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Searching for Life on Another Planet – with Sarah Stewart Johnson



The Royal Institution

The possibility of life on Mars has fascinated scientists like Galileo, William Herschel and Carl Sagan. And even now, new missions are seeking to prove that we are not alone in our universe.
Sarah’s book “The Sirens of Mars” is now available on Amazon: https://geni.us/LGlAe

Watch the Q&A: https://youtu.be/5dtBHPYcipk

Sarah Stewart Johnson’s scientific research focuses on the evolution of planetary environments, particularly with regard to the search for life on Mars. She has created models of the early Martian atmosphere, completed field seasons in Antarctica, Australia and Madagascar, conducted research at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, and worked on the NASA Science Teams for the Opportunity, Spirit, and Curiosity Mars Rovers.

This talk was streamed live by the Ri on 7 July 2020.


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42 thoughts on “Searching for Life on Another Planet – with Sarah Stewart Johnson
  1. Interesting, why would you be wasting precious resources in searching for life on other planet's when this world has undiscovered life here?
    Furthermore, we are already being observed by another highly intelligent race from outside of this planet's solar system for the past century.
    It appears ignorance runs deep in the scientific community.

  2. The first Viking photo with the blue sky: you didn't go into details, but I remember it was the appearance of the orange cables on the craft itself that made them realize that the color was wrong.
    The gas exchange experiment really did call the solution "Chicken Soup" at the time!
    Note that the Viking experiments were not just confusing, but the "control" didn't work well either: in some cases the mechanism was unable to detect life in the soil samples from Antarctic soil samples that we know did contain viable microbes.
    The odd results were concluded to be due to perchlorates (IIRC)… years later we learn that the soil does not contain such, but I never heard a re-interpretation of the results in light of what we know now.

  3. Nothing against this lovely girl and her work but this is all dreaming. Not that whatever she says in not gonna happen but there is not an embryos embryos embryos embryos embryos embryos on earth today that will ever see an alien or go live on some other planet.

  4. It's a good thing , there are no people on Mars !
    If there were, surely USA would have started a Planetary War !
    Claiming " Martians are producing Antimatter Bomb, 'We' must disarm them for the sake of 'Peace' ! "
    -the usual kind of propaganda BS

  5. Phobos 2 did deliver some science data and photos from Martian orbit in 1989 before failing. The hiatus in 1976-96 was not complete, although Phobos 1, 2 and Mars Observer all failed.

  6. good talk, I told head of UK & US in 1980s that there is water & life on mars(sub-training). I have also told space agencies that there is life on solar system some planet and moons. they are complex. not simple. NASA is not looking for life. they are exploring mars mineralogy.
    Full information in my 1975 Bremen Summerhouse notes or by official permission / request of Madam chancellor Angela Merkel I will instruct their release. Ferydoon Shirazi. MG1

  7. If you read a King James bible, you'll notice plenty of life in outer space. They're call principalities and powers, and you do NOT want to meet them.
    Look at the book of Ezekiel for spacemen.

  8. hm, interesting how lonely and detached it feels to not have people together. Personally, I do not like the feeling of this format, (I understand the reasons with the Viral outbreak), because there's the sense of a lack of Human contact. It's nice to be engaged within the same room as each other. It feels as though the presenter does not see me, they do not know if anyone is actually watching, (unless she's doing a zoom meeting or can see us via relay video on her end, showing us on her screen). But she does not see me, and so, it feels detached.

    I'm grateful that the Royal Institute, and many other sources of service or informative presentations can still function of a sort. But I wouldn't like to see this as the future of scientific presentations. What does seem beneficial, however, is the idea of working from home. I wish I could do that in my job, but I cannot; I have to be at work. But it's nice to know there's a positive application to isolation in some extent.

  9. Do you think they should have a colour card that the camera takes a picture of so that we know how true the colours are in the light there on that Planet

  10. 34:11 Interesting that we became so reflective, looking around EARTH finding metorite in Antarctica, because the next mission is working on bringing material back from Mars, meanwhile algae etc in Antarctica, can we really risk losing life on this Planet, through the runaway heat theory.

  11. A few days ago there was a study which found that most of those rivers were flowing below glaciers by comparing Mars features to Earth river valleys so even at Mars's prime it seems it would have been more like Antarctica than the warm wet vision. Still could have potentially supported life but would have been extremophiles living in or under the ice. If they were/are subsurface microbes there they would probably be metabolically slow since on Earth the analogs then to have very slow metabolisms.

    That is part of the reason that Venus interests me for the prospects of life more with the potential evidence that the Unknown UV absorber found in the clouds of Venus might be biological in origin as no convincing abiotic explanations have been identified and unusual variations in concentration/distribution of these absorbers across the planet along with detections of the life essential elements within their structure, as well as elongated large particles consistent with some Earth based microbes has been building up a good case for phototrophic Venusian life lingering on in the upper clouds of Venus. If true this would offer another independent test for life without the need to drill and with a far higher rate of replication. Whoops forgot to post reply…

  12. Thanks. How deep have the rovers explored? A couple of inches maybe? There is life underground on earth, living in rock fed by underground rivers in the gradient of increasing temperatures and pressures with depth. I suspect that there are similar circumstances on mars and even the moon in the porous layers from 5 to 500 metres deep where there is water and a soup of minerals as food for microbes. That’s where we need to look too.

  13. Thanks. How deep have the rovers explored? A couple of inches maybe? There is life underground on earth, living in rock fed by underground rivers in the gradient of increasing temperatures and pressures with depth. I suspect that there are similar circumstances on mars and even the moon in the porous layers from 5 to 500 metres deep where there is water and a soup of minerals as food for microbes. That’s where we need to look too.

  14. There are countless sites on Mars where potential signs of previous life are clearly visible but mainstream so-called scientists out of fear they may have to change long held beliefs ridicule and dismiss out of hand these findings and the people who identify them and send these so called search for life missions into areas where they know there's little chance of finding anything of real significance.

  15. Ri is great. I teach English in Czechia and instead of talking about weather and travelling I try to have my students watch lectures such as this one and then we can use it for conversation so that they learn and also learn 🙂

  16. Would that be the interdimentional beings that come and go on a daily basis? Or demons if you're a Bible reader.

  17. When a talented, intelligent adult professional woman speaks like a middle school girl….ugh! I literally don't care what she has to say…I can't listen. It's just plain embarrassing! It's one of the ways women are holding ourselves and each other back! I beg women to practice making their voice and speech patterns sound like serious professional grown ups they are when speaking professionally!!!

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