[Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] greetings friends fellow earthlings and explorers who wish to see the ocean depths near and far welcome to ask an astrobiologist the show that celebrates the science and the scientists involved in our quest to understand the nature of life I'm your host Dr Graham Lao also known online as the cosmobiology and of course we're brought to you by the NASA astrobiology program and Sagen net.org as always a huge thank you to all of you who tune in for our show who are watching right now live and asking questions in the chat and having conversations about our our theme of this of this month uh and a huge thanks to all of you out there who watch the show afterwards and leave comments for us to come back and check out and who interact online with myself and our guests and NASA astrobiology we appreciate all of you so much this month a huge shout out to our ambassador of the month the PC3 user on X uh PC3 is one of the research coordination networks of NASA astrobiology it stands for Prebiotic chemistry in early Earth environments so a huge thanks to them for sharing about the show and getting involved uh now today's episode is going to feature Dr Richard camilly a scientist from Woods Hole oceanographic institution and you just saw a trailer for the most recent episode of our alien Earth we're going to dive into that episode and its theme a little bit today during the show with Dr camil Dr camil started off studying biology before getting into engineering and received his Doctorate from MIT in 2003 his work focuses on developing and using autonomous robotic systems for things like oceanography uh space exploration Disaster Response even sub subse archaeology which is pretty cool uh so welcome Dr camilon thank you for joining us for ask an astrobiologist thank you for having me it's a pleasure to be here well I'm so glad we have you join us uh to talk one about this recent episode of our alien Earth but also to share about your career and your research interest and to talk about things related to astrobiology now with all of my guests I like to start off just knowing what your science origin story was what got you interested for instance in your case to to study oceanography and Robotics and pursue this career okay well um we'd have to go back ways I uh when I was uh a kid I I really wanted to be a paleontologist and I still enjoy collecting fossils uh going to Museum of naal Natural History in New York uh and I guess over time that evolved into studying biology and uh uh did my undergraduate work in biology I almost went to med school but uh uh based on some advice from friends they suggested that I can consider engineering because I like to build things and so that's what I did and uh uh and then went on to become an oceanographer and now a lot of my work has kind of come full circle there and uh so there certainly is a biological component in terms of being able to uh develop robotic environmental sensors and uh uh also for looking for uh uh and characterizing life forms in the deep ocean and potentially developing Tech technologies that can be used for space flight systems to do the same very cool now early on in your career you made the switch from biology as an undergraduate to doing graduate school in engineering which I've met a lot of people who've gone the other direction but very rarely from biology to engineering was that a difficult challenge for you in your educational career to go to an engineering field after doing biology uh it it did require uh kind of doubling up on some of the coursework uh shifting gears a bit but uh uh I have to say that uh uh it uh uh it was exciting and fun and um if I had to do it all over again I would I love that yeah for myself I went from biology chemistry and astrophysics and jumped into geology even though I only had three undergrad courses in geology before grad school so I think it's good for everyone who wants to be an astrobiologist to know there are lots of different directions you can take now I'm curious uh before we speak about the research you've done in Santorini and this recent episode of our Ali in Earth um how have you seen the field of oceanography changing during your career especially relevant to your research um one of the things that uh I I've seen during my career is is a a shift in terms of uh technologically what's possible and uh maybe a way to sum that up is that uh uh early on uh with the field robotics U the technology was very limited and so we tended to operate robotic systems in Fairly controlled environments and now uh with the uh sort of acceleration of Technologies and capabilities uh we're now using uh robotic systems uh for um uh operations in places that are not only difficult but uh uh also potentially dangerous and uh we're using these these robots in uh areas that uh where uh we couldn't send humans very cool I'd love to explore that then with this recent episode of our alien Earth and the research you've been doing off the coast of santerini um now these pools that you found I think originally in 2012 from the episode um they're called kalisti limnes um first off can you explain what what those what that what that word means that term means and what these pools why they're significant yeah so um I guess maybe can preface this by saying that scientifically whenever you discover something you get to name it and so my colleagues and I uh named this geologic phenomenon kalisy limnes and uh the name uh stems from ancient Greek kisty meaning most beautiful and lmes meaning lakes and so the uh the kalisti limnes uh they have this this really cool characteristic that when you view them from inside as submersible uh they have this IR iridescent Sheen to them uh just like an opal uh and as a matter of fact the the material that makes up these these lakes or pools uh is 10% by weight opal and so they're they're kind of Jewel like very cool so so what what Drew you to exploring this region in the first place I guess is a big question uh I uh uh got involved with with that project uh uh because of some colleagues over in Greece who had been uh contacted uh by the the Greek government because um Santorini is an island that is also uh sitting on top of a Caldera as a matter of fact the island is the rim of the Caldera and uh it's uh back in 2011 the Caldera started to become active again uh with what called seismic swarms lots of uh earthquakes and the entire Island started to inflate so uh there was a um they put together a team to uh uh investigate this and to uh prepare for uh potentially having to evacuate people from the island and the reason for that is U Back about 3 and a half thousand years ago the volcano erupted during the Bronze Age and it destroyed an entire civilization and so we didn't want to repeat of that so I wanted to be prepared so uh the the team was assembled to go and investigate and I was invited to join on the team and and uh uh so that's how we started there and that's how we found these kaliste lmonies wow it's incredible like connecting ancient history to Modern disaster understanding in and preparing for possible impacts and then connecting to deep sea observations of geology and biology that connects to astrobiology um I love seeing all those connections and and for you yourself a lot of your work is focused on autonomous robotics things like the gliders that anyone who watches that episode we'll see being deployed underwater what are the biggest challenges for you for deploying autonomous robots that go and explore underwater uh one of the biggest challenges one of the kind of the major focal points of of um my research group's work uh is uh perception and uh basically uh for a robotic system to be able to perceive its environment correctly and um then uh make uh appropriate decisions so that it can complete its Mission uh and uh um humans are are excellent in terms of their perception abilities robots not so much and uh so we're trying to improve that very cool one I imagine it's getting better we see a lot of things in robotics getting better all the time um on the land and in the ocean uh you said in the show that deploying the gliders in this specific site was like hang gliding in Midtown man man Midtown Manhattan at night um why is that why why is it the case these gliders have so many obstacles to overcome uh so um I guess we could I'll use a technical term here the gliders are what we um in engineering parlament consider underactuated and in other words they they don't have a lot of power to control themselves uh to position themselves uh they're the gliders the reason that they don't uh have that kind of power is because power requires energy and these uh uh vehicles are are designed to uh carry out long-term reconnaissance and so long range uh that means that they have to be energy efficient and so uh uh anyway that um by being energy efficient uh they have to have a very very low power draw roughly the same as a cell phone to operate a robot and so they use uh the the environmental energy draw some of that environmental energy to help them move along but again they they can't just kind of um U uh parallel park themselves if they find something or uh do these sorts of things so that's a big challenge the other one is perception uh uh robots are easily fooled so figuring out ways that they can explore an unknown environment and keep themselves relatively safe while collecting uh the uh useful information to hand back for uh another robot to complete its Mission very cool now one thing that popped out to me being a huge fan of Star Trek when I watched the episode of our alien Earth about Greece was that you have these algorithms for deploying the robots named after Star Trek characters Kirk and Spock and so you know you mentioned earlier you were interested in in paleontology when you were young um it's not surprising I think most of our our folks we've had on the show are interested in paleontology and space um there's a big connection there but a lot have also been fans of Science Fiction so are you a fan of Star Trek and science fiction and and has that kind of inspired your own career and the things you think about yeah definitely uh as matter of fact uh uh often times on on Expeditions we'll make reference to specific episodes and uh particular lines uh from Star Trek uh but and I should say that that um the the Star Trek characters that um are the uh that some of these algorithms are named after that's the work of my colleague Brian Williams at MIT uh he is a big treky and uh each of those uh the named um uh algorithms that's call them uh their characteristics are um uh somehow linked to the the characters in Star Trek very cool um so I want to speak just briefly about our connections then to all of Earth's oceans as well as to other oceans elsewhere um so first off how do how does this research in deploying these robots in this specific location off the coast of santerini how does it better help us understand geology and biology of Earth's oceans globally uh well certainly the uh that area is um around santorinian the Columbo volcano uh you could think of that operationally as kind of a crucible uh in terms of the the challenges that they present for these robotic systems which um is kind of a proven ground if they can operate there they can operate in many other places uh so um that's from kind of the engineering perspective from the scientific perspective uh certainly the uh uh observations that we make uh for example around sorini uh uh do have very important uh implications for uh understanding uh the Earth the ocean climate Cycles Etc and one case in example is going back to the kisty limnes uh the mechanism that uh causes uh those to form we have evidence to believe uh is uh a process wherein the carbon dioxide dissolved in the water makes it heavy and causes it to cool that has a uh very important implications for uh some techniques that are are being considered right now uh sometimes referred to as carbon capture and storage or the idea is to instead of allowing carbon dioxide from uh combustion emissions uh to go go into the atmosphere is to uh uh uh just inject them into the deep ocean the idea being that the ocean is vast uh should dissolve and disperse uh but in this case we see a a phenomenon that um wasn't considered previously that the the carbon dioxide will actually settle to the bottom and create these uh uh this pooling effect it's incredible so I love that connection to to the earth's climate and carbon dioxide and carbon capture I was in Iceland this summer and saw a really cool place where they're they're capturing carbon dioxide and trying to create rock out of it but there's you know obviously many different different formats for for doing carbon capture and trying to to have some impact on the world's carbon budget right now and so that's really cool um do you think and so it's speculation for fun like long term if we did start injecting that carbon dioxide do you think at such depths we could have similar systems forming away from you know volcanically active more shallow regions do you think that would have the same kind of systems might form or you think it' be like wildly different seafloor settings um there are very specific conditions that would have to uh be present for that but uh it it's conceivable that you you could have uh these things forming uh elsewhere in the world certainly very cool so um so you know it's an astrobiology show and so we have to talk a lot about space exploration and and trying to better understand not just life here on Earth but the possibility for life elsewhere and so I wonder from your Viewpoint how does your research deploying autonomous robots for various regions around our planet in Earth's ocean how does that apply to exploring oceans of other worlds like Europa or Enceladus okay well um the right now the the scientific hypothesis kind of consensus really right now is is that uh Europa and celades contain liquid oceans underneath and in Ice uh covering which is not like uh the polar ice caps uh in the Arctic in the Antarctic Ice shelves um they may be quite a bit deeper on these or thicker on these other uh planetary bodies uh but developing the technologies that can uh go and study uh Under Ice uh is something that um for here on Earth is is a big deal in itself but again it becomes sort of a Proving Ground uh for uh developing these Technologies uh for exploration uh uh under uh uh europro or Enceladus ice cover and uh fantastic and then the ice cover is one thing to think about so we asked our audience before the show uh with one of our polls on YouTube through NASA astrobiology what the biggest challenges might be for us in future missions to put robots under that ice and to explore for life on Europa uh we gave people options like building autonomy for our robotic explorers to to be that far away uh from the surface finding a way through the ice itself uh communicating information back to Earth uh and then also a big one withstanding Jupiter's radiation belt um of those possible answers that we gave we also allow people the option of making some comments but the biggest that people selected was finding a way through that thick icy crust um now on Earth you know we don't have any ice anywhere on Earth that's remotely as thick as what we think europa's ice is um so we have to figure out how to get down through that first um do you have a perspective on the importance of getting through the ice and how we can deploy robots below the ice through things like nerad which was used in this episode of our alien Earth or other robotic missions in the future um yeah so I uh getting through the ice is uh uh daunting and there are several groups that are are focused uh on that and uh um it'll be interesting to see which of the different techniques uh really kind of wins out here uh the there are techniques that are currently used uh for example to bore through um the ice sheets in Antarctica uh typically you're talking about uh hundreds of meters of uh depth that they have to bore through but um in terms of the we we could talk about the the specific designs of that but I I think for purposes of my work the big implication is that the larger a diameter that you have to bore through the more energy it takes so uh that translates into if you're going to make a robot you want to make it as small as possible so you have have to uh only make a small hole in the ice and so that really puts an emphasis again on sort of these accommodation factors like low power uh uh small form factor uh the ability to operate uh with without lots of actuators and things like that getting back to that underactuated aspect and then for the communications that's really hard um because uh anytime you go under Ice uh or underwater uh it's opaque to the most of the electromagnetic spectrum radio waves light Etc and so Communications becomes incredibly difficult and uh from a a standpoint of autonomy that has huge ramifications uh the autonomous systems that we put uh underwater or under ice have to be truly autonomous that we don't typically we don't talk to them uh until they return to the surface and so they have to find their way they have to have that uh sort of the cognitive abilities the perception to be able to complete their mission and come home very interesting now I love this idea of having like a smaller diameter bore hole um do you think in the future we might like deploy like huge fleets of very very small micro robots into oceans on Earth or other worlds um I I could see uh U the there are some advantages to redundancy and uh but there are some trade-offs as well one thing is if you make a system smaller uh hydrodynamically uh the fluid that you operate in um the call it the feeling of it changes so if you think about like a something like a plank in a little tiny uh organism that's swimming in our oceans uh to that that organism uh seawat feels like honey it's feels super viscous and that's why they move slowly whereas a uh a bigger organism like a shark uh can move much faster so there's a trade-off in terms of uh the coverage rate if you will and uh the size of the vehicle the number of vehicles Etc very cool it's so just fun to think about what the future of Robotics in our ocean in europa's Ocean other worlds might hold um you know assuming we can get through the ice there are lots of techniques that people have suggested things like using a nuclear engine to melt through the ice and various methods of boring um you know our best estimate right now is that the ice in Europa is some 10 kilometers thick which is you know extremely thick so you know yeah communication between a fleet or even a single robot will be extremely difficult but there's so much cool stuff going on right now uh across the solar system on our own planet and exploring oceans um I wonder if you can give us the the the bigger Vision that you have for let's start off just with with Earth Earth exploration exploration where do you see the exploration of Earth's oceans going um let's say the next decade um one of the big things that we are focusing on is is sort of the event response uh so there there are phenomena that occur on earth like say for example a hurricane uh that uh if you want to be able to make measurements of say like the energy transfer of a hurricane you have to be right there right then and uh when I say you you want a sensor there you don't want a human there and uh so it means having a way for uh robotics syst systems to be able to uh on a moment's notice uh uh start a new Mission uh arrive on site very quickly uh and then respond to the the environmental Dynamics and that's one thing that we're working on quite a bit in oceanography uh so that we can have a better uh kind of um uh uh observation capability of of the earth you know 70% of it's covered in water uh and if we um uh were to compare the sort of the weather stations uh underwater with those on land uh they're incredibly sparse and uh there's an interesting tie and if you look at how meteorologists collect their data a lot of that data was collected or the the ability to collect the data comes from airports uh and uh uh uh so uh uh aircraft need to uh uh have uh uh uh information in order to uh plan their their routings and so forth and so that's why uh that system was created um we don't have that quite yet underwater and um but the technology uh that we have to build for that because we don't have the advantages of uh radio links and so forth makes it more uh closely resemble what we would need uh for Planetary Exploration particularly Under Ice that's incredible I guess just for fun for a follow on of that do you think uh we'll be sending humans more underwater and building like underwater habitats or you know on the ocean surface like more cities and things like that in the future or do you think the real future of oceanography does lie in robotics um from the uh if you think in terms of um uh the infrastructure that's required for humans to live underwater in habitats uh it uh becomes a more challenging in in engineering we call that a hotel function literally you know all of the the infrastructure that's required to support that thing that agent uh person uh could be a robot by the way but robots take a lot less care in feeding than humans and uh I have spent uh uh expend spent quite a bit of time underwater um when I was younger I was a a saturation diver uh and um uh I can tell you that it's it's very um the work underwater physiologically it's it's hard for your body and um uh you have these issues of of uh fatigue that's set in that can really change uh a person's ability to operate and so the nice thing with Rob is U they tend not to get tired they do break but uh they tend not to get tired or need sleep it's pretty incredible I mean I think a lot of us interested in space exploration and the astronautics and astrobiology are also scuba divers and have underwater um I've never done deep water diving myself but I do remember reading the book The Last dive and just being blown away by some of this technical diving that people have done and it is very dangerous it has led to some accidents and and injuries and things like that so that's always an important part I think for people to remember whether we're sending humans down into the deep ocean or off to other worlds like Mars or Beyond is there are a lot of impacts for putting humans into environments that we just didn't invol evolve to live in um it's a huge impact um now I'm curious you you mentioned you know connections of your research to climate to disaster um and how disasters can unfold um you know you have a lot of things going on your research has touched on archaeology and a lot of other Realms um how do you see these connections all playing together uh through oceanography and through your work to the future of things like Space Science Biology or maybe even philosophy oh wow um that's a a big question uh in terms of of the connections one thing that's that's uh emerging um or it's becoming more and more apparent uh is the the linkage uh one one of the things that that my group focuses on uh is what we call shared autonomy or collaborative autonomy and that's human robot interaction and uh this is something that uh you know you see uh on the International Space Station where there there are robotic arms and stuff continual maintenance uh uh on the uh the space station but you see that uh playing out also uh with the the various Mars Landers where there are humans back on Earth that are directing robots on Mars and um the ability to uh for that to function smoothly uh is a complex process and and we can certainly design robots that that um um are able to complete um a task like think about robots on a factory floor where they they're in this uh controlled environment uh the humans give them a directive and put yellow tape around the robot and the humans don't go into that space the robot does its job uh with the human robot interaction this is where you have to have the humans and robots interacting in terms of understanding intent uh uh between let's say an autonomous system and a human directed uh command uh goes back to kind of Isaac asimov's uh uh principles right uh and and uh uh anyway one of the things that's that's emerging is trying to better understand human cognition and you know these issues like uh for example uh uh let's say from one human to another uh they could have different uh skill levels and for a robot to be able to uh uh understand those differences and and uh choose to uh uh uh function differently based on the human that's there and and things like for example fatigue or attention uh to understand when a human's not paying attention these are it basically boils down to issues of trust and we think about humans trusting uh robots but the converse can be true as well where the humans or the robots uh have to uh uh uh understand the nuances of of how to trust humans so that keeps the human safe so um this is something that really moves over into kind of the brain and cognitive science aspects and also the general philosophy of of uh how we uh understand our world yeah it's incredible um and I love that connection of like you know how we build autonomy into robots and give them some kind of thought you know on top of their sensing like how can they actually use an intelligent process to have some sensing of what we're going through and and what they're actually doing in the work uh along with us humans there definitely is a very interesting future for autonomy and Robotics for AI and for what we humans have uh in Exploration now I have a couple more of my own my own questions before we jump to our faster than light segment um but first off in prep for this episode you told us about a recent sighting you had of a cool columnar feature underwater it's kind of like seeing Devil's Tower below the ocean and we're just wondering if you could explain that for our audience so we can talk about it a little bit okay so this goes back to the um the Columbo Expedition that we did as a a part of the NASA P star program and uh we were examining the uh this uh the inside U the the Caldera of this volcano the Columbo volcano it's one of the most active and most dangerous volcanoes in that part of the world and um the best way that I could describe the the inside of the volcano is for U uh the folks out there that are are uh fans of The Lord of the Rings trilogy this is like descending down into Mordor uh you know it uh is an active volcano uh with uh uh hydrothermal venting they're basically underwater ferals uh uh plenty of uh sulfur to go around if if you could smell underwater it would probably smell pretty bad uh but uh uh anyway one of the things that we saw with the our initial sonar reconnaissance we use sonar to map uh the inside of the volcano uh similar to the way that uh uh for uh the uh uh uh orbiters uh the way that orbiters will use radar to map the surface of St Mars or Europa and uh anyway with the the uh what we call digital elevation maps that came back there were these spires that just went straight up and think of uh again uh back to the Lord of the Rings these towers uh when we looked at them we thought well that's that's probably the hydrothermal venting and um it's probably uh gas bubbles rising up from these volcanic Vents and so we thought all right let's go check that out and so we sent in the um the vehicles and one in particular the the NAD under ice vehicle uh and um when we got there it um well the uh the pilots were extremely tense because it turned out that it wasn't uh uh fluids rising up from these vents it was columnar lava very similar to The Devil's Tower and these were just going straight up and uh the amazing thing it I mean want to get back to kind of astrobiology because of the way that the volcano is structured uh and the various volcanic fluids coming out like the the carbon dioxide for example and sulfur and all these uh fluids that that come out of the volcano if you look at these these spires they're they're several hundred feet tall um basically vertical and down at the bottom the environment is very similar to what uh we think uh the pre biotic Earth was like before life existed before we had an oxidizing atmosphere and as you ascend along the Spire it's like stepping forward in time again to where we get to our modern um ocean and uh so uh it was totally unexpected that we would find these things uh uh and uh we um we're looking at the the life forms uh as we went along and uh uh found some some interesting organisms one we call a lollipop sponge it looks kind of like a lollipop and sponges are kind of unique organisms because um uh in terms of their biochemistry they have a lot of tricks up their sleeves and you know if you think about humans we have uh two bio biochemical Pathways we can use aerobic and anerobic uh and uh you know we we prefer to use the aerobic approach uh but occasionally we have to resort to anerobic uh respiration uh sponges uh have a a at least another one up their sleeve where they can use nitrogen and so it confers confers an advantage to them and uh anyway so there are these different life forms that are using little biochemical tricks to make a living uh in areas where we couldn't and it's interesting to see that and it it gives kind of a map of how uh life may exist uh uh other places in our solar system other places in the universe by using uh uh these biochemical Pathways that that give them a a little bit more of a a a thermodynamic Advantage let's say I love that yeah there's so many cool things that life on earth does that that helps us to better understand what we're looking for out there uh possible metabolism bio signatures things that are left by life that we could look for um it's all extremely intriguing um so thank you very much for that uh I do have two more of my own questions here uh one uh so we have people who watch the show who are maybe early career scientists or maybe younger people who they want to know if like a career in the field of astrobiology or oceanography or robotics is right for them uh what advice would you give to someone who maybe wants to follow in your footsteps or at least achieve some similar uh research goals as you have well I'd say uh number one key ingredient is follow your curiosity I mean science is curiosity driven I me that's how we come up with hypotheses that's how we come up with ways to test these hypotheses so yeah um uh without curiosity you you really can't move forward but if there's something that you really are interested in and have curiosity um yeah it's it's uh um certainly I I would um pursue that myself and that's what I've tried to do in my career heck yeah I love that and then finally um what Legacy do you hope to leave in the fields of oceanography and Robotics um I I'd say just kind of abstracting back the the Legacy that um my work is that I hope to advance our scientific understanding by creating technologies that allow us to observe the previously unobservable um and so you know a lot of my work focuses on developing the tools so that we can observe something that was otherwise invisible to us and uh that kind of Eureka moment of when you do see something uh uh and uh yeah that's that's just U uh the kind of the ultimate reward and uh that's the kind of Legacy that I would like to leave it's fantastic it sounds like a good Legacy uh now we're going to do our faster than light segments so just some kind of easy questions uh we ask these of all of our guests just to kind of get an an an understanding of what different astrobiologists and researchers around the world think so first and foremost we mentioned science fiction earlier in Star Trek uh what stories have inspired you to want to learn more about life in the universe uh I have to say uh one of the stories that that really kind of was formative for me was um a biography uh from a it was given to me it was a used book it was given to me when I was a kid uh it's it's a biography of a a deep sea diver named John jstone and uh as a little bit of background uh he was a uh a diver uh was born in the late 19th century and he was one of the the deepest divers at that time and uh he wrote about uh things that he had seen and one of the jobs that he had was was uh at one point uh fixing a a Communications cable between Tasmania and Australia and he walked something like 40 or 50 kilometers on the seaf Flor and just observed the world around him you know his kind of mind-blowing I got the book when I was like eight years old it was like wow you know all this stuff so yeah that that book U um kind of brought my career full circle into oceanography wow that's so far to walk underwater that's so cool it's like walking in like an alien environment like one of the Apollo Astronauts or something yeah and as a matter of fact you know that um there's the the Aquarius habitat off Florida um I spent a while there you live underwater for weeks at a time and uh that habitat is used to train astronauts for space walks and that kind of thing so yeah very very similar yeah absolutely now let's shift gears if you could go back to the beginning of your career what advice would you give yourself wow uh that that's a a challenging one I I think I would um look at particularly in my studies at uh uh some of the uh different um uh uh subjects uh that you know the 20 hindsight's 2020 now I can say yeah that like like for example cognitive science that's something that uh um had I to do it all over again i' I'd go back and and um uh take a couple classes on that at least you know and maybe devote more of my uh studies to that but um yeah interesting so we have another question I'm going to jump to then because it's kind of interesting so say you could choose a different career if you could restart your career today what would you study um may study a little bit more of archaeology I mean um I've uh done a few Expeditions uh therw waterer archaeology and uh uh we tend to uh uh underestimate what Humanity was capable of in ancient times and certainly we really underestimate uh their capabilities prehistorically and so um I would probably study more about that I mean one thing that I I find uh fascinating is uh with the new developments in um uh using DNA to reconstruct the past uh for example um putting together the uh uh the Genome of the neandertals in understanding them who they were just from the fossil evidence U that's something that yeah I'd love to learn more about yeah absolutely um you know life has done so many cool things on earth humans have done so many cool things for us to explore and learn more about and we have more ahead of us too um so let's think more about life than in general what is your favorite thing that life on Earth does I kind of going back to the issue of the the sponges having that trick up their sleeves biochemically uh you know living systems find a way to make a living and if you think about life it's it's this unbroken thread that we Trace back through our ancestors and every um life form uh uh can as well and you know we tend to think of life as fragile but it's it's really robust I mean genetically humans and bananas share about 50% of their DNA but we're so different we're using the the same kind of building blocks and can come up with all of and life has come up with all of these Creative Solutions for operating and living in environments uh and finding ways to coexist you know with the symbiosis symbiosis and uh you know even just uh uh uh plants and animals being kind of the yin and yang uh for products and reactants and so uh yeah I think that that's really amazing and uh yeah to be able to maintain that you know it's it's kind of uh creating order from disorder uh using the sun's energy to do that or the the chemicals deep in the earth to do it yeah fantastic and we we have a lot of similarities and some differences and so that goes into our next question if you could communicate with any nonhuman organism on Earth what would it be and what would you want to talk about I'll digress for a moment on that one um some years ago I was in Alvin on a on a deep dive and um we were uh out in the Eastern Pacific not too far from Los Angeles in a maybe about 1,000 ft down and um normally when you uh do these Dives when you're when you're transiting between study sites you uh try to conserve power you turn off the lights and that kind of thing uh and anyway we arrived at this one site turned on the lights and there were some fairly large fish swimming around on the bottom and all of a sudden uh this uh group where a swarm of of uh uh jumbo squid just showed up out of the darkness and these are um Humbolt squid they're 5 to 10 feet long uh probably bigger than an average human uh and they are very very uh aggressive and uh they were swooping in and and uh just grabbing these fish and chowing down and um they communicate with each each other they seem to hunt in packs so they have kind of a society um and anyway at a certain point one of them swam up to the sub and started feeling around with its tentacles and I had my face in the viewport and it swam up and put its eye right up there to look inside it's Cur clear it was curious and maybe he was hungry too but glad that there was some titanium between us but but at the same time uh it's clear that you know these organisms have a society um of sorts they communicate with each other they use a very different method for communication um they communicate with their chromatophores on their bodies they change colors um but yeah if I could talk with an organism i' I'd be interested in finding out you know uh its thoughts on the world in particular you know think about it its origin story I mean do squid consider where they their origin is um they only live a year or two um but uh yeah so anyway that would that would be uh one organism that I'd be interested in in uh finding out more about so cool yeah there's so many cool creatures out there on our planet and yeah there's so much non-human intelligence for us to to learn more about and maybe one day have those conversations so um I have one more question in our fter than light segment and then we'll jump to our audience Q&A so that folks who are watching live right now can ask questions of you in the chat right now on YouTube my last question what is an unbelievable science fact that still blows your mind oh that one's easy uh uh that we are made of star stuff you know to quote Carl Sean um when I found out out as a kid I used to watch Cosmos uh and uh that's still just blows my mind that um you know we're made of out of materials that U were formed in a supernova uh that we have no idea where when how I mean maybe the how but but uh uh yeah that we were made of that it it uh really just kind of expands my idea of of the vastness of the universe it's beautiful yeah we we certainly are the cosmos coming to know itself which is pretty incredible now for those who are watching live you can ask questions in the chat if you like uh I have some questions already here so I'll start off with one from Andrew Rowen who reached out to me in particular on Facebook um just curious what you think of the best environments for exploration specifically whether we should focus on something like Enceladus which has a much thinner icy crust even though it's a smaller Ocean than some place like Europa oh Europa certainly has its uh challenges um and the the other along with the ice also the radiation field um I would be happy with either one uh I I'd say Enceladus uh maybe kind of a personal favorite but that's just because of personal preferences very cool um let's say let's say we do find alien life out there on Europa or in solidus or Mars or an asteroid or an exoplanet uh Jim pass reached out on X and wants to know um what you think would happen um to humankind to our societies should we find alien life and should we specifically find a second Genesis of alien life wow um I think it would certainly change the conversation in terms of how we view ourselves uh and uh hopefully it would make us uh a little bit more attuned uh to um the the value and and the beauty of life here on Earth I mean who knows what that that um uh xenobiotic kind of organism is or I guess Xeno organism um you know I I wondered how much it look like anything here on Earth is it carbon based or not um uh yeah I I think it would just change our our view of U who we are and where we are yeah I agree entirely um and we just don't know long-term implications societally that's why people like Jim pass himself who is a sociologist are important in that work uh now the user rendering reality 3D animations on YouTube who's watching live wants to know what you think of including hydrophones or microphones on underwater robots to listen for alien life sale in Europa or techno signatures like signs of Technology out there and and I'll even add to that just using you know hydrophones microphones here on Earth to better understand the sounds of our oceans uh certainly we we use uh hydrophones quite a bit um and uh as a matter of fact it's one of the uh techniques that we use for conservation methods uh for U citations whales there are a number of whale species that are critically endangered and uh uh we use those here on Earth to to help protect those whales uh for uh exploration absolutely I mean the hydrophones are a great way uh to uh be able to detect um in particular uh seismic activity uh we could do that that would tell us a lot about for example Enceladus in Europa um and uh certainly um biologically underwater Acoustics is one of the um preferred most modes of communication for uh organisms absolutely just just to add to that do you think when it comes to Ocean exploration and specifically things like the cruise ship industry the shipping industry do you think that we humans owe it to ocean life uh maybe more specifically marine mammals to consider the the sounds that we're putting out into the ocean and if so how could we best approach that issue um certainly the uh environmental noise uh is becoming a greater and greater issue uh fortunately there are organizations within for example the shipping industry uh that uh uh have been working toward minimizing acoustic disturbance and another thing that that um has been uh gaining momentum is using these uh other vessels let's say non-scientific vessels uh as forms of opportunity to put um uh sensing systems on to help uh for example uh protect whales I have a colleague Dan zitterbart who's developed a uh a um Advanced kind of Imaging system that uh uh can operate 247 on ships to identify uh for example uh whales and let the uh uh the crew know that that whales are present so that they can reduce their speed and minimize the disturbance yeah very cool um we have another question concerning contamination relevant to your study sites but I think first I'm going to ask this question by Lucas Lee who just kind of Simply wants to know what programming languages um are you using for autonomous technology on your robots uh the the preferred um if we want to go super low power uh we always try and go with the compiled language uh sometimes uh we get down to uh uh just regular machine code uh if we're doing um uh something that we want to send out for extended period we'll use that we'll use u c C++ uh when we're doing development work uh we tend to use uh uh interpreted languages like python for example very cool and then uh so jumping back to contamination uh honor mahanti who's one of our production assistants uh wants to ask his own question he wonders what your thoughts are on the future of deep ocean tourism and whether you're concerned about contamination for study sites that we're trying to understand scientifically um the the deep ocean uh maybe I should one one of the things that that uh is and the issue with the deep ocean is that uh there's already been quite a bit of contamination uh in in the sense that that uh the ocean it's it's like a highway that's been without an Adopt A Highway program for thousands of years and so I mean that's why archaeologically it's interesting to find shipwrecks but at the same time we have all kinds of debris that just uh gets dispersed into the ocean uh I've done UH 60 some Expeditions in my career and uh I have yet to visit any part in the deep ocean where I have not found um uh trash or or litter from humans often times quite a bit of plastic um I that really speaks to whether or not we currently are in an anthropos scine uh given our impacts geologically biologically atmospherically on all of Earth's environments um we humans are making a large impact whether we want to really discuss it or not it's out there and we don't know yet the long-term ramifications of those behaviors um which also for me as an astrobiologist speaks a lot to our questions of alien civilizations and whether they've gone through these periods as well where they had to realize what they were doing um but I do love that kind of idea of this being a highway without a highway adoption program in the oceans and that a lot of our long-term trash throwing behaviors has ended up in the oceans um so we have one last question from our audience Lucas Lee wants to know um what your biggest gripes are with the way that either astrobiology or oceanography have been portrayed in fiction uh I'd say for a lot of fiction I'm thinking of sort of like Hollywood movies oftentimes they portray the the um people in in these domains as kind of cowboys uh and it's kind of superficial and uh I think that uh if we if we look at the kind of the Union of the two that there's particularly with the exploration there's um uh all kinds of um history that's untapped that would make just for uh interesting stories like for example uh each of the space shuttles was named after an oceanographic ship uh as a matter of fact the Atlantis my favorite because uh the wood Soo oceanographic Atlantis was its uh first ship and so these Expeditions of Discovery uh or key for um uh both space and ocean art you I think maybe that's why we all like Star Trek because it it does have a a little bit deeper storyline I love that there's been cool tie-ins to to science fiction and to what we share and the stories that we tell I think you're right about like the kind of cowboy Behavior you know things like Armageddon and Deep Impact and those kinds of things there also great things like the abyss I thought James Cameron's the abyss back in the 80s was a really interesting exploration of what it could look like um so I think we are at the top of the hour and the end of our episode so Richard thank you so much for joining us for asking astrobiologist and to everyone out there tuning in uh you can reach out to all of us online and find us in the various places we are but one big thing if you want to learn more about Dr Richard cil's research you can go watch episode three of our alien Earth on NASA plus as well as the NASA astrobiology YouTube channel uh more episodes will be coming out exploring field sites all around the world and various astr biology teams who are working and asking questions of how we can explore the Earth to better explore for life out there so for all of you tuning in we super appreciate all of you you are a fantastic audience Dr camilly thank you so much for joining us to everyone out there thanks for joining and until next time stay curious [Music] he [Music] [Applause] [Music] n