SETI Institute2013-05-20T02:47:33-04:00SETI Institutehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=seti-instituteCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for SETI InstituteGood old fashioned elbow grease.SETI Institute Teams Up With Zooniverse to Empower Citizen Scientists in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligencetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.13108782012-02-29T13:31:37-05:002012-04-30T05:12:01-04:00SETI Institutehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/seti-institute/TED Prize enables launch of new citizen science initiative, Science Channel dedicates the month of March to SETI Science Programming
As part of the TED Prize Wish made by renowned astronomer Jill Tarter, the TED Prize today launches SETI Live (setilive.org): a site where -- for the first time -- the public can view data being collected by radio telescopes and collectively help search for intelligent life on other planets.
TED, the nonprofit dedicated to Ideas Worth Spreading, established the TED Prize in 2005, born out of a vision by the world's leading entrepreneurs, innovators, and entertainers to turn ideas into action one Wish at a time. SETI Live was created in collaboration with Zooniverse team at Chicago's Adler Planetarium and is the latest development of Dr. Tarter's 2009 TED Prize wish, "to empower Earthlings everywhere to become active participants in the ultimate search for cosmic company."
The launch of SETI Live opens the door for anyone to help search for intelligent life on other planets. For the first time ever, data being received by the Allen Telescope Array in Hat Creek, CA will be made public so citizen scientists can scan it for potential signals.
"Three years ago, Dr. Tarter stood on the TED stage and asked us all to unite in the search for life on other planets. The TED community responded by dreaming big and working hard -- with many milestones to show for it," said TED Prize Director Amy Novogratz. "This landmark step empowers people around the globe to meaningfully contribute to this important scientific endeavor and work towards answering the ultimate question, 'are we alone?'"
Dr. Tarter, Director of the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute's Center for SETI Research, has devoted her career to hunting for signs of sentient beings elsewhere. SETI Live will further her Wish and build upon the community of scientists and technologists already involved in the search.
"There are frequencies that our automated signal detection systems now ignore, because there are too many signals there. Most are created by Earth's communication and entertainment technologies, but buried within this noise, there may be a signal from a distant technology," said Dr. Tarter. "I'm hoping that an army of volunteers can help us deal with these crowded frequency bands that confuse our machines. By doing this in real-time, we will have an opportunity to follow-up immediately on what our volunteers discover."
Zooniverse is home to the Internet's largest and most successful citizen science projects, including Galaxy Zoo. SETI Live is its newest venture.
"Over the last few years, we have learned about the incredible desire of hundreds of thousands of people to take part in scientific research as they've used Zooniverse to classify galaxies, explore the Moon and even to discover planets," said Chris Lintott, Zooniverse Principal Investigator. "With SETIlive.org, we're very excited to be inviting them on this grandest of adventures."
On the heels of the launch of SETI Live, Science Channel has partnered with TED and SETI Institute by designing a call-to-action programming campaign, dedicating the month of March to answering this most indelible question, "Are We Alone?" Four world premiere programs including Morgan Freeman's Through the Wormhole, Alien Encounters and NASA's Unexplained Files will premiere every Tuesday, beginning March 6 throughout the month. Each special world premiere will drive viewers to the SETI Live site and empower citizen scientists everywhere to unite towards a common goal.
"Partnering with TED and the SETI Institute has been such a great initiative for SCIENCE. With ARE WE ALONE? we want to draw viewers with smart, lean-forward programming and empower them to uncover evidence of extraterrestrial life," said Debbie Adler Myers, General Manager and Executive Vice President at SCIENCE. "At SCIENCE we question everything and no topic inspires more questions than the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence so we are proud to join the search."
You can support the science at the SETI Institute at SETIStars.org]]>Life at the SETI Institute: Dr. Gerry Harp -- Deciphering Celestial Signals in a New Waytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.10628302011-10-27T20:17:53-04:002011-12-27T05:12:02-05:00SETI Institutehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/seti-institute/By Dr. Gerry Harp, Senior Astrophysicist, Center for SETI Research, SETI Institute, and Gail Jacobs
Trained as a quantum mechanic, Dr. Gerry Harp was deeply interested in possibilities for using the multiple telescopes of the Allen Telescope Array to generate steerable "beams" on the sky - beams that could be far smaller than any single antenna could produce. Such beams don't emit anything, but work in reverse by capturing only energy that comes from the sky in a certain direction. Gerry joined the SETI Institute in 2000, practically at the telescope's inception and uses the telescope for SETI research.
Gerry's SETI research often focuses on using the array properties of the telescope to speed up SETI by searching large areas of the sky all at one time (imaging SETI). Gerry is also interested in extending the ways we analyze telescope data to search for signals that can contain large amounts of complex information (e.g. spread spectrum signals). Put simply, because of the long times (years) between when they send the signal and when it arrives, the aliens will help us out with some kind of error correction scheme or another. All such schemes introduce redundancy, and by designing algorithms to sense redundancy we can discover complex ET signals without knowing their content.
Gerry, briefly describe your research project.
I'm working with the Allen Telescope Array (ATA), the SETI Institute's own radio interferometer telescope. Working closely with Dr. Jill Tarter, we look for artificial signals coming from outside our solar system. SETI is kind of a long-range cell phone call. Working as the transmitter, your handheld cell phone converts your voice to radio waves and transmits them to a tower which amplifies and registers your voice with a computer. This recording is transferred to your friend's location where it is reconverted to sound.
Allen Telescope Array (click on image for larger view)
In SETI, the only difference is that the speaker is very far away and has almost no bars on their connection. In order to hear them, we build a huge radio telescope (tower) to catch those waves, and transfer the recorded signals to a computer "friend" that carefully listens for us. Because of the long distance, the alien's message is distorted and buried in static. The static can be overcome by listening for a long time or building a larger telescope. Overcoming the distortion is still pretty-much an unsolved problem which I find quite fascinating.
You must accumulate an immense amount of data.
Yes. The world is becoming a better place for scientists, as we now have access to more data than ever before in human history. Today's scientists need ways to analyze astronomical (ha!) quantities of data. To keep up, the role of computers in all kinds of science is growing. Whether they like it or not, all scientists are becoming computer experts.
We use computer tools to expand what it means to "look" at the data. By doing something we call "projecting the data," we look at the data from a different angle or in a different light, if you will. Have you ever been to a place during the day, and then when you came back at night, you couldn't recognize it? You see all sorts of things you didn't notice during the day. In our language, we'd say that the night view shows a different projection of the same scene than the day view.
It turns out that there are an infinite number of possible projections we can use on the light or radio waves that come from outer space. In practice we're limited only by our imagination and choices of which projections we look at. How should we look at the universe? Let's project the data to highlight how the universe changes with time. Or highlight different colors. What color are radio waves? If we highlight color differences, what will we find? First of all, anything white will disappear! If you highlight the similarities between one part of the sky and another part, what can you learn from the result? In fact, how would you even design a program that highlights such similarities? History teaches us one important lesson -- every time we find a new way of looking at the universe, we discover something new.
How does this apply to SETI science?
We again look for differences and similarities. In one experiment, we looked at one part of a signal taken at a specific time and a another part of the same signal captured at a different time. We then highlighted similarities between these two pieces of the same signal. In nature, there are very few similarities from one time to another. It's always newly randomized. But it's very common for artificial signals to repeat. Using this method we can highlight only the artificial signals. Then it is just a matter of proving that the signal comes from outside of our solar system, and you're done!
Allen Telescope Array (click on image for larger view)
Having just done this research over the last year, we're now at the point where we have our results. We looked at the data with a new technique called auto-correlation, which basically looks for repetition in signals. We discovered many new signals - very strong signals - that never showed up in any of our previous measurements. You wonder how something like a strong signal could hide, but our usual methods for looking at data did not highlight repetitions. We have tracked down the strongest signals we've found and so far have discovered that they were made by human beings, but this is very exciting research.
In addition to conducting SETI searches, how do you use the Allen Telescope Array?
The ATA pushes the envelope for conventional radio astronomy, and I do astrophysics with the Allen Telescope in my spare time, like on my lunch break! I'm working on time-domain astronomy (galaxies that change over time) and applying SETI signal recovery methods to ordinary astronomical data to learn more about the interstellar "channel," or the contents of the space in between stars and galaxies.
Interestingly, we also use the ATA to locate satellites as they orbit the earth. We rely on satellites for our GPS, telecommunications (satellite TV), weather monitoring (hurricanes) and many other applications. When satellites bump into each other and crash, that causes major problems. They create debris which can crash into other satellites, and even more satellites can get damaged. So we also use the ATA to advise satellite companies where their satellites are and they use that information to avoid future collisions. In addition to private funding, this service helps us pay the bills.
What is the coolest thing about your project?
It is the element of discovery. We are constantly looking at different parts of the sky at different frequencies and analyzing the data in new ways. At every moment, we're learning something new. There could be a huge astronomical effect or interstellar message right under our noses that no one has yet seen because they haven't looked in exactly the right way. I'm excited every day to see what we may find.
What do you currently consider your biggest challenge?
The biggest challenge is having enough time. I'm lucky enough to have many good ideas in front of me, all of which I want to pursue. Choosing which ideas to pursue is a challenge - but a good challenge.
Why should the general public care about your research?
One thing that may not be emphasized enough about science is the importance of understanding. Practical applications of Einstein's General Relativity Theory don't readily come to mind, yet humans are fascinated with this topic. Physics explains how the universe works; it can tell us how the stars move and how galaxies form and interact with each other. As humans, we place a great deal of value upon this type of knowledge.
My research tries to examine the sky in new ways, ways that differ from seeing or listening. In a small way, it is like developing new human senses or pushing our senses into new domains. Radio Astronomy images offer a new human sense in which we can see the sky as if we had "radio goggles," much like infra-red goggles used in action movies to see at night. In fact, this is exactly what radio telescopes do -- they act as very slow goggles allowing us to see the unchanging parts of the sky in the radio frequency range. We want to speed this up.
In my previous career I worked on similar problems, not using radio waves but x-rays and even electron waves to "see" objects. In that case, the objects were very small (atoms), but the principles are all the same. It is all about adapting data that we can detect with our instruments so it can go through the interfaces of our mind. With these tools, we will make new discoveries and learn more about the universe and our place in it.
We're in a discovery mode. Nearby space is familiar, but it is keeping many secrets. We don't know what we don't know, and finding out those things is the most exciting of all. What we discover may indeed have practical applications -- or it may just be really wonderful.
Is there one fact about your research that surprises most people?
Scientific research has always been a marriage of science and engineering. These days, the most important aspects of science progress are happening in computer science and software engineering. I find myself going to more software conferences than science conferences because large buildings full of computers are becoming the tools of astronomy. We build large telescopes and accumulate huge amounts of data, but astronomers don't have the time to study that data. I see computer science as playing a continually expanding part in the future of astronomy.
What is your personal opinion on the potential for detecting intelligent life beyond Earth?
I have no doubt we will find other life as we explore the cosmos. It's very clear to me that life is an imperative for the universe, so life is going to grow. I believe that, provided the human race survives, we will eventually find life forms of many varieties. And the longer we last, the more life we will find.
Contrary to popular opinion, the universe is still very young. Perhaps the reason we haven't found much life beyond Earth is that we're among the leading edge of intelligent species in the universe, and over time the amount of living creatures in the universe will increase until it is teeming with life. If humans conquer climate change, manage our natural resources and survive for the long term, we may someday face similar issues with our own galaxy.
What was your dream job as a child? Picasso once said that every child is an artist. I've heard other people say that every child is a scientist. We are born with a scientific curiosity that is evident when you watch children's behavior. They're constantly doing experiments. In giving it some thought, I think I just never grew up. I was born with a desire to do experiments and understand things around me and I simply haven't stopped.
I was very fortunate to have had such a calling. By the time I understood what it meant to be a scientist, science had settled in my heart as a permanent fixture. I count myself lucky since knowing what you want is half the battle to getting it.
When did you first become interested in physics?
My father grew up as a son of a coal miner. Growing up in the Appalachian region of West Virginia, most children went through the sixth grade and that was all the schooling they got. My dad actually went as far as eighth grade, which was considered "higher education" at that time and place. Unfortunately he was never able to get the kind of education he wanted. Despite this, however, my father never stopped learning and gave himself a classical education while working two to three jobs for much of his life. When I was a child, I learned about Einstein and Plato on my father's knee. That was a very formative time for me. I admired my father and his heroes became my heroes.
What created the connection for you to take your work in Physics and apply it to astronomy and interstellar communication?
As a boy, my parents bought me a telescope and I spent hours staring at the moon and the sun (with appropriate filters, of course). But my primary interests were for things that were very small. At the beginning of my career, I was particularly interested in trying to see atoms by using electrons to make holograms of the atoms. It turns out once you understand something about waves, this knowledge transfers easily to all domains of physics and astronomy, as well as other disciplines.
How do you spend your free time?
I read books about cosmology and other fields of physics. I also love comic books, especially the comic material from Japan, known as Manga. There is a huge amount of Manga comic material in different genres for adults. You can have dramatic, adventures, or even love or detective stories, and I just love this stuff. It's my only vice. (A favorite for all ages is Case Closed.)
Tell us about your interest in education.
I was a tenured professor of physics spending several years at Ohio University before I came back to California, and I anticipate holding some kind of college teaching position once again in a few years. In the meantime, I've remained involved in education by working with college interns. The SETI Institute sponsors a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) summer program as well as an Undergraduate Research at the SETI Institute in Astrobiology (URSA), a partnership between the SETI Institute and San Jose State University. I enjoy working with young people and find working with interns to be very rewarding. Besides, they do a lot of great work!
The SETI Institute REU Class of 2010 at Mt. Lassen, California (click on image for larger view)
I'd like to bring more young engineers into science. I've seen a barrier between engineering and science. Scientists are often welcomed in engineering, but not vice versa. I believe scientists can learn a lot from the engineering community. I'm continually blown away not only by engineers but by people of all domains and trades. The world is overflowing with amazing people.
I'm also involved in Puente, a California-wide program to support young, first-in-family students entering college, offered at a local college. As someone who was the first in my family to get a degree, I really enjoy working with Puente to help young people adapt to college life, sometimes explaining the basic rules, like getting straight C's is not acceptable, or opening their eyes to an entirely new way of life that a college degree can offer. I usually take the students on tours of the SETI Institute. Many of these young people have not been exposed to white-collar work settings and let me tell you, very few exit the premises without a desire for a comfortable desk job! I also get to meet with the students and their families at an organized dinner party. Here we also help the parents understand college basics, explaining how a college is a worthwhile pursuit, not the least because education is an investment that pays out dramatically over time. If you don't believe me, check out this simple graph on Employment Projections:
Note: Data are 2010 annual averages for persons 25 and over.
Earnings are for full-time wage and salary workers.
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Population Survey. May 4, 2011 (larger view)
Do you have advice for high-school level students who have an interest in science?
I would tell them to study what they enjoy and pursue your love. Don't worry too much about how you're going to make it. Unless money is what you live for (some people just like it!), just focus on what you want and get really good at what you enjoy -- the opportunities will be there. At some point in your life after you graduate college, you'll have to be flexible and figure out how you can apply what you've learned to something that is productive for society. You can do this. The people who are most successful are without exception the people who love what they're doing.
What is your philosophy of life?
The biggest obstacle that you'll face in life is yourself, so try not to get in your own way.
What historic and/or contemporary personalities do you admire and why?
The feat Einstein did all by himself - his leap of understanding - was enormous. At times, I've thought perhaps Einstein was too smart. He made this enormous leap and the rest of us didn't get the opportunity to visit all the stages in between. As a result, it's very difficult for cosmologists to understand what Einstein understood and very few people can enter the field. But what Einstein did was truly marvelous and he is someone I continue to admire.
Another person I've come back to recently is Richard Feynman -- not because of his contributions to physics but because of his contributions to education. I only recently realized that he basically rewrote the entire undergraduate curriculum in physics, with a couple of important partners, at CalTech. I'm revisiting his lectures now with amazement. It's inspiring that kind of accomplishment is possible. I've been thinking a lot about how we could rewrite it again.
I also really admire a lot of the people I work with, Jill Tarter being an excellent example. She excels in ways that I've never seen in anyone else. She has capacities and abilities to think and synthesize and just has enormous energy -- it's fascinating to watch her. I can only stand in awe of what she accomplishes.
Gerry Harp and Jill Tarter in 2010 at Lassen, near Hat Creek, CA, home to the ATA (click on image for larger view)
What is your favorite vacation destination?
Perhaps my best vacation was a trip to Ecuador and specifically the Galapagos Islands. That trip was like a complete course in biology and in particular, what can go wrong in evolution. I believe that the animals in the Galapagos have not had sufficient predation; they have not been sufficiently challenged by their environment. It's just too nice a place to live. The birds cannot get off the ground under their own power. They have to leap off a cliff in order to get airborne because they're so fat. There are countless similar examples because the environment lacks predators. When I look at them, I can only see ourselves and wonder if perhaps at the moment and as a species, we're not sufficiently challenged.
]]>Life at the SETI Institute: Dr. Jill Tarter -- The Search for Cosmic Companytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.10222542011-10-20T13:43:04-04:002011-12-20T05:12:01-05:00SETI Institutehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/seti-institute/
By Gail Jacobs
Astronomer Dr. Jill Tarter is Director of the SETI Institute's Center for SETI Research, and also holder of the Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence). She is one of the few researchers to have devoted her career to hunting for signs of sentient beings elsewhere, and there are few aspects of this field that have not been affected by her work. Jill was the lead for Project Phoenix, a decade-long SETI scrutiny of about 750 nearby star systems, using telescopes in Australia, West Virginia and Puerto Rico. While no clearly extraterrestrial signal was found, this was the most comprehensive targeted search for artificially generated cosmic signals ever undertaken. Among her numerous distinguished awards and recognitions, Jill received the 2009 TED Prize, which will empower Jill and her team to take SETI research to an entirely new and broader level.
Being as much of an icon of SETI as Jill is, perhaps it is not surprising that the Jodie Foster character in the movie Contact is largely inspired by this real-life researcher.
To learn more about Jill, visit her Huffington Post Q&A.
]]>Young clays on Mars may have provided niches able to support lifetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9929422011-10-03T16:29:17-04:002011-12-03T05:12:02-05:00SETI Institutehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/seti-institute/Dr. Janice Bishop, Senior Scientist SETI Institute
October 3, 2011
Two small depressions on Mars found to be rich in minerals formed by water could have been places able to support life relatively recently in the planet's history. These findings were published October 1, 2011, in the journal Geology. The team, led by Catherine Weitz of the Planetary Science Institute, studied layered outcrops at the western region of the huge Valles Marineris canyon system.
Many ancient clay-rich rocks have been found on Mars in recent years. What is interesting about this study at Noctis Labyrinthus is that we see alternating rock layers of clays and sulfates, including some clay outcrops as young as 2-3 billion years old, rather than the more common 4 billion year old clay rocks. Dr. Weitz reports, "This indicates a different water environment in these troughs or depressions relative to what was happening elsewhere on Mars."
Each trough probably experienced multiple water-infilling episodes at variable pH levels that deposited clays under neutral to basic conditions and sulfate minerals under acidic conditions. This dynamic geochemical environment indicates that these two troughs are unique and could have provided a more habitable region on Mars at a time when drier conditions dominated the surface.
The team and I mapped hydrated minerals within each trough using high-resolution images from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera and hyperspectral data from the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spacecraft, combined with Digital Terrain Models (DTMs) to determine elevations and view geometric relationships between units.
This area would be a fantastic place to investigate with a rover, but the rugged terrain would be challenging for both landing and driving. I'm continuing to investigate sites of interesting aqueous mineralogy on Mars in order to search for possible sites where life may have been possible.
Learn more about Janice and her research in her Q&A, Mars: Back through the Looking Glass."]]>Life at the SETI Institute: DIY -- Do your own SETI searches with setiQuest Data and Softwaretag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9862732011-09-28T20:26:58-04:002011-11-28T05:12:01-05:00SETI Institutehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/seti-institute/ By Dr. Gerry Harp, an astrophysicist at the SETI Institute.
Figure 1: A waterfall plot. This shows the signal as a function of frequency (increasing to the right) and time (increasing to the top). A slanted straight line is just the sort of thing we look for in SETI searches. In this case, it is from the Voyager spacecraft, 100 times further from the sun than is the earth.
You know that feeling where you have a great idea about doing SETI but you don't have a large radio telescope handy when you need it? If so, then we have something for you.
For the past two years, the SETI Institute has opened its doors to citizen scientists over all the world by open sourcing our own signal detection system software and a test program offering "raw" telescope data that anyone can analyze. These offerings have generated significant interest and we're happy to announce an expanded archive of more than 3TB of setiQuest data is now available to all SETI enthusiasts and hosted through a generous donation by Amazon Web Services.
The raw data archive is reorganized with better documentation so you can perform your own "observations" of signals arriving from outer space in the directions of various interesting stellar objects from quasars and blazars to pulsars, from satellites orbiting the earth to spacecraft. It also includes Kepler exoplanets, super-hot O-stars which may be good energy sources for giant astro-engineering projects, and astrophysical masers which might be used as natural amplifiers for a SETI beacon.
Figure 2: Spectrum of a methanol maser, produced with the tools described here.
What's it all for? As the setiQuest data project has grown up, scientists and volunteers associated with the SETI Institute have developed a set of open-source programs to allow flexible data analysis, with a goal of prototyping new algorithms for the discovery of SETI signals. As of today, we're offering these tools to you in an open source package, graciously hosted at GitHub. Bringing these programs to the public was generously supported by Google through the Google Summer of Code program with excellent contributions from our mentee, Aditya Bhatt, an outstanding computer science student approaching graduation in Gandhinagar, India.
Using the setiQuest Data and Algorithms tools, you can produce conventional waterfall plots (like Fig. 1) on your own computer and examine them for interesting signals. The spectrum of methanol masers in the W3OH molecular cloud shown in Fig. 2 was generated using setiQuest data and the Algorithms tools, and plotted using Excel. Each bump in the spectrum is essentially a giant natural laser in a molecular cloud (except that the l="light" produced by this cloud is in the m="microwave" frequency range). Using the same tools, you can look for time variations in this signal which might indicate a SETI beacon.
These days, the nuts and bolts of SETI lie in the computational domain. The offerings described here are aimed at individuals with some computer skill, including a basic knowledge of C or another programming language. We are looking for citizen scientist collaborators to work with us on improving the package features or porting the code to other platforms. We're also seeking volunteers to help us lower the bar for getting started with SETI analysis and to use these tools to support other SETI projects such as setiQuest Explorer. If you're interested in SETI, spectroscopy, digital signal processing or just think this looks cool, then we invite you to join the fun at setiQuest.
For more information, follow the links and check the setiQuest forum.
]]>Life at the SETI Institute: Mars Detective -- Investigating the Red Planet for ancient lifetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9815712011-09-26T13:59:59-04:002011-11-26T05:12:02-05:00SETI Institutehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/seti-institute/Dr. Richard Quinn; Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe, SETI Institute, and Gail Jacobs
Is the surface of Mars really sterile, or could there be still-undiscovered traces of life littering this hostile landscape? Chemist Richard Quinn focuses on understanding the reactive processes that take place on the surface of the Red Planet, and how these might give a better idea of the potential for habitable environments.
Click on images for larger view
Richard, briefly describe your research projects.
I typically have four to five concurrent projects, all with a common theme, but my research focuses on two general areas. One research area is Mars science - specifically, habitability and astrobiology. I'm working on characterizing mechanisms of biomarkers' degradation and preservation, especially organic chemicals, which might give us some insight into the habitability of different environments on Mars. I investigate the properties of soils based on in situ measurements made by landers and then use the results to evaluate the habitability of Mars.
My other area of research involves instrument development. I've recently been working on instrument technology development and science experiments in low-earth orbit. I'm currently performing an experiment with other researchers on the O/OREOS (Organism/Organic Exposure to Orbital Stresses) mission, which is a nanosatellite now in low-earth orbit. The experiment is called the Space Environment Viability of Organics. We're looking at the rate organic molecules, which are the building blocks of life as we know it, are altered in space environments - how they change when exposed to space radiation.
A computer-generated image of the O/OREOS nanosatellite. NASA's Organism/Organic Exposure to Orbital Stresses, or O/OREOS, nanosatellite is about the size of a loaf of bread, weighs approximately 12 pounds and has two experiments that it will conduct in low Earth orbit, more than 400 miles above Earth. Image Credit: NASA Ames
In late August 2011, you were quoted in a Space.com article, with the intriguing headline, "The Dirt on Mar's Soil: More Suitable for Life than Thought." Tell us more about those findings and what that could mean for future research.
I recently published a journal paper with some co-authors from NASA-Ames, JPL and Tufts University. It provided an analysis based upon some of the results from the Mars Phoenix Mission that landed in the northern Polar Regions in 2008. We measured the property of the soil, known as the redox, or oxidation reduction, potential. Very simply, it's one measure of the reactivity of a soil, and metabolism is coupled to redox processes.
One of the concerns for Mars exploration is that Mars' surface might be very oxidized, or very inhospitable to life. What our measurements have shown is that, in fact, when we added water to Martian soil at the Phoenix site, we found it to be a very moderate soil solution. Previously we had determined the pH was slightly basic, which surprised some who thought Mars soil would be very acidic. Our measurement of redox potential indicates that in its current state, the Phoenix site on Mars is a benign environment. There are other ways in which the environment is very challenging for potential life, but these results gave us one measurement that indicates the environment isn't as harsh as some people thought. We continue to look at those data sets and come up with new scientific insights.
Another interesting headline appeared on August 30: "Epic search for evidence of life on Mars heats up with focus on high-tech instruments." According to Dr. Jeffrey Bada, co-organizer of an American Chemical Society symposium on the Red Planet, in late August, "The bottom line is that if life is out there, the high-tech tools of chemistry will find it sooner or later." Have new tools propelled us into a revolutionary era of space exploration and the possible discovery of life on Mars or elsewhere in the universe?
There are two parts of the problem. One is the tools; the other is the accessibility to the right location. In 2008, the Mars Phoenix mission had an instrument set geared toward accessing habitability, but it was a stationary lander. In November 2011, however, NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory will be launching the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), which has very good science capability in terms of measurements -- and it can also rove. This mission involves taking the combination of good analytic tools and then getting them to the right spot, which is very exciting.
Curiosity - The Next Mars Rover. This artist concept features NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover, a mobile robot for investigating Mars' past or present ability to sustain microbial life. This picture depicts the rover examining a rock on Mars with a set of tools at the end of the rover's arm, which extends about 2 meters (7 feet). Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Jeff Bada, who made the comment, is right. We do have the tools. The MSL will likely experience technical challenges when making the measurements so we'll have to wait to see how successful it is, but everybody has high hopes. When doing research, you don't always get the answer you want, but then you do it again with what you've learned from previous attempts and eventually success will come.
What tools are you working on that could take lead to breakthroughs in learning more about a planet's environment and potential for habitability?
I'm interested in chemical sensors. One of the challenges we face when using chemical sensors is that they tend to have a very short shelf life. On Earth, you can use the sensor and then throw it away. When you need another one, you open up a package and if it doesn't work, you just get a new one.
I've been working on methods that will enable chemical sensing in extreme environments where the chemical sensors are made at the point of use. Typically a chemical sensor has a sensing element that degrades with time. When looking at space exploration into the outer Solar System, it can take many years from the time of the instrument launch to the time it is actually used. To address this, I'm looking at micro-fabrication tools that would allow for self-assembly of our chemical sensing elements in situ. Instead of sending the chemical sensor with the sensing element, we would send a device that would fabricate the sensoring element when it gets to its destination.
Do you personally think the potential exists to discover life on Mars?
My work primarily focuses on evidence for ancient life that once existed on the planet. Based upon observational evidence in terms of the history of liquid water on Mars, it appears there were habitable environments in the past. I think the probability of ancient life existing on Mars is very high. Again, the challenge for the scientists is access -- getting a rover to the right location and having the right tools to actually have a confirmation that will hold up to public scrutiny.
Click on image to see an animation of panorama images of NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander's solar panel and the lander's Robotic Arm with a sample in the scoop. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Texas A&M University
What is the coolest thing about your work?
As a scientist, the coolest thing about the work in general is that you have the opportunity to create your own projects. Through the proposal process offered through NASA and other government agencies, you're allowed to develop your science ideas from the ground up and I think that's very exciting.
Why should the general public care about your research?
I think the public, and the nation, should be interested in planetary exploration, which includes learning everything we can about our Solar System and beyond. Historically, that's what progressive nations have done -- we've explored. Since the founding of the country, we've explored our continent, and then we went beyond the continent. That's what makes - and keeps - nations great.
Looking from a basic science perspective of understanding who we are and understanding both the history and the future of life in the universe, space science is an area that I hope fascinates lots of people.
Are you aware of misconceptions the public may have about space science?
I think one misconception that the public may have is that space science costs a lot of money, and they wonder if it's worth it. In fact, the cost of space exploration, particularly a Mars rover or something similar, is extremely modest relative to the financial burdens of the country. People may think space exploration is something we can't afford, but its payoffs are tremendous to the nation in terms of what we learn and in terms of technology spin-off.
Much of what my colleagues and I do is technology development. The technology benefits of NASA programs and space exploration are tremendous. The country would lose a great deal if support for these programs were lost.
What do you currently consider your biggest challenge?
My biggest challenge is the difficult current funding environment. But the economic challenges are not only relevant for scientists but for everybody in today's economy.
What motivates you?
I love the work I get to do each day. When I was in college, I really dreaded going to different jobs I had throughout that time. As a scientist, however, I can honestly say I don't think there has ever been a day when I haven't wanted to get to work and see what discoveries await.
What first sparked your interest in science, and specifically chemistry?
I think it was pretty clear from a young age that math and science were subjects for which I had an aptitude, and so it was a no-brainer to pursue science. My family provided us with a strong academic focus and the encouragement to find something we were good at and enjoyed. There was something that appealed to me early on about the interactive physical aspects of creating something with my hands, and I'm fortunate to be able to work in an area that I've been interested in since I was a kid. Does your work offer the opportunity to speak with youth or work with them?
Yes, I routinely have students working in my lab. Currently, I have two students just starting who are from the URSA (Undergraduate Research at the SETI Institute in Astrobiology) partnership program the SETI Institute has with San Jose State University. I also have REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) students in the summer. This past summer, I was involved in STEP (Science, Technology and Exploration Program), a summer program for high-school students.
When speaking with students, I give them my perspective as a scientist and describe what science is about, which in fact, turned out to be somewhat, if not quite different, than what I thought it was when I was a kid. I thought science was more precise and always provided the right answer. Now I realize it's more fluid and there's a lot of diversity in opinions on the same subject matters. Picture to right: Richard Quinn with URSA student Hana Hashim.
Have you seen your students have the same type of realization regarding their notions of what a career in science is really like?
For students who come to work in my lab, I think the most surprising thing to them is how difficult experimental science is, how patient you need to be to wait for a result, and how the process frequently requires an extended period of time where you feel like you're not achieving much and then suddenly, the Eureka moment comes and everything falls in place.
Young people tend to expect instant gratification, especially in today's society. I was recently speaking with a student and I explained how long it takes to get an instrument onto a Mars mission, which is usually more than a decade from the start. She couldn't believe it and looked so sad! She asked, "It takes how long?" And then she commented on how Google basically "conquered the world" in a matter of years and yet it takes more than a decade to get something to Mars.
Does your work keep you in the lab?
I have a lab at NASA Ames, and I love working in the lab. But I spend a great deal of time writing papers and proposals. From around 2000 through 2007, I spent almost every summer in the Atacama or elsewhere doing field work, but my time away from the lab now tends to be for gatherings with family and friends.
If you had a one-year sabbatical to learn something entirely new, what would it be?
It would be fascinating to learn more about art conservation from a materials science perspective. Being a chemist, the materials and methods of restoring master works and things like that would be pretty interesting.
What is your philosophy of life?
Just try to be a nice person as best you can.
What's in store for you in the future?
I would like to see another instrument I've worked on make it onto another planetary exploration mission. I was just awarded funding to develop an experiment for the Space Station. Developing new technologies and experiments and seeing them deployed in space is one of my goals.
To learn more about Richard and his fascinating research, listen to his talk on the O/OREOS Nanosat Project, presented on April 24, 2011, as part of the SETI Institute Colloquium series.
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First Planet Orbiting Two Stars Discovered by the NASA Kepler Spacecrafttag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9646042011-09-15T14:21:20-04:002011-11-15T05:12:01-05:00SETI Institutehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/seti-institute/ By Dr. Laurance Doyle, an astrophysicist at the SETI Institute, and lead author of a paper that will appear in the journal Science on September 15, 2011.
For the first time, astronomers with the NASA Kepler spacecraft mission have discovered a planet orbiting two stars. This is a fundamentally different kind of planetary system than has ever been discovered before. The new system is known as "Kepler-16" and consists of two stars -- one about 69% the mass of the Sun, and the other only 20% the mass of the Sun, which circle each other every 41 days. Around both of these circles the Saturn-mass planet, half rock and half gas, known as Kepler-16b, with a period of 229 days. Even though the planet has an orbital period of less than a year, it is still outside the habitable zone of the stars because the stars are much dimmer than our Sun.
Where the Sun Sets Twice - NASA's Kepler mission has discovered a world where two suns set over the horizon instead of just one. The planet, called Kepler-16b, is the most "Tatooine-like" planet yet found in our galaxy. Tatooine is the name of Luke Skywalker's home world in the science fiction movie Star Wars. In this case, the planet is not thought to be habitable. It is a cold world, with a gaseous surface, but like Tatooine, it circles two stars.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt
The discovery that such "circumbinary" planets can exist increases the likelihood of success of the Kepler Mission, which is to detect the first habitable; i.e., Earthlike, planets around other stars. Perhaps half the stars in the galaxy are in double star systems. Understanding that planets can form in close binary systems means that these, too, can be targets in the search for habitable worlds.
In the Light of Two Suns - This artist's concept illustrates Kepler-16b, the first planet known to definitively orbit two stars -- what's called a circumbinary planet. The planet, which can be seen in the foreground, was discovered by NASA's Kepler mission.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle
The research team discovered the circumbinary planet in an eclipsing binary system. This is a double star system in which both stars orbit each other across our line of sight, so that eclipses of the stars occur with regularity. Historically, much of what we know about stars sizes comes from such eclipsing binary systems. In addition, the planet's orbit was found to lie very close to the same orbital plane - the difference in the tilt of their orbits is less than 1/3 of a degree - so that the planet also moves across the disc of each star, momentarily blocking some of the light. Such events are called "planetary transits" and most of what we know about the sizes of planets outside the Solar System comes from such transit events. Thus we have the best of both worlds, and Kepler-16 is probably the most accurately measured planetary system outside our own.
Some scientists have nicknamed the planet "Tatooine" after the name of the home planet of Luke Skywalker, the hero in the 1970s science fiction movie Star Wars. In the story -- in a hypothetical galaxy far, far away, -- a circumbinary planet's double sunset was first brought to the screen. The public's vision of circumbinary planets thus goes back decades. But today science fiction has become science fact, and that galaxy far, far away has become our own galaxy. A whole new kind of planetary system has been shown to exist and -- like Luke in the story -- the adventure is just getting started.
]]>Life at the SETI Institute: Rachel Mastrapa - Paving the Way for Astronomical Discoveriestag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9408522011-08-29T15:43:43-04:002011-10-29T05:12:02-04:00SETI Institutehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/seti-institute/Dr. Rachel Mastrapa; Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe, SETI Institute, and Gail Jacobs
Rachel Mastrapa studies the surface processes of icy Solar System bodies by interpreting their infrared spectra. The majority of her work involves performing the ground truth measurements in the laboratory including calculating the complex indices of refraction of single composition ice samples. These measurements are then used to construct model spectra to interpret the chemical composition of observed spectra. She also studies the subtle changes seen in ice mixtures that are not seen in single composition samples. Rachel has collaborated with her peers to collect spectra of Europa from the Keck Observatory and interpret Cassini VIMS spectra of Enceladus.
Click on images for larger view
Rachel, do you recall what first sparked your interest in science?
I can't remember a time when I wasn't interested in science. Ever since I was very young, I was curious. My mom tells me I used to have a big collection of sticks and stones. Maybe that's what led to my interest in Earth Sciences.
I excelled at math and science, and I loved participating in science fairs. It was frustrating because I was interested in astronomy, but coming up with astronomy projects wasn't easy in grade school. I was always doing random projects in completely different areas. In college, I narrowed my interest in astronomy when I took some classes in Earth Sciences. That's when I discovered that I wanted to pursue Planetary Science.
Briefly describe your research project.
Basically, my work involves doing ground truth measurements for ices in the Solar System. Doing ground truth measurements is a complex process. If we wanted to know what components made up an icy area on Earth, we'd just get a scoop of it, take it to the lab, and conduct several measurements to determine its contents. But these icy Solar System bodies are billions of miles away, so all we can do is use data gathered from ground-based telescopes or spacecraft, such as Galileo, Cassini or New Horizons, which is currently on its way to Pluto.
These spacecraft not only have on-board cameras that take pictures of the visible light; but they also carry spectrometers that break light up into many wavelengths and collect spectra, specifically in the infrared. Using this data, I can then measure the infrared spectrum of these ices in the lab for comparison to these observations. It's interesting to look at different wavelengths because molecules will absorb light at very specific wavelengths, and those absorptions are unique to specific compositions, such as water.
This picture from the lab shows the sample window (without ice). The sample is deposited on the clear window inside the metal ring. This is generally inside the sample chamber and isn't visible. It is only pulled out to clean it or check the temperature connections.
The measurements done in the lab help us analyze the remote observation data. Using this remote sensing data, I make a sample of ice under conditions that exist in the outer Solar System, such as on the surface of Europa, Enceladus, or a trans-Neptunian object. There are several different compositions of ice. Primarily water ice is in the Solar System, but it can also include methane, ethane, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and methanol. I've worked with all of these different ices in the laboratory. The main conditions I can simulate in the lab are the low temperatures and pressures similar to the vacuum in space. I'm looking for ices in the general temperature range within the Solar System -- anywhere from the low 20s in Kelvin up to 150 Kelvin. My sample chamber can reach a bottom temperature of 15 Kelvin (-258 degrees Celsius; -432.67 degrees Fahrenheit).
What is the coolest thing about your project?
It's really fun learning about the composition and structures of ices that are billions of miles away. But my work takes that one step further. There are still some observations that have absorptions that are not identified. We either haven't made the comparison yet or it's non-unique; it could be several different materials. Most of the icy objects we've observed are mainly water. As we get further out, the objects are mostly nitrogen and methane dominated.
There is another layer of interpretation that we can take from infrared spectroscopy, however, and this has been the bulk of my work recently. My team and I are not just identifying pure compounds but we're also seeing how those absorptions change as a function of temperature and mixing materials together. Mixing different materials together can shift where the absorptions are, sometimes making them stronger or weaker, making them go away, or making new absorptions appear. By using the infrared spectrum, we can identify not only what materials are on the surface, but we can (a) possibly get a remote measurement of the temperature of the surface, and (b) get an idea of how the materials are separated or mixed together, and that's really interesting.
It's also cool working in the Astrophysics & Astrochemistry Laboratory at NASA Ames Research Center. Many of these measurements have never been done before. It's not easy to put these labs together and keep them working, and it can be challenging to make the samples. It's a lot of fun to get in the lab and do the hands-on work!
Rachel Mastrapa working in the laboratory.
Is your research hindered by existing techniques or technology?
When I think about my biggest challenges, the first thing that comes to my mind is just finding the time to pursue all the projects in which I'm interested. But the techniques we use today in making the samples can also be challenging. We're often limited in the laboratory because it's difficult and expensive to build a laboratory system that can do multiple measurements. Typically we can make one type of sample or one type of measurement. In my dream world, I'd have a laboratory system with all kinds of instruments so I could better characterize my samples. I don't waste much time thinking about what I don't have, however; there's a lot to do now with the lab equipment I do have access to.
Why should the general public care about your research?
Some of these measurements have simply never been done before. My research is the most basic groundwork for future exploration. Some day, far into the future when humans are at the outer edges of the Solar System, they'll know what those planetary bodies are made of because of the work my colleagues and I have done. Our groundwork might one day lead to locating resources, finding where the hot spots are on the surfaces that have oceans, finding if you can remotely detect the temperature of these surfaces, and even possibly finding evidence of life on these other objects.
Essentially, the methods I'm working out right now will be the basis for future discoveries. In the Star Trek TV series, someone may refer to a "Class M" planet. They know it's a Class M planet because they did some kind of scan on it and their software contains algorithms that are based on research someone else did a hundred years earlier -- and I'm the person doing those measurements now.
What keeps you motivated?
Solving problems! I like finding a question or problem and then trying to figure out an answer or solution. One of the challenging parts of my work is getting the samples just right, but it's also interesting to think about why it's so challenging - what's going on. I like working in the lab and trying out different options to see how things work and finding ways to get the best sample I can - that's a lot of fun!
I also enjoy working in the lab with my students and post-docs. They tell me about a problem and I can offer suggestions, so the years of trial and error are paying off!
Rachel with two REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) students she worked with in 2010. Left to right: Ashley Curry, Rachel Mastrapa, Janine Myszka.
Photo taken by Rachel's daughter, Helen
What was your dream job as a child?
I wanted to be a ballerina, then a veterinarian, then an astronaut, and finally an astronomer - in that order. I wrote a poem about stars when I was eight, which is when I think I first made my choice and knew what I wanted to do.
Do you speak with youth about your career; and if so, what advice do you offer?
I've been working with Project Astro for two years now. Project Astro is a national program that has a local node in the Bay Area. Its purpose is to do public outreach, partnering astronomers with educators. It emphasizes offering repeat visits with the same class so there is consistency and the children can follow up on questions with the same astronomer. This year I'll be visiting a third-grade class again. Project Astro has all the education materials set up so I just go in and talk about the phases of the moon, which is what they'll be studying. I do a variety of activities, from giving them lectures to an interactive, hands-on project. I like to show the kids that science can be a lot of fun.
I've also sat on various panels, including working with high school students. My main advice for them is to pursue a career they will actually enjoy doing and to not select a major simply because it's what their parents want. I tell them to play to their strengths. But the most important thing I let them know is to not be afraid to fail. A lot of people get hung up on the idea that failure is a bad thing. Failure is often a very good; you can learn a lot from your mistakes - especially in the sciences. There is a massive concern that failure means you're a loser, and I'd like to help dispel that myth.
Have you come across misconceptions about science or scientists to which you'd like to comment?
I often come across people who aren't aware of how collaborative science really is. I work with a group of fantastic people. We talk about our ideas with each other, we share our problems in the laboratory, and we help each other find solutions.
Scientists can have a reputation for being social outcasts and nerds who are incapable of talking with people, but science is generally very social. That's why the meetings we attend are so important. This is where we share ideas and talk to each other about the kinds of measurements and observations we are doing. Even people who are coming into science aren't fully aware of how important it is to interact with other scientists. (Photo to left: Rachel attending the American Astronomical Society's DPS [Division for Planetary Sciences] meeting in Cambridge, England.)
Written and oral communication skills are also very important. Going through peer reviews can be tough, and you have to have thick skin when you are answering questions or getting criticism at a presentation. People can be very confrontational and you have to be ready for that. I was lucky because when I was growing up, my older brother would play pranks on me and tell me crazy stories like chocolate milk came from brown cows. I tweeted a while back that I can accredit the vast majority of my scientific skepticism and possibly my thick skin to my older brother.
You have been involved in several organizations related to women in science. Why is this important to you?
In the United States, more women are now in the sciences at the undergraduate level and graduate levels, which is great. (See the Association of Women in Science website for the data.) But somewhere around the post-doc to professional scientist level, something happens which studies refer to as the "leaky pipeline." For a long time, it was explained as a lag effect because there weren't a lot of women to begin with in the sciences. But there has been steady increase towards parity at the undergraduate and graduate levels for about 20 years now. Yet at the post-doc and especially the faculty levels, the number of women in science and technology is pathetically low. This is particularly true in the "hard" sciences, such as physics and math. Less that 20% of tenured and tenure-track faculty are women and only 5-10% of full professors are women.
Many people have been looking into this issue of women in science. Some believe women are just not as good in science, but most studies indicate cultural effects. In one example, a recent study examined reference letters for tenure-track faculty positions. Mock panels from actual university departments were given typical reference letters. Statistically, it was much more common for women to be described as thoughtful, caring, helpful, working well in a team, and so on; while men were likely to be described as go-getters, independent, and on the cutting-edge of the field. The latter descriptors were more positively received, and the qualities such as working well in a team were not well received. Members of the science community need to think carefully when writing and reading recommendation letters.
While the situation for women is far better than it used to be, there is plenty of room for improvement. I can't imagine how difficult it was for the women who were the real pioneers in the sciences when there simply were no women in the field. I appreciate them blazing that trail for me. I've had my own challenges but I've been able to learn from them, and I'm very happy to be able to pass that experience down and help out the next generation. That's one of the reasons I believe the time I devote to these organizations is worthwhile.
As a working mom, do you have any advice for other women?
There is no perfect solution - there is only a perfect solution for you. You'll learn that you have some biases you weren't aware of in your decision-making. Getting past those biases will be the most helpful thing you can do. It's the "never's" that will be a challenge. Some moms say, "I would never put my child in full-time daycare." And then you realize you're losing your mind when you're at home full time so you put your child in full-time daycare or you get a full-time nanny. Or vice versa, you might say, "I would never quit work and stay at home," but being away from your child might just be destroying you -- and you're surprised by this. Go ahead and quit or cut back your hours and only work part time. You're not a failure if you do that.
The trailblazers did a fantastic job of getting us into the professional realms; but if anything, we're being destroyed by our own expectations of ourselves. We're supposed to work full time, be full-time parents, be active, have a healthy diet, and make sure the kids eat healthy food and have all kinds of great educational opportunities, and the list goes on. My main advice is to define your priorities, realize they might change and the things you believe most might also change. Be willing to adjust and go with it.
What is your philosophy of life?
"Make the world a better place," which is a part of the Girl Scout Law. I've been in Girl Scouts since I was a Brownie at 8 years old, and I have a lifetime membership. Now I'm a Girl Scout leader for my daughter's Brownie troop.
What's in store for you in the future?
Continuing my work and making steady progress. It's incremental work, so there is really no end to it. There is a wealth of information available, and it would be a lot of fun to help identify some of those unidentified compounds. I'll slowly add equipment to the laboratory, and that's where I get concerned about the NASA budget. The average success rate for grants is less than 30%, so a lot of proposal writing is also in my future.
Learn more about Rachel in her full interview.]]>SETI Institute Engages the Public and Celebrates Sciencetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9260342011-08-13T00:55:28-04:002011-10-12T05:12:01-04:00SETI Institutehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/seti-institute/ Click on images for larger view
The cosmos can be mysteriously alluring to all -- from the young in age to the young at heart. In particular, space science and astrobiology fill us with wonder, amazement and awe -- but the scientists who work in these intriguing fields may seem intimidating to the non-scientist. At the SETI Institute, we open our doors on an annual basis and invite the public to celebrate science with us at our Mountain View, California, headquarters in what is always an energizing and informative interactive science fair.
Science enthusiasts and those who are just curious are welcomed into an environment that exudes not only the visitors' enthusiasm, but also the scientists' passion towards their ongoing research and recent discoveries. According to Tom Pierson, SETI Institute CEO, "This year's Celebrating Science day was our biggest and best yet. It was a very large crowd, and everyone had a great time, both the scientists and our guests. And... it was fantastic to see so many young students and their families enjoying the wonder of the search for life beyond earth!"
This year, over 400 people attended the SETI Institute's Celebrating Science event, held July 23, 2011. Guests had the opportunity to speak with a number of scientists who represented the Institute's wide range of astrobiology and planetary science. Dr. Jill Tarter was on hand to provide an update on the Institute's search for extraterrestrial intelligence and the Allen Telescope Array.
The renowned Dr. Frank Drake was kept busy talking with a loyal group of admirers who were more than willing to wait in line for the opportunity to meet Frank and have him autograph their Drake Equation t-shirts and books. Dr. Doug Vakoch also signed several copies of the recently released Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence, which Doug edited and in which several Institute scientists authored chapters.
Dr. Seth Shostak entertained a standing-room-only crowd with a talk that described what would really happen upon first contact; and Dr. David Morrison, Carl Sagan Center Director, was on hand to dispel the many myths that propagate the Internet. Dr. Peter Jenniskens shared his fascinating stories about tracking meteors around the world. He even brought a meteorite he tracked down and located in the vast desert area of the Sudan. Many other scientists were also present to answer questions and talk about their interesting research into a number of different areas, including Saturn and Mars.
Dr. Jon Jenkins informed the masses who stopped by his table about the exceptional results of NASA's Kepler Mission at year two. He reported, "The Celebrating Science event was a blast! It's always energizing to talk to people who are jazzed about science and the work we do at the SETI Institute. I am consistently impressed by the questions I get about the Kepler Mission from young kids to senior citizens -- they keep me on my toes and make me feel good about my work and the value of it in their eyes. SETI Institute research scientists are pushing back the frontier of science all the time, and it's great to be able to share the thrill of discovery and exploration with the public."
Geoff Puckett, Founder and CEO of EffectDesign Inc., shared a walk-through nebula concept model he is working on for the Institute. The goal is to create a high-tech, museum-quality immersive experience for Institute visitors. Geoff noted, "A key element which got visitors of all ages excited was the ability to walk through one nebula and then come back to the entry to select a different nebula or other body. The ability to 'experientialize' scientific data seemed to be the biggest 'Wow' factor."
TeamSETI member William Phelps has offered to share his love of astronomy with event visitors by bringing his solar telescopes to the event for the past several years. This year he brought his very popular large h-alpha solar telescope. "I love setting up my solar telescope at the Celebrating Science event," said William. "When people first look through the telescope, most people just see red. Our brain is used to receiving all different colors of the visible spectrum. At first it doesn't really process such a narrow band image very well, unless you've been doing this for awhile. Often people take a quick look and then get up to leave. 'Wait,' I say, 'you have to give it at least a minute...' About 30 seconds later they start to see the details -- the texture of the chromosphere, the tiny (!) spikes around the edge of the sun that look like tennis ball fuzz, and finally a prominence or two. That's when they open their mouth and say 'Wow!' and I know they are getting a good look at our closest star; the one we orbit, the one that gives us life."
TeamSETI member Candace Cook traveled from Oregon to attend Celebrating Science. "What an enlightening event," she said. "I was thrilled to spend three hours with a group of highly intelligent people who, when asked to discuss a scientific subject, did not roll their eyes, look away and suddenly remember a previous engagement! My sincere thanks to everyone at the SETI Institute for celebrating the fact that many of the civilians out here, even those without a Ph.D, love learning and actually enjoy discussing science! Kudos!"
Rob French and Lisa Ballard's area was inundated with visitors throughout the afternoon. Rob said, "I was pleasantly surprised at the level of public interest in space science and the number of attendees. Our Cassini table was overwhelmed with guests for most of the day. Many of the people were clearly very interested in the subject and asked insightful questions. For many, I think this was the first time they had seen so much imagery from Cassini, and there was a general sense of awe that humans had really accomplished this. At a time when NASA funding is in such danger, it was great to be able to share our accomplishments with the general public and see their support."
In addition to sharing science in a way that is easily comprehensible to the general public, the SETI Institute also believes in the importance of cultivating a love for science in the next generation of young scientists. Around 80 children participated in educational, interactive, and fun science activities donated by Agilent Technologies. Kids were given the opportunity to build a catapult or create their own model of the earth, spinning on its axis and changing its seasonal position relative to the sun (Night & Day activity).
One college astronomy teacher commented that she wished her students came to class understanding the concepts that were introduced and easily grasped by the young folks engaged in the Night & Day activity. Younger children were able to dissect owl pellets; and one young girl was exuberant over the fact that her pellet contained not one, but two skulls, with the jaw and a few teeth intact. Moving the jaw, she exclaimed, "It works!" Many children proudly carried around the catapults they built, not realizing they also got a lesson in physics. Even the youngest children got to color and create sticker pictures that had a space theme.
SETI Institute REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) intern Ross Cawthon thoroughly enjoyed leading the kid's catapult activity. He said, "Most of the kids started thinking about how to put the catapult together before I even began the instructions. We had a good conversation about why heavier or lighter objects would go further. It was nice to teach interested kids, and it was great to hear how much they like science!"
This was nine-year-old Lea's second time attending Celebrating Science. "There was a huge crowd there," she commented. "A lot of SETI scientists were there with a lot of different things to show and tell about space and science. I liked the activities that were there for kids. But what was most interesting to me was learning about how many different planet candidates have been identified by Kepler and how they decide whether they are good candidates or not. Next year I would like to learn more from the different scientists. All in all, I really liked Celebrating Science!"
The SETI Institute would like to acknowledge the almost 60 volunteers and its many supporters who helped make Celebrating Science a success. We'd also like to thank Steve Stubbs and Tom Pierson for capturing the event through their camera lens. If you'd like to see more, visit the Celebrating Science Photo Gallery.
]]>Robots vs. Humans: Should we cede solar system exploration to the robots? Do humans have a place beyond low Earth orbit?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9015752011-07-18T11:33:28-04:002011-09-17T05:12:01-04:00SETI Institutehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/seti-institute/ By Dr. Cynthia B. Phillips
Research Scientist, SETI Institute
The final mission of Space Shuttle Atlantis has spawned a whole series of perspective pieces on the history, state, and future of space exploration. Some, like the YouTube video "NASA's increase of awesome to continue," are unabashedly exuberant celebrations of the future in store for us in space; others, like this thoughtful piece in Technology Review entitled "Was the Space Shuttle a Mistake?," are depressingly and effectively critical of the cost both in dollars (more than $200 billion) and in human lives lost (14 astronauts plus at least 6 ground support staff) of the Shuttle program. Some authors have even posited the end of the space age altogether, as in a piece subtitled "Inner space is useful. Outer space is history" in The Economist.
While some of these articles make throwaway references to the number of robotic missions that could have been launched for the cost of one Shuttle flight (estimates range from $450 million per launch, one Discovery-class mission, up to $1.6 billion per launch, half a Flagship mission), there has been little analysis to date of the relative merits of human exploration vs. robotic exploration.
As a planetary scientist, I have very mixed feelings about the human spaceflight program. On a purely scientific level, there is very little in our current solar system exploration program that can't be done just as effectively by a robot as by an astronaut. Robots excel at the tedious work of taking similar pictures or analyzing similar rocks over and over and over again, without complaint (usually!) or a need for life support systems. Robots don't need food or water, they can withstand much more damaging radiation, and, perhaps most importantly, they don't need to come home at the end of the mission. Simply put, a one-way trip requires only half the fuel of a round trip voyage, and even though you'd likely get plenty of volunteer astronauts signing up for a one-way trip to Mars, it's unlikely that our current moral and ethical code would allow us to send such a mission.
And yet. While orbiting robotic probes have taken stunning vistas of the outer Solar System, it is clearly our rover missions on Mars that have won the hearts and minds of the general public. Perhaps it is the anthropomorphic, almost cute appearance of Spirit and Opportunity (and don't underestimate the cuteness factor), but I think it's also that rover tracks are the closest thing we currently have to astronaut footprints on the surface of another world.
If you think of an iconic image of space exploration, chances are you'll come up with an astronaut planting a flag on the Moon, or perhaps that classic image of a single bootprint from Apollo 11. Robots have flown past, orbited, and/or landed on all of the major bodies in our solar system and quite a few of the minor bodies -- we've landed spacecraft not only on Mars, but also on Venus, the Moon (of course), and Saturn's moon Titan; we sent an atmospheric probe into Jupiter; we're currently in orbit around Mercury and Saturn; and we've flown past Neptune and Uranus (and are on our way for a flyby of that pesky has-been, Pluto). Yet without that bootprint, that iconic image of "touching the surface," have we really explored those worlds?
Ironically, if the next target of human space exploration remains a trip to a near Earth asteroid, the "boots and flag" doctrine becomes extremely complicated in an irregular microgravity environment. If an astronaut visits an asteroid, she probably won't actually be able to stand on it because there won't be enough gravity. Landing would be extremely difficult, but perhaps a spacecraft could rendezvous with an asteroid by matching its speed and let an astronaut drift over to pay a visit to a large space rock. Rather than trying to make a bootprint on the surface, wouldn't a large pole be easier for her to poke the surface with? It could even collect a sample while making a boot-shaped impression. But then do we need the astronaut outside in her suit in the dangers of space after all? Couldn't she just operate the pole with a boot on the end from safely inside her spacecraft? What if she operated it remotely, from a larger spacecraft perched a safe distance away from the asteroid? What if she stayed home and operated it truly remotely, from the comfort of a safe NASA facility's virtual reality tank? What if the boot-and-pole contraption didn't need to wait for signals from a faraway human astronaut at all, but could be programmed to autonomously tap the surface on approach, make and photograph a nice boot-shaped mark, and perhaps even scoop up a sample or two of asteroid dust to send back to Earth in a small capsule? Would that allow us to check off "asteroid exploration" from our list? What if I told you that mission has already been accomplished -- the Japanese Hayabusa spacecraft successfully used a robotic probe to capture a small sample of dust from the asteroid Itokawa in 2005, placed it in a capsule, and sent it back to Earth, where it was successfully recovered in 2010 and is currently being studied.
But what about the science, you say, all that science that can only be done by trained astronauts? What about the amazing green moon rocks that were found by the Apollo astronauts on the lunar surface but surely would have been missed by a robot? To this, I would argue that while certainly human astronauts have the benefit of intelligence, quick thinking, problem solving, and ingenuity, robots have certain inexorable advantages in the realm of space exploration. Aside from not needing to eat, sleep, or return to Earth, robotic missions are significantly cheaper than human missions. For the cost of putting two astronauts on the surface of a planet like Mars for a few days or weeks, you could afford an army of robots that could comb the surface of the planet for years. While they might not spot that green rock right away, through sheer brute force chances are they'd eventually stumble across it and catalog it as an interesting sample to be sent back to Earth someday. And if you don't have humans to return to Earth (and keep alive and safe all the way home), you have room for a whole lot more rocks in your return capsule!
So why, then, do I have mixed feelings about the end of the Space Shuttle program? If everything humans can do in space, robots can do better, cheaper, and safer (in terms of loss of human life), then why send humans at all? The answer is simple: don't try to justify human spaceflight using science. NASA got it right when it split off the Science Mission Directorate (SMD) from the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate (ESMD). Keep exploration, dominated by human astronauts, separate from science, where robots rule. Sure, there may be some chances for science to be done along the way, as in the interesting geological observations made by the Apollo astronauts or the microgravity chemistry experiments performed by astronauts on the International Space Station, but if you try to justify a program like Apollo or the ISS purely on scientific terms, you'll fail. For the $25 billion spent on the Apollo program (a more inclusive estimate in 2009 dollars is $170 billion), or the $100 billion spent on the International Space Station (which includes construction costs plus the cost of 33 Space Shuttle missions to construct and supply the station), we could have had a small army of robotic lunar geology rovers or a fleet of microgravity satellites. Apollo and the ISS belong firmly in the Exploration side of NASA's portfolio, and that's as it should be.
Why, then, should we explore at all, if not for scientific gain? As a scientist, this might be a hard position to admit, but exploration has political and psychological benefits that go far beyond science in many respects. The Apollo program was a unique circumstance of the Cold War era -- instead of fighting a war on the ground, with potentially devastating consequences from the use of atomic or nuclear weapons, the United States and the Soviet Union chose astronauts and cosmonauts to fight in a modern-day arena: space became the gladiator ring of the past. In a post-Cold War era, the International Space Station became a sign of international cooperation and trust, as governments from many countries shared resources to build and staff a technological marvel in orbit.
Human spaceflight gives us a new perspective on our world, fragile and beautiful in an endless, empty sea of darkness. It is inspirational, a source of pride in our nation's accomplishments, a uniting subject at a time of great national divisions. And it is space travel that lights up the minds of children, of the next generation of explorers, sparking a seed of innovation and excitement and exploration that will carry this nation forward. NASA should be on the cutting edge of that exploration.
The Space Shuttle was an innovative technological marvel in 1981, when it was first launched, but it has kept flying far longer than originally intended, and the fleet of spacecraft has grown old and unreliable. Many things have changed since 1981, and it's time for a change in our human spaceflight policy, as well. I believe that the Obama administration made a tough but correct decision when it decided to encourage commercial development of spacecraft that can serve as the cargo ships and true "space shuttles" of the future, bringing supplies and astronauts to the International Space Station and other future destinations in Low Earth Orbit. Atlantis' final journey into space turned out to be both majestic and mundane, as the science fiction spacecraft of the future (at least the future as seen in 1981) ends its days ferrying a load of spare parts and bologna sandwiches into orbit and bringing a load of broken equipment and assorted trash back to Earth. Such resupply missions are clearly better suited to the shipping containers of the future, robotic resupply ships that are already automatically docking with the ISS which are unloaded, then filled up with trash and released to burn up in the Earth's atmosphere on the way down.
NASA's future of human spaceflight will focus on innovation and true exploration, not the day-to-day operations of the supply chain. As Space Shuttle flights became ordinary, they lost their place in the human imagination because they ceased to be exploration - while the scenery is stunning, there are only so many times that a trip around Earth or a visit to the same Space Station can be spun as new and exciting on the evening news. A focus on developing flexible, innovative, and realistic new spacecraft that can take astronauts to Near Earth asteroids (with or without a boot-on-a-pole), or back to the Moon, or even on to Mars, will give NASA's ESMD a true purpose and destination once more.
Robotic precursor missions to asteroids and other destinations can certainly do some great science along the way, but NASA needs to make sure that the budget for true scientific exploration, as done by the amazing spacecraft of SMD, remains insulated and protected from the almost boundless demands of human spaceflight. Humans have a place in space exploration, as ambassadors and proxies for the human race as a whole, but robotic missions will venture to the far reaches of our solar system to study environments too remote or dangerous for humans to visit any time soon. Fortunately, there's plenty of space for both!
About the Author: Dr. Cynthia B. Phillips is a planetary scientist at the SETI Institute and author of over a dozen books, including Space Exploration for Dummies. Dr. Phillips acknowledges helpful discussions with Dr. David Morrison for this article.
]]>Life at the SETI Institute: Friedemann Freund - The Future of Forecasting Earthquakestag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8874972011-06-29T20:16:50-04:002011-08-29T05:12:01-04:00SETI Institutehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/seti-institute/By Dr. Friedemann Freund; Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe, SETI Institute, and Gail Jacobs
Friedemann Freund doesn't shrink from taking on the really big problems. His research has elucidated such important phenomena as the fact that rocks under stress behave like batteries that can produce currents deep within the crust of the Earth. These are not piddling electron flows, either - the currents could be as large as millions of amperes, sufficient to be measured above ground, and perhaps even from orbit. Understanding and exploiting this phenomenon could lead to a dramatic breakthrough in earthquake forecasting. Click on images for larger view
Friedemann, how did the science of earthquake forecasting attract your attention? I became active in earthquake research approximately 15 years ago. What many find surprising is I came to study earthquakes from the field of basic physics - I wanted to understand defects in minerals that affect the physical properties of rocks when put under stress. Of course, our very tectonically active, dynamic planet puts rocks under enormous stresses all the time. Eventually, these rocks rupture and generate huge shock waves that can bring down buildings or generate tsunamis that can run back and forth across an entire ocean several times. It is mind boggling to realize a magnitude 9 earthquake releases the energy equivalent to several million atomic bombs of the Hiroshima class. Photo to the left is an extensional crack taken in the Santa Cruz Mountains, California, on October 17, 1989. Credit: R.J. McLaughlin, U.S. Geological Survey
The conventional seismological community is unable to derive early warnings for even the large magnitude earthquakes, such as the recent quake that devastated parts of Japan or the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake off the west coast of Sumatra that produced a killer tsunami. Through my work, I hope to help build an understanding of the very subtle signals generated when stresses are building up deep in the Earth to the level where rocks will eventually rupture.
How did your research into mineral defects lead you to the study of pre-earthquake signals?
I became interested in certain mineral defects many years ago while living in Germany. I chose the simplest oxide material one could attain, which was magnesium oxide. My colleagues were skeptical of this area of study, thinking there was nothing left to find. But my work led me to a family of defects, which everybody else had overlooked or misinterpreted as "dirt" or some unspecified form of contamination. I spent the next 20 years characterizing these defects with every physical technique available. I discovered one of the characteristic features of these defects was that, when activated, they would change the electrical conductivity, by 8 orders of magnitude. An enormous change.
After working in this area a number of years, turning more toward studying rocks, I recalled my old studies on the magnesium oxide crystals. They had generated electricity when I "tickled" them. By the mid-1990s, I knew that minerals in common rocks have the same type of defects. It occurred to me that if I mechanically stressed those rocks, I might be able to generate electricity.
This idea turned out to be correct but it took another 10 years before I had time to invent an experiment that has since become a benchmark experiment. Working with two post-docs at NASA Ames, I was able to demonstrate in 2006 that when we apply moderate stress to one end of a block of granite about 20 feet in length, we could draw an electric current from the other end. In addition, based upon a theoretical paper I had published in the mid-1980s, we showed that air molecules become massively ionized at the rock surface and that small sparks are flying off the corners and edges due to the firing of corona discharges.
Photo credit: Gary Cyr
Are your findings currently being used in the field to detect unusual ionization levels in the atmosphere?
I've been working with Tom Bleier, who leads Quakefinder, the humanitarian R&D division of Stellar Solutions. Tom has now installed air conductivity sensors along California's San Andreas Fault. When there has been a moderate or big earthquake not far from one of his sensor stations, he has indeed recorded a very large increase in air conductivity. When we saw this effect for the first time, we were very pleased even though our sensor was overwhelmed by the amount of ionization. This air ionization at the ground level and the upward expansion of the heavily ion-laden air, probably up to the stratosphere, is what causes distinct reactions in the ionosphere some 200-300 km above us. These are very complex processes, widely reported in the scientific literature as potential pre-earthquake indicators - fascinating for us to begin understanding how these processes work. I'm pleased to see this work receiving press coverage, including news reports in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area.
What is the coolest thing about your project?
The sheer scope of the work is energizing! Earthquakes are only one of the many aspects that have come out of my work. Even though I plunged into this earthquake arena and some people now call me the earthquake guy, this work is actually only an entry into an even wider area of research.
How is your research expanding in scope?
In reading a variety of seemingly unrelated reports, I began to wonder if the defects I had seen in the minerals 25 years prior could be responsible for the signals people were reporting from the natural environment prior to earthquakes. To me, the answer very quickly became Yes! That seemed to be an intriguing avenue to follow.
In early June 2011, I gave a talk at a brain mapping conference in San Francisco, California, in which I pointed out a very interesting phenomenon. The ionosphere that wraps around the globe has a standing wave that is constantly fed by lighting strikes on the surface of the Earth. Every lighting bolt that hits the Earth emits a broad electromagnetic radiation from very high frequencies that you can actually hear. In the old radios, you could hear the crackle of lightening strikes.
But there is also a very low frequency component; and one component in the low frequency, around 8 Hz, is the frequency that a wave takes to travel in one single oscillation around the entire Earth and reconnect. I became interested in the influence these extremely low frequency electromagnetic waves might have on living organisms. It turns out our brain emits radiation at 8 Hz and 4 Hz. Even the brains of little animals, such as mice, emit 4 Hz of electromagnetic radiation.
Prior to an earthquake, the earth sends out bursts of low and extremely low frequencies that cover the entire spectrum around 8 Hz from millihertz to 100 Hz. These electric waves come from the belly of the earth. There are some very interesting studies that link psychological and physiological phenomena in humans and animals to the approach of big earthquakes exactly at the same time when these electromagnetic waves are emitted.
What are some examples of psychological or physiological phenomena exhibited prior to an earthquake?
Evidence is mounting that ultra low frequency and extremely low frequency radiation emitted in the natural environment can have profound effects on human and animal health and behavior prior to an earthquake. An excellent paper has been written by Dr. A. Shitov, a professor in Southern Siberia. He characterized a number of incidents that occurred prior to the 2003 magnitude 7.5 Chuya earthquake, a remote area in Siberia. One of the aspects he looked at was medical records. Dr. Shitov was able to show that about two weeks before this earthquake, there was an unusual increase in the number of people seeking medical help. The complaints of those who flocked to hospital emergency rooms before the earthquake were related to neurological conditions - hypertension, vegetative vascular dystonia, epilepsy - while other conditions such as acute respiratory infections and gastro enteric diseases, which are due to poor air quality and drinking water pollution, showed up after the quake.
Emergency visits prior to the Magnitude 7.5 Chuya earthquake in Siberia. September 27, 2003.
A. Shitov, 2010
Another example of interesting pre-earthquake behavior came about through pure chance. In the spring of 2008, a group of medical doctors at the University of Chengdu in Sichuan, China, were monitoring the circadian rhythm of laboratory mice. On May 12, 2008, in the midst of their experiment, the devastating magnitude 8.0 Wenchuan earthquake occurred less than 100 kilometers from the university. The researchers continued their experiment but then found out that three to four days before the earthquake, the circadian rhythm of the mice had become completely random. This continued for a few days after the earthquake, until the animals' behavior returned to a normal pattern. A friend from China sent me the electromagnetic wave spectrum recorded at the same university. It showed a large extremely low frequency electromagnetic emission two or three days before the Wenchuan earthquake - at the same time the mice exhibited their strikingly abnormal behavior.
In a third example from 2009, a Ph.D. biology student from The Open University in England was in Italy continuing her third year of studying toads and their mating behavior. Suddenly the toads disappeared from the lake, which was the study area. When the student couldn't locate the toads, she became worried as this was extremely unusual behavior. Then the deadly 6.3 magnitude earthquake hit the heavily damaged the town of L'Aquila, Italy, approximately 70 kilometers from the lake. Three days later the toads returned.
Strange and interesting things are observed before major earthquakes. I find this area of study a wonderful challenge in which to understand the complexities of the world. It's fascinating to think these occurrences are driven by the sun and are influenced by processes that originate in our closest star. We have a diurnal pattern of a distribution of earthquakes controlled by a current in the ionosphere, which is controlled by the activity on the sun. When we move into a new cycle of solar activity, such as we are now entering, the currents in the ionosphere will have a higher chance of triggering earthquakes in the earth's crust. If you look at 100 or so years of seismic activity records from around the world, you will see a clear pattern that the number of earthquakes follows the solar activity. I want to understand the details surrounding this fact. Image to left: The X9-class solar flare of Dec. 5, 2006, observed by the Solar X-Ray Imager aboard NOAA's GOES-13 satellite. Credit: NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center
Why should the general public care about your research?
There's no doubt seismologists have done wonderful work. They look at the number of earthquakes, details of past earthquakes, and then they construct elaborate statistical models when the next earthquake will happen. But they can't "predict" earthquakes. That's where the 30-year uncertainty comes in that is reflected in insurance policies.
I don't want to look backwards at past earthquakes and predict future earthquakes statistically. I want to train my eyes or my instruments to understand the earthquakes as they happen. As the stress is building up deep in the earth 10, 20, 35 kilometers below the surface of the earth, can we pick up and understand the signals that are detectable at the surface? Since these signals range from animal behavior to ionospheric perturbations and everything in between, it is important to understand how the basic physics is related. If we can show - and I think we can - how atmospheric phenomena and phenomena in the biologic world, such as animal behavior, are linked to ionospheric perturbations, we can then use this to forecast conditions under which earthquakes are likely to occur.
Collapsed building and burned area in San Francisco as a result of the October 19, 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Credit: C.E. Meyer, U.S. Geological Survey
While we can't predict earthquakes, we can issue an alert stating, "Stresses seem to be building up deep in the earth's crust at a particular fault and if these stresses reach a certain level, there is an increased chance of an earthquake within the next few days." This can have tremendous impact on the public and saving lives, instead of being unprepared and having to deal with the aftermath of a massive earthquake.
How has your lifelong study into the physics of Earth influenced your thoughts on the possibility of life on other planets?
Wherever in the universe there is a planet with land and liquid water and an active weathering system, I predict that this planet will slowly but inextricably become oxidized. Even without life and without photosynthesis this planet will acquire oxygen in its atmosphere. Carl Sagan's proposal of the "pale blue dot" being a symbol of life in the "blackness of space" is a beautiful metaphor. Life is not necessary to create a pale blue dot, but the same weathering process which injects oxygen will also release organic molecules into the environment, specifically complex molecules such as must have been available on the early earth, forming the basis for self-organization and the origin of life. Image to the right: This is a computer artist's illustration of a giant but remote galaxy string discovered recently. Credit: NASA
My work suggests that wherever planets exist in our galaxy and beyond, which are similar to the earth with a similar weathering system, they will create situations for life to form. If this life self-assembles from the organics released from rocks during the weathering cycle, it will look similar to our own - similar in its overall biochemical foundation. I don't believe in life based on silicon chemistry or on a completely different chemistry. Earth-like planets anywhere will, by necessity, develop both oxygen and primitive life. The slowly but inextricably rising amount of oxygen in the environment will drive the evolution from primitive single-cell organisms like the prokaryotes on earth to more evolved forms of life like the eukaryotes on earth that have learned to not only survive in the presence of oxygen but to thrive in it.
If you had a one-year sabbatical to work on a pet project, what would it be?
I'd like to revisit some ideas I had about 30 years ago. At the time my work had led me to become interested in proton conductivity. I developed a complete semiconductor physics of protons carrying electric currents as they relate to certain chemical processes. I would like to see whether my basic understanding of proton conductivity can be applied to better understand to the functioning of the living cell. Our cells have an amazing capability of transporting protons through the cell membranes. Peter Mitchell who proposed an elaborate but basically "unphysical" mechanism for this transmembrane proton transport received a Nobel Prize. I challenge his idea. If I had six months or a year, or if someone would give me the money to hire a capable young Post-Doc, I'd love to see how far I can take my fundamental understanding of how protons conduct electricity and how they couple to the flow of electrons -- a fascinating project, if only I had the time to do it.
Learn more about Friedemann and his fascinating research in his full interview.]]>Life at the SETI Institute: Janice Bishop -- Mars: Back through the Looking Glasstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8639222011-05-18T19:18:12-04:002011-07-18T05:12:01-04:00SETI Institutehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/seti-institute/By Dr. Janice Bishop; Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe, SETI Institute, and Gail Jacobs
Dr. Janice Bishop is a chemist and planetary scientist who explores the planet Mars using spectroscopy. Her investigations of CRISM data of Mars are revealing clays and sulfates in the ancient rocks that provide information about the geochemical environment at that time. Dr. Bishop studies the spectral fingerprints of minerals and rocks in the lab in order to generate a spectral library for identification of these in the Martian data. Her research also involves collecting and studying Mars analog rocks and soils at a variety of locations including volcanic islands, cold deserts, hydrothermal regions, acidic aqueous sites, and meteorites which are the only Martian samples available on Earth to date.
Click on images for larger view
What first sparked your interest in science?
I grew up in Livermore, California. My Mom is a scientist and my dad is an engineer, so I was always exposed to science. Livermore is a town with an abundance of scientists, ranchers, and wineries, so being a scientist was a very normal career path.
When I was a kid my parents brought my brother and I to science fairs and open houses at the Lawrence Livermore and Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories. We saw the cool things the scientists were doing and became interested ourselves. These open houses were similar to the SETI Institute's Celebrating Science event, and I am glad to see the SETI Institute hosting these types of public events as well. You never know what will capture the imagination and interest of a child.
Very briefly, describe your research project. I currently have several ongoing projects, which all primarily relate to mineralogy on Mars. We are trying to identify the ancient rocks on the planet - rocks that contain clays, sulfates and other minerals that formed under aqueous conditions. These findings will allow us to look for areas where water might have been present on the planet and where life might have been a possibility. The photo to the left shows Dr. Bishop measuring spectra of sulfate-rich rocks at the Sulfur Bench site at Kilauea, Hawaii. Credit: L. Gruendler.
Tell us a bit about the technology that enables your research.
We use information captured by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which is still flying in orbit around Mars. It launched in 2005 and started collecting data October 2006. CRISM (Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars) is a hyperspectral imaging camera that is on board. Instead of the three colors our eyes use to perceive our world, CRISM gives us 544 channels. We use all these different colors to view the planet. We are looking at these Martian images in order to identify the mineralogy, and the mineralogy tells us about the geochemical environment on the planet.
Minerals have a unique signature that is like a fingerprint. They show up as small peaks and dips in the spectrum. By looking for these dips, peaks and curves, we can identify minerals on the planet. In order to identify minerals on Mars, however, we need to study minerals in the lab and at field locations analogous to Mars, which are two other projects of mine. I analyze the data sent back from CRISM along with other members of the CRISM Team and the scientific community.
What is one of the coolest things about your projects?
We are finding many of these clays in the really ancient rocks. It's like having access to this clear window back into time on the planet Mars. We do not have that option for Earth because our planet has been "contaminated" by life. Our planet is a host to all types of plants and animals that have changed the planet substantially in the past 4 billion years. But on Mars, the clay minerals in particular can tell us a lot about the geochemical environment 4 billion years ago; and that helps us understand what the planet was like then and if life might have evolved. Whether life did or did not evolve is interesting and helps us further understand evolution of life on our planet Earth, and that is pretty cool.
Dr. Bishop collecting samples from the solfatara site inside Kilauea caldera, Hawaii. The volcanic ash has been altered here by the steam vents. Orange layers are colored by jarosite, an iron-rich sulfate mineral. Light-colored layers contain opal. Credit: L. Gruendler
What do you currently consider your biggest challenge?
There are so many! Getting good spectral libraries is a challenge. When we are looking at these spectra, or the curves, dips, slopes and peaks from Mars, we want to be able to identify them as a specific type of mineral or rock.
Mars may have other kinds of rocks or minerals in a form different from those on Earth or types that are less common on Earth. As we collect and analyze this data, we try to identify certain aspects as belonging to a class of minerals, such as clays, sulfate or mafic silicates. As we study these images in more detail, we then try to find analogs of the mineral combinations or rock types in nature so that we can infer the geochemical environment on Mars. It is important to collect as many samples as we can on Earth so we can continue to build and expand our library. Beyond looking at the pure minerals, we also try to look at the alteration of igneous rocks to see how the minerals we are interested in form in situ.
Dr. Bishop testing magnetic properties of soil at the solfatara site inside Kilauea caldera, Hawaii. Credit: E. Goeschl
Where are some of the places your field work takes you?
There are several locations on Earth that serve as Mars analogs. Mostly, we try to go to remote places where there is less vegetation and fewer human interactions. Dry areas are good, and some scientists go to the Atacama or the Antarctic Dry Valleys. My field research has mainly taken me to Hawaii and other volcanic islands such as Iceland. I have frequently been to the top of Haleakala on Maui because there is less vegetation. Other interesting sites are near Kilauea on the Big Island. I like to study alteration of the volcanic rocks in order to study the kinds of minerals that form under different environmental conditions. The National Park Service has been very helpful providing us with field permits; sometimes they even join us with our field work.
View of cinder cones inside the Haleakala caldera from Sliding Sands Trail, Maui. Credit: J. Bishop
It's fun to climb up these volcanoes and look at the different forms and colors of the rocks. Often the iron in the minerals is an indicator because it produces different colors depending on the mineral structure. At Haleakala much of the altered volcanic rocks are a shade of brown but the ones near cinder cones or those with some interesting mineralogy can be orange, purple, pink, yellow or other colors because of their iron content.
Why should the general public care about your research? A lot of people are curious about Earth's evolutionary process. One of the big reasons we might care about how life evolved on Mars is because this information could help reveal more about our own planet. We hope to learn how those minerals on Mars formed and whether or not life evolved. Studying the clays and understanding how Mars' early geochemical environment changed will help tell us whether or not there was life there and how it might have evolved. And that information can help us better understand how life might have evolved here on Earth. You can see Dr. Bishop collecting samples at the solfatara site inside Kilauea caldera, Hawaii, in the the photo to the right. Credit: E. Goeschl.
How did you come to join the SETI Institute?
Through much of my undergraduate years at Stanford, I worked on projects through NASA Ames. In grad school, I also received a NASA Graduate Student Researcher's Program Fellowship through NASA Ames. I did my post-doc at the DLR in Germany for two years, and then came back to Ames for an NRC research fellowship. At that time I started meeting people at the SETI Institute and it seemed like a great place with which to become involved. I joined the Institute in March 1999.
What motivates you?
I love what I do! I love my projects. I don't really ever put them away; they are always traveling with me. Occasionally I'll wake up at night with a great idea, then write it down and go back to sleep. Often I get an idea while I'm listening to a lecture or waiting for an appointment -- the ideas always bubble up. The thoughts are always there and the projects are always working in the back of my mind. It is just a part of my life.
What was your dream job as a child?
I wanted to be an astronaut. I imagine a lot of people thought about that career. I actually applied when I was finishing graduate school. I interviewed twice but was not selected due to a depth perception problem with my vision. But it was so cool to go through the interview process and find out about the astronaut program, what they do and all the bizarre medical tests they put you through.
As a youth, did you have any experiences that influenced your career?
When I was 16 and in high school, I went to a summer camp on astronomy called SSP (Summer Science Program). The NSF (National Science Foundation) used to sponsor these camps, and I was among 36 kids from around the country that participated in this program. It was a great experience to spend six weeks hanging out with other kids interested in astronomy and learning a lot about science. Our project was to observe an asteroid with a telescope and calculate its orbit. For me, it was a real eye opener that I could do this. SSP still exists today and is largely sponsored by the alumni. Unfortunately, NSF stopped support of all of these extracurricular high school programs years ago.
If you were speaking to a group of teens about your career, what would you tell them?
I would tell them they need to find something that really interests them and that they are passionate about. Find something you want to spend all of your free time doing. And study hard, work hard, and learn a lot. You have to persevere. Things don't always work out well on the first try. There are going to be ups and downs in anything. If you have a bad day, you just have to take a deep breath, go get an ice cream, and come back the next day and try again.
What historic and/or contemporary personality do you admire most and why?
I admire Marie Curie and Amelia Earhart because they were outstanding women who did interesting work. I also admire Lise Meitner. She was a physicist in Berlin in the early 1900s and I learned about her when I lived there. Both Dr. Curie and Dr. Meitner were important scientists who contributed greatly toward our understanding of chemistry and physics, and had to overcome a number of challenges in their lives.
What is your favorite vacation destination? We have a lot of fun collecting rocks when we go to Hawaii or Iceland. There is so much for families to do in the Hawaiian Islands, so my husband can take the kids to the beach while I go hiking to look at the rocks. Sometimes we all go hiking together and our kids are very interested in exploring as well. Sometimes I bring a magnet or a couple of magnifying glasses because the kids enjoy studying the rocks too. Dr. Bishop with her kids examining altered volcanic rocks in the field in the photo to the right. Credit: L. Gruendler.
If you had a one-year sabbatical to learn something entirely new, what would it be?
I always wanted to go to Egypt. I think the archeology there is just fascinating. It would be so interesting to be an archeologist in Egypt for a year.
Learn more about Janice and her interesting research in her full interview.]]>
Life at the SETI Institute: Lori Fenton -- Sand Seas of the Solar Systemtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8517802011-04-20T18:25:38-04:002011-06-20T05:12:01-04:00SETI Institutehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/seti-institute/By Gail Jacobs and Lori Fenton
Planetary scientist Dr. Lori Fenton joined the SETI Institute as a principal investigator in 2006, and was awarded NASA's Carl Sagan Fellowship for Early Career Researchers that same year. Lori's primary research interests include aeolian geomorphology -- how wind shapes a planetary surface -- for both Mars and the Earth, recent and ongoing climate changes, and the mobility of wind-blown sand and dust. Her research makes use of many different types of information, including visible and thermal imagery from spacecraft and atmospheric models such as the Ames global climate model.
Lori's recent publications describe how dunes and dune fields record climate change on Mars, the first evidence for dune migration on another planet, and how atmospheric models can be used to account for wind gustiness and its effects on sand movement.
Click on images for larger view
Briefly describe your research project.
I study the wind on Mars and how it affects the surface. That includes many desert features, like sand dunes. Dunes are sculpted as the wind blows around sand grains. By looking at dunes, we can learn something about wind patterns. If those wind patterns change over time, as the climate shifts, it may also be recorded in the shape of the dunes, so we might even be able to learn something about climate change on Mars by looking at sand dunes.
My current project involves looking at wind patterns in a particular area on Mars. Near Mars' equator, there is a large interconnected set of canyons. Some of them have mysterious materials, or sediments that have formed inside them that seem to indicate they were formed in the presence of water. That's very exciting since Mars is now a dry and desolate place. However, evidence like this tells us that it was once much wetter. If these materials are dried and hardened mud much like we think, then they might just have fossils in them. Finding evidence for former life on Mars would be very exciting, since we've never found life beyond Earth. Not yet, anyway.
I'm not studying those layers of old mud, but rather piles of sand that have swept by and eroded the layers. Some of that sand has accumulated into lovely dunes that can tell us something about wind patterns in these canyons. One thing we don't understand is where did this sand come from? I'm wondering if it eroded from the dried muddy layers -- if that's the case then we might be able to help figure out how those muddy materials formed. Sand grains are bigger than the typical silt grains found, for example, in the middle of a peaceful lake. Maybe we can then say that these muddy materials weren't formed in a lake (or at least not a very peaceful one).
What is the coolest thing about your project?
I get to look at pretty pictures of Mars. Often I'm the first person in the world to ever look at them in detail. It's like being the first explorer to climb a mountain and see what's on the other side.
This image is part of HiRISE image PSP_002464_1745 on Mars. The sun is coming from the upper left. It shows some old eroded aeolian ("aeolian" = wind-formed) features that may have once been either dunes or ripples. The darker gray material that you can see at the upper right and lower left once buried these features, and has since eroded away, exposing these things. If you click on the link to see the whole image (which I recommend) you'll see much more of that gray material -- I just pulled out the part of the image that has aeolian features in it. This sort of view is pretty rare on Earth -- usually buried dunes become sandstones and never again look like dunes. Apparently on Mars, whatever process cemented these things made them much harder and thus more resistant to weathering than the gray material that covered them. That way, when the gray material erodes away, the old hardened dunes (or ripples) still hold their original shape. Source: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
What do you currently consider your biggest challenge?
There is so much we just don't know about the geology and climatology of Mars. My job is to interpret what I see in images and observe in model results. It can be very hard to get solid answers or even narrow down possibilities. It can also be frustrating to spend months working on a really neat project, only to find that I can't really figure out anything of significant importance.
Why should the general public care about your research? What is the potential impact?
The benefits of doing this sort of research are greatly delayed, but that is the nature of much of science. Take the case of Marie Curie, who discovered two radioactive elements and pioneered the field of radioactivity. At the time it was done merely to better understand the forces controlling nature. But it opened up pathways in medicine that now, many decades after her death, allow cancer and many other diseases to be treated. And thus the most esoteric subject of physics has extended our life expectancy: whoever thought particle physics would be relevant to our daily lives? This is how science works.
My work is unlikely to save lives 100 years down the road like Marie Curie's work. She's just one famous example. The field of science is full of researchers working to understand nature. There's no way to tell what will help humanity and the world in the years to come, but some of it certainly will. In the meantime, sit back and enjoy how neat (and pretty) it is.
How did you come to join the SETI Institute?
I finished my postdoc at Arizona State and was looking for work in the Bay Area, since my husband was in grad school at Berkeley. There is a group of atmospheric modelers at NASA Ames, so I wanted to work with them. The SETI Institute provided a good way to work with those folks (Ames doesn't hire often and I didn't have the patience to wait for them to see my genius).
What first sparked your interest in science and planetary science in particular?
I can't remember what first got me into astronomy; that goes way back, at least to first grade and possibly earlier. When I was eight my parents gave me a dinky little telescope for Christmas. My dad took me out to look at the sky. He pointed it at Vega, a bright star. I was disappointed to see that it looked exactly the same in the telescope as it did with just my eyes. But then he pointed it at Saturn. Even with that little telescope I could see that Saturn was a disk, with rings, and even the moon Titan was visible. After that it was no contest: I had to study planets.
This image is part of HiRISE image PSP_006248_1235 on Mars. It shows a dune at a high southern latitude that is ~150 m across. The sun is coming from the upper left - you can tell because some small boulders have shadows pointing away from the sun. The dune is blue because the image is stretched -- really it would be a very dark gray. This type of dune is formed by winds blowing from the right to the left in the image. But this dune isn't likely to be active anymore -- erosive processes have made the slip face on its far left side appear ragged, and the long shadowed cracks running along the dune's southern side (away from the sun) are probably caused by permafrost slowly deforming the dune. The faint thin streaks criss-crossing the image are tracks left by dust devils as they move by, vacuuming up lighter dust and leaving behind dark trails. Source: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
What motivates you?
I like to figure things out. Once I have some idea of how to approach a problem, there's no stopping me. It becomes something I must do.
What was your dream job as a child?
I wanted to be a scientist working on Mars. I still do.
If you were speaking to a group of teens about your career, what would you tell them?
Being a scientist is more than just wearing a lab coat and looking at beakers and test tubes all day. It's a very diverse sort of field, with a lot of flexibility. So if you're the kind of person who wants to answer questions about the universe around you, be aware that you can tailor your career to suit your personality. Some scientists work in the field, others develop models on computers, many work with their hands in the lab, and some process data. Some work alone, while others work on huge teams with hundreds of other people. Some are computer geeks, some are rock jocks, and some are both. Some of us are solitary quiet people, but let me tell you, there are big parties every night when we meet at professional conferences! Most of us wind up doing some combination of all of these things, but you can pick out what is most appealing to you and approach the scientific questions in your own way, playing to your strengths.
You also don't have to be a genius. Knowing your math and science is certainly necessary, but don't ever worry that you're not smart enough, like that sophomore who takes math classes at the local university (every school has at least one). Sure, there are star scientists who discover big things and get famous because they work hard and are brilliant. But even those people don't get everything right all of the time, and they can't do it all. There's plenty of room for different talents, perspectives, and approaches. If you can find your niche, you'll discover you're a part of it all. Most of us are smart people who work hard, trying to advance our field -- sometimes we make big leaps and sometimes we don't; that's just life.
My favorite thing about science is that even if your hypothesis turns out to be wrong, you've still learned something and can still contribute to humanity's understanding of the universe. Where else can you be so wrong and still win?
What is your philosophy of life?
It's better to try and fail than it is to later regret not having tried.
What's in store for you in the future?
Who knows? That all depends on where my funding comes from. My work is dependent upon whether or not the proposals I write are selected. If they are, then they become grants, which fund me to do the research I proposed and I get to do what I love -- explore, figure things out, and bask in the beauty of our worlds.
Learn more about Lori and her amazing research in her full interview. And watch Lori's interesting and informative talk on "Sand Seas of the Solar System," as presented on March 2, 2011, as part of the SETI Institute's weekly Colloquium series
]]>How to Catch a Comettag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8431712011-03-31T14:11:03-04:002011-05-31T05:12:01-04:00SETI Institutehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/seti-institute/Dr. Mark R. Showalter
Senior Research Scientist SETI Institute
Four and a half billion years ago, a fluffy "snowball" coalesced out of the cloud of ice, dust and debris still surrounding our Sun. Most of the snowballs like it later merged to become the planets we know. This one, however, had a chance flyby with a young planet, probably Jupiter. Jupiter's gravity propelled it out into the far reaches of the Solar System, where it remained in deep freeze, among many others like it, as a member of the so-called Oort cloud.
Eventually, the tug of gravity from a passing star slowed it down ever so slightly, and that was enough to send it plummeting back toward the Sun, into the region where it had formed billions of years earlier. By a great quirk of irony Jupiter was again in its path. This time, the planet's gravity captured it into a long, elliptical orbit. On July 7, 1992, it executed a cosmic hole-in-one, passing through Jupiter's slender ring and breaking apart under the planet's ripping tides.
On the night of March 24, 1993, astronomers Eugene and Carolyn Shoemaker and David Levy were searching the skies when they noted an oddly shaped blotch near Jupiter. It was a comet to be sure, but quite unusual in shape. The next morning it became known as Shoemaker-Levy 9, or SL9 for short. With additional detections, its prior history as a body disrupted by Jupiter became clear. As new data accumulated, however, SL9 became even more remarkable, because astronomers realized that it had evaded Jupiter for the last time. In July 1994, the world watched as the broken fragments of SL9 plunged into Jupiter one by one. Few comets are ever featured on the front page of the New York Times, but the July 19 headline read, "Earth-Sized Storm and Fireballs Shake Jupiter as a Comet Dies." SL9 went out with a bang. The impacts left behind blotches in Jupiter's clouds but, after a few months, they faded away. End of story.
Or so we thought. As we have just published in the journal Science Express, this story has an unexpected epilogue.
To tell the rest of the story, however, requires a brief detour to another planet, another spacecraft, and another decade. Cassini arrives at Saturn in 2005, and begins sending back detailed images of that planet's ring system. My colleague and co-author Matt Hedman scours the images of Saturn's innermost ring and finds an obscure detail that, notably, was not present in the Voyager images from 1980 and 1981. He sees "ripples"--vertical corrugations in the ring plane, which repeat every 30 km or so. We do not what to make of this pattern. After a few years, however, we notice a trend: the ripples seem to be getting shorter. Whatever they are, they are winding up like a watchspring. When Matt plays the process backwards, we learn that the pattern began when some "event" tilted Saturn's rings off their axis in late 1983. But what could have caused such an event?
We had seen similar ripples exactly once before. The rings of Jupiter showed vertical ripples when they were first imaged by the Galileo spacecraft in 1996. At the time, we did not know what to make of this pattern. Galileo never detected it again. Nor did New Horizons, a spacecaft that flew by Jupiter in 2007 en route to its 2016 encounter with Pluto.
But what if the pattern in Jupiter's ring was another winding watchspring? I revisit the Galileo and New Horizons data with a more open mind, searching for any pattern of any wavelength. Sure enough, the watchspring pattern was in there after all, winding up tighter in each detection. We had overlooked it previously because we were looking for the wrong pattern. It is evolving in exactly the same way as the pattern at Saturn. This means that, just like at Saturn, we can play the process backwards. When we do, we determine that the rings of Jupiter were tilted off their axis in mid-1994.
Why does this date sound so familiar?
Active comets are typically surrounded by clouds of fine dust, and the Hubble images confirm that SL9 was very active. After many calculations and numerical simulations, we have finally managed to show that, at the same time that the large fragments were hitting Jupiter, SL9's dust cloud missed the planet and carried enough momentum to tilt the entire ring off its axis. SL9 seems to be our "smoking gun." Reasoning by analogy, the event that tilted the rings of Saturn in 1983 was probably also the impact of a comet.
The Jupiter data has shown us something else quite interesting. The pattern produced by SL9 was only one of four different ripple patterns detectable in the data. SL9 was not a freak event; comets hit the rings of Jupiter maybe once or twice per decade, and the rings of Saturn perhaps once or twice per century. As a bigger planet, Jupiter collects more comets. SL9 was not unique, or even unusual.
I posed a question in the title; How do we catch comets? The short answer is, with a really big net. Luckily for us, planetary rings serve as the perfect nets. Our recent studies span decades, planets, and spacecraft, but they tell a simple and unified story: comets hit rings; rings get tilted; tilts become spirals. With the right observations, we can now replay that history years and even decades later, just as if it were embedded in the grooves on an old vinyl record.
]]>Life at the SETI Institute: Jon Jenkins -- Turning Pixels Into Planetstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8417092011-03-28T18:22:48-04:002011-05-28T05:12:01-04:00SETI Institutehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/seti-institute/by Gail Jacobs
Dr. Jon Jenkins is the Analysis Lead for NASA's Kepler Mission. He works at the Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe, SETI Institute. Jon heads up a group of about two-dozen scientists and programmers who designed and built the software that is the brains behind this dramatic search for other worlds. With a photometric precision of 20 parts per million, Kepler is able to discover planets that are the same size as the rocky, inner orbs of our own solar system. By making an inventory of such worlds, Kepler will answer one of the most intriguing questions in astrobiology: are Earth-size planets abundant or rare?
Click on the images below for larger view
What first sparked your interest in science and astronomy in particular?
My parents both worked at the Kennedy Space Center. My dad was an engineer who worked on the Mercury and Gemini programs and then on Apollo for awhile. I grew up on Merritt Island watching launches of Apollo and later the shuttle. I was always very interested in space science, but it wasn't something I set out to do when I went to college. My doctorate is in electrical engineering. Some roommates knew of a professor in Electrical Engineering who was doing research for NASA. They introduced us and that's how I came to work on planetary science. But it was a natural fit, and I was very excited by that opportunity. I was able to spend a couple of summers as an intern at the Kennedy Space Center writing software that monitored Space Lab II. Those two summers were a lot of fun because I got to go on unofficial tours of the shuttle. As we were integrating Space Lab into the shuttle, we had the opportunity to walk all around the shuttle and look inside the cargo bay from inspection cat walks that went over the shuttle. It was quite a thrill!
Describe your role as Analysis Lead for the Kepler Mission.
As the Analysis Lead for NASA's Kepler project, I'm responsible for designing and building the science pipeline that processes the raw photometric data we get from the Kepler spacecraft. We measure the brightness of the 165,000 stars we're continuously monitoring in order to detect instances where the planet crosses in front of the disc of its star. These events are known as transits. In essence, the team is looking for very tiny solar eclipses where the planet comes in between us and its star and casts a shadow in our direction.
Briefly tell us about your research project. Kepler is all about detecting small planets around Sun-like stars. The goal is to determine the frequency and distribution of Earth-size planets around these stars. We are especially interested in those small planets we consider to be in the habitable zone of their stars - that range of distance for which the surface temperature would be between the freezing and boiling points of water so liquid water could pool on the surface.
An Earth-size planet's radius is about 1/100 the size of a Sun-like star. We're looking for one part per 10,000 drop in brightness caused by this tiny planet blocking a small fraction of the light from the star. In order to confirm our findings, we need to observe at least three transits - three times when the star is blocked by the body of the planet crossing in front of it. This can take several years. The time interval between these transits tells us what the orbital period of the planet is, and the fractional drop in brightness tells us the size of the planet relative to its star.
Diagram showing relative sizes of all confirmed Kepler planet discoveries
as of February 2, 2011, and comparison with Earth and Jupiter.
Image credit: Sam Quinn, The Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Since we've classified these stars, we know what their masses are, roughly how big they are, and how hot they are. Using Kepler's laws of planetary motion, for which this mission is named, we can take the orbital period, the time interval between transits, and the mass of a star to provide us with an estimate of the distance of the orbit of the planet from the star. This gives us the size of the orbit. If we know how hot and big the star is, we can then predict the temperature of the planet. That's what allows us to determine if the planet is likely to be in or near the habitable zone. Catching these planetary shadows will help us to identify the essential properties of the planets.
We also want Kepler to help us better understand planetary formation in general. That's why we're observing not just a large number of stars but also a large variety of stars - from the cool M-Dwarfs to the hot Late-A stars.
How long have you been working on this project?
I began working on this project in May 1995, and Kepler was launched in March 2009. Kepler was proposed four times to NASA's Discovery Program, beginning in 1994. We were selected for flight in December 2001. This tells you how long these processes can take. The proposal cycle alone is over a year. Usually these competitions have as many as 40 proposals competing for two launch opportunities at most. In our case, it took well over a year to be selected.
With Kepler halfway through its current mission and returning amazing data, what are your days like now?
I began as the person on point for the technical development and I did a lot of the engineering and science design and analyses. Now, I spend most of my time leading and providing guidance and oversight to some fairly large teams of engineers and scientists who built the production line software and science pipeline servers and put all the hardware together.
I interface with the project management to ensure we stay on track and make the best financial decisions so we maximize the science. Do we need another software engineer or another scientist to do this work? What's the appropriate balance of skill sets? I've ended up doing a lot of things I never anticipated. I've hired 24 people through the SETI Institute to work on the Kepler project. Most of them are scientific programmers or scientists working directly on Kepler.
Now that we've got real flight data, I also spend much of my time writing papers, giving talks, or reading and reviewing other people's papers. Kepler is phenomenally productive. We've got wonderful data coming down and are making incredible discoveries. We now have the first 120 days of data out to the public. At the same time, we released a paper describing over 1200 planetary candidates we've identified in that data. We're talking about 10 planetary candidates being discovered per day. It's challenging to keep up with all the data that's coming to us at such an incredible pace!
What is the coolest thing about your project?
The Kepler Project is going to allow us to answer a question I've been asking all my life - "Are we Alone?" When I was a child, I would lie on the grass in the summertime, look up at the stars, and wonder if there were other beings on those stars looking up into their night sky in our direction, wondering the same thing. We're taking a small step closer to answering that ultimate question. "Are there other worlds out there?" has been asked since the early Greeks, so we've been wondering about what the skies may hold for at least 2,000 years. What could be cooler than being in a position to answer a question that has been asked for so long without the possibility of being answered?
We're very fortunate to live at a time that places us on the cusp of this major discovery of other worlds similar to Earth - worlds that could have liquid water, life, or even intelligent beings pondering the same questions as you and I.
Kepler team at NASA Ames Research Center presents a plaque to Nichelle Nichols (Lieutenant and Commander Uhura of Star Trek). Plaque reads: "Kepler - NASA's First Missions Capable of Finding Earth-size Planets...To Nichelle Nichols."
Photo credit: NASA Kepler mission
One of the most rewarding aspects of this project so far has been seeing results many people, including me, didn't expect to see so soon. In this initial slate of planetary candidates, about a third of the stars that host planetary candidates host multiple transiting planet candidates. About 20% of our planetary candidates are in systems where multiple planetary bodies appear to be transiting their star. I didn't expect to see that so early in this mission.
Tell us a bit about Kepler 11.
Kepler 11 is the planetary system that just seems to keep on giving. It has six planets, and the five innermost planets are in orbits that fall well within the orbital distance between Mercury and the Sun. It's only the sixth planet that is outside Mercury's orbit, but not outside Venus' orbit. It's an extremely compact system. It's similar in flatness to the solar system, but our own solar system is much more spread out than Kepler 11's system of planets. If you were to scale this planetary system to the size of an old LP record in terms of the tilts of the orbits, then it would be no thicker than that old LP record. With regard to the five innermost planets, you can scale that system down to a Compact Disc, and the tilts of the orbital planes and their orbits would be no thicker than a Compact Disc to hold all those planets.
Kepler-11 is a small, cool star around which six planets orbit. At times, two or more planets pass in front of the star at once, as shown in this artist's conception of a simultaneous transit of three planets observed by NASA's Kepler spacecraft on August 26, 2010.
Image credit: NASA/TimPyle
These very flat systems are fully consistent with our classic model of how planetary systems form. A protoplanetary disc, basically a disc of dust and gas, collapses and becomes flatter and flatter and spins faster and faster. The innermost part of that disc collapses gravitationally to form the central star, or the sun. Fragments then clump together in the outer part and those fragments stick together and collide and stick to grow and create the planets.
We're seeing that nature appears to really love making systems of planets; not just solitary planets around solitary stars. We're also seeing a large variety of other extremely exciting science discoveries being made in the data that have nothing to do with planets themselves. For example, even in the earliest data sets, we saw evidence for Doppler boosting, which is a relativistic effect that was predicted but never before observed. Essentially this is sort of the Star Wars effect, when you engage to go faster than light and the star field collapses to a point in front of you. It's a very small effect because these stars are certainly not going anywhere close to the speed of light; but Kepler's photometry is so good, we're able to see it easily.
How is Kepler helping scientists "hear" the song of stars?
Stars are like bells -- they ring. They are big balls of fluid and gas so they tend to oscillate. The Kepler Asteroseismic Science Consortium that is associated with Kepler has over 400 asteroseismologists -- astronomers who study the interiors of stars by studying their pulsations and oscillations. Stars have what are known as starquakes, which are similar to earthquakes and can excite oscillations or acoustic modes in the stars. When stars are singing songs as they oscillate and pulsate, they actually change their shape. This shape change causes an apparent change in brightness, which we can measure very well. As we study the brightness variations in time, we can essentially hear the songs of the stars. By then studying the tones, or the notes the stars are singing, we can learn about the star's interior structure and work from models to estimate the size and the age of the star.
The variations in brightness an be interpreted as vibrations, or oscillations within the stars, using a technique called asteroseismology. The oscillations reveal information about the internal structure of the stars, in much the same way seismologists use earthquakes to probe the Earth's interior. Image credit: Kepler Asteroseismology Science Consortium webcast of 2010 Oct 26
Learning more about stars is important for Kepler in terms of planetary discovery. We can use this data to estimate the size of our brighter stars that host planetary candidates and can measure the radius to 1%, which is far greater than through any other means available to us today. These stars are 600 to 3000 light years away. We see only a point source, yet we're able to measure that point of light to 1%. That's pretty exciting!
Why should the general public care about your research?
I think this project and the question it may answer resonate well with the public. People are extremely excited about Kepler and want to learn more about it. I think people really want to know the answer to the question, "Are we Alone?" That's why they're so interested in Kepler and SETI. Our discoveries can give us perspective about our place in the universe. There are 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy. We're on one very small, typical planet; it would indeed be surprising if we were the only example of an Earth-like planet around a Sun-like star. There's no reason to believe there aren't a lot of other "earths" out there. Until you make an observational measurement and prove that there are others, however, we don't really know if we are alone.
This artist's concept illustrates the two Saturn-sized planets discovered by NASA's Kepler mission. The star system is oriented edge-on, as seen by Kepler, such that both planets cross in front, or transit, their star, named Kepler-9. This is the first star system found to have multiple transiting planets. Image credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech
I think people do care about this ultimate question and they really want to know what's going on out there. As scientists, we want to know whether our solar system is typical. So far, it's been our only example of a planetary system with rocky bodies in it. Kepler is the first mission to unequivocally detect and discover a rocky planet. That rocky planet is in a 20-hour orbit but we're not in a position yet with our current data to expect to have discovered an Earth-size planet in an Earth-like orbit. Because the orbital period is a year, we'll need at least three year's worth of data before we can even begin to answer that particular question.
How can the Kepler data impact future space missions? Kepler's potential impact is to revolutionize our understanding of planetary formation and the frequency of planets and systems like our own solar system. That provides important answers for future NASA missions, like Terrestrial Planet Finder. That mission's sole purpose is to image planets near their stars and actually do spectroscopy to look for biomarkers in the atmospheres of these planets. It won't be able to look nearly as deep as Kepler; and there are three competing architecture designs for this mission. The architecture design decision will depend in no small part on the answers Kepler provides in terms of the abundance of Earth-size planets in the habitable zones of their stars.
We need Kepler to answer this question of abundance before we can move on to the next phase, which is characterizing these planets. Kepler does not allow us to determine whether there is liquid water or atmosphere on these planets; at least not for the small rocky ones. But it does provide us with the crucial information necessary to go onto that next step of designing the Terrestrial Planet Finder and other successive missions that will answer these next level questions.
How did you come to join the SETI Institute?
I joined the Institute on April 1, 1992. I was working on data for the Magellan Orbiter and remote sensing of planetary atmospheres using the Pioneer Venus Orbiter, which was managed out of NASA's Ames Research Center. I was awarded a guest investigator grant and the SETI Institute was recommended to me as a place to come to support me in my research.
What motivates you?
Doing something nobody else has ever done before. I think that's the principal motivation of most scientists and engineers. It's either to see something that nobody has ever seen before, to discover or learn something nobody has even known before, or to design and build something to perform some service that no one has ever been able to do before.
What was your dream job as a child?
For the longest time, I wanted to be a brain surgeon. In high school and college, I quickly figured out that to become a medical doctor and a surgeon required an encyclopedic knowledge and I was much more interested in math, science and engineering because we learned how to do things. I felt that was a better fit for me.
As a youth, were there any books that influenced your career?
I read a lot of science fiction. The first science fiction book I read was Have Space Suit -- Will Travel, by Robert Heinlein. I quickly got lured into reading lots of science fiction as a child, which continued through college.
If you were speaking to a group of teens about your career, what would you tell them?
Engineering remains a great career. Throughout my career, I've not fit in anywhere, in some sense. I basically operate in the intersections between different fields. I think that allows me to make very unique contributions wherever I am because I can bring knowledge and techniques from electrical engineering and signal processing to bear on astronomical questions of great interest. Working with astronomers, astrophysicists and geophysicists, I can help identify and develop new solutions to the problems we're facing, and I've learned a lot of science along the way. Strong mathematical tools and background can give you a lot of flexibility to engage in different areas of science; and electrical engineering uses a lot of those types of tools and techniques. Some of the most interesting and exciting activities going on in science today require a multidisciplinary approach, and we need people with broad sets of experiences and backgrounds to be able to solve these problems.
In terms of choosing a career in general, I would advise people to choose something you love to do because you're going to be spending a lot of time doing it. I think it would be very sad to spend half your waking days doing something you really don't want to do. For me, the money is of secondary importance. I'd rather do something I love instead of doing something simply to give me the financial resources to do what I love to do.
Who do you admire and why?
I admire Frank Lloyd Wright. I think I draw inspiration from him because he was an incredible visionary who dreamed of things nobody had ever done before and brought them to life. He was very concerned about designing buildings that fit in with their natural surroundings. And he didn't limit himself to just the building; he also designed the furniture and, in fact, went into such details as designing his wife's dresses to fit in with the home décor. Walking inside a building Wright designed is like being in a temple in the sense that it is really awe-inspiring.
The Kepler mission has provided me with an opportunity to have my own vision and see it through - from inception to fruition. This has been an incredibly broad and extremely detailed mission that has covered a spectrum of science and engineering. I'm thrilled to have been involved from the beginning point at which a photon becomes an electron and it gets counted on the CCD all the way through the design of the flight software to the design and development of all the processing and analysis software that can allow us to do whatever is necessary - including reconstruct the pointing of the spacecraft so Kepler can do everything it was designed and built to do - to ensure the Kepler team can turn these pixels into planets and discover what age-old questions we can finally answer.
What's in store for you in the future?
I hope there continues to be a lot more data from Kepler and a lot more planets. It looks promising. I've learned quite a bit about managing a really large and complex project. Kepler requires a lot of organization and process and systems engineering management to make this project come together. Every piece has to fit together with all the other pieces so that at the end you have something that does what you need it to do. And it has to be done all together and on schedule. As a co-investigator on a proposed Explorer class mission that would involve an all-sky transit survey, I know I would really enjoy taking the lessons I've learned from Kepler and applying them to a new mission. That would be a lot of fun as well as scientifically very rewarding.
Learn more about Jon and his amazing research in his full interview.
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Trained as a quantum mechanic, Dr. Gerry Harp was deeply interested in possibilities for using the multiple telescopes of the Allen Telescope Array to generate steerable "beams" on the sky - beams that could be far smaller than any single antenna could produce. Such beams don't emit anything, but work in reverse by capturing only energy that comes from the sky in a certain direction. Gerry joined the SETI Institute in 2000, practically at the telescope's inception and uses the telescope for SETI research. 
My research tries to examine the sky in new ways, ways that differ from seeing or listening. In a small way, it is like developing new human senses or pushing our senses into new domains. Radio Astronomy images offer a new human sense in which we can see the sky as if we had "radio goggles," much like infra-red goggles used in action movies to see at night. In fact, this is exactly what radio telescopes do -- they act as very slow goggles allowing us to see the unchanging parts of the sky in the radio frequency range. We want to speed this up. 
Picasso once said that every child is an artist. I've heard other people say that every child is a scientist. We are born with a scientific curiosity that is evident when you watch children's behavior. They're constantly doing experiments. In giving it some thought, I think I just never grew up. I was born with a desire to do experiments and understand things around me and I simply haven't stopped.
The team and I mapped hydrated minerals within each trough using high-resolution images from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera and hyperspectral data from the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spacecraft, combined with Digital Terrain Models (DTMs) to determine elevations and view geometric relationships between units.
Is the surface of Mars really sterile, or could there be still-undiscovered traces of life littering this hostile landscape? Chemist Richard Quinn focuses on understanding the reactive processes that take place on the surface of the Red Planet, and how these might give a better idea of the potential for habitable environments.
Rachel Mastrapa studies the surface processes of icy Solar System bodies by interpreting their infrared spectra. The majority of her work involves performing the ground truth measurements in the laboratory including calculating the complex indices of refraction of single composition ice samples. These measurements are then used to construct model spectra to interpret the chemical composition of observed spectra. She also studies the subtle changes seen in ice mixtures that are not seen in single composition samples. Rachel has collaborated with her peers to collect spectra of Europa from the Keck Observatory and interpret Cassini VIMS spectra of Enceladus.
Dr. Cynthia B. Phillips is a planetary scientist at the SETI Institute and author of over a dozen books, including Space Exploration for Dummies. Dr. Phillips acknowledges helpful discussions with Dr. David Morrison for this article.
Friedemann Freund doesn't shrink from taking on the really big problems. His research has elucidated such important phenomena as the fact that rocks under stress behave like batteries that can produce currents deep within the crust of the Earth. These are not piddling electron flows, either - the currents could be as large as millions of amperes, sufficient to be measured above ground, and perhaps even from orbit. Understanding and exploiting this phenomenon could lead to a dramatic breakthrough in earthquake forecasting.
Dr. Janice Bishop is a chemist and planetary scientist who explores the planet Mars using spectroscopy. Her investigations of CRISM data of Mars are revealing clays and sulfates in the ancient rocks that provide information about the geochemical environment at that time. Dr. Bishop studies the spectral fingerprints of minerals and rocks in the lab in order to generate a spectral library for identification of these in the Martian data. Her research also involves collecting and studying Mars analog rocks and soils at a variety of locations including volcanic islands, cold deserts, hydrothermal regions, acidic aqueous sites, and meteorites which are the only Martian samples available on Earth to date. 
Planetary scientist Dr. Lori Fenton joined the 
Four and a half billion years ago, a fluffy "snowball" coalesced out of the cloud of ice, dust and debris still surrounding our Sun. Most of the snowballs like it later merged to become the planets we know. This one, however, had a chance flyby with a young planet, probably Jupiter. Jupiter's gravity propelled it out into the far reaches of the Solar System, where it remained in deep freeze, among many others like it, as a member of the so-called 
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