15: NASA Research Suggests Mars Ice Contains Best Chance for Finding Ancient Life. John Batchelor and Bob Zimmerman discuss NASA's search for signs of past organic life on Mars. A research team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center conducted a simulated test

The John Batchelor Show

John Batchelor

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4.5 • 2.8K Ratings

🗓️ 22 October 2025

⏱️ 2 minutes

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Summary

NASA Research Suggests Mars Ice Contains Best Chance for Finding Ancient Life. John Batchelor and Bob Zimmerman discuss NASA's search for signs of past organic life on Mars. A research team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center conducted a simulated test to see how long microbiological remnants could survive Martian radiation conditions. The test exposed E. coli samples in simulated Martian sediment and pure water ice to radiation equivalent to a 50-million-year span. Results showed the samples rapidly decayed in the sediment. However, the E. coli samples survived the entire time span when encased in the ice. This research strongly suggests that searching for ancient microbiology should not occur in the dry tropics where current rovers operate. Instead, NASA must search above 30 degrees latitude where substantial near-surface ice exists. Finding living life is highly unlikely, but discovering fossilized corpses of past life in the ice is the most probable outcome.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is John Batchel, a conversation with colleague Steve Yates, who's about to depart for the APEC summit, stopping in Tokyo first and then on to Seoul.
0:10.4	Questions about the APEC summit have to do with whether or not Xi Jinping will attend.
0:16.3	It has been talked that this would be a wonderful opportunity on the sidelines, as Steve explains, for President
0:22.9	Trump to meet with General Secretary Xi as President Trump begins his second term. But why the
0:31.5	doubt? Why the story that China has canceled its reservations at a luxury hotel in Seoul.
0:40.2	Unknown.
0:40.9	Here's Steve to explain what we do know.
0:44.2	More of this tonight.
0:46.8	John, this is a little unusual in terms of past PRC engagement in diplomatic groupings.
0:57.8	There wouldn't usually be this much now Now you see it. Now you don't in terms of commitment of who's coming. We don't always have top leaders from any country
1:04.9	coming to APEC leader summits, but on balance, most of them do. And of course, the value of the summit is less the
1:13.1	grouping itself, sort of like going to the UN General Assembly. It's the side meetings that are
1:18.3	the top line feature of it. And so it's been assumed for a very long time, that this would be
1:23.9	the meeting for President Trump and Xi Jinping to sort of engage in this second term of Trump.
1:32.1	But now the Chinese are putting some uncertainty on that.
1:34.6	And President Trump himself was echoing that.
1:37.6	And so I think at this point, the APEC summit might actually be a bust in terms of the global diplomacy that will be engaged in there.
1:47.3	The president will go to Japan before going to Korea to meet with the new prime minister there.
1:52.2	That will get headlines.
1:54.1	And then we'll have to see what kind of meetings come at the APEC summit.

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