Alien Life, Distant Worlds, and Us

 

Worldly Thoughts

 

I woke up this morning thinking about the latest discoveries of planets around other stars. Astronomers are using a variety of techniques to find them, and totals are racking up quickly. Most of the planets that have been found are “Jupiter-like,” meaning they are gas giants with huge atmospheres. They’re relatively easy to find because of their size. Worlds like Earth (the terrestrial worlds) are smaller, and tougher to spot. But because astronomers have been able to spot the environments in which planets form around stars (that is,in clouds of gas and dust), it’s pretty likely that there are many terrestrial planets out there, too. We just have to dig into those clouds and come up with the planets. Which will take time and some sophisticated astronomy search methods.

Yesterday, the Spitzer Space Telescope folks released news that Earth-like planets might form around many of the closest Sun-like stars. This orbiting telescope, which is sensitive to infrared light (think “warmth”) was used to study dust envelopes around nearby stars. These are warm places. Dust closer to the star is hotter than dust farther away from the star, the warm dust is a fair indicator of the types of materials that form rocky planets—that is, Earth-like worlds. Such discoveries always lead to the old question, “Is there life out there?” It’s a fair one to ask.

For now, the definitive answer is “No.” But, that’s because we haven’t seen the evidence for any other life out there. Yet. We don’t have communications from that life, or pictures of it, or any other manifestations of it that we recognize as a definite “signal.” But, if it’s out there, there’s some chance that we’ll detect it. Some day.So, what I woke up thinking about was what life on OUR planet will be like once we discover life somewhere else. Will it change us in some non-physical way? Will our thinking change about life? About politics? Religion? Education? Science? The way we treat our own planet?

Life from “Out There”—Threat or Learning Experience?

Courtesy SwapmeetDave.

The concept of life elsewhere is a major staple of science fiction stories. Depending on the story being told, the life from “out there” can be threatening, friendly, super-intelligent, simple, primitive, or depicted as being far beyond what we can comprehend. In reality, the life we find beyond Earth will likely be some combination of these factors, and perhaps look nothing at all like what we expect. How that life will act? Well… like we do with our deities, humans have painted aliens with a palette of characteristics that we most admire and/or fear in ourselves. When we DO get to meet other forms of life, the experience may teach us a bit more about respecting the life forms we share Earth with.Wonder about why I say that?Well, consider for a moment what humans and human activity (such as whaling) looks like to the cetaceans that inhabit our planet. Or, think about what our planet might look like to alien visitors who come in search of us and they find how we’ve treated our environment.These may be extreme examples, but the point I’m trying to make here is that the search for intelligent life (and other planets) isn’t one-sided. If there’s somebody out there looking for life elsewhere, and they find US, will we inhabit their worst nightmare or exemplify their fondest wishes? Either way, the possibilities are thought-provoking.

Defunding Astronomy in the UK

The Role of Money in Astronomy

So, all this astronomy I write about costs money to do. That isn’t a surprise to anybody, I hope. Everything in life has some cost to it, whether in money, karma, time, personal involvement, or ethical reward. While it is true that you can walk outside, look up, and do astronomy at the very basic level, to do anything beyond that requires equipment and person-hours. And those cost money.Amateur astronomy equipment can cost as little as the price of a book of star maps and a pair of 10×50 binoculars or run to many thousands of dollars or Euros or whatever units of money you use for a top-of-the-line home observatory. I always tell people to start small and let the love of astronomy guide them to whatever seems appropriate to spend.Professional astronomy is a whole different ball game. No one person “owns” a big observatory like Yerkes or Anglo-Australian or Mt. Wilson or Gemini or Hubble Space Telescope or the Very Large Array. They’re operated by consortiums of institutions based in a number of countries. It’s about the only way that the enormous costs of running state-of-the-art astrophysical research facilities can be afforded. And the costs can be … well… astronomical, running into multiple millions of dollars/Euros/etc. each year. The consortiums (and their countries) help pay the bills, and in return, each member of the consortium gets time on the instrument(s).

Recently the Gemini partnership was shaken when the United Kingdom announced it was pulling out to save money. I don’t know all the politics that led to this decision, but it took UK astronomers by surprise. The result of that pullout would have denied UK astronomers access to a major Northern Hemisphere observatory, starting nearly immediately.

It made little sense, but in times of tightening budgets, I suppose that the science and technology committee in the UK that made this decision didn’t see astronomy as being as important as other physics expenditures it wanted to make, or perhaps much less important than life sciences, for example. Nonetheless, it was a surprise to the partnership and a shock to the world’s astronomy community.

Today the Royal Astronomical Society announced that the UK is in “constructive discussions” to continue UK involvement in the Gemini Partnership. President of the RAS, Dr. Michael Rowan-Robinson commented, “The UK has invested about 35 million pounds in the capital phase of the Gemini Observatories, in which we have a 23% stake. To pull out precipitately, as seemed to be happening, would have written this off to make a saving of 4 million pounds a year, at the expense of inflicting great damage to the UK’s international reputation.”

That is a lot of money to invest, and UK astronomers had every right to feel betrayed by their government’s actions in the attempted pullout. Astronomy IS worth the money and the effort, and I suspect that UK scientists will need to make sure their collective voice is heard the next time somebody suggests “cost-saving” measures such as this one.