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CNN Live Today

Postcards from the Red Planet

Aired January 07, 2004 - 10:45   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: They are like postcards from the Red Planet. These are images, and the latest images from Mars being beamed back from NASA's Spirit rover yesterday. Scientists said they're shocked and awed by the high quality of the images. The rover is expected to send back more color pictures in coming days.
Let's talk more the pictures snapped by NASA's rover at this historic mission to Mars. Joining us now, the science guy, Bill Nye.

Bill, good morning.

BILL NYE, "THE SCIENCE GUY": Good morning, Daryn.

KAGAN: You must be going nuts looking at this stuff.

NYE: Well, you do, yes, you do. It's spectacular. The thing that strikes me about Mars, I say always, when you look at these pictures, it's a place you could walk around, you could have a picnic if you were dressed properly.

KAGAN: It's a little cold, right?

NYE: Yes, a little cold and hard to breath. Yes, but it may very well hold secrets to the Earth's past. You know, it's not unreasonable that life started on Mars and got catapulted through the inner solar system and landed on Earth.

KAGAN: Really? I mean, we're not talking science fiction kind of stuff here?

NYE: No, it seems like it. It does sound like science fiction, but it's actually not beyond imagining. But anyway, how would you go about proving or disproving such a crazy thing.

KAGAN: Good question. How would you answer that question?

NYE: Well, the first thing is as near as anybody can tell, it's really to have living things, as far as we know, you want to have water.

KAGAN: Which is mainly what they're looking for, right?

NYE: That's right, you're really looking for signs of water. People thought at first this was a dry lake bed, no question. And then when you get looking closer, it's not so obvious that it was a lake bed, maybe just water flowed over it at one point. But there's definitely wind blowing there. You see these wind tails, this downstream disturbance of the sand, which means that there is -- things have been flowing there in some form or another for a long time.

KAGAN: Here's my question to you, Bill, as "The Science Guy." I'm looking at these pictures, as a lay person, and I see, oh, pretty colors, nice rocks. But when you look at the monitor, what do you see?

NYE: I see these patterns or pads, where either a wind or water or just gravity carried sand in these winding patterns. As we say in geology, Daryn...

KAGAN: What do we say in geology, Bill?

NYE: Every rock tells a story. So if you can go up and knock one of those rocks open, you will find whether they were put there by sedimentary layering of water flowing in, drying out, flowing in or whether they were put there by a volcano, lava, or just how much they've been affected by the environment and the atmosphere and the sun. You know, it's the same sun on Mars as we have on earth, and it looks like where air bags were withdrawn -- I say air bags -- the landing gas bags were with drawn, reeled back in, the surface was scraped or polished.

KAGAN: Like someone was there before?

NYE: No, no.

KAGAN: Now, we're out there.

NYE: No, just that the surface is much different from just a few grains of sand below the surface, which is very unusual. Now you might see that in Atlanta after everything dries out, after a big rainstorm. But you might see it by some entirely other process we haven't really figured out yet.

KAGAN: The good news is there's another one on the way. Spirit is there. Opportunity is supposed to land at the end of the month. What additional information should we expect to get from that?

NYE: Well, the first thing is, it's another place. You know, if you were to trying to infer every environment on the Earth by looking at one person's living room, you wouldn't really get a complete picture. The same is true when you land on one place on Mars, you don't really know the whole planet. The other charming, wonderful thing, if everything goes well, we'll have spacecraft on opposite sides of the planet, and this help you do all kinds of wonderful...

KAGAN: Comparisons?

NYE: Studies of the weather, global weather.

KAGAN: OK, good. I want to ask you about this nice tribute to the Columbia astronauts. We're coming in a few weeks on the one year anniversary of that disaster?

NYE: What about it? I mean, it was a sad thing. It's nice thing that was placed there, and I hope someday...

KAGAN: I think a lot of people don't know about this plaque, though. Here's a picture of it. Tell me about it.

NYE: Well, it was placed there at the behest of Sean O'Keefe, the head guy. It's a nice thing. It reminds you that NASA is a civilian agency dedicated to peaceful exploration of space, and that it's a big agency, both with this planetary robotic exploration and with these human space flights. Because one day, everybody thinks if Mars remains intriguing enough, people will want to go there, and it's important for everyone to know how much -- how difficult it is, and the cost that human race has paid to try to achieve these scientific goals.

And the people who died in that crash, I'm sure would have supported this. I'm sure they supported this mission; they were space explorers.

KAGAN: I bet when that day comes up, you will be first in line to buy a ticket.

NYE: And it could be some of the viewers of this program.

KAGAN: It could be, inspired by your descriptions.

NYE: Well, we'll see.

KAGAN: Bill, thank you. Bill Nye, "The Science Guy," always fun to look at the pictures with you. I appreciate it.

NYE: Thank you, I appreciate it. To Mars.

KAGAN: To Mars and back. Thank you, Bill.

To mars and back. Thank you, bill.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired January 7, 2004 - 10:45   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: They are like postcards from the Red Planet. These are images, and the latest images from Mars being beamed back from NASA's Spirit rover yesterday. Scientists said they're shocked and awed by the high quality of the images. The rover is expected to send back more color pictures in coming days.
Let's talk more the pictures snapped by NASA's rover at this historic mission to Mars. Joining us now, the science guy, Bill Nye.

Bill, good morning.

BILL NYE, "THE SCIENCE GUY": Good morning, Daryn.

KAGAN: You must be going nuts looking at this stuff.

NYE: Well, you do, yes, you do. It's spectacular. The thing that strikes me about Mars, I say always, when you look at these pictures, it's a place you could walk around, you could have a picnic if you were dressed properly.

KAGAN: It's a little cold, right?

NYE: Yes, a little cold and hard to breath. Yes, but it may very well hold secrets to the Earth's past. You know, it's not unreasonable that life started on Mars and got catapulted through the inner solar system and landed on Earth.

KAGAN: Really? I mean, we're not talking science fiction kind of stuff here?

NYE: No, it seems like it. It does sound like science fiction, but it's actually not beyond imagining. But anyway, how would you go about proving or disproving such a crazy thing.

KAGAN: Good question. How would you answer that question?

NYE: Well, the first thing is as near as anybody can tell, it's really to have living things, as far as we know, you want to have water.

KAGAN: Which is mainly what they're looking for, right?

NYE: That's right, you're really looking for signs of water. People thought at first this was a dry lake bed, no question. And then when you get looking closer, it's not so obvious that it was a lake bed, maybe just water flowed over it at one point. But there's definitely wind blowing there. You see these wind tails, this downstream disturbance of the sand, which means that there is -- things have been flowing there in some form or another for a long time.

KAGAN: Here's my question to you, Bill, as "The Science Guy." I'm looking at these pictures, as a lay person, and I see, oh, pretty colors, nice rocks. But when you look at the monitor, what do you see?

NYE: I see these patterns or pads, where either a wind or water or just gravity carried sand in these winding patterns. As we say in geology, Daryn...

KAGAN: What do we say in geology, Bill?

NYE: Every rock tells a story. So if you can go up and knock one of those rocks open, you will find whether they were put there by sedimentary layering of water flowing in, drying out, flowing in or whether they were put there by a volcano, lava, or just how much they've been affected by the environment and the atmosphere and the sun. You know, it's the same sun on Mars as we have on earth, and it looks like where air bags were withdrawn -- I say air bags -- the landing gas bags were with drawn, reeled back in, the surface was scraped or polished.

KAGAN: Like someone was there before?

NYE: No, no.

KAGAN: Now, we're out there.

NYE: No, just that the surface is much different from just a few grains of sand below the surface, which is very unusual. Now you might see that in Atlanta after everything dries out, after a big rainstorm. But you might see it by some entirely other process we haven't really figured out yet.

KAGAN: The good news is there's another one on the way. Spirit is there. Opportunity is supposed to land at the end of the month. What additional information should we expect to get from that?

NYE: Well, the first thing is, it's another place. You know, if you were to trying to infer every environment on the Earth by looking at one person's living room, you wouldn't really get a complete picture. The same is true when you land on one place on Mars, you don't really know the whole planet. The other charming, wonderful thing, if everything goes well, we'll have spacecraft on opposite sides of the planet, and this help you do all kinds of wonderful...

KAGAN: Comparisons?

NYE: Studies of the weather, global weather.

KAGAN: OK, good. I want to ask you about this nice tribute to the Columbia astronauts. We're coming in a few weeks on the one year anniversary of that disaster?

NYE: What about it? I mean, it was a sad thing. It's nice thing that was placed there, and I hope someday...

KAGAN: I think a lot of people don't know about this plaque, though. Here's a picture of it. Tell me about it.

NYE: Well, it was placed there at the behest of Sean O'Keefe, the head guy. It's a nice thing. It reminds you that NASA is a civilian agency dedicated to peaceful exploration of space, and that it's a big agency, both with this planetary robotic exploration and with these human space flights. Because one day, everybody thinks if Mars remains intriguing enough, people will want to go there, and it's important for everyone to know how much -- how difficult it is, and the cost that human race has paid to try to achieve these scientific goals.

And the people who died in that crash, I'm sure would have supported this. I'm sure they supported this mission; they were space explorers.

KAGAN: I bet when that day comes up, you will be first in line to buy a ticket.

NYE: And it could be some of the viewers of this program.

KAGAN: It could be, inspired by your descriptions.

NYE: Well, we'll see.

KAGAN: Bill, thank you. Bill Nye, "The Science Guy," always fun to look at the pictures with you. I appreciate it.

NYE: Thank you, I appreciate it. To Mars.

KAGAN: To Mars and back. Thank you, Bill.

To mars and back. Thank you, bill.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com