Brian Cory Dobbs

Viking.

It all comes back to Viking, 1976.

It went and it took atmospheric measurements of Mars, in addition to soil samples and this, that, and the other photographs.

What is the Martian atmosphere composed of?

Mostly carbon dioxide.

There's a little bit of oxygen in it.

But there's also a little bit of this relatively unknown gas called xenon, but an isotope of xenon, xenon-129.

We have xenon-129 here on Earth.

It is a naturally occurring gas.

gas it is found on the periodic table we actually use xenon in flash bulbs flash lamps things of that nature but we don't really typically hear about this strange gas the interesting thing is on mars the xenon 129 to xenon 132 ratio does not match anywhere else in the solar system so a long time ago

Another scientist by the name of Dr. John Brandenburg, who's a plasma physicist, was just curious to know more about Mars, and he was following the NASA missions.

And he was working at Sandia Labs.

Do you know Sandia Labs?

Ah, okay.

So the Department of Energy has these nuclear facilities that they do nuclear research on.

And anyway, some portions of it are classified, top secret, that sort of thing.

But anyway, he's standing in line at the copy machine to make a copy of a page that talks about the Martian gases that were measured recently on the Viking mission.

And this is back in the late 70s or early 80s.

I think 1984, rather.

He just... Remember standing in line at the copy machine.