014 - Space pt1 - The deep sea of other worlds with Kevin Hand and Casey Machado

Sorry for the lateness of the episode, we were rather ambitious with this one. Thom and Alan get access to a sound stage and get to actually record the podcast in the same room for the first time. In recent news there seems to be some pop-culture discoveries, the Eye of Sauron and Spongebob and Patrick have been found in the deep sea. Finally, we try not to get too depressed about ocean warming and deep-sea mining buy considering our own energy budgets.

The topic for this double episode is, as ever, the deep sea. But this time we are talking about the deep sea… Innnnnn Spaaaaaaaace! It turns out there is deep sea outside of earth, even in our solar system. The ice-covered moons of the gas giants likely contain liquid water. How likely are they to contain deep-sea life completely independent from the life that originated on earth? What are the best candidates for alien life in our solar system? What could that life be like and why does our own deep ocean provide a perfect test bed? Thom chats with astrobiologist Kevin Peter Hand, author of Alien Oceans: The search for life in the depths of space, and director of NASA’s Ocean Worlds Lab.

How will we explore these alien deep seas? It turns out that the early versions of the vehicles which may some day explore these ocean worlds are already in development. Thom chats with Casey Machado, Research Engineer at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution about the Orpheus AUV, the first generation of such vehicle and a new asset for the exploration of our own deep ocean.  

It turns out space is big, too big for a single podcast. Look out for episode 2 next week.

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Glossary

Astronomical unit - the distance between the Earth and the Sun

AUV: Autonomous Underwater Vehicle

Hadal - Areas more than 6000 m deep, mainly the deep-ocean trenches

K strategist - an organism that has few offspring but invests a lot of resources and energy into them, e.g. whale

Molar concentration - one mole (6.02214076×1023 particles) of substance in a litre of solution.

R strategist - an organism that has many 'cheap' offspring, e.g. salmon

ROV – Remotely Operated Vehicle

Links

Undersea volcano looks like the Eye of Sauron

Spongebob and Patrick at almost 2000 m

Temperature impact on deep-sea biodiversity

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The Ocean Worlds Lab

The buoyant rover for under ice exploration

Alien Oceans: The Search for Life in the Depths of Space

The very bad day, the loss of Nereus

WHOI Hadex website

Orpheus