BONUS - Why aren’t stars closer together?
The Supermassive Podcast
Izzie Clarke
4.6 • 556 Ratings
🗓️ 11 June 2025
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What would happen if planets collided at a snail's pace? How much of Avengers Endgame regarding time is scientifically acceptable? Why aren't stars closer together? And the team discuss a listener's theory to terra-form Mars.
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The Supermassive Podcast is a Boffin Media production for the Royal Astronomical Society. The producers are Izzie Clarke and Richard Hollingham.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to another bonus episode of the Supermassive podcast from the Royal Astronomical Society. |
| 0:08.3 | With me, science journalist Izzy Clark, astrophysicist Dr Becky Smethurst and the Society's deputy director, Dr. Robert Massey. |
| 0:16.5 | Right, let's dive into the supermassive mailbox. |
| 0:20.0 | Robert Rustopia has an idea for terraforming Mars. |
| 0:23.9 | Try this, they say. |
| 0:25.6 | Hi, I discovered the supermassive podcast just recently and really enjoy it. |
| 0:30.4 | You ask for curveball questions in one of your recent episodes, and I have one. |
| 0:35.1 | Has anyone in the science community ever seriously proposed this method |
| 0:39.1 | of terraforming Mars? Here goes. One, create little thruster probes which have just enough fuel to get |
| 0:46.2 | to Saturn's rings. Two, these probes then find a big chunk of ring ice and attach to it. |
| 0:54.0 | Three, the probe then uses some of the mass of the ice chunk itself as thrust material, |
| 1:00.3 | steering the chunk to crash into Mars gently, if possible. |
| 1:05.4 | Four, repeat steps one to three, sending probes each year over the next century or two, how many probes would |
| 1:12.3 | we need? 10,000, 100,000. Five, wait a few decades for everything to settle down into oceans, |
| 1:20.0 | thicker atmospheres, etc. Six, go live on Mars. I hesitate to say, I thought of this myself. |
| 1:27.3 | I could swear I heard this somewhere many, many years ago, but cannot find a source. |
| 1:31.1 | Would it be feasible, like all terraforming? |
| 1:33.7 | It would take extreme patience and a multi-decade commitment to get off the ground. |
| 1:38.3 | But wouldn't there be more than enough water and other trace elements out there around Saturn for use in this way. |
| 1:45.0 | Thanks for your podcast. |
| 1:46.2 | Can't wait for the next episode, Russ in Canada. |
| 1:49.9 | Russ, thank you for taking up our challenge of curveball questions. |
... |
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