SIO509: What Project Hail Mary Gets Right (And Very Wrong...) About Biology

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:11 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 509. I'm Thomas Smith. I am so excited for this one. Have you seen the movie Project Hail Mary? Or maybe have you read the book? Or, maybe both? Well, I hope so, because that's what we're going to be talking about today. We've got Dr. Eric Jaffe here to break down the biology of Project Hail Mary. What does it get right? What does get very wrong? And then, because I'm me, I'm also going to suggest that you got quite a few space things wrong, but that's okay. Still a very good movie. I had fun. I liked it. A lot of people are really loving this one. Here's the thing. I tried. I set about to try to do it in a non-spoiler way. That was my goal. And then I quickly realized because of the specific science we needed to talk about, there's basically no way to do that non-spoilers. I don't think the spoilers are like super important plot points. So if you haven't seen it and you still want to see it, I don't think it would be horrible to listen, but you might want to consider if you're anti-spoilers, I know some people don't care. Air. If you're really anti -spoilers, you might want to pause this one, keep it handy for when you do see it. But yeah, normally try to keep it spoiler free. Just wasn't possible with the specific science that we want to talk about. That said, I'm really excited. This is a really fun one. Couple of nerds nerding out to a nerd movie in the best way. And I'm so glad Dr. Eric Jaffe was back on the show. It's been far too long. All right, we're going to take our quick first break. You can avoid those annoying ads if you go to patreon .com slash serious pod, support the show, support conversations like these, and share the show! All right. After this, I'll be on with Dr. Eric Jaffe to talk Project Hail Mary.

0:01:51 Ad: [Ad break 1 — ad music]

0:01:51 Thomas: So, Eric, it's been far too long. How you doing?

0:01:53 Eric: I'm doing pretty well. We just finished up our third of four report periods in school. Kids did really, really well on their biology exams, so take that, Charles Murray, and the bell curve.

0:02:03 Thomas: Did you have to explain to them how the sun is dying? And you're like, hey.

0:02:07 Eric: Luckily, we haven't been attacked by alien neural tubes yet, so I haven't been called into higher service yet, but I'm on the lookout.

0:02:14 Thomas: Because apparently none of the kids will know anything and you'll be breaking the news to them. Why? I don't know. But that's how movies work.

0:02:21 Eric: That was really weird, yeah. Although I will say, kids will ask me about current events, so that does kind of track, where because you, as a teacher, you're a trusted source of information, they'll still They'll process things through you, even if they get their news from other sources. So like the dire wolf stuff, I was talking to my students all the time, for instance.

0:02:37 Thomas: Oh, yeah. The direwolf stuff. Man, man, I forgot about that. Are they eating the sun? How are they doing?

0:02:42 Eric: We are going to have some callbacks in this because we're going to talk about the history of life on Earth. We're goingto talk about probably Brett Weinstein, because what's an episode without dropping his name?

0:02:50 Thomas: Well, yeah. So we watched Project Hail Mary. Well you read and watched?

0:02:56 Eric: I read and watched, yes.

0:02:57 Thomas: I literally just minutes ago walked in the door from seeing it today because I really wanted to see it. Once I saw that, I was like, oh, I want to watch this before I do it because I don't want any spoilers. And so we just watched it. I enjoyed it. We're going to talk about some of the science. I will warn that we have to talk about something that it does happen later in the movie. I don't think it's like that big of a deal as a spoiler, as spoilers go. Just in my evaluation in terms of enjoying the movie, it's not like he's dead the whole time and he's a ghost or something. It's not, not like that level of kind of thing, but it is a plot point later. Unfortunately, we got to spoil it, but spoiler warnings issued. I'm talking enough to give people time to turn it off if they don't want to, but I don't know. I think you should have to. Okay. We just watched it. I would don't want to do the thing where I say a bunch of general thoughts first. Cause I always get caught ADHD wise talking for an hour before digging into it. So I, why don't we just dig into it though? I will say I liked, I liked the movie. I liked it. I thought it was like a solid B plus. Did you like it?

0:03:52 Eric: I also really enjoyed it. It's going to sound like I'm yucking people's yum in a couple of minutes, but I want to be very clear, right? Right. This is the scientists using this as a way to talk about things. And all science fiction movies, there's a reason why there's the fiction after science. Right. So obviously there's some things that don't kind of jive. I will say there are things that Andy Weir did that made things harder for himself that we'll talk about. But overall, I also really enjoyed the movie. I thought a lot of the things they did science wise in the book in particular were really well done. The movie flattened a lot OF those things. So there's A couple of things we can talk about, They kind of removed the things that made it very good at science in the movies, but it was still a really wonderful, wonderful movie.

0:04:29 Thomas: I want to ask you a question. I haven't looked up. Why do I know the name Andy Weir? He must've written something else that I know.

0:04:37 Eric: He also wrote The Martian, and not to give away the whole thing, The Martian was a much more grounded, obviously because it didn't involve quite the scale and stakes, but it also allowed that to be much more grounded in the science. This one starts veering off into more speculative areas, and there's things that he does well with that, but then things that kind of was getting too cute by half and made things more difficult for himself science-wise.

0:04:38 Thomas: Ah, that's it. Okay. Yeah. Well, here's what I will say. It's a good thing we're talking to a biologist and not any sort of space person. I mean, I'm sure you're an admirer, but the space stuff was absolutely terrible. Like, the space staff, especially toward the end of the movie, was so dog shit I was laughing. But the biology stuff seemed less obviously wrong or anything and really interesting. I actually loved the central premise. So the central premise from the beginning, this isn't any kind of spoiler, like the very beginning, it seems as though they discover that something is like eating the sun. And it seems to be this, I'm going to forget the terminology, but some, some sort of, they have the names for it. You know, whoever discovered it or whatever. There we go. A Petrova line. It's like this stream of stuff coming out of the sun. They don't know what it is. And it turns out it's like, it's, like, eating the sun and then turns out at some sort of I guess we don't for sure if it's a life form or not at this point. And I, what, do we ever know if it is a life?

0:05:38 Eric: It's a Petrova line. Yeah. Yes.

0:05:54 Thomas: I'm not sure if that specifically, oh, he does say it's life. Yeah.

0:05:56 Eric: In the book, they very much confirm. And I'm going to be using some knowledge from the book where they're a lot more clear, just because nothing in the movie counteracted the readings in the book. And I actually think the movie did a better job of keeping it vague because it's in the specifics where I think Andy Weir made some choices that made things a little bit more complicated than they needed to be.

0:06:15 Thomas: Well, one thing I did like, because it reminded me of my one biology class I took. So they end up getting some sort of sample. And wouldn't you know it, our only guy who Jenessa thinks is Blake Lively's husband. In opening arguments, she said Ryan Reynolds. I didn't know enough at the time to correct her. I was like, I didn't think that was right, but I also hadn't looked at the movie yet. But no, it's Ken. It's different. Wait, are they both Ryans? Is it Ryan Gosling?

0:06:41 Eric: Yeah, it's Ryan Gosling. And I got to say, as a biologist turned teacher, the fact that it looks like Ryan Gosling is the most unrealistic part of the...

0:06:46 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot about him and his career and all that stuff that's kind of unrealistic. He's studying it. And one moment I liked was at a certain point, he's like, oh, it's moving. And then everybody who's apparently idiots was like, it'S ALIVE. And then he's, like, well, no, that could be a lot of, it doesn't mean it's alive. And I do remember that one thing from high school biology was a particular, like lab or whatever we did, what makes something alive? And I remember the teacher did something, you can make something look like it's Alive, but it's actually just a little chemical reaction that's like making it look like it's eating stuff, but that's much different than life. So I liked that because Cause it was kind of reminiscent of that, but then apparently he's just like, no, it's a lie.

0:07:24 Eric: And that's actually where this book really, the movie flattens a lot of these points. Where the book is at its best is a lot people think that science is the way science is done in the MCU, where a really rich person buys a really piece of fancy equipment, and then they just tell the fancy equipment to do things, and they get an answer.

0:07:43 Thomas: An AI that's way too good at understanding human humor for my taste will like do everything and it'll just be like, dude, run that. And I was like, okay.

0:07:52 Eric: Spoilers for Endgame, I genuinely don't understand why it was impressive that Tony Stark invented time travel when he literally did nothing. He just sent his AI. And what I love about the book, especially, and a great example of this is the opening scene of the movie where he looks out and realizes he's in outer space. In the book. The way he figured it out wasn't by looking out the window. It was by testing gravity. Right.

0:08:17 Eric: And those type of simple experiments are really at the heart of what Andy Weir does well, scientifically. Right.

0:08:22 Thomas: First thing I muttered to my probably annoyed wife, I was like, why is there gravity? Why is there gravity? Why is, why is there? Oh, I told her, I was like they better fucking, there better be a spinny thing going on. They better have a spinny thing. They didn't.

0:08:28 Eric: At the time, there would be gravity because of acceleration.

0:08:36 Thomas: Well, oh, you're telling me that they're accelerating at exactly 9 .8 meters per second squared in space? Is that what you're trying to tell me?

0:08:44 Eric: That's actually what gave it away is they weren't, gravity wasn't 9 .8 meters per second. And that's how he knew he wasn't on Earth.

0:08:50 Thomas: My point is, why would it be anywhere near anything like that? There's two kinds of space travel. One is like a very slow acceleration that you do forever, you know, and it like slowly, slowly, slow takes up. I don't think you would notice that really, because it's so slow. And then I guess in this movie, not to give anything away, but they have a fuel source that's super, super strong. So are we to understand he's burning up something like 9 .8 meters per second squared? That would take forever though. Wouldn't you have to? I don't know.

0:09:18 Eric: Well, yes, they were going, I think, 0 .92 C, so like 92 % the speed of light.

0:09:22 Thomas: Oh, okay. Okay. So they did in the book, that's the justification. Okay, well, I like that because it was funny because later on in the movie, they're like, gravity, turn it on. I was like, wait, what? Why do you got the gravity? But I did tell Lydia, I was Like, oh, are they going to say they were exactly accelerating? And also the ship is pointed, I guess the right way for everything. Okay. It's fine. It works out.

0:09:44 Eric: Believe me, there's a lot bigger problems than the acceleration and gravity, and I'm also not as qualified to talk about that one.

0:09:46 Thomas: Yeah. Not toward the end. Toward the end, that's the biggest problem, toward the end .

0:09:54 Eric: Fair.

0:09:54 Thomas: It's so bad.

0:09:55 Eric: There are other catastrophic problems, but we'll unpack them all together

0:09:57 Thomas: Yeah, okay. We'll do biology. But anyway, so you're saying he did a little experiment to kind of figure out the acceleration was different and that's how he discovers he's in space? Like, yeah.

0:10:06 Eric: Exactly because anywhere on earth gravity will be 9 .8 meters per second and he was consistently getting I forget what the exact number was but it was off by enough that he realized he had to be either in a highly specialized environment with a centrifuge or on a spaceship

0:10:21 Thomas: Okay, so he doesn't have the ability to just tell that in the book. That sounds kind of interesting you can't just see out a window or something yeah

0:10:27 Eric: In the book it was a lot more interesting because it was you start off in media res and then he's slowly gaining his memories as he completes the mission and it backfills all of of the stuff on Earth. So the movie went a lot more chronologically, which is why spoilers are always a weird thing for this one, because it does jump around a bit. Yeah.

0:10:45 Thomas: Well that's dang that's kind of spoilers for the book I wish I had read the book first because that would be a really cool process of discovery I

0:10:52 Eric: Anyway, eventually, right, this scientist turned teacher turned back into a scientist gets recruited to study this possible alien life. Yes.

0:10:56 Thomas: Bet back on earth now we're talking on

0:11:02 Eric: And the reason why was because he wrote a thesis about how life does not necessarily have to be water based. And apparently this got him blackballed from the field. And that that was my first kind of like, we consider that stuff all the time. In fact, we don't have the time to really get into this, but there's already suspected, not suspected, there's evidence of possible microbial life on Venus because of the byproducts of certain things in the atmosphere. And Venus has zero water, which we will definitely talk about later.

0:11:05 Thomas: Earth yeah yeah very silly wait it has zero water I mean I think I learned that it was like no as a kid I thought it was all like watery for some reason. I don't know why I thought that.

0:11:39 Eric: Venus used to have water, but they are in the later stages of what humans are trying to do to earth right now. And they they had a runaway greenhouse effect.

0:11:47 Thomas: So they had Republicans. Okay. They've discovered Republicans on Venus. Gotcha. Possibly.

0:11:51 Eric: They had their own alien civilization that put oil over, you know, and here we are.

0:11:57 Thomas: Yeah. Okay, so that's interesting. I thought that was funny too, but then I almost, I was trying to do the thing. I've grown a lot as a person because I was Trying to help it. I was helping the movie with the acceleration thing. I was like, maybe that's what they're saying. I Thought it was kind of weird because I don t think you'd be accelerating at that rate, but that's just me. And then this one I was was like okay what if he actually later she's like well you got fired for calling somebody out or something I was like oh what if she is saying he got blackballed because of his theories but actually he's an asshole

0:12:23 Eric: Yeah, and that's what I wrestled with. And now we're going to drop the mention. I was unclear whether this was a story like the guy that invented the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, where he had this truly groundbreaking idea and then kind of left the field because of various levels of antipathy, levels of not buy -in or disillusionment.

0:12:41 Eric: Or if this was a Brett Weinstein who wrote a really general thesis that didn't really engage with anything directly, was overbroad and over -challenging and overconfronted for no reason, and then was confused why he was blackballed from academia. And I gotta be honest, after seeing that chapter title, I know which way I'm voting. I think we would have done The Curious Case.

0:12:59 Thomas: Oh what's the chapter title

0:13:01 Eric: It was like something like, you guys are all idiots for believing this, but it was very overbrawed and combative, so I have a feeling we'd be doing The Curius Case of Rylan Grace's thesis if we were in real life.

0:13:11 Thomas: Oh yeah yeah for sure it also like doesn't seem like it was that unique a thought so then they do some comedy where he's like oh turns out the thing he was studying it is water -based so then why is it what's he even doing why is he any sort of a specialist then if the one justification you had for why this His high school teacher was there. He had a thesis that had something to say. But then, I guess, I don't know. He shows his brilliance in making some discoveries that justifies him still being in the movie. So we'll go with that.

0:13:36 Eric: That was one of my favorite parts of the science, is that simple experiment he did where he went to Home Depot to get some duct tape and cardboard and set up that little, I don't know if we want to start the spoilers now, but the astrophage trap. And just to be clear, what astrophagy is, is a microorganism that is eating the sun and then traveling to Venus for the second part of its life cycle. And that's what the Petropa line is.

0:14:02 Eric: The worry is that as it consumes the energy from the sun, it's going to make the world colder to such a degree, 10 to 15 degrees after like 40 years, where we're worried about two degrees of warming. Think about what 10 to15 degrees of cooling would do,

0:14:16 Thomas: Yeah. Right when they said 10 to 15 degrees in 30 years, I was like, oh, okay, that's not. You're dead. That's not, that seems really bad.

0:14:22 Eric: Right? It would it would truly be apocalyptic. But my favorite part of that whole sequence was that simple experiment he did where he figured out very quickly what it has taxes to what attracts it, and then how it reproduces right? A very simple experiment is where this movie and book really, really shine. The problems that it introduces by being water-based and having DNA and mitochondria is where it almost completely lost me.

0:14:47 Eric: Do you want to start to unpack why that's kind of where it lost me?

0:14:50 Thomas: Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the whole thing, though, initially, the whole reason that she reached out to him movie wise was well it's eating the sun so it can't be water -based and so we're talking to this not water -base scientist and so yeah but then it was so I guess that they found a way around that

0:15:04 Eric: I'm going to actually leave aside the problems of that one-way insulation heat shield it's got that allows it to protect itself from the sun, but also take in nutrients and expel nutrients. All of those things shouldn't work as like a one-way mirror through its cell membrane. It should be able to either exchange both directions or it would be completely insulated, right? It doesn't really work that you can take in the sun's energy and not have it incinerate you.

0:15:32 Eric: That's actually not my biggest problem. My biggest problem is not even that it's water -based, although my first ping of like kind of this is weird is that it kept an internal temperature temperature of 96 .1 degrees.

0:15:43 Thomas: Was that in the movie or just in the book I don't remember that

0:15:44 Eric: It was very, very briefly in like a computer monitor. It kept saying 96 .15 degrees.

0:15:49 Thomas: Yeah that seems interesting okay

0:15:51 Eric: The reason why that's unnecessarily problematic is you're already talking about keeping temperature next to the sun, right? And 96 degrees is just hot enough where in the lab, we use 95 degrees for a very specific thing when we handle DNA.

0:15:59 Thomas: Yeah

0:16:09 Eric: DNA is double -stranded, right, It's got base pair partners so that it can replicate itself, so that it stores information on both strands. And the double strand in nature is actually very key to DNA's ability to replicate itself. Because if I have one side, I also have the other side. But at 96 degrees, the hydrogen bonds between the two strands actually break down and it starts to separate.

0:16:08 Thomas: Huh oh wow oh wow it's that's sensitive huh

0:16:33 Eric: It's extremely sensitive, except for a certain type of organisms on Earth that we call extremophiles. And extremophiles are actually able to live in even superheated water because of pressure that's above boiling. And they do that by having modifications to their DNA that allows it to maintain stability even in those elevated temperatures.

0:16:51 Thomas: Oh so it's not just like it somehow insulates itself

0:16:54 Eric: Well, it does insulate itself, but if it's 96 degrees inside, it can't insulate the inside from...

0:17:00 Thomas: Oh it's 96 inside oh yeah I missed that sorry yeah yeah

0:17:02 Eric: Exactly. It's always 96 degrees. Inside the cell.

0:17:05 Thomas: Gotcha gotcha okay so you're saying this was like kind of a needless choice

0:17:09 Eric: Exactly. Why not just make it at normal homeostatic temperatures if you already have a differential compared to the sun? I don't see why you need to keep it at a hot 96 degrees when that's still infinitely colder than the surface of the sun.

0:17:15 Thomas: Hmm

0:17:24 Eric: Either way, you have that problem of temperature differential, but they never actually explain that they have those modified DNA residues in the book like an extremophile would have, which kind of, again, just adds a needless complication. And that's a big theme throughout because as I mentioned, it has DNA and it has a mitochondria. That sets up a whole running theme throughout the book that this isn't a part of panspermia.

0:17:23 Thomas: Does seem weird hmm

0:17:47 Eric: And panspernia is the idea that life on Earth was seeded by life on other planets. And there's like a universal travel of life throughout the universe.

0:17:45 Thomas: Oh okay

0:17:56 Eric: But it's all connected from that initial life event.

0:17:56 Thomas: Oh wow oh so that's why he decided to make it have dna and all that stuff because it still needs to be like close enough to us is that what you're

0:18:06 Eric: I actually think that this was a mistake to make it close enough to us. And I'll explain why in a second.

0:18:09 Thomas: Saying oh okay but do you think that's why he did that is what I'm

0:18:13 Eric: I don't know. I think it was to really make sure that it was alive. And I think he might just like the idea of panspermia, but there were better ways to do panspermias we're about to talk about.

0:18:20 Thomas: Saying okay I'm always saying that oh

0:18:26 Eric: Here's the thing about mitochondria. Mitochondria is not like an organelle that can evolve, right? What it was most likely is another bacteria that the first eukaryotic cells actually swallowed whole in an idea called endosymbiotic theory.

0:18:42 Thomas: Right and then like combined

0:18:44 Eric: And there's a couple of reasons why we know that. One is that the mitochondria has its own double membrane system that allows it to control its own environment, more or less. But the real kicker is that it has its own DNA. And not only that, human DNA and eukaryotic cells with a nucleus, just to be clear, those type of cells that have those membrane -bound organelles that have a nucleus store their DNA linearly in lines that are strings, right, that are wrapped around these histone proteins and organized into chromosomes after they wrap around like beads on a string.

0:19:17 Eric: That's how they pack that DNA so efficiently. Bacteria are like the messy kids that just leave their clothes all over the room. They don't have a nucleus, and they don't have histones for their DNA. They instead have a circular chromosome that just coils and wraps around itself like a rubber band that gets tied up. And so here's the problem. Mitochondria were swallowed up by eukaryotic cells almost a billion years into evolution on life on Earth. And if you want to say that this is a panspermia event where the astrophage is coming to Earth, you can't have it match a eukaryotic cell, if it's seeding life on Earth, it would have to be bacterial because for a billion years, the only life on earth was bacteria.

0:19:52 Thomas: Interesting okay yeah no that makes sense

0:19:59 Eric: And there's even more problems with having a mitochondrion because a mitochondrion, by definition, means that you are using oxygen as your main form of metabolism.

0:20:07 Thomas: Why does it mean that, by definition

0:20:09 Eric: Oh, what mitochondria do, right? The reason they're the powerhouse of the cell is because after you break down sugar, after you breakdown glucose, you do this thing called electron transport, where you take the energy that you broke from from the bonds in glucose, and you pass it along the cell membrane of the mitochondria via electrons. But at the end, you're left with a spare electron. And what oxygen does is kind of accept it at the end and close the loop so that the electron transport chain can go again. But without oxygen, the mitochondrion doesn't work. And there isn't oxygen either in the sun or where they were going to breed, which is Venus.

0:20:46 Eric: There's also no water on Venus. And if you're going to double your cells on Venus, this might sound obvious or it might not. If you're going from one cell to two cells, unless you're getting smaller and smaller each time, you need to get new water. So where are they getting that water from in a planet that doesn't have it?

0:20:43 Thomas: I was under the impression there would be water so I was told there'd be

0:21:21 Ad: [Ad break 2 — ad music]

0:21:22 Eric: Venus has no water and it's only like 0 .3 % oxygen.

0:21:25 Thomas: Water oh okay so there's I was gonna say I would have thought there was some oxygen too I guess I'm just all wrong about venus but at least there's a little

0:21:31 Eric: There's carbon dioxide. So you could hand wave it away by like saying that they use their immense energy to split carbon dioxide into oxygen, but that doesn't solve the the water problem. And again, it just introduces needless complications. Because here's the fun part. The first life on Earth was actually bacteria that didn't use oxygen. I think we talked about this in the Great Extinction episode. But oxygen actually started killing things at first.

0:21:34 Thomas: Bit right hmm

0:22:01 Eric: It wasn't until we had those oxygen

0:21:56 Thomas: Yeah right yeah and the planet was like way heavier higher in oxygen right right

0:22:04 Eric: Producing things, the photosynthetic organisms.

0:22:06 Thomas: Well produce oxygen producing thing oh okay I thought you were saying oxygen like consuming things uh

0:22:12 Eric: No, because photosynthesis takes in CO2 and spits out oxygen. Cellular respiration takes in oxygen oxygen and spits out CO2. So before we had those photosynthetic organisms, it was actually a very low oxygen environment.

0:22:20 Thomas: Yeah gotcha I thought it happened the other way around I think that's my confusion oh

0:22:29 Eric: No, it Was actually that way. Yeah.

0:22:29 Thomas: Okay gotcha I thought the order was was backwards. Oh, OK. Interesting.

0:22:32 Eric: But here's why I say that he kind of wrote himself needless complications. If I was saying that an alien seeded life on Earth, and it also replicates on Venus very well, I would just say that it was like the original bacteria that didn't use oxygen, that didn'T have mitochondria. There's no reason why these these astrophages have to be eukaryotic because then you're tying it to a specific time in evolution over a billion years into life on earth, which means that it can't actually seed the life on earth. Whereas if you made it bacteria, then you have a plausible mechanism for panspermia with a little bit of hand waving.

0:23:07 Thomas: Interesting Well in the movie they didn't care about that at all because I there was no sense that this was panspermia And also sorry for again, it's mild spoilers. We are gonna meet an alien life form Are we to suspect then that that would also have to be related to this if it's panspernia?

0:23:11 Eric: Right. They somewhat suggested that, but, and here's the good news for all my Rocky fans. They did not go into the biology nearly enough and they didn't suggest it was DNA based or even water based. They actually used like a mercury liquid metal blood type system that was way more interesting and way more foreign

0:23:35 Thomas: Oh nice. Yeah, cuz I friggin love this thing.

0:23:40 Eric: And allows me to hand wave a lot more, right?

0:23:42 Thomas: Yeah I love this alien. It was great.

0:23:44 Eric: And because it's so alien, I can buy a lot more of the stuff. But when you start bringing in mitochondria and DNA, you start bringing in needlessly complications for how does something that needs oxygen and water survive on Venus in the sun?

0:24:00 Thomas: Yeah I don't have an answer for

0:24:02 Eric: What's also curious is once they found out it has DNA, the very first thing I would have done was sequence the DNA, right, because theoretically, especially if it has mitochondria, it would fall within the tree of life on Earth, and you'd be able to place its evolutionary history. In particular, I'd look for two things. I'd looked for a sequence of bases called T -A -T -A or T -AT -A, a TATA box. And then 30 bases away from that, I looked for T -AC, those letters. And there's a reason why. All eukaryotic organisms, when they start a gene, starts with that TATA data box to like kind of recruit RNA polymerase and the machinery to make a protein. And then the very first amino acid in every single protein for all organisms on life on earth. This is one of the biggest proofs of common ancestry. They all start with that TAC, which becomes methionine. And so there would be a very easy way to prove it.

0:24:16 Thomas: You interesting yeah I can't say I followed that um it was a lot of words that I would I wouldn't be able to put it in any sort of words of my own but I also don't know how important it is so I don't know

0:25:09 Eric: Here's how I would think about it. DNA reads three letters at a time, as we've talked about before. Those three letters code for the amino acids that make our proteins. And that's why DNA matters, because it builds proteins. Every single protein starts with a methionine amino acid. All life on Earth, all proteins start with that. And if I wanted to see if this was life that came or started life on earth, I would look for that methionin at the start of every gene.

0:25:35 Thomas: So you're saying in the I just want to get something straight because in the movie like I said they don't none of this is happening so in the move -in movie that could explain why you didn't do that is because who cares apparently they made in the moving they kind of made it so there was was like a really tight timeline it was like they really needed to get all the information immediately as fast as possible so maybe that would explain not doing the thing you're

0:25:57 Eric: It wouldn't, it wouldn't because the whole thing is an intergalactic case of, I don't know why I swallowed the fly, right? They're going to Tau Ceti to try and figure out how to stop the astrophage.

0:26:04 Thomas: Saying hmm I don't think we introduced that but I guess it is going to be pretty hard

0:26:11 Eric: Yeah, it's very hard to talk about it without spoilers.

0:26:13 Thomas: The reason he's on a ship yeah is because apparently there's one star and like the whole anywhere near anything that it's not consuming so this stuff that's eating stars it's and so the only thing they can think to do rather than, I don't know, somehow study from a distance is build a spaceship with a new fuel source that from the literal astrophysicians themselves to be able to go to this very, very, far away place. Seems impractical to me to say the least, but we'll, we'll set that aside.

0:26:43 Eric: I actually would not like to set that aside because this is a good example of like what people think science is versus how a scientist would approach the problem. Because Dr. Grace actually approached it the exact way I would, right? With those boxes and that dark room, he figured out three major things. That it's absorbing the sun's energy and using that to move. Move that it is then attracted to infrared light and trying to go there because that's the emission spectrum of carbon dioxide. And that once it's in that carbon dioxide rich environment, that's what it's using to reproduce. Because you can take carbon and oxygen and use them to build things the same way plants do, right? Plants build most of their sugars, not from sunlight, that'S where they get the energy, but from the carbon dioxide in the air to build those sugars.

0:27:30 Eric: And THAT was was my favorite part of the book and the movie, that simple experiment that kind of traces out the whole life cycle. There's one other problem. If they have mitochondria and take energy from the sun, I am confused why there's no mention of chloroplasts, right? Because the whole goal of a chloropast is kind of like a mitochondria, also a bacteria that was swallowed up by another eukaryotic organism later in that evolutionary path, right, and its whole job is to use pigments to trap light energy and turn it into chemical energy, which is what we're saying the astrophage is doing. So they would need to have some type of chloroplast organism or organelle, but if they have a mitochondria in DNA, there is only chloroplasm and chlorophyll that does that light -to -chemical conversion on Earth. And so again, if you're going to do this whole panspermia thing where we are related to the astorphage, you would needto explain a little bit more about what it's using to convert that light energy into chemical energy.

0:27:45 Thomas: Me too. That's what I was saying. Where are the quarter paths? I says to my wife. Okay

0:28:34 Eric: And I would expect it to have a chloroplast as well.

0:28:36 Thomas: But for the movie screw all that because we're not doing panspermia so that's at least good so do you think that's maybe why they made that choice or they just didn't have time to squeeze it all in it was a lot to squeeze

0:28:46 Eric: I think it's both. I think both movies always flatten the science. And also, hopefully, someone gave him some feedback about all of the issues that these introduced. Because if they had just went with hydrogen or sulfur -reducing bacteria, there's plenty of hydrogen sulfide sulfates and everything on Venus where it's going to reproduce. And it would have matched the timeline of panspermia, where the first life on Earth was sulfur -reducing bacteria, right? So that would have just been a much cleaner hand wave than introducing these eukaryotic cells way ahead of the timeline.

0:29:20 Eric: Here's where I do want to kind of talk about the mission because once you know how it reproduces, once you Know what light spectrum it's attached to, and once you kind of know where it's going and how to kill it, because if you remember, he killed one of the astrophages.

0:29:35 Thomas: In hmm oh yeah he accidentally killed one yeah

0:29:37 Eric: You don't need to go to Tau Ceti anymore. More. You can make an astrophage trap. This is now an engineering problem, just

0:29:42 Thomas: Yeah you get a little box with a stick and then you're like here astrophage and then it goes under of there yeah yeah

0:29:47 Eric: At a very grand scale, because you have all of humanity working towards that, right? You get your finest engineers to design a surface where everything is a nanopointed needle, and it's put that right in the Petrova line, and now you don't have an astorphage problem. Or you set up a series of dark boxes right by that Petrovo line. You trap it in a way that it's got polarized lenses where where the light can go through the trap to attract the astrophage, but it changes the spectrum going the other way towards Venus, and now it doesn't know where to go for its reproduction. Both of those are way more plausible to me than developing interstellar flight for the first time ever, getting it perfectly right, inducing comas into a crew of only three people.

0:30:33 Eric: Exactly, you're getting it right. And when two of them didn't wake up from that coma, I'm sorry, I don't like the odds of that third person waking up. But not only that, it gets worse because they wouldn't even know the mission failed or not because communication is so problematic when you're light years away.

0:30:31 Thomas: Yeah then only sending three guys yeah yeah right also the travel speeds made no sense doesn't he say it was 11 light years away yeah and then in the

0:30:57 Eric: So it was about a 13 -year journey. Yes. Right.

0:30:59 Thomas: End okay at a certain point it is said in the movie that it's going to take four years so I was like well that can't be anything I realizing that we pretty much do have to give away most of the movie sorry I was thinking thinking we could talk around it, but it is true that they go all the way out there to discover how it's killed. And that I have a question about also for the space nerds and not even space nerd for anyone who knows anything about space, the sequence of objects that he's, he's going to use is the most hilarious, not possibly in space set of stuff. He might as well have dumbbells, like at a certain point he might as Well, Oh, here's my dump full rack of weights and dumbbell bell set, there's a point where he grabs a monkey wrench and you

0:31:03 Eric: Yes, that doesn't make sense. Right.

0:31:45 Thomas: See that it's next to two other full monkey wrenches of the same size. Cause you know, in case your space monkey wrench breaks, you need a backup. That is the heaviest possible tool for the application that you would never need in space ever. And it's so funny that it did stuff like that. Like you have all this thought out science and then they're like, well, he would have a clock from Ikea and a set of monkey wrenches.

0:32:09 Eric: Not only that. Right. Like he's got a scanning electron microscope. He has things that I would say are a little too fancy for what he needed. I would use like a mass spec, a thing that analyzes chemicals. But scanning electron microscope that they had, or it might have been the transmission electron microscope, either way, as someone that has actually worked on electron microscopy and did it for years, I would be a little dubious about some guy just kind of working it in space for the first couple of times.

0:32:38 Eric: These are complicated pieces of equipment. And even with training, the fact that this is a one -shot mission with no communication back home for dozens of years just really makes it a very, very poor plan, especially when there are solutions you could do locally that would get immediate feedback from. And you still have the astrophage in a lab. I'm just not sure why going to Tau Ceti is a good plan.

0:32:50 Thomas: It's quite silly yeah yeah it's it's didn't make any sense it's pretty

0:33:05 Eric: I did want to talk a little bit about, I get why Andy Weir kind of made them DNA, but I would have done something different. I would Have not tried to do panspermia, and instead thought about more like Rocky, what are those base principles of life, right? And just to really sketch those out, it's the ability to have metabolism, right, the ability that kind of take energy and repurpose it for your own needs, the the ability to respond to stimulus, the ability to self -replicate, all of these, the astrophage are doing really well, right? All of these are in play, but there are ways that you can do it that don't bring in the timeline of Earth in problematic ways. And the way I was thinking about this is you can kind of think of life as like, making it DNA-based and giving it a mitochondria is a little bit like saying we've discovered Atlantis, and it somehow has a copy of Harry Potter in its library, right ? It's jumping pieces of evolution in Earth's history, but also claiming that the astrophage was the source of it.

0:33:27 Thomas: Stupid mm -hmm yeah great you got turfs here too can't get away from the turfs

0:34:06 Eric: Right. But there are some base things that you would see. And so, for instance, the reason why I say that methionine would be proof that we all shared a common ancestor is picture information storage, right? The base level is you have to have some level of sorting, right, so you're going to have categories and groupings at the very base level of any information storage, because as I I always tell my kids, information is stored in differences and you need ways to sort those differences.

0:34:18 Thomas: Anywhere

0:34:34 Eric: A blank white paper has no information. It's only when you start adding things that you can compare the lines that are there to things that aren't. But DNA would be at a level of like, we're all using color codes because we are visual creatures and colors are easy to spot differences. Where I'm curious is, and why I asked that sequencing question is, are they using the the same colors for the same codes, right? Does green mean the same thing for astrophage that it does for humans? And that would go a long way towards proving that they did in fact come from a common ancestor, and that would then reintroduce those problems with panspermia. Now, it is possible that Earth was the source of the

0:34:33 Thomas: Hmm right hmm

0:35:14 Eric: Astrophagem, and they evolved to escape it. Can you figure out the problem with that side of the equation, though?

0:35:19 Thomas: It feels like there'd be a lot of problems so

0:35:23 Eric: Well, in order to escape energy to travel interstellarly. And where would they get that energy from?

0:35:26 Thomas: I don't know yeah so they still would be the one half of the thing you're talking about right they would have escaped as one half of whatever the cell thing

0:35:34 Eric: Well, yes, they would have escaped as having mitochondria with no chloroplasts. But the real problem is in order to escape, they would've had to use energy from the sun. So we would've already seen in the fossil record.

0:35:39 Thomas: Is yeah sure yeah and then they'd be like oh what did I forget oh we had a son back home god damn everybody turn around we all gotta go

0:35:53 Eric: And now they're coming back and somehow all of life looks like them, even though they came before most of life evolved and they are a more advanced form of life. And so the timeline is just super, super scrambled. All of this could have been made much easier by making the bacteria. But besides that, we then go to Tau Ceti. And TauCeti has a fully developed ecosystem. And that actually in the book is the astrophages homeworld.

0:36:20 Eric: They evolved there. And the reason why Tau Ceti isn't dimming is because it has natural predators.

0:36:19 Thomas: Back oh okay oh because they're nimbies they're like ah not my we're

0:36:29 Eric: It's the NIMBY astrophage. Exactly.

0:36:29 Thomas: Not we're it's the nimbism though you're gonna keep your son you get to have your star huh well we can't have one

0:36:35 Eric: It's actually more that they had functional checks and balances because they had those predators, right? The Taumibas.

0:36:40 Thomas: So here's what I didn't understand and I think I could have been missing something if we basically do have to you you know, kind of give that away. So the whole reason in the movie, I'm talking movie wise, we're to believe these things are eating like every star, like it was just all of them, except like this one, at least in a, you know. A close enough group for us to get to, I guess. And so we go there, they're like, we got to figure out why this is, et cetera. And then they get there and they're like, there's something that eats them that's on this planet. But then he says, the problem is there's exactly the same amount of something going in as going out from the star. They They said, I don't know what it is, if it's mass or what, but it's like, it's the same going either way.

0:37:21 Thomas: And then how's that possible? It's because the predator is eating it, but its eating, I guess, exactly whatever extra amount it would have that I didn't get.

0:37:30 Eric: That actually isn't too bad ecologically, right? The reason why reintroducing wolves was so important to Yellowstone was because it called the deer population and kept them at what we call their carrying capacity. What the carrying capacity is, is kind of the maximum population that an ecosystem can healthily support. Yes.

0:37:50 Thomas: Yeah. But I also just don't get it. It was exactly the same. And then one of my question was, wouldn't they still be consuming the star then? Because they're still going to the star, getting something, making pit stop to have some car star sex and reproduce it on that planet. And then they're getting, the extra is getting eaten. So aren't they still using the star?

0:38:10 Eric: And I want to be very clear. This one is not my field. My guess is the argument is, is that the nuclear fusion inside the sun is now capable of keeping up with the drainage.

0:38:19 Thomas: Oh, like that star's like a different kind of star or something. What do you mean?

0:38:23 Eric: Well, it's more that because their population is being limited by those Tau Miba, it is not overtaxing the star's ability to produce more heat from nuclear fusion.

0:38:35 Thomas: But that still happens on the way out. Am I crazy? There was a very specific directionality described, which was they're going in and then they'RE coming out the same amount, which is like the implication being normally they would come out bigger because they stopped and reproduce.

0:38:51 Eric: Oh, I see what you're saying. Yes.

0:38:52 Thomas: So if they're going into the star, they're doing the normal stuff. Nothing else has happened. They're the normal star eating guys. Then they go somewhere and then they're being consumed after that. So they would still be eating that star to the same degree that they're eating any star, right?

0:39:07 Eric: I get what you say. I guess what they're meant to say was that it's not an increasing Petrova line, the population isn't growing, because of that limiting. And it's because enough predators are eating them at Tau Ceti that it keeping up with the growth,

0:39:23 Thomas: So then the idea is normally they reproduce and then they take, like make another pit stop. Like they go back to the sun after that, I

0:39:30 Eric: Right? Exactly. Because those are now cells that need to replenish what they just used in their journey to replicate, right. In the same way, if I grow bacteria on a a Petri dish, and I now have doubled my bacteria, they're still stuck on that Petri dish using nutrients for food.

0:39:45 Thomas: Guess.

0:39:46 Eric: They're in a constant cycle of consumption and doubling, consumption and doubling. But in order to keep doubling, you need to keep consuming.

0:39:54 Thomas: I don't get that because of the way the propulsion worked. I thought they were just like making a freeway that goes to all these different places. I didn't know they could like loop back around and that's what's keeping that star.

0:40:04 Eric: My guess is they keep enough in reserve because when we capture the, when we, I mean, fictionally, captured the astrophage on Earth, they still had plenty of energy, right? And if they had already been coming back from the sun and when we were collecting them, theoretically, they'd be drained of energy. So they clearly have excess energy for their trip.

0:40:22 Thomas: But what, okay. What is the measurement he did that was like, it's the same going in and coming out. What was he measuring then? I don't understand.

0:40:29 Eric: I don't know how he would have known directionality because it would have just looked like a line.

0:40:33 Thomas: They took two samples. Remember, they took a sample. That's what I'm saying. In the movie, they had it labeled going from star to planet to star, whatever. Like he had it labeled the two different directions and he was like they're exactly the same.

0:40:45 Eric: There was only one Petrova line, so I'm confused how they knew which direction they were traveling.

0:40:49 Thomas: That's why I'm saying there isn't only one Petrovila and there's a directionality to this process that I'm saying this doesn't make sense.

0:40:55 Eric: It really doesn't make sense.

0:40:57 Thomas: Okay, thank you. That's all I need to hear.

0:40:58 Eric: If there was more going in, no, yeah, it still wouldn't work. You're absolutely right. This falls apart. The main point, though, is that those Taumibas were culling the population to keep that star in check, right?

0:41:11 Thomas: Yeah, seems like something we could reproduce it on pretty easily.

0:41:15 Eric: But also, this is another case of him introducing a problem that just wasn't needed because he made the Tau Miba deathly allergic to nitrogen in the book. And there's a real problem with that.

0:41:26 Thomas: Yes, they touch on that in the movie for a second and it's like, well, I'll fix that.

0:41:30 Eric: But there's, there's a real, real problem with that most of DNA and protein involve tons of nitrogen. Nitrogen is not one of those elements you can ignore. There's a reason why our planet, well, not a reason because evolution evolved after the composition, right, right? But our planet is 70 % nitrogen, but we need bacteria. We need things to take that nitrogen and incorporate it into our biology because nitrogen is super, super important for DNA and proteins. And if you're making all of this panspermia, by definition, they're going to need to use nitrogen in their life cycle. And they're gonna need to be able to take it in, process it, and use it to build biomolecules. Now it's possible that like us, there's bacteria on on Tau Ceti that fix that atmospheric nitrogen and put it in more biological forms like nitrates, which is why you have nitrates in fertilizer. But the problem is, if you have bacteria fixing nitrogen in the atmosphere, by definition, you have nitrogen inthe atmosphere. So how did the TauCeti evolve anyway? Does that make sense?

0:42:31 Thomas: I'm already done with the premise. It didn't make any sense. Yeah, no, I agree.

0:42:48 Ad: [Ad break 3 — ad music]

0:42:48 Thomas: Why did he even need to do the nitrogen thing?

0:42:51 Eric: Because Earth is 72 % nitrogen, Venus has a huge nitrogen atmosphere, and Eridan had a huge nitrogen atmosphere. Now, the reason why this made things more difficult for itself...

0:43:00 Thomas: Hold on. So you're saying it's so he didn't need to do it. It's just he did that because it would set up conflict.

0:43:06 Eric: Right. He did it because he needed to do something to transform the Tau Miba, he needs to do that last breeding experiment where he builds up resistance, which I actually love in the book, right? In the book they do this breeding program that builds up resistance to atmospheric nitrogen in the Tau Miba. And the reason why I love that experiment is it's such a good encapsulation of what humans are doing in a natural sense to bacteria on earth. The reason why when a doctor says, gives you antibiotics, they say, take it for the full course, even if you start feeling better, right? The reason why is let's say you start feel better after seven days, but you're supposed to take it 11. You've killed off most of the bacteria and you're starting to feel better. But by definition, any bacteria that remain are more resistant to the antibiotics than anything that already died. So if there's still bacteria and infect another person, they're going to start reproducing and they're gonna have a new new range, right? A new bell curve of that resistance. Some of them are going to be more resistant. Some of them are gonna be less, but on average, you have shifted to a more resistant population. And if the next person doesn't take their antibiotics fully, you've now inculcated a new population that's even more resistant with only those super resistant ones that are now available. Andif that person doesn' finish taking them, they can infect someone else. And that's how you end up with these deadly antibiotic resistant bacteria.

0:44:32 Eric: So I love that experiment in terms of sketching out how that resistance builds. I just don't get why it had to be nitrogen when nitrogen is one like pretty inert, at least biologically, it's got that triple bond for N2. So it's very hard to make nitrogen do things, right? Because it's really tightly bound to itself. But then also you need that nitrogen for really important biomolecules. And I just can't really envision DNA and protein -based organisms existing where nitrogen is a complete anathema to them.

0:45:05 Eric: And there's a very easy way they could have done this because the planet that the Taumiba were on was like 0.2% the pressure of planet Earth. And Eridan had even more pressure than planet Earth in the book. So you could have this exact same type of breeding scheme, this exact same experiment, but just make it align to pressure sensitivity instead of chemical sensitivity.

0:45:27 Eric: And the same things would have been true, but again, it didn't have the needless problems the same way making them bacteria would have solved a lot of needless problems.

0:45:35 Thomas: So how would you have set up the conflict where it's, yeah, same thing. Okay.

0:45:38 Eric: You would do the same thing. You would put the pressure just at what's lethal, right? And then you would give it a couple of days and see what the most pressure resistant of those taumibas are. You Would take them and move them to a tank with slightly higher pressure, allow them to reproduce yes

0:45:54 Thomas: But all that was in order for it to cause another problem, which is it evolved to like hurt the ship, right? Like essentially wasn't that like kind of the thing he was setting up.

0:46:04 Eric: Because all of the tanks were xenonite the taumibas evolved the ability to pass through the xenonite

0:46:13 Thomas: So I'm saying, how would you do that same thing with what you're doing?

0:46:16 Eric: You could change the material each time that you're housing the thing in that way it's not selecting for the

0:46:23 Thomas: No, no, no. I'm saying the thing that the author is trying to do is set up that conflict, that problem. Problem so how do you still have that problem where it's going to evolve to mess up your ship in some way oh

0:46:33 Eric: As long as you're doing the things in that xenonate you'll still have that same parallel evolution of ability to pass through the xenonite.

0:46:40 Thomas: Okay so it doesn't really oh that's right yeah so it doesn't really matter what you're trying to like breed them into doing the byproduct of like oh they became resistant to the container they were in essentially yeah okay that makes sense

0:46:53 Eric: So again, it's just needless problem. Although I, again, chemistry is not my field. It is certainly a choice to have them develop resistance to xenon, which is a chemically inert gas by definition. Xenon is not really doing much chemically, and I'm not sure whether they're changing their size or something, but unless they're getting smaller and smaller, I'm not sure how they're gaining that ability to pass through the xenon.

0:47:17 Thomas: It's weird how much cool biology there was in this for there to be that many like what the what in the world's going on things you know isn't that

0:47:26 Eric: The movie is trying to kind of correct some of these sins, because to me, these are pretty obvious.

0:47:31 Thomas: Weird no I mean even in the

0:47:33 Eric: I'll be honest, like so many of my doctor and scientist friends read this book and recommended it to me and loved it, that I actually before recording this episode, texted my thoughts to everyone's favorite human Jenessa, and was like a sanity check of I'm thinking about this, right? It's crazy that these things have mitochondria, because that ties them to a specific time and place on Earth. And luckily, she was like, okay, you're good to record.

0:47:43 Thomas: Book because she checked the law on it no

0:47:58 Eric: Believe me, I'm in awe of her ability to do both law and science at the same time. She's basically me and my twin, Wonder Twin powered together. So now we've bred our Tau Miba. We've done our stupid plan of going interstellar travel. We somehow survived.

0:48:14 Thomas: Nice we can't talk about the going and for some reason needing to get a sample skimming the atmosphere of this planet and also there was differential gravity so like even though you'd be in free fall with everything he was like having to lift the probe because it was too heavy I was like that what's happening that's nothing

0:48:33 Eric: Yeah, that made no sense to me, but I'm not going to fake the funk on physics.

0:48:35 Thomas: The gravity there yeah it's like the gravity there was so bad like the space stuff in the end moments there was there well it's not even really the end but the space self in those moments were to me I didn't what are we doing like it became so unhinged that I was I don't know why we're we're doing this well there's got to be better ways don't you

0:48:53 Eric: There had to be, especially because this was the best case scenario, right? And it needed a literal interstellar alien that somehow traveled interstellarily without knowing relativity. Because they didn't mention this in the movie.

0:49:00 Thomas: Think right that they said it didn't know relativity no he said that he said it in the movie and I was like what the fuck how is it doing anything yeah

0:49:09 Eric: Oh, yes, Dr. Gillis or one of your other very talented people might be able to push back on this. But I'm pretty sure without relativity, you are not doing interstellar travel, you might get to a place 11 light years away, but I don't think you're going to be near the Tau Ceti star, right? You're in wherever it was when you first clocked that journey, because you're not understanding precise navigation in a relativistic universe.

0:49:20 Thomas: I wouldn't think so that was crazy there's no way yeah that was really that was a bad choice I did not like

0:49:40 Eric: And that's what I mean by like, there's just a bunch of things that they did that wouldn't have changed the plot at all if they tweaked it slightly and just introduced needless problems. Not the least of which, right, so now we're done with this journey. We sent back our beetles, right? They're back with the taumibas. And the Earth is already a snow globe, as we saw.

0:50:00 Eric: But now they're going to have to breed that taumiba at scales.

0:50:00 Thomas: That yep yeah well they'd have to send it to venus right and like maybe you could do it in a way that would if it got a natural food source that it loves I guess you're figuring it'll just flourish

0:50:13 Eric: But you're still playing a huge amount of catch up with the astrophage that's already there. And so my whole point is like, if you're going to knock the idea of just building a trap because of the issue of scale, you still have that issue of skill, you just pushed it back 30 years and didn't have contact with the person knowing if it was going to work before you got those beetles.

0:50:33 Eric: It's just a fundamentally flawed plan. And I can't believe another scientist didn't and go, hey, this is really stupid, we know how it moves, we know how to kill it.

0:50:32 Thomas: There right yeah Yeah, it basically should have just been in the end that shows Earth and they're like, oh, we're fine. We figured it out. Which, you know, maybe, okay, they wanted to have more than one plan just in case, you know?

0:50:48 Eric: Right now, because Rocky, the Eridan is so much more alien, I have much less beef with his biology, it would require so much more thinking about the hypotheticals and stuff. And it didn't needlessly insert itself into Earth's evolutionary timeline.

0:51:01 Thomas: Yeah, I love that. Yeah.

0:51:11 Eric: And what I loved about Rocky's biology was the idea of these colonial microorganisms that build a rocky carapace as like their outer shell, right? Because that's actually similar to things that we see on Earth. We do have colonial organisms that are kind of colonies of single-cell organisms or small organisms that then build these large structures. I'm thinking specifically of things like coral.

0:51:34 Eric: So rocky as coral is actually a really cool idea. And then I do have to give Jenessa one more shout out. The fact that it looks like a crab is just a beautiful, beautiful idea because there's a joke in evolution that everything's a crab. There's only two actual main lineages of crabs, but there's so many things that look like crabs because of convergent evolution. The crab body plan is just really good at doing crab-like stuff. And so things over and over again evolve a body plan that looks a lot like a crab.

0:51:44 Thomas: I loved it. Yeah. Crabs all the way down.

0:52:07 Eric: So I loved everything about Rocky. I'm not coming for Rocky.

0:52:10 Thomas: No, Rocky was great.

0:52:10 Eric: All of my beef is with the Taumiba and the Astrophage. My main point is this. What he tried to do was come up with an alien and did the problem. We're going to give them the exact Dewey Decimal System, the exact library coding system that we use in our modern libraries, but this is actually a librarian from the Library of Alexandria. There's certain things that will be shared among all living things just because of the necessities of self-replication, metabolism, and all that, but the fact that they're DNA-based with mitochondria with all of that stuff just makes it so specific that you're basically saying that the Library of Alexandria is using the Dewey Decimal System. It messes up the timeline and it just introduces anachronisms and needless complications that don't need to be there.

0:52:57 Thomas: But still a fun movie. I liked it.

0:52:59 Eric: Very fun movie. And again, I cannot wait till there's alien neural tubes so I can leave my students behind and go into space.

0:53:05 Thomas: I will say I did want to read the book after watching the movie now having talked to you I'm not sure I will take the time I'm not sure it's worth the time I don't

0:53:14 Eric: Where the book is really, really good at science and why I did truly love the book. I know it sounds like I'm very negative about it, but what they're really good at doing is showing what science looks like. Those simple processes and experiments, those simple things that build up. Even things like the way he learned Rocky's language is a really cool way to do it. And it's similar to the way we study whale song. But the fact that we haven't cracked whale songs with hundreds of thousands of scientists working on it for decades, probably should tell you that he's not using a laptop to crack the Aroden language.

0:53:32 Thomas: Know yeah just didn't have the right laptop yeah mm

0:53:51 Eric: Yes, we just needed that laptop and obviously Ryan Gosling. At some point, we're going to have a really awkward apology to whales for messing up their oceans.

0:53:59 Thomas: Yeah I agree well that was a lot of fun I love the movie uh people should see it I'll make sure that I put a warning in the beginning that we do pretty much have to spoil the whole damn thing because there wasn't really any way to talk about it so we'll see how how many folks uh listened through the and got the spoilers but um that was fun learned a

0:54:15 Eric: It's doing well in the box office, so we'll still have some listeners.

0:54:18 Thomas: Lot nice it was fun I like it was good to see another science movie that people like that's popular that uh even though it got a lot wrong was still uh still fun and still sciencey I liked

0:54:28 Eric: And to be be clear, even the stuff that got wrong, it still did science way better than 99% of popular IP franchises, science fiction movies. It did a lot right. It just had a much less grounded and speculative fiction to it. So it wasn't able to be as correct as like the Martian was, which was truly, truly good at the science.

0:54:47 Thomas: It okay but in the book please tell me they didn't have one guy at nasa be like wait a minute what if we slingshotted on the gravity of the other planet and then they're like my God, you're a genius you thought of the thing we all do would already have done obviously please tell me the book didn't do

0:55:10 Eric: I mean, that's kind of what they did with the whole non-water-based life, right? Because it's really not that hard to think of non - water -based life. And as I mentioned, there's actually really cool chemical compounds already on Venus. I'm not saying the astrophage are already there, but it does suggest that there might be metabolism going on in Venus because the only way those compounds form is either through geologic processes or microbial processes on Earth, and none of the geologic processes that would form it are present on Venus.

0:55:12 Thomas: That yeah all Right, well. That was a lot of fun. Let's do it again sooner than however long it's been since the last one that was this is great really enjoyed it oh yeah that's right all right maybe we'll see you again soon

0:55:46 Eric: School year's ending soon, so I'll be open for business again. Always a pleasure.