In the first half, Professor David Weintraub shared updates on astronomy and space science, and discussed why, of all the celestial bodies in our solar system, Mars has beckoned to us the most. We will have the ability to get humans to Mars within a decade with companies like SpaceX, he noted, but whether that's a good idea is up for debate if it's questionable how feasible it will be to bring a crew back alive. Much has been accomplished through robotic spacecraft like the rovers, and such missions, he added, are far more affordable than sending a human team.
Weintraub does not believe that Mars was ever inhabited by intelligent life forms or larger creatures but does think that bacterial life could exist there. Should we discover that, it will indicate that life could be abundant in the universe, he said, adding that if the bacteria is DNA-based, it means that it's related to life on Earth, but if it's not, it would tell us that life on Mars got started completely independently of Earth. Two moons in our solar system, Europa and Enceladus, have the possibility of life, as their surfaces are covered with frozen water, but underneath are oceans of liquid water heated by the core. Exoplanets in other solar systems seem to be quite common, he reported, but in contrast to our system, some of the ones orbiting closest to their sun are larger in size like Jupiter.
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Author and paranormal expert, Richard Estep, first got involved with paranormal research in 1995 in the UK after attending an overnight investigation at the infamous St. Botolph's ("Skidbrooke") church. In the latter half, he talked about cases involving haunted hospitals, poltergeists, and houses where murders took place. "Asylum 49," a haunted hospital in Tooele, Utah was partially turned into a "full contact" Halloween attraction and contains the original hospital equipment from when it ceased operation. Estep believes he saw a full-bodied apparition of a young girl at the former hospital-- at first, he thought she was one of the actors the facility uses, but the staff informed him they don't employ actors that young, and he probably saw a ghost they called "Sarah."
Hospitals lend themselves to hauntings because of the dramatic life and death situations that take place there, he explained. Nurses often have encounters with the paranormal, he added, reporting such things such as globes of light rising out of patients as they pass away, and call buttons that go off in rooms where no one is there. Estep investigated the Fox Hollow Farm in Indiana that was owned by a serial killer in the 1990s, who killed vulnerable young men, and then burned or dismembered them on the grounds. People have seen apparitions both in and outside of the house, including a young male who had no legs, and one of the residents was said to be attacked by invisible hands while in the swimming pool.
News segment guests: Charles R. Smith, Lauren Weinstein