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Next month, Mars will make its closest approach to Earth in 15 years. Astronomers hope that their observations will provide useful information on the weather and surface conditions of the red planet.
The mystery of Mars continues to fascinate Michio Kaku theoretical physicist, futurist and author. Kaku ( @michiokaku ) joins Jeremy Hobson Here & Now to talk about the speed at which humans could travel to Mars, and other advances in the world of science .
"Things that were once the subject of science fiction are now translated into the science of the real rocket," says Kaku
Interview Highlights
About How Long Could We Have Humans on Mars
"Well, let's be honest: it only takes three days to go to the moon, so the moon is a jump, a jump and a jump from the Earth, and I personally believe that some time in the future, people will spend their honeymoon on the moon.
"March … is a very different ball of wax. Two years for a return mission to Mars, plus all the problems of weightlessness, micrometeorites, radiation, etc. But there are technical problems. We have of course sent some robot probes to Mars, some in fact, and there are real plans to go to Mars in the 2030s, first on the moon – according to a new presidential directive signed in December – first to the Moon, using the Moon as a base, then to Mars perhaps around the 2030s. And perhaps after that, the asteroid belt operation. "
On the Long Term Plan for March
" We want to start the Mars terraforming process first. If you could increase the March temperature by 6 degrees in the future, you could induce an artificial greenhouse effect that would disappear on its own. Some people think that if we have satellites, solar satellites that orbit around Mars and reflect sunlight up to the polar ice caps, then you could melt the polar ice caps and then the rivers and seas could flow freely on the surface of Mars. about 3.5 billion years ago. And then the transgenic plants would thrive in the atmosphere – the plants like carbon dioxide, and it may be possible to genetically alter the algae and plants that will grow in that environment. And then the mining operations could also take place. The first thing you want to extract would be ice, to extract the drinking water – once you purify it – and break it down into oxygen and hydrogen for rocket fuel and for breathing.
"The keyword is self-sufficient: you do not want a colony of Mars to be a drain for the US economy. You want it to be self-sufficient, that it has its own mine, that it has its own agriculture and its own industries, and of course, it's more long-term.We're not talking about that for soon.But the basic foundation is laid now, same as we speak. "
On which will go to Mars first: a private company or a government space agency
" This is the key question.You see in the years 60, everything was done by the government and things were really expensive.In 1966, the budget of the Apollo space program absorbed 5% of the federal budget as a whole.It's amazing.You can not self-sustain a program with this kind of cost, 5% of the federal budget.Now, prices have dropped dramatically. has, the movie "The Martian", with Matt Damon, cost $ 100 million. But the Indians sent a probe to Mars for $ 70 million. So a Hollywood movie on Mars costs more than going on Mars – it's at this price that the price has gone down.
"Normally, it costs about $ 10,000 to put a pound of anything in orbit – that's your weight in gold – think of your body made of solid gold. It's costing you to just put yourself in orbit around the Earth. "However, Elon Musk claimed that it could lower the cost by a factor of 10. And that would open up the space for development.And remember that these people have a vision for the future.The vision of Elon Musk is that we become a multi-planetary species, because after all, dinosaurs did not have a space program, and that's why dinosaurs are not here today, so we need a backup plan, explains Elon Musk.
"But then Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world, to head Amazon, says he wants to make Earth a garden. He wants to put polluting industries in the space so that the Earth becomes a park, a garden, which is fundamentally a testimony to a clean environment, a new vision for the planet Earth. So we have Silicon Valley billionaires coming up with new vision, new energy and of course, a lot of money. "
On the gravitational wave laser observatory (LIGO), and what it means to be able to detect gravitational waves
" I think it's great. Finally, we will put LIGO in space, what is called LISA – spatial laser interferometer antenna. These are three satellites connected by laser beams that detect the gravity waves of the Big Bang itself. We will get baby pictures – baby pictures of the infant universe, maybe a thousandth of a second after the moment of creation. Now, the Big Bang images that you see on the Internet are images that were taken more or less when the universe was 300,000 years old. But we do not want it. We want the baby pictures of the universe to leave the womb at the moment of creation. And physicists like me are hoping to find evidence of an umbilical cord, an umbilical cord of the infant universe that emerges from the uterus and connects it to a parent universe.
"The point I am raising is that with the gravity wave sensors in the space, we may have the opportunity to detect the pre-Big Bang universe. capture radiation at the moment of the Big Bang, or just after, you can roll back the video tape.The string theory is what I do in life, it's my day job, and the String theory is a theory that goes even beyond Einstein and that precedes the Big Bang.And string theory makes several predictions about what was the pre-Big Bang universe, and we might be able to launch the video on LISA to detect radiation before the time of creation to give us an idea of the pre-Big Bang universe. "
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