B1 · Intermediate
12 min
sciencetechnologyspace exploration
Moléculas en Marte: ¿El inicio de la vida?
Molecules on Mars: The Building Blocks of Life?
Fletcher breaks down this story in English. Octavio reacts and expands in Spanish. Follow along with the live transcript, tap any word for its translation. Intermediate level — perfect for intermediate learners expanding their range.
So, look, I want to start with a question I've been sitting with all morning.
When was the last time a piece of news made you stop and just...
stare at the ceiling for a minute?
Bueno, para mí fue ayer.
Well, for me it was yesterday.
La NASA anunció que el rover Curiosity encontró más de veinte moléculas orgánicas en Marte.
NASA announced that the Curiosity rover found more than twenty organic molecules on Mars.
Right, and the word organic is doing a lot of work in that sentence.
Because to most people, organic means something you pay extra for at Whole Foods.
But in chemistry it means something much more specific, and much more consequential.
Mira, en química, una molécula orgánica es una molécula que contiene carbono.
Look, in chemistry, an organic molecule is a molecule that contains carbon.
Y el carbono es la base de toda la vida que conocemos en la Tierra.
And carbon is the basis of all life as we know it on Earth.
So finding these molecules on Mars doesn't mean NASA found little green men.
But it does mean they found the kind of chemical raw material that, on Earth, eventually led to life.
That's the thing.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Los científicos las llaman moléculas prebióticas.
Scientists call them prebiotic molecules.
Son como los ingredientes para hacer la vida, pero todavía no es la vida misma.
They are like the ingredients to make life, but they are not life itself yet.
Here's what gets me, though.
They found these using a chemical method that had never been used on another planet before.
A compound called tetramethylammonium hydroxide, which I cannot say three times fast.
And the fact that it worked at all is remarkable.
Sí, en los laboratorios de la Tierra, los científicos usan este compuesto para analizar moléculas muy complejas.
Yes, in Earth laboratories, scientists use this compound to analyze very complex molecules.
Pero nunca lo usaron en otro planeta.
But they never used it on another planet.
Fue un experimento nuevo, y funcionó.
It was a new experiment, and it worked.
I mean, Curiosity has been on Mars since 2012.
Thirteen years.
And it's still making new discoveries.
That's...
that's a genuinely extraordinary engineering achievement.
Bueno, el rover tenía una misión original de dos años.
Well, the rover had an original mission of two years.
Dos años.
Two years.
Pero todavía funciona, todavía explora, todavía hace ciencia importante.
But it still works, still explores, still does important science.
Es increíble.
It's incredible.
And it's been rolling around inside Gale Crater, which was once an ancient lake.
So the context here matters enormously.
These molecules were found in a place that, billions of years ago, had liquid water.
A ver, hace unos tres o cuatro mil millones de años, Marte tenía agua líquida en la superficie.
Right, about three or four billion years ago, Mars had liquid water on its surface.
Tenía ríos, tenía lagos, tenía una atmósfera más densa.
It had rivers, lakes, a denser atmosphere.
Era un planeta diferente.
It was a different planet.
Which raises the question that every astronomer and every kid who ever looked at the night sky has asked.
If Mars once had water, and now we're finding the building blocks of life...
was there ever anything alive there?
Es que esa es la pregunta más grande de la ciencia moderna.
That is the biggest question in modern science.
Y todavía no tenemos la respuesta.
And we still don't have the answer.
Pero cada descubrimiento como este nos acerca un poco más.
But every discovery like this brings us a little closer.
No, you're absolutely right about that.
And look, what I find historically fascinating is that we've been asking this question about Mars specifically for well over a hundred years.
This goes back further than most people realize.
Claro.
Of course.
En el siglo diecinueve, un astrónomo americano llamado Percival Lowell miró Marte con su telescopio y creyó que vio canales.
In the nineteenth century, an American astronomer named Percival Lowell looked at Mars through his telescope and believed he saw canals.
Pensó que eran obras de una civilización marciana.
He thought they were the works of a Martian civilization.
He was wrong, of course.
The canals were an optical illusion.
But the idea captured the public imagination so completely that H.G.
Wells wrote The War of the Worlds in 1898, and people have been obsessed ever since.
Mira, la diferencia hoy es que no usamos telescopios con errores de percepción.
Look, the difference today is that we don't use telescopes with perception errors.
Usamos rovers con laboratorios químicos muy precisos.
We use rovers with very precise chemical laboratories.
La ciencia es completamente diferente.
The science is completely different.
Right.
So let's go deeper on what Curiosity actually did here, because the method is interesting.
Normally when you heat up Martian soil to analyze it, a lot of the organic molecules break down before you can identify them.
The chemistry is too harsh.
Sí, el problema es que Marte tiene mucho perclorato en el suelo.
Yes, the problem is that Mars has a lot of perchlorate in the soil.
Cuando calientas las muestras, el perclorato destruye las moléculas orgánicas antes de que puedas analizarlas.
When you heat the samples, the perchlorate destroys the organic molecules before you can analyze them.
So the tetramethylammonium hydroxide, the compound with the name I keep mangling, essentially acts as a chemical shield.
It protects the organic molecules long enough to identify them.
And this time, it worked.
Over twenty molecules identified.
La verdad es que los científicos esperaban encontrar algunas moléculas, pero encontraron más de veinte.
The truth is that scientists expected to find some molecules, but they found more than twenty.
Fue un resultado mejor de lo que esperaban.
It was a better result than they expected.
And the other piece here, which I think is often underreported, is the preservation question.
These molecules survived in Martian rock for potentially billions of years.
Which tells us something about Mars's geology and its ability to lock things away.
Bueno, eso es muy importante.
Well, that is very important.
Las rocas en el Cráter Gale son como una biblioteca.
The rocks in Gale Crater are like a library.
Guardan información química de cuando Marte era joven y tenía agua.
They store chemical information from when Mars was young and had water.
A geological library.
I like that.
So the question for scientists now is, are these molecules purely geological in origin, meaning they came from asteroid impacts or chemical reactions in rocks, or could they have a biological origin?
Es que no podemos responder esa pregunta todavía.
We can't answer that question yet.
Curiosity no tiene los instrumentos para confirmarlo.
Curiosity doesn't have the instruments to confirm it.
Necesitamos traer las muestras a la Tierra para analizarlas en laboratorios más avanzados.
We need to bring the samples to Earth to analyze them in more advanced laboratories.
Which brings us to the Mars Sample Return mission.
This has been in planning for years, a joint NASA and European Space Agency project to physically retrieve rocks that Perseverance, the newer rover, has been collecting.
The idea is to get them back to Earth by the mid-2030s.
Mira, el rover Perseverance ya recogió muchas muestras de roca marciana y las guardó en pequeños tubos en la superficie.
Look, the Perseverance rover already collected many samples of Martian rock and stored them in small tubes on the surface.
Ahora esperan una misión futura para recogerlas y traerlas de vuelta.
Now they are waiting for a future mission to collect them and bring them back.
But, and this is the part that frustrates me, the Sample Return mission has had serious budget problems.
NASA restructured it in 2024 because the original plan was running to ten billion dollars.
Ten billion.
So the timeline is uncertain.
La verdad es que la exploración espacial siempre tiene estos problemas de dinero y tiempo.
The truth is that space exploration always has these problems of money and time.
Pero cuando tienes resultados como los de Curiosity, es más fácil justificar el gasto.
But when you have results like those from Curiosity, it is easier to justify the expense.
That's a fair point.
And there's also SpaceX in this picture now.
Elon Musk has been talking about sending humans to Mars since, honestly, before it was fashionable.
His timeline has always been optimistic to the point of fantasy, but the hardware is getting real.
A ver, los cohetes de SpaceX son muy impresionantes.
Well, SpaceX's rockets are very impressive.
Pero enviar personas a Marte es completamente diferente.
But sending people to Mars is completely different.
El viaje dura entre seis y nueve meses, y la radiación es un problema muy serio.
The journey takes between six and nine months, and radiation is a very serious problem.
The radiation issue is genuinely underappreciated by the public.
Outside Earth's magnetic field, astronauts absorb radiation at rates that are deeply worrying for long-term health.
Mars has no magnetic field of its own to speak of.
So you're exposed the whole way there and back.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Y cuando llegas a Marte, la atmósfera es muy delgada.
And when you arrive on Mars, the atmosphere is very thin.
No te protege de la radiación solar.
It doesn't protect you from solar radiation.
Es un ambiente muy hostil para los seres humanos.
It is a very hostile environment for human beings.
So step back with me for a second.
Because here's what I keep coming back to.
We've now found organic molecules on Mars.
We know Mars once had liquid water.
We know it had a thicker atmosphere.
The conditions for life were there, at least in some form, billions of years ago.
Bueno, sí.
Well, yes.
Y aquí hay una pregunta filosófica muy grande.
And here there is a very big philosophical question.
Si la vida apareció en la Tierra cuando las condiciones eran correctas, ¿por qué no apareció también en Marte cuando las condiciones eran similares?
If life appeared on Earth when conditions were right, why didn't it also appear on Mars when conditions were similar?
The extraordinary thing is that there are really only two answers to that question, and both of them are staggering.
Either life is so rare that it happened once in our solar system, or it's common enough that it happened at least twice, right next door to each other.
Either answer rewrites our understanding of the universe.
Es que eso me parece lo más fascinante.
That is what I find most fascinating.
Si encontramos evidencia de vida antigua en Marte, aunque sea una bacteria fósil, cambia todo.
If we find evidence of ancient life on Mars, even a fossil bacterium, it changes everything.
Cambia la biología, cambia la filosofía, cambia la religión.
It changes biology, it changes philosophy, it changes religion.
I covered the Vatican for three weeks once, back in 2005, when John Paul II died.
And I remember asking a Jesuit astronomer, there are Jesuit astronomers, they run a very serious observatory, I asked him how he squared his faith with the possibility of life elsewhere.
And he laughed.
He said that would be the best news God ever gave us.
Mira, me parece una respuesta muy hermosa.
Look, I think that is a very beautiful answer.
Y creo que muchas personas, religiosas o no, reaccionarían con asombro y alegría si confirmamos vida en otro planeta.
And I think many people, religious or not, would react with wonder and joy if we confirm life on another planet.
So where does this leave us with the Curiosity announcement specifically?
I think the honest summary is, this is a genuinely significant step.
The method is new, the number of molecules found is surprising, and the preservation evidence is important.
But it's one piece of a very long puzzle.
La verdad es que la ciencia funciona así.
The truth is that science works like this.
No hay un momento de descubrimiento dramático.
There is no single dramatic moment of discovery.
Hay muchos pasos pequeños, y cada paso es importante.
There are many small steps, and each step is important.
Este es un paso muy bueno.
This is a very good step.
And Curiosity deserves its flowers.
It landed in August 2012 using a system so audacious, a rocket-powered sky crane that lowered it on cables, that NASA engineers called it seven minutes of terror.
And thirteen years later, it's still going.
Bueno, para terminar, creo que este descubrimiento nos recuerda algo importante.
Well, to finish, I think this discovery reminds us of something important.
Los seres humanos somos curiosos por naturaleza.
Human beings are curious by nature.
Construimos un robot, lo enviamos a otro planeta, y seguimos buscando respuestas después de trece años.
We built a robot, we sent it to another planet, and we keep searching for answers after thirteen years.
Eso dice mucho de nosotros.
That says a lot about us.
It does.
And the rover's name, of course, was chosen by a twelve-year-old girl from Kansas in a NASA essay competition.
Clara Ma.
She wrote that curiosity is the most powerful thing you own.
I think about that a lot.
On that note, thanks for listening to Twilingua.