The John Batchelor Show

VIDEO: Water, Water Everywhere

March 19, 2015

Wednesday  18 March 2015 / Hour 1, Block C: HOTAL MARS, episode n. Michael J Mumma, Founding Director, Goddard Center for Astrobiology & Senior Scientist, Solar System Exploration Division, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center; in re: Mars oceans - how big they were, what are the best theories for what happened to the water, et al.  Water on many of the billions of exoplanets; oceans of Enceladus and Ganymede. Clearly, there's a lot of water underground on Mars; have to evaluate how much it's been lost over time.  In its atmosphere, was enriched as deuterium by a factor of five relative to Earth's ocean water. Much of the light hydrogen may have gone out the atmosphere.   . . .   Ceres:  regions on the planet look like car headlights: where water vapor and plumes are active?  . . .  Moons of Saturn and Jupiter – specuation that subsurface oceans are richand deep. Rethink conditions for life on other planets? Yes – may be not hostile but friendly to emergence of life. Europa has cracks, now we know that it has a subsurface ocean, as does its partner Ganymesde (saline).  Enceladus is ejecting plumes of material into space – methane, water, even silica particle.  Heat to unfreeze ice: the tidal friction.  No winds, so to speak; so no familiar waves, but the water does move around, rise and fall according to Jupiter's gravitational pull.  Minerals dissolve from rocks deep down, then ejected into space via plumes.   . . . The Grand Tack carried [ejecta?] to the inner Solar System, than carried other material outward.  Ergo, we all have a lot of traded material – the fundamentals of the mystery of life.  What prebiotic chemicals in comets? Amino acids and nucleide bases.  Mixing of mineral structures; water; organic chemicals; energy source; must be producing gasses that fuel life (molecular hydrogen).  Hydrothermal vents.  RNA. Mars  rocks arrive on Earth – we have a hundred today.   The first rule of physics is: If it isn’t impossible, it happens.  
Michael Mumma is a Senior Scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and Director of the Goddard Center for Astrobiology (one of the NASA Astrobiology lead Teams).  Mumma is a spectroscopist who specializes in observations of comets, atomic and molecular physics, planetary atmospheres and the interstellar medium.  He is an active observer and team leader on the Hubble Space Telescope, IUE, FUSE, EUVE, ROSAT, Space Shuttle and many ground-based facilities, and in addition is involved in the development of advanced instruments for quantitative spectroscopy.