things, and perhaps create that possibility, because I believe that even if there are many wars here in Colombia, in the world, we are not going to create an environment as hostile and difficult as the one on Mars.

[01:20:57]Well, you have a point, you have a point, but really let's say that again this is a Martian dream and as I say, unlike what has been science fiction until now, this is a scientific article. This is an article, let's say, based on statistics, evidence, calculations, and engineering that could become a reality. Hey, think of it this way.

[01:21:31]Well, when Jules Berne wrote 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea or when Jules Berne wrote From the Earth to the Moon, he was dreaming about the possibility of that becoming a reality, but Jules didn't make a single calculation. When Julio wrote Journey to the Center of the Earth, he imagined a center of the Earth that is very different from what reality is.

[01:21:58]Even so, the human species, in its intellectual capacity, which is often contradictory in terms of the harm we do to ourselves, was able to achieve, as you say, a utopia or a fiction like submarine travel or space travel.

[01:22:25]This article, this specific work, is a scientific work, and that, let's say, takes away the fiction. There is some hope there. Exact. There is some hope in terms of the fact that there are still possibly things we haven't figured out, but the article is more science than fiction, whereas other stories, well, let's say they had much more fiction than science and yet we still ended up making it reality. So, uh, again, this was like a mutual feeling we had about this work, and that's why we brought it up and wanted to share it with you. What's more, I had originally planned the typical monthly discussion about the month's news, but we said, "No, come on, let's talk about this, because this is really cool."

[01:23:22]This is an update on what will happen at some point in our human history. Life tends to colonize new niches, and we are part of that life that colonizes new niches. He said it, it's very likely going to happen. As a very famous mathematician from Jurassic Park said, life finds a way.

[01:23:44]But also, there's something really nice about this, and that is that the proposal isn't that we're going to Mars right now, is it? The proposal is that in centuries or millennia, humanity could be making this Martian colonization a reality.

[01:24:03]Yes of course. First we have to solve a lot of problems here. We could be going through the problems we have overcome, that is, if we are still here, if humanity is still here.

[01:24:12]I'm going to be optimistic and I believe that while this process is just beginning, we'll already have space habitats, space stations where we'll be living completely on the moon, in stations, and we'll be working on Mars.

[01:24:31]Expans.

[01:24:32]The Expans, of course.

[01:24:34]The expansive modern Verne, I feel.

[01:24:39]No, I think that we, why do we make science fiction? Because we are always dreaming that we can do more things, and that is innate.

[01:24:50]Stories tell us who we were, who we are, who we can become, or who we are afraid of becoming. And that's what builds us as human beings, the stories we tell ourselves. This is a story we are telling ourselves about the future. However, it is not a science fiction story. This is not a story where we have heroes, where we have princesses, where we have monsters. This is a story that does come from the future, but it comes with all the science of today, right? And with likely science even tomorrow.

[01:25:26]Technology, especially today's science, tomorrow's technology. So, beyond being fiction, it's us human beings telling ourselves stories, convincing ourselves that we are capable. And when we get into the idea that we are capable, that's when we really dig deep.

[01:25:44]We're going to the Moon, we're going to Mars, and we're probably going to go much further.

[01:25:48]What Dara is saying is very nice, because on one hand there is a vision of, well, how we are going to expand, right?, of great economic powers on this planet. But on the other hand, there's a vision of how we're going to take care of this planet, right? Another great economic power. Who has the question?

[01:26:02]Let's say the first thing we have to terraform is the earth again.

[01:26:08]Yes. Or that we don't go to Mars to form the Earth.

[01:26:12]Recover the earth or Venus form the earth.

[01:26:15]Dr. Z.

[01:26:17]Oh, oh, oh.

[01:26:18]No, no, no. Uh, I didn't see it in the article.

[01:26:21]Very interesting article, Pablinche.

[01:26:23]Very good discovery, tremendous, I mean, the article is very, very long, but I did n't see a fundamental ingredient for terraforming, which is patience.

[01:26:34]Ah, yes, of course.

[01:26:35]And the other is necessity. Look, why does it have to happen on a short timescale?

[01:26:40]No, they don't talk about timescales, do they? Yes, if they talk about it, well, they put up today's dollars. Why not?

[01:26:46]Why don't they just say it? We're going to take this over in a century. We have a 1 square kilometer inflation outlook.

[01:26:53]Uh, sure. And we need to consider the inflation outlook. So what happens?

[01:26:56]This is an article written by scientists immersed in the capitalist ideology that things must be done the day after tomorrow. And as the gentleman said over there, the big problem is that, yes, humans want to do everything quickly and obviously we damage everything when we do it quickly.

[01:27:17]So I would say, no, there isn't one, there is one fundamental ingredient for terraforming. Excuse the comment, and you will discuss it in depth and with patience. And the other is necessity. What the hell do we need to do this, [ __ ]?

[01:27:30]So, what does he care if Mars is habitable? And well, damn, we have a habitable planet.

[01:27:36]The only, the best way, the moon.

[01:27:38]I would say that. I would say that what we need is to dehumanize the solar system. Let's remove humans from the solar system.

[01:27:47]Let's dehumanize the solar system. Let 's humanize it, but in a humanized way.

[01:27:50]Here I go. So, the need, I would say the best way, but that wasn't the purpose of the article, but maybe we can write an article together. The best way for Terrafon to love you is to bring 10 people who are enraged, son of a [ __ ], who say Marcos and without condoms.

[01:28:10]We're seeing too much of this super naked stuff.

[01:28:13]Send it without condoms. No, no, because the idea is that there's nothing better than necessity. It was out of necessity that we reformed you in the western United States. We reformed Asia out of necessity, right? Well, we renovated you, didn't we? Humformano.

[01:28:26]We humanize, we anthropophorize. Out of necessity, we made the powder bowl in the United States.

[01:28:32]So, from need also comes destruction.

[01:28:34]Yes. And again, this is still absolutely anthropocentric and it's still an anthropomorphic ideology, that is, we were thinking about where the human species is going. Nobody mentioned the ark we're taking and the animals we're taking to Mars, right? Nobody.

[01:28:55]Indeed, look, this is literally how Jorge is suddenly upsetting him, this is a mental masturbation in terms of hey, how cool to go to Mars, because again here there is a lot of fantasy involved in what you say, in what is the need to go somewhere else. We cannot yet survive among ourselves here. Why should we go and scrub the Martians, even if they are bacteria? TRUE?

[01:29:27]That's also explored in Expans.

[01:29:28]Yes, because there are humans on Mars, and Earth is obviously Turkish, right? Human on Mars, on the Moon, in all seasons, on asteroids, on quattro things and everyone fighting with everyone.

[01:29:42]Ah, as always, that's another story. We're going to go and do the dishes on Mars, and we're going to go and do the dishes on Saturn's moons, and we're going to do the dishes in the solar system.

[01:29:50]I propose finally, because it's a shame I took that microphone, people don't just scratch the inside of my mouth. Uh, I propose that we do genetic engineering and take away this crap from humans, this stupid thing of expanding everywhere. The question is whether this is inevitable, if Mars is going to be anthropomorphized, right? Or rather, if we start making sure that girls and boys are born who stop messing around with capitalism and expansion throughout the solar system. That would be easy.

[01:30:25]If we change the chickens, we will change ourselves. Well, but the simplest thing then is that no girls or boys are born. I have to go down so they can pay my pension, you idiot.

[01:30:35]Initially, no. I do agree that this planet already has too many humans. It would be great if we sent some of them to an uninhabitable place like Mars for now. That's the idea. Are there any more questions? Uh, no. I think we can wrap this up now. If there's another question here in the audience: Yes, back there. There's another question here in the auditorium.

[01:31:04]Hello good evening.

[01:31:06]Hello how are you?

[01:31:07]Fine, thanks. I would think it's like a story of movement. Why do we have the need to move? Why did those human migration phenomena occur after the Ice Age, for example? And I don't know if it's a wrong comparison, but it will have something to do with Mars going to occupy Earth's orbit. It will be a No, but Mars, well, first of all, we don't have to worry about that. Mars isn't going to move from where it is for now, right? Unless we put an engine on it like in the wandering earth and bring it back with us, but that's another science fiction story. In other words, Mars is not going to move from where it is.

[01:31:47]But what you say is true, and as Jorge said, there is a gene in us that we haven't yet identified that forces us to run around everywhere. We have an infantry fan.

[01:32:00]Why the hell are you going to the North Pole, you idiot? If there's nothing there.

[01:32:04]That's cold and icy. Why do you want to climb all the way up there, you idiot? If you die there, you can't breathe. There's something there. There's something about Jorge's mouth that doesn't go away.

[01:32:13]But that's life.

[01:32:15]That's life, Pablo. That's a characteristic thing about life. Life expands, that is, it is DNA forcing us to do things. Exact. Life expands.

[01:32:24]Life seeks its niche and speciation, which is one of the, let's say, evolutionary tools, forces species to be selfish, to seek their well-being as a species. And ours, for better or for worse, achieved a level of intelligence that gave it the ability to screw over all the other species on the planet. So, I still think the problem is genetic.

[01:32:55]It's genetic. There's something in the Homo gene that forced us to leave Africa, isn't there? Not only Homo sapiens, Homo erectus left there 1.8 million years ago and walked as far as the island of Flores, as far as Java, as far as Beijing. There were already Chinese people 900,000 years ago, brother. So, that exploration of the incredible homo. And yet, look, only we sapiens remain because there were other beings who stagnated and did not continue exploring.

[01:33:23]No, because we are more gossipy and because we like to live life to the fullest, we like to live an evolutionary advantage of being a loner, we like to have fun, we like to be in community, we were larger groups, we communicated better, we talked more and that helped us, let's say, in terms of evolutionary adaptation.

[01:33:46]Professor Mario Londoño and a large number of other friends are following us and debating with Jorge. Jorge, please watch the chat on YouTube. Okay, let's move on to the last question now because we're out of time, colleague.

[01:34:00]Andre, this is the last one. The last one. We can't do any more.

[01:34:05]Well, it's more like a comment and you guys can correct me. Well, I think this whole space exploration thing is necessary if we want to survive as a species too, because at some point this planet will no longer be habitable for us. Um, let's say that if humanity manages to survive to such an extent, until the sun loses its nuclear fuel and expands and we can no longer survive here, this is like a way to keep moving forward to continue exploring and be able to continue surviving as a species in other places, not necessarily Mars, but in other places as well. And indeed, Andre, that's what evolution forces us to do; it's that blessed evolution that makes us slaves to reproducing.

[01:34:50]The Abrahamic mandate is from the DNA. "Be fruitful and multiply," said Abraham. Very good.

[01:34:59]And that's what DNA does. DNA compels us to pass on information to the next generation and to sustain the species in some way. And we're going to want to stay here, well, not here, but in this universe until heat death without misery.

[01:35:17]I do want to go to Mars.

[01:35:19]Ah, because it has lower gravity and our knees don't hurt.

[01:35:22]That planet must be wonderful.

[01:35:23]We're going to Mars. A hug to everyone who is connected, to those who came today and joined us here, and we'll see you in June at the regular colloquium. Okay, take good care of yourselves. Ciao. Ciao. Co