Tara Tomlinson: Hey everybody! Welcome back to “A View from Earth” brought by the Fiske Planetarium at CU Boulder! 
We hope you’re doing well and staying safe.
Tara Tomlinson: Now, as with the rest of the university, and many public spaces around the world, Fiske’s theater is 
for the foreseeable future, to the public, due to the COVID-19 epidemic.
Tara Tomlinson: However, we are still so committed and excited to bringing you astronomy and education that we’ve started a whole host of free 
online offerings so that we can stay connected and keep bringing you the Fiske content you know and love, plus some new stuff, like this podcast!
Tara Tomlinson: So, thanks for tuning in and learning with us here today.
Tara Tomlinson: My name is Tara. I'm a planetary scientist and a CU alum.
Tara Tomlinson: And I'm also the Outreach Coordinator and a presenter at the planetarium. And my friend Collin is here too.
Tara Tomlinson: Hi Collin.
Colin Sinclair: Ahoy mateys!
Colin Sinclair: My name is Collin.
Colin Sinclair: I'm an undergrad at CU.
Colin Sinclair: I am a presenter at the planetarium and now apparently, also a pirate! Back to you Tara.
Tara Tomlinson: Thanks Collin!
Tara Tomlinson: So, today we are talking about...
Tara Tomlinson: Dun, dun, dun...
Tara Tomlinson: Life in the universe! We're approaching it from two different directions. We're going talk
Tara Tomlinson: a little bit about bioastronautics.
Tara Tomlinson: With our guest, Dr. Luis Zea.
Tara Tomlinson: We also have Dr. Bruce Jakosky, who’s going to tell us a little bit about astrobiology!
Tara Tomlinson: And you'll get a good feel about what the difference is between the two of those.
Tara Tomlinson: These are excerpts from our interviews with these guys, so we hope you enjoy those.
Tara Tomlinson: But first, the news!
Tara Tomlinson: And here to give us a bit of the news about exoplanets is our friends. Sophie. Sophie. Introduce yourself a little
Sophie Adams: Hi So I'm Sophie, I am
Sophie Adams: A senior at
Sophie Adams: CU Boulder. I am a TAM major here. And I guess my fifth year and I love astronomy and it's my passion. 
I love sharing information about it. So, I'm super excited to share information about life elsewhere in the universe with you today.
Sophie Adams: Cool. So, before we get started, I wanted to
Sophie Adams: Thank my friend Justin wang for taking the time to let me interview him and for sharing all the 
information that you'll be hearing today. He's a double major in astrophysics and
Sophie Adams: molecular, cellular and developmental biology with a minor in bio account and he's worked in astrobiology research 
at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Science. During his time at CU ultimately, he hopes to be an astronaut.
Sophie Adams: So, the search for life elsewhere in the universe has two lanes of research life outside of our solar system and life within our solar system.
Sophie Adams: The search for life outside of our solar system is being conducted through NASA's Kepler and TESS missions. 
These missions have found thousands of planets orbiting around other stars, which we call exoplanets.
Sophie Adams: Scientists look for certain characteristics in these planets for them to possibly be able to support life.
Sophie Adams: These characteristics include the size of the planet. The distance from their sun, where the other 
planets in our solar system are located in relation to the target planet and the shape or their orbit.
Sophie Adams: If all of these characteristics fall under what we call the habitable zone.
Sophie Adams: Then scientists look more closely at these planets for signs of life. So, for example, Mars is at the edge of a few 
habitable zones in our own solar system. It's a little bit too far away from our sun to support life. It's also a little bit too small.
Sophie Adams: But you may be more aware of the search for life within our own solar system in 2017 NASA's Mars Reconnaissance 
Orbiter or MRO discovered evidence that liquid water flows intermittently on Mars today.
Sophie Adams: Since we know life needs water to survive, NASA deploys missions to ancient river deltas and 
streams on the surface to Mars to investigate further.
Sophie Adams: It's hotly debated. How long water has existed on the surface of Mars. Some believe water flowed on 
the surface for billions of years which is long enough for life to develop, but others believe that
Sophie Adams: water on the surface of Mars was short lived, and that the best place to search for life on Mars would be ancient sites of volcanic activity.
Sophie Adams: That we're more continuous yet could also be extremely hot and toxic, but we know that life here on earth can live in those kinds of environments.
Sophie Adams: While we are still in search of present life on Mars. A lot of the ongoing Martian 
astrobiology research is rather the search for evidence that life once existed on Mars.
Sophie Adams: Europa has also been a large focus of our extraterrestrial research; we have observed that the 
moon has a large water I show and infer and hold that there's a liquid ocean under the surface.
Sophie Adams: Europa is extremely cold and any life that makes us under the surface of ice wouldn't have access to the sun.
Sophie Adams: So instead of creating energy from photosynthesis any living microorganism under the surface of ice. 
Would need to derive their energy from chemical energy from the moon itself.
Sophie Adams: NASA's clipper mission is scheduled to launch to Europe in 2024 to gather more information.
Sophie Adams: Part of a search for life elsewhere includes learning how life began and persevered here on Earth.
Sophie Adams: The most accepted theory today on how life formed on earth was around hydrothermal vents at the bottom of our oceans.
Sophie Adams: Since the environments are so extreme on the surface of Mars and Europa scientists investigate 
these hydrothermal vents and hopes to learn more about microorganisms that are able to thrive in these harsh conditions.
Sophie Adams: They also investigate other places that provide extreme conditions for life, such as the hot springs in Yellowstone and the northern Arctic these places are called analog environments.
Sophie Adams: Environments that mimic the geochemistry on the surface of another planet by studying these places, scientists hope 
to gain information that could help lead them to track down microorganisms living in extreme conditions on Mars and Europa.
Sophie Adams: By studying these places, scientists hope to gain information that could help lead 
them to track down microorganisms living in extreme conditions on Mars or Europa
Sophie Adams: We're also looking a little bit less intensely at Titan. And we're also looking a little bit less 
intensely at Titan and Enceladus, which are two Saturn's moons.
Sophie Adams: And sell it as like Europa is my device, we have observed water guys are shooting from the surface of the moon but
Sophie Adams: But because we are more focused on Europa. At the moment, we do not have any scheduled 
missions Enceladus, however missions, most likely will begin to be Enceladus in the next few decades.
Sophie Adams: Titan. On the other hand, has a very different environment than what we're used to 
observing its surface is so cold that methane exists and less liquid form.
Sophie Adams: Its surface is so cold that methane exists in liquid form. Titan the has a methane cycle, very similar to the water cycle here on Earth.
Sophie Adams: It rains methane there a methane clouds and there are lakes of methane. Scientists are 
not looking at Titan as seriously as Europa and Mars because it's too cold for liquid water.
Sophie Adams: However, my friend Justin believes that we still need to investigate tight more because we 
need to remember that life might not exist as we know it here on Earth.
Sophie Adams: If methane acts as water on this moon, what is life can be created from methane instead of water.
Sophie Adams: Although there are many discrepancies between scientists on the places that may support or may have supported life in the past 
many scientists believe that life does or has existed somewhere else in the universe beyond her, and if it didn't, that'd be whole waste of space.
Tara Tomlinson: Excellent.
Tara Tomlinson: Thank you all.
Collin Sinclair: Thanks for putting it together for us. Sophie.
Sophie Adams: Of course.
Tara Tomlinson: So now we are speaking with Dr. Louis Zia who's an assistant research professor for CU 
Boulder aerospace he specializes in the intriguing field of bio astronautics which is studying how biology and space interact
Tara Tomlinson: His interests span everything from gravitational microbiology to bio mining and bio-based resource utilization
Tara Tomlinson: Does work asked questions like how we, how can we protect our astronauts from 
bacterial contamination or how can microorganisms help us mine metals from asteroids.
Tara Tomlinson: Dr. Zia is also part of the Artemis program leading an investigation to use yeast to 
study the radiation environment of the moon. This all sounds so fascinating. So, thank you so much for joining us today.
Luis Zea: Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Collin Sinclair: I am jumping right into your projects; Tara and I were talking about how your website looking through your website is like
Collin Sinclair: Is like, it looks like reading a sci fi novel or something like all of these different projects that you're working on, are
Collin Sinclair: Just crazy. So one of these projects in particular is examining how biofilms behave in space and biofilms are groups of 
bacteria or fungus that stick together like the kind that you find in your shower or on your teeth, you can correct us if that's wrong.
Collin Sinclair: But that's, that's our understanding for everyone listening. That's a biofilm and much like we 
never think about them in the bathroom until it's too late.
Collin Sinclair: I've never considered that they would grow in space too. How are you, conducting this experiment? 
And are you just characterizing them at this point, or are you also actively testing ways to mitigate them.
Luis Zea: Yeah, now you got to right except for you said biofilms growing your bathroom and your teeth.
Luis Zea: The correction is it they don't grow my teeth alright.
Luis Zea: Yeah.
Luis Zea: That's actually right and that's why we brush our teeth, all of us, because even if you were to be just rinsing it with, you know, like, like mouthwash.
Luis Zea: That is not enough of a mechanical stress to remove them from our teeth, they are biofilms as you mentioned, 
bacteria and fungi, mostly bacteria otherwise from guy when they're forming about films are usually called molds.
Luis Zea: Technically you can use both. But they these bacteria, for example in in people's mouths in our teeth.
Luis Zea: they secrete these substances that allow them to adhere to a surface and once they're there. Good luck. 
You need really hard brushing and that's not only a problem for astronaut's teeth
Luis Zea: But it's also a problem for. Well, we were mentioning before of ECLSS environmental control on life support systems.
Luis Zea: What keeps the astronauts alive in space, and let's go for another quick time travel and now it's about space station. 
So, in orbit and what biofilms problems they have had. So, the first
Luis Zea: Big space station. The Soviet salute six. It had several biofilm problems. A they saw it forming inside pipe things and we hide behind panels.
Luis Zea: The Soviet salute seven they had it on the water recycling system that's up place You don't want it.
Luis Zea: Rubber of hatch locks. So, if you think about it, the, the doors, if you will, and space stations or spacecraft. They have a
Luis Zea: It's like an O-ring. Right. It's a seal to make sure that gases are now going anywhere now biofilms 
our problem for two reasons. One is because of the health problems, they can bring
Luis Zea: In fact, most of bacterial infections in humans have a biofilm association to the meaning that 
bacteria tend to be in a biofilm state when they are causing the disease.
Luis Zea: And the other one is because they can degrade the material so they can basically eat away the plastic or metals, upon which they are growing.
Luis Zea: They, they can be acidic. They can be corrosive, so if you have this kind of stuff growing on an offering that 
keeps your air in your spacecraft. That's not a good thing because now you have little paths of air leaking.
Luis Zea: And if you have it on your water recycling system, as I mentioned, there's also this medical aspect of it can 
get people sick if it's the wrong kind of bug. So also, you don't want it anywhere close your water right
Luis Zea: And then if we keep on the time travel. The Soviet slash Russian Mir space station. they headed 
down a bunch of different places, air conditioning the oxygen
Luis Zea: ECLSS block the water recycling unit, even on an extra vehicular activity suits headphone. This is the cool suit that you saw
Luis Zea: Was that movie Gravity with all that wrong stuff, but also some pretty cool looking stuff. Yeah. So those are 
the EVA suits on the Mir space station. They had biofilm on growing and one of the suits headphones.
Luis Zea: And very interestingly one case was on a navigation window so they had this Court's window that the cosmonauts would use to look out
Luis Zea: And see the spacecraft that was arriving the progress with our cargo and stuff, they need it and they would kind of like play video games.
Luis Zea: But real life and bringing it now that navigation window was going through problems of 
what eventually they learned was a fun guy called Penicillium Rubens
Luis Zea: It was called penicillium chrysogenum, but it got its name changed it wasn't cool enough. So, when for Rubens
Luis Zea: And you don't want your navigation window, not to be perfectly clear right and you don't want that jeopardize by biofilms.
Luis Zea: And so, it's been a problem for a very long time. And in fact, there's this really cool story of 
when astronauts us astronauts were able to go to the Mir space station.
Luis Zea: And telling stories and also the stories also coming from cosmonauts have, for example, 
a really bad stench and people are like, what the hell is that smell.
Luis Zea: And you are living in this very tiny space. You don't want to be smelling that kind of stuff. Like, like right now. 
We're all quarantine right we take our trash out because imagine being quarantined and smelling that stuff all the time.
Luis Zea: And so, they find out it was coming from a panel, so they remove the control panel and they see this biofilm growing on the back.
Luis Zea: Now that's bad for a lot of reasons but remember how I was saying that biofilms 
can degrade polymers, the plastic, for example, that covers cables and wires.
Luis Zea: big no you don't want another fire there, right. So that's another kind of problem of 
biodegradation of how these bugs can cause problems. And of course, this is
Luis Zea: True, not only in Russian and Soviet space stations. It's also true. And it's also true still on the International Space Station and
Luis Zea: That's the reason for which NASA is currently supporting research in this field, because especially there's a challenge, 
making sure there's no biofilm growth on the wastewater tech, which is part of the water processing assembly of ISS ECLSS
Tara Tomlinson: Well, kind of moving forward. I also want to ask you about your mission on the Artemis program your co-PI for this.
Tara Tomlinson: We talked about Artemis, a little bit last week with Dr Hayne and you're particularly studying how radiation in the moon's 
environment could affect cells and DNA using yeast. Can you kind of tell us a little more about how this works, because this is really strange.
Luis Zea: Yeah, right. yeast, that's what we use for making bread and beer.
Luis Zea: Yeah, actually, when you see the genome.
Luis Zea: Which is the genetic code of yeast over 70% of their most important genes are 
also found on the human genome. And so that makes them a really good
Luis Zea: model organism is what we call it. For example, imagine if I want to have really strong statistical data that I can do studies with
Luis Zea: Our network, I would need to send thousands or millions of humans to deep space and analyze changes right
Luis Zea: However, in a tiny little vial. I can send millions upon millions of yeast cells and each of them have their 
own DNA, each of them has their own genome. And that allows us to do very massive studies.
Luis Zea: With genes are also found either directly on the human genome where they have equivalent 
genomes and that's the kinda like the recent and why on Artemis? so
Luis Zea: Earth is protected by the magnetosphere. Right. So, if we were to cut the earth in half, 
which I hope nobody has the power to do that because there will be a bad day.
Luis Zea: You would see something like an apple, where the earth is a circle in the center and then you would see the
Luis Zea: Two kind of ovals that a go outside of the circle. And that's our magnetosphere, right, it has 
multiple layers and this magnetic field protects us from some of the solar particles that
Luis Zea: There are always irradiating are radiating our way, but also from galactic cosmic rays, which sounds very sci fi, but it's really real.
Luis Zea: And that's the reason for which we're not getting cooked right
Luis Zea: But once we are beyond the Van Allen Belts astronauts are going to be exposed to that high radiation environment.
Luis Zea: And we haven't had an opportunity to send a control biological experiment beyond the Van Allen Belt since 1972 on 
Apollo 17 so when that when NASA put out a call for proposals I was shaken of excitement and of course I partnered with
Luis Zea: Corey Nislow. He's a professor at the University of British Columbia and he has this really cool.
Luis Zea: Things called deletion series and overexpression series of yeast and if you think of the genome of the 
genetic code of anything, say in this case yeast have like a bunch of Lego pieces, making a little train
Luis Zea: In this case is about a 4000 Lego piece long train, where each Lego is one of the genes with what he does with his deletion series is he
Luis Zea: Makes imagine 4000 copies and on the first copy. He removes one of the Lego pieces and instead 
of that he puts a little flag and the next one. He removes the second Lego piece and puts us like
Luis Zea: Basically, it's called deletion series because each of those mutants has had one gene deleted.
Luis Zea: And the overexpression series is the opposite instead of deleting one gene. He puts a bunch of that gene in that space. And we're going to do is
Luis Zea: A bio server space technologies, which is where I work. It's a nonprofit research center within the university of Colorado
Luis Zea: We build hardware and we help astronaut. I'm sorry. We help scientists send their experiments to space 
we train the astronauts we develop the hardware hold the NASA safety support documentation, etc.
Luis Zea: So, what we're doing about her is building the autonomous hardware, which of course this is sake or has to have an acronym is called PLSM.
Luis Zea: And PLSM gets no data no power, no communication, no nothing from Orion and still, we 
need to be able to know when we're past the Van Allen Belt and activate the experiment.
Luis Zea: That's what we're going to be doing activating this deletion and overexpression series then 
letting them grow under the microgravity and high radiation environment of deep space.
Luis Zea: And then we're going to make a correlation of which of the mutants had higher rates of survivability than the others.
Luis Zea: And this allows us to make a study of the effects of both microgravity on high radiation on DNA damage and 
other really cool thing is that us has the DNA repair mechanisms that are also similar to what happens on humans.
Luis Zea: We don't get cancer as often as it could be. Thanks in part to the DNA repair mechanisms that we have
Luis Zea: imagined this DNA strand. And there are these little molecular robots that string through it checking for any inconsistency. 
So, when they found something that, like, oh, wait a minute, this should not be a G. This should be a seat.
Luis Zea: And they recruit these other molecular robots and they fix it well and they want it. You want to make 
sure that this repair happens before the cell splits in two
Luis Zea: If the damage was not repaired before the cell splits into now that's going to be part of its genome, and that those two 
cells are going to become 4 8 16 32 64. That's one of the bases of cancer when this mutation just takes over.
Luis Zea: So, it's very important to understand if we are going to have higher damages. They are high rates of DNA damage in deep space.
Luis Zea: We know we will, but we don't really have that problem quantified and the other aspect is, 
we also want to see if the DNA repair mechanisms are acting in any different way.
Collin Sinclair: So, what I'm realizing as this. We're talking to you is that this is going to be a very difficult 
episode to cut because I will want to keep every word that you're saying because this is so interesting.
Luis Zea: Don't cut it Collin don't cut it.
Collin Sinclair: Don't do it. So, um, I you very briefly mentioned
Collin Sinclair: You know, another one of your sci fi sounding projects that is side none fi
Collin Sinclair: You are involved in something called bio mining which to our understanding is using organisms to mind for metals like iron on the moon.
Collin Sinclair: What sort of organisms are these, how does it work. What are the 44 endangered elements that you mentioned on your website.
Collin Sinclair: Also, quick plug to your website anyone listening. The website is awesome. So, check it out. You can find it. If you just search 
like colorado.edu spats space Luis Zia me my hyperlink it somewhere. It's really cool. Um so anyways, back to you.
Luis Zea: Alright. Thanks. Uh, yeah, maybe where every time we say the word space bio mining 
journey should put like a cool sci fi background on the podcast.
Luis Zea: Yeah, it sounds really sci fi. In fact, it is not and something that a lot of people don't know is that between five and 15% of gold and copper 
that is mine on Earth comes from biomining processes. So, I'm sure that the first person who thought of bio mining on Earth.
Luis Zea: Probably got laughed at a lot because that was totally sci fi more on the fi. And in fact, now it is not because we use it a lot on Earth.
Luis Zea: So, we're come the novelty of this is implementing these kinds of processes for In Situ Resource Utilization so making 
sure we can live off the land as we go to cool places like the moon, Mars and beyond. And there's this one.
Luis Zea: bacteria called Shewanella oneidensis and it has the capability to transfer electrons with minerals are outside of it. 
So it's called an exoelectrogen and what it does, it can help us reduce Iron, so Iron present on the regolith on the dust.
Luis Zea: It can be oxidized, and I imagine is called iron3
Luis Zea: And Shewanella goes there. He eats it does its thing, and it transformed that iron3 that was in the mineral 
into iron2 that is now in solution in a liquid that you can then segregate from the rest.
Luis Zea: And that's how you could potentially extract minerals. We started with
Luis Zea: Iron in the lab because that's something that there's, there's a lot of research on how Shewanella does that
Luis Zea: What we're doing here is that we're growing on our space flight hardware and those FBA is and gaps that I was talking about.
Luis Zea: And we are exposing it to regulate simulate so we don't have, you can go to a you 
know a grocery store and like, Hey, can I have a pound of lunar dust.
Luis Zea: But there's this really cool lab at the University of Central Florida where it's actually where I did my master’s. Go Knights!
Luis Zea: And this call the class exolith lab and they actually synthesize regolith stimulant from different places off different bodies and that's how we have
Luis Zea: Asteroid lunar and Martian regolith stimulants. So, they have what we understand our equivalent constituents. That's the same ingredients right
Luis Zea: And we're growing the Shewanella with this different kind of regolith stimulants.
Luis Zea: In flight hardware like we would do in a potential spaceflight experiment which we're still not at planning. We're, we're just learning the ropes here.
Luis Zea: And the idea is that that eventually you're going to have these tanks where the bug is 
happy, you're giving it the footy. Once it can do this electron transfer
Luis Zea: And then it will give you things that you can need. You can need for other things. 
For example, if you have this bio reactor, would you just put a bunch of dust and
Luis Zea: These little things with bacteria and its growth medium and on the other end, you're getting
Luis Zea: Purified iron, and then you can feed that to 3D printers, and you can build structures, you can build parts and there's a bunch of 
metals that you can do. And you mentioned the 44 endangered elements and that's the idea that this could support not only
Luis Zea: Space, you know, having folks out there in space, but it can also be brought back to Earth. 
Imagine how cool a world would be in the far future where
Luis Zea: Earth. Is that clear. A know mining, so like no heavy industries and Earth is a living 
cell so we could do mining off asteroids, and that's where we get all this stuff. We need it, or at least part of it.
Luis Zea: And bio mining could be a part of it as well because he can help you potentially extract some of those endangered elements which are 
the elements for which we know there's going to be a supply, there's not going to be enough production of them in the in the upcoming years
Tara Tomlinson: So, we did want to kind of here towards the end, ask you a couple of little more personal 
questions just kind of about what you do and your journey and how you got here and um
Tara Tomlinson: On your CV, it talks about you started your education in mechanical engineering and then aerospace engineering and then 
bio-astronautics so. Have you always had this interest in space or space science or is this something you kind of gradually work your way into?
Luis Zea: Oh no, it wasn't, it was in my genome for sure was there from the beginning.
Luis Zea: From what Guatemala, as I mentioned, so I didn't have the you know the resources for me to 
come to the states. So, I wasn't sure it was going to be able to
Luis Zea: I started as a not a great student, meaning I was a terrible student
Luis Zea: And then when I realized that I wanted to do space stuff. And in order to be able 
to come to the states and do this that I needed a scholarship, that's when my life changed.
Luis Zea: I did skateboarding for a living. So, my priorities were first was skateboarding, and then a 
number two was skateboarding. And number three, and 4 and 5 maybe you've had time left. It was school
Luis Zea: So, when I realized how things work. They changed my life and really focus and studying 
and trying to be a better student, this isn't high school, school, middle school, high school
Luis Zea: And then I wasn't able to get any scholarships, because I had all these years of 
slacking right, I ended up well. But I had all the history of not doing great.
Luis Zea: So, I learned German as a plan B to so that I could apply to Germany. I learn Portuguese as a Plan C incase
I couldn't come to the States for Germany, I would try to go to Brazil to study aerospace
Luis Zea: I did an undergrad in Guatemala to get my stuff together and get that degree. And that's how I was able to come to the states.
Luis Zea: As a graduate research assistant, where I worked at doing helping with research and that was what pays for your tuition.
Luis Zea: Basically, and that wasn't petroleum engineering. And that's because after my 
undergrad I still couldn't find a way to come outside of Guatemala to study airspace.
Luis Zea: So, I got a job as a mechanical engineer in the in the oil industry and actually had nothing to do with oil I was doing was Excel and
Luis Zea: That is, that's what helped me get my foot in the door, then I did aerospace, 
then I couldn't really get anything into aerospace because I wasn't resident, and a citizen.
Luis Zea: So, I got a job as a heat transfer engineer. And then I went back to school for a PhD here at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Luis Zea: Now I'm a citizen and I'm able to work and all this cool stuff. So, life takes you different ways life 
really is a zigzag. And that's kind of the message I would say to the younger folks just keep in mind open
Luis Zea: Plan for a plan B, you know, the more tools you put in your toolbox languages software stuff, the better for you.
Collin Sinclair: That is an awesome story like just that whole progression is that's just fascinating.
Tara Tomlinson: I love hearing that too,
Tara Tomlinson: Because it seems like pretty much everyone that we've talked to nobody has had a real like linear path of how they got from
Tara Tomlinson: A to B to C. Everybody's kind of been, you know, started here. And we had some musicians and we 
had some bio folks and everybody kind of lines their way, nobody really just goes straight. And I think that's awesome.
Collin Sinclair: So, the kind of the question that we like to wrap up with a lot is, and you've actually touched 
on this several times, which is awesome, but I'll ask you to kind of summarize everything that you've
Collin Sinclair: Said in this in this vein, what advice do you have to young people who, after listening to this, say, wow.
Collin Sinclair: That Dr. Zia guy is awesome and hilarious and sounds like he's having a great time. And I want to go do that.
Collin Sinclair: Instead, they say, Okay, I'm into bio astronautics. What advice if you can wrap all of those different tidbits of advice 
that you've listed over this last hour. What advice do you give to young people who now want to pursue this as a career?
Luis Zea: You say, I'm going to wrap it or rap it right now.
Collin Sinclair: If you can rap it, that would be
Luis Zea: Awesome. Oh, me too hard Collin. And so, I'm just gonna go with non rap. I'm gonna wrap it
Collin Sinclair: Okay, okay.
Luis Zea: So, depends on the age if it's elementary or middle school, or even high school, I would say grades matter.
Luis Zea: See, I always thought, why is my mom giving me such a hard time by my grades, who cares about the grades.
Luis Zea: You will in your future. It opens doors, you know, these movies where you have this magical 
key that opens this magical door to who knows where those are your grades, extracurricular activities.
Luis Zea: At once more than one person is applying to a position to either a job or grad school, you're 
going to be compared against in a quantitative and quantitatively way, meaning that
Luis Zea: You want to see you want to make yourself stronger case than others. And one way you can do that is through extracurriculars
Luis Zea: And it can be based on what is that you want to do it can be languages. If you want to go into computer stuff, then you know different
Luis Zea: Software languages or different software. And so, they had these kind of extracurriculars, start a start up a student group.
Luis Zea: You know, these kinds of things volunteering. I think it's very important. But really, you gotta 
do it if it's if it comes from the heart. But there's so many different things in which you can volunteer.
Luis Zea: There's we are always more fortunate than a lot of other people. So, finding time to help others. It's, it's pretty important. And then if you're older. 
And now you're kind of got college, getting so old, then same thing of grades and extracurricular but don't forget the multi-disciplinary
Luis Zea: Of real life and you know it's important that to know more than one trait is going to help you a lot. Stay positive and keep working hard.
Collin Sinclair: I think that is a perfect way to wrap up the episode. Dr. Luis Zia. Thank you so much for joining us today. 
That was absolutely a pleasure to talk with you.
Luis Zea: Likewise. Thank you for having me. It was really nice talking to you with Tara and Collin.
Collin Sinclair: So now we are speaking with Dr. Bruce Jakosky who is a professor at CU Boulder and Associate Director for science, 
the Associate Director for science at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, also known as LASP
Collin Sinclair: He is the principal investigator for the MAVEN spacecraft mission and newly appointed member 
of the National Space Council users’ advisory group.
Collin Sinclair: He has expertise in geology and Cosmo chemistry makes him a leading expert in Mars's atmosphere 
and what it would take to make the red planet habitable.
Collin Sinclair: In fact, he's authored two books on the search for life in the universe and leads the team. The CU team for 
NASA's astrobiology Institute. If anyone knows how to create a livable Mars, it's Dr Jakosky but does he think we can do it.
Collin Sinclair: Dr Jakosky thanks so much for being with us today.
Bruce M Jakosky: Real pleasure to be here today.
Collin Sinclair: We'll start off with, with the question that is might seem kind of trivial, but it's important for the 
success of this episode, which is, what is astrobiology?
Bruce M Jakosky: Astrobiology is all about trying to understand the origin, the distribution of life in the universe. 
We know that the Earth has life. It's the only place we know of that does
Bruce M Jakosky: But we can ask the question, where else in our solar system life exists. What about recent planets 
that have been discovered orbiting other stars because life exists there.
Bruce M Jakosky: It's all about understanding the relationship between life and its planetary environment and where 
conditions might be met that could support an origin of life or could support the continued existence of life.
Collin Sinclair: So, this is kind of in contrast to what you were talking about with our other guests, which is 
how can we support life that started on earth and thrive in space.
Collin Sinclair: But Astrobiology is kind of the opposite. We're looking at life that has no relationship to Earth and is just out there, you know, living
Bruce M Jakosky: Well yeah yes and no. If we think about life on Mars, for example, Mars meets all 
the environmental requirements, we'd put forward as being necessary to support life.
Bruce M Jakosky: Things like liquid water all of the different elements, out of which you might construct life 
and a source of energy, either through sunlight or chemical reactions that could support metabolism.
Bruce M Jakosky: But Mars doesn't have to have had an independent origin of life in order to have life. 
You can have living organisms transferred between planets.
Bruce M Jakosky: On Earth, for example, there are organisms that live inside of rocks in the water that fills pore spaces in the rock.
Bruce M Jakosky: And if one of those rocks happens to get ejected by an asteroid impact. It could find a 
way to Mars and transfer life there. So, it's possible if we find life on Mars than it might have come from Earth.
Bruce M Jakosky: It's also possible it could go the other way that if we find life on Mars or evidence for ancient life on Mars.
Bruce M Jakosky: That could be where the origin of life occurred and life on Earth had been 
transferred here for Mars. That's one of the fundamental questions that I think will be really interesting to try to answer.
Tara Tomlinson: So then, let me put this to you. And this is a question that people ask all the time. If there's so many opportunities 
for life to be out there, why haven't we found it yet. Why haven't Why haven't they contacted us, why don't we see any of this life just yet.
Bruce M Jakosky: Well, there, there are a lot of really good
Bruce M Jakosky: Questions locked up in that one simple
Bruce M Jakosky: Question. The first is, let's distinguish between microbial life and intelligent life. I don't expect microbes to contact us.
Bruce M Jakosky: They just aren't capable of building even primitive radio systems, but we can discover 
evidence for microbes. We've sent a spacecraft to Mars in the 1970s to look for evidence for life.
Bruce M Jakosky: It turns out, in hindsight that that the experiments on the Viking spacecraft were not really the right 
ones, but they were at the time, based on what we knew about life today we would send a different set of experiments.
Bruce M Jakosky: In addition, we have the issue of looking for life in what's called the Allen hills meteorite. It's a rock from Mars.
Bruce M Jakosky: About this big, about the size of a really big baked potato. That was knocked off of Mars by an impact and came to Earth.
Bruce M Jakosky: Some people think thought that they were seeing evidence for life evidence for fossil life inside of it.
Bruce M Jakosky: It took once that proposal was put forward. It took a team of maybe 500 scientists 
half a dozen years of analysis to reach a consensus on whether they were seeing evidence for life.
Bruce M Jakosky: That consensus was probably not, but it's not an easy question to answer. You pick up 
a rock and ask, does it have evidence inside of it for life.
Bruce M Jakosky: You have to do a lot of analysis to get a definitive answer the question about intelligent life is a very different one.
Bruce M Jakosky: People are looking for signals that might be transmitted by intelligent life that we might intercept.
Bruce M Jakosky: And it is a fair question to ask if life is so widespread, where is, how come they haven't come here and there are a lot 
of our hypotheses put forward as to why that might be the case. Everything from were so primitive. They don't want to bother with us to
Bruce M Jakosky: They're already here and just watching us biding their time until we demonstrate that we're a species worth interacting with
Collin Sinclair: So, moving towards your profession as a professor with the University of Colorado, you teach courses across a range of subjects.
Collin Sinclair: But some of the points that you like to touch on, or I'm just pulling this from your website. 
So perhaps this is false, but you can verify for us. It sounds like some of the points you like to touch on
Collin Sinclair: Are, are those related to societal and philosophical issues that relate to Astrobiology. What are some of these issues?
Bruce M Jakosky: Well, we've been getting at. Some of them are we alone in the universe. What does that 
mean for our perception of who we are as individuals or as a society.
Bruce M Jakosky: People are interested in this question of life elsewhere because we are life we exist in 
our planetary environment and it's of interest to know, are we alone. Are there other organisms.
Bruce M Jakosky: Again, I think the answer will have profound implications if you think about it, you can look in our history for examples of how
Bruce M Jakosky: Of what some of the implications might be the best analogy would be the Copernican revolution, the recognition that
Bruce M Jakosky: The sun and the planets don't revolve around the Earth, but the Earth goes around the sun, 
in some sense, that have the effect of displacing humans from the center of the universe.
Bruce M Jakosky: A record and at that time when that happened, it was a really big deal, you know,
Bruce M Jakosky: Does it make a difference to you or me whether the Earth goes around the sun 
or the sun around the Earth know you'd be hard pressed to think of ways in which really makes
Bruce M Jakosky: A real difference to you in your day to day life, but it's a profound difference in terms of the place of humans in the universe.
Bruce M Jakosky: And it created upheaval. At the time, there was an it's you can imagine that started what people have 
called a big battle between science and religion. Who has control over the description of the world? I think the recognition that
Bruce M Jakosky: If we find life that we're not the only life in the universe would have the same 
effect of displacing humans from the center of the universe to displacing terrestrial life.
Bruce M Jakosky: From the center of the biological universe, and I think it's a set of issues, we'd have to deal with.
Bruce M Jakosky: I think finding evidence for life would be profound looking where we think there should be evidence, 
where there should be life if it exists elsewhere and finding none would be profound. Just as well.
Tara Tomlinson: So, we've talked a little bit about Mars already and we mentioned in your bio. You are the PI 
of the MAVEN mission. Um, can you tell us a little bit about MAVEN and kind of how that relates to astrobiology
Bruce M Jakosky: I see Maven as an astrobiology mission MAVEN is the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution mission. 
The end in MAVEN is the 'n' at the end of evolution. So, it's not a true acronym.
Bruce M Jakosky: And I've taken a lot of grief for that over the years, but the MAVEN mission is focused on studying
Bruce M Jakosky: A part of the Mars system that really hasn't been studied. And that's the top of the atmosphere. That's the boundary 
between the thick lower atmosphere where all the weather occurs and space, the upper atmosphere is where the sun.
Bruce M Jakosky: Through its sunlight through the solar wind interacts. And it's able to strip gas off of the atmosphere. 
So, we're learning about the physics and chemistry of the Mars upper atmosphere.
Bruce M Jakosky: At the same time, we're seeing how these processes lead to loss of the atmosphere to space. And the goal of MAVEN was to understand
Bruce M Jakosky: What drove the climate change on Mars that we infer from the geology, we see evidence 
that early Mars was warmer, and wetter compared to today is cold and dry desert like planet.
Bruce M Jakosky: What drove that change, what was the role played by stripping of the atmosphere to space by the sun and the solar wind.
Bruce M Jakosky: So as a as an aeronomy mission which around me is the study of the upper atmosphere. 
It's perfectly fine. But really, it's an astrobiology mission. We're trying to learn what controls the climate.
Bruce M Jakosky: What controlled past tense. The climate on Mars. What could control the climate on Mars, like planets around other stars.
Bruce M Jakosky: We're looking at things that affect the history of liquid water on the surface, things that affect the temperature of the surface.
Bruce M Jakosky: And the control the habitability of Mars by microbes. All the evidence points to the surface of Mars as having been habitable.
Bruce M Jakosky: By microbes at least 4 billion years ago, but not today what control that by understanding the 
relationship between climate and geology and possible biology. We're really studying the astrobiology of Mars.
Collin Sinclair: So, we're talking about all of these places in the solar system that could have life right that we say, okay, well, this is a thought.
Collin Sinclair: What you know as the planetary scientist, when you look around. What do you see, being 
the necessary features of the planetary surface that sustain life or below the surface?
Collin Sinclair: You know, like Europa. For example, you mentioned that subsurface ocean. What are we looking for when we see all these different bodies?
Bruce M Jakosky: You know, with the
Bruce M Jakosky: The current understanding of widespread life on Earth and life living in environments 
that we would have fought until recently were way too extreme we've come up with a set of criteria.
Bruce M Jakosky: For what could support life and it's not very difficult liquid water access to the biogenic 
elements carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and 22 others that are all present on any geologically active planet.
Bruce M Jakosky: And a source of energy that can drive metabolism really any rocky planet that also has liquid water is going to meet these and
Bruce M Jakosky: Going to these places and looking to see whether there was an origin of life whether there ever was life there, 
it's going to tell us a lot about what the requirements are, as well as what the distribution of life in the solar system is
Collin Sinclair: This is on the pretense that you know the life that we're looking for is somehow related to the life that we know. 
And obviously, that makes sense because you know I think that
Collin Sinclair: That a lot of people have heard people say, well, we, we can't start looking for what we don't know. We have, you know, our 
starting place is us. We know that we exist, and we know what features you know make our lives possible. So, we can look for those
Collin Sinclair: What about things that, you know, do you think that there is a life form that doesn't operate at all like we do you know you've mentioned that
Collin Sinclair: You know there's these elements that we're looking for. And also, like a source of energy and how are we, 
how are these life forms you know metabolize and interacting with their environment.
Collin Sinclair: Like are there, you know, in your mind, is there a way that life could be completely different. And we don't even 
know how we, you know, any way to describe what it's doing or how it's working or is that not life as we're talking about it.
Bruce M Jakosky: Well, first it requires
Bruce M Jakosky: Answering the question.
Bruce M Jakosky: Of what is life. And that's a very hard question to answer by itself.
Bruce M Jakosky: But also, how do you look for it? On Earth, we have a very simple way of looking for life. If we want to go outside and see if there's life there.
Bruce M Jakosky: We can pick up something and the test is to determine whether it has RNA and DNA on Earth that appears to be a unique
Bruce M Jakosky: descriptor of whether something is alive or not. Now, you can imagine that there 
might be what people have called a shadow biosphere on Earth organisms that
Bruce M Jakosky: Exist. And we haven't discovered them, but don't use RNA and DNA. Maybe, maybe not.
Bruce M Jakosky: If we want to go to Mars and look for life. We could take the same RNA and DNA detectors 
and take them there. But if life isn't identical to Earth life. We're not going to discover it.
Bruce M Jakosky: So, you have to think of other ways to look for evidence of life, you can look for 
it in physical structures like cells, you can look for it in patterns of chemicals.
Bruce M Jakosky: Where certain chemicals are more abundant in a structure if it's been alive 
than if it hasn't been you can look for patterns in the stable isotopes.
Bruce M Jakosky: Different flavors of atoms that have different masses where certain chemical 
reactions or living organisms that use chemical reactions prefer one isotope to another.
Bruce M Jakosky: What are you going to find don't know we're trying to come up with ways to look for life that make as few assumptions as 
possible in order to not miss things, but we're always bound by our assumptions. Could there be life based on something other than carbon
Bruce M Jakosky: People always talk about silicon-based life because silicon sits right below carbon on the periodic table well on Earth carbon
Bruce M Jakosky: Reacts with hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, it makes these nice long chains of hydrocarbons 
that have various have properties that are at least for us appear very conducive to participating in life.
Bruce M Jakosky: Carbon can be present and in the earth's environment as a solid as a liquid as a gas, it can
Bruce M Jakosky: Be present in the atmosphere can dissolve in water can precipitate out as carbon minerals. It can be taken up by organisms.
Bruce M Jakosky: Silicon can do all these things, too. But when silicon combines with oxygen, it doesn't 
make long chains. It makes these what are called silicon tetrahedron that we think of as rock.
Bruce M Jakosky: And silicon can dissolve in water, but in very trace amounts and you don't find much silicon or silicon 
dioxide in the atmosphere. It's not something we breathe in. So, there are limits. I don't expect to find zinc-based life.
Bruce M Jakosky: Carbon is so abundant that it's not, it's probably not very limiting to assume that life will be carbon based
Bruce M Jakosky: Remember silicon at the surface of the Earth is 10,000 times more abundant 
than carbon yet life uses carbon. It's not just based on abundance. Similarly,
Bruce M Jakosky: Water is a great liquid in which life can exist, it can dissolve things it can precipitate things
Bruce M Jakosky: If there's water on a planet, I would think it would be water-based life if there was any, but you go to Titan and you have methane, 
ethane oceans. Could there be methane, ethane-based life using those liquids instead of water. I wouldn't rule it out. It's not impossible.
Collin Sinclair: Alright, so, so we'll move on a little bit into you, what you do. And one of those things is writing books you've written two of them.
Collin Sinclair: That they're called the search for life on other planets and Science Society and the search for 
life in the universe. I'm curious. What drove you to write these books like when what
Collin Sinclair: Made you say okay, it's now my time to write a book. And also, what's it like to write a book, because that's pretty cool.
Bruce M Jakosky: It certainly wasn't a money-making proposition. I didn't set out to be rich, you know the first book on life in the universe.
Bruce M Jakosky: The, the physical environments. Everything from stars two planets to oceans and atmospheres to possible life, history of life on Earth.
Bruce M Jakosky: What pushed me down that path was the recognition that when I talked to students when 
I taught classes for undergraduates. They were interested in the questions about life in the universe.
Bruce M Jakosky: I remember my first classes in planetary science didn't have any discussion of life. 
Then I added one day, we'll talk about life on Mars, and the Viking missions.
Bruce M Jakosky: That one day expanded into a week and it eventually expanded into a whole semester because 
I realized that that's what the kids were interested in. And it's not because they were way out in left field.
Bruce M Jakosky: They were expressing something that was inside of everybody that interest and I explored it in depth. I started to understand the
Bruce M Jakosky: Issues and how it all came together. This was in the 1990s, at the same time that we were recognizing
Bruce M Jakosky: Just for the first time the possibilities for life elsewhere. And I thought, how cool I want to share this. So, I wrote a book.
Bruce M Jakosky: At the time, I think it was the first book in what I would call the modern era of understanding the possibilities for life in the universe, and it was
Bruce M Jakosky: To me almost a life changing event to explore in detail all of these different disciplines 
and how they come together changed my view of the world dramatically, and I realized
Bruce M Jakosky: Along with everybody else how important the questions about life in the 
universe were and how fundamental they worked at the science that we were engaged in
Collin Sinclair: And so, you said you know you. That's the count the inception of the book. What's the process of writing a book like I've 
never talked to an author firsthand that's written two books to just ask way, what's it like to write a book. How does that work.
Bruce M Jakosky: Well, I've seen a good description of it. You just sit down in front of a blank piece of paper and cut open a vein and it just all pours out
Bruce M Jakosky: It's very daunting. If you think of it as writing a book. But if you break it down into chapters. Each one is very straightforward in that that book.
Bruce M Jakosky: I can't remember right now. I had about 20 chapters and each one, when I sat down to write it was 
very well defined. It was about 10 pages 10 pages of single 10 or 20 I forget now pages of single space typed.
Bruce M Jakosky: verbiage, and I know how to do that. It's very, very easy if you know what you want to say to write down the words.
Bruce M Jakosky: The hard part is thinking about what you want to say organizing it and 
making sure you've got everything covered that said it took me about two years to write
Bruce M Jakosky: write that book because I also had other things that I had to do with my time, I would say it was about a year of efforts spread over two years.
Bruce M Jakosky: And I remember when I was done holding this manuscript in my hands and thinking
Bruce M Jakosky: If I took this and just threw it in the trash can. Right now, and walked away from it. It's still would have been 
worth doing because of the impact that had on my thinking about how everything fit together in the universe.
Collin Sinclair: That is awesome.
Tara Tomlinson: I like that.
Bruce M Jakosky: I didn't do that.
Bruce M Jakosky: I didn't do that
Bruce M Jakosky: But I thought about what it would mean it was just an interesting realization
Collin Sinclair: That's very cool.
Tara Tomlinson: Do you think that I'm having experience writing scientific papers kind of 
helped with that breaking it into 10- and 20-page chunks. It's, it's very much like submitting a paper.
Bruce M Jakosky: That's the point I was trying to make that that I know how to write a paper. 
I know how to write 10 pages because I've been doing that my whole career.
Bruce M Jakosky: So, once I could break it down into 10-page chunks. It was very straightforward to write not easy; it still took a lot of effort. A lot of time.
Bruce M Jakosky: I can't tell you how many nights and weekends I spent working on that. But it was straightforward.
Tara Tomlinson: Alright, so Dr. Bruce Jakosky thank you so much again for joining us. It's been a pleasure chatting with you.
Bruce M Jakosky: Thank you. It's always a pleasure.
Colin Sinclair: Alright, and that wraps things up for this week's episode of A View from Earth.
Colin Sinclair: We'd like to thank our guests really quick, Dr. Luis Zea and Dr. Bruce Jakosky 
for giving us their time and talking a bit about life away from Earth.
Colin Sinclair: By the way, we cut their interviews quite a bit to fit into our allotted time for the main episode. but the full, extended interviews
Colin Sinclair: Are available on YouTube and SoundCloud. So, if either of those really 
caught your eye, go ahead and check the extended interviews out. I think you'll like them a lot!
Colin Sinclair: Next week we're going to be talking about Citizen Science with [Dr.] Michael Aye & [Dr.] Ganna Portyankina.
Colin Sinclair: And that's going to be a lot of fun! The episode is titled:
Collin Sinclair: "So You Want to Be an Astronomer”
Collin Sinclair: Do You?
Colin Sinclair: Check out the episode. Make sure to give a visit to our website: colorado.edu/fiske
Colin Sinclair: And there you can leave us questions if you like; that we will then pass on to our experts.
Colin Sinclair: But also, from our website, there is an option to donate.
Colin Sinclair: If you'd like to be a part of this podcast and allow for its continuation into the future
Colin Sinclair: we'd really appreciate that, so thank you.
Colin Sinclair: This podcast is available on YouTube, SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. And from us here at the View from Earth team,
Colin Sinclair: thank you for listening.
