Bill Nye Just Settled the "Best Planet" Debate Once and For All
Bill Nye of Science Guy and Netflix fame has weighed in on the never-ending debate about which planet reigns supreme. His answer is even more earnest than ‘90s kids could imagine.
“Earth is my favorite,” Nye tells Inverse on Instagram. “I grew up here. All my friends are here. The food’s good.” While our planet is unfortunately full of people, he has a point about pizza and cured meats. I mean, at least I assume that by “food,” he means pizza and cured meats.
Nye wasn’t gonna get off the hook that easy, though. When we asked about his favorite planet besides Earth, he shockingly didn’t seem to be on either Team Saturn or Team Jupiter. The Science Guy just really loves terrestrial planets — but for the record, Inverse is firmly Team Saturn.
“Right now, I wanna go to Mars,” he says. “I wanna see what’s going on on Mars. It’s very reasonable life started on Mars, and you and I are descendants of Martians.”
What Nye’s referring to might sound like it’s from sci-fi, but it’s actually an idea scientists have been kicking around for some time. The hypothesis is that life might have originated on Mars, but hitched a ride to Earth via a meteorite. Some studies suggest that at least one Martian meteorite delivered the element boron to Earth, which, when dissolved in water, can stabilize with ribose and form RNA. RNA, or ribonucleic acid, is largely responsible for our gene expression. Isn’t science the coolest?
Self-explanatory
Luckily for Nye, pretty much everyone with money is vying to get to Mars right now. In 2020, NASA will send another rover to the Red Planet to look for traces of past microbial life. But in the years to follow, SpaceX, Boeing and others will duke it out to get a human on Mars.
In time, Bill and the rest of us will get more answers about the red planet. Maybe he’ll shoot a new series on Mars. If he does, I hope it has a lot of cats. Humanity deserves it.
