How the search for ET turned into hard science

[Lance]

How the search for ET turned into hard science
Once relegated to the quacks and hacks of astronomy, the search for alien life has become a legitimate area of study

Jacob Berkowitz, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Saturday, March 25, 2006

Washington, D.C., is full of conspiracy theories and political intrigue at the best of times. When it comes to talk about aliens in the U.S. capital, it's often about calls for the CIA to reveal what it did with a UFO that allegedly crashed in Roswell, New Mexico, in the 1950s, or buzz about frozen alien bodies in the basement of the Pentagon.

But next week in Washington, talk about aliens will be taken with furrowed-brow seriousness. It's not speculation about pregnant women and Martian abductions, but the painstaking search for possible Martian microbes. Not alien invaders, but talk about using space-based telescopes to search for a sister-Earth around a distant sun.

Only several decades ago, the search for extraterrestrials was led by garage-based amateur enthusiasts debating crop circles and grainy UFO snapshots. Many scientists thought it was quackery.

Today it's called astrobiology, and for the first time in human history is backed by hard science.

Astrobiologists say that we stand on the brink of verifying something that, since the time of the ancient Greeks, humans have only been able to speculate about: life beyond Earth. And 20 years from now, they say, there's a good chance we'll know for certain, one way or the other.

The hundreds of astronomers, planetary geologists, biologists and chemists gathered in D.C. this week for the NASA-sponsored fourth Astrobiology Science Conference are riding a wave of excitement, and barely contained expectation, fuelled by the fact that amidst their speculation they have hard data -- from robotic rovers on Mars to tantalizing glimpses of exoplanets, planets around other suns.

Humanity now has the technology to actually test for life beyond Earth rather than just peer up at the night sky in wonder.

Astrobiology advances just this month point to the convergence of events prompting scientists to believe that if life is out there it can't hide much longer:

- In March, astronomers identified four new planets orbiting distant suns. Prior to the summer of 1995, when the first exoplanet was discovered, we knew of only nine planets, from Mercury out to Pluto, in the entire universe. As of today, astronomers have racked up a menagerie of 185 exoplanets -- mostly gas giants like Jupiter -- and counting, according to the online Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia, the scientific scorekeeper in the search for exoplanets. Now there's intense competition to find the first Earth-sized rocky planet, and then to probe it for signs of life.

- On March 13, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter entered orbit around the Red Planet to pinpoint the location of water there. This latest probe will provide more scientific data than all previous Mars missions combined. Thanks to recent missions to Mars, it's now clear there've been extensive periods when water existed there. And where there was liquid water there could have been life -- or might still be life, eking out an existence in subsurface ice.

- Later this year, the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence SETI project will start tuning in to the cosmos with the new massive Allen Telescope Array radio telescope, north of San Francisco. With their new ability to scan a much wider swath of the cosmos in broadband, the folks searching for distant civilizations will even be able to eavesdrop on any "extraterrestrial electromagnetic leakage" from alien TV or radio broadcasts. SETI officials are cocky enough to put a timeline on their search: They expect to make contact within two decades.

The fact is, whether your view of life in the universe is primarily shaped by Star Trek or science, most astrobiologists and sci-fi buffs alike believe that in a universe of more than a billion galaxies, each with more than a billion stars, life of some kind must be out there.

"I think we all believe in it," says Hojatollah Vali, a 59-year-old McGill University professor of biomineralization who teaches Canada's first university course in astrobiology.

Indeed, we live in the age of discovery of extremophiles -- creatures on Earth, mostly microbes, that live in what previously were thought of uninhabitable environments. Whether it's acidic, near-boiling, freezing or under enormous pressure -- it's home to some sort of microbial life. We've found life living below the surface of Antarctic rocks, in acidic Arctic "cold springs" and even kilometres inside the earth.

So if life can get a toehold in these seemingly alien environments on Earth, why couldn't bacteria live in an ocean below the perpetually frozen surface of Jupiter's moon Europa?

However, for all of astrobiology's pre-birth excitement, anyone who's been around the ET business knows that its modern history is founded on a century of errors and dashed hopes.

A hundred years ago, millionaire Bostonian James Lowell convinced himself and millions of others that the lines on Mars surface visible through a telescope were ancient canals, the remnants of a dead civilization. Mr. Lowell was no crackpot. He founded the famous Lowell observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, and painstakingly drew what for 50 years were the best maps of Martian geography. But he was dead wrong about the canals.

On Dec. 14, 1962, NASA's Mariner 2 probe opened a new age of space probe research, speeding by Venus carrying many scientists' expectations of a watery, life-filled world. Instead, it radioed home news of an impossibly hot, utterly dry surface. A lifeless planetary neighbour.

In 1976, the NASA scientists and engineers guiding Viking 1, the first U.S. robotic probe on Mars, were ecstatic when their first test of Martian soil indicated the presence of microbial life. But subsequent tests showed that this life signal was coming from very dead rocks.

Then in 1996, a NASA team including McGill's Mr. Vali, made international headlines with the discovery of a possible sign of life in Martian meteorite ALH84001. The scientists said that a microscopic, pearl-like thread of iron-based spheres could be a byproduct of Martian microbial life. Most of the scientific community said the evidence was too ambiguous to pop the champagne. Ten years later, Mr. Vali still believes he's held a possible sign of ET life. But, he says, astrobiologists are still taking scientific baby steps in understanding how to look for signs of alien life.

"We learn from our mistakes," he says. "Nowadays the good thing is we're really learning about these things, including extremophiles. We're creating an extensive database that we can use in case we find something in a meteorite or material that comes back from Mars, so that we can interpret it in a better way."

Indeed, when one alien door shuts, another opens. While Venus appears dead and Mars is a big maybe, now astrobiologists are focusing their search for life on Europa and, more recently, Saturn's moon Enceladus. Earlier this month, an international team of scientists announced that images from NASA's Cassini spacecraft reveal that there are gigantic geysers, 80-kilometre tall versions of Yellowstone Park's Old Faithful, at the moon's south pole. The geysers appear to be spewing water, which readily turns into ice and snow.

While 20 years ago, the thought of life in or around these planet-sized snowmakers would have seemed far-fetched, astrobiologists are planning to debate the possibility of life on Enceladus at the Astrobiology Science Conference in Washington, D.C. this coming week.

What's clear is that with tools and targets, it's now not just a search for ET life, it's a race. Not just to find alien life, but to explain it. The astrobiologists in Washington will be discussing the latest findings toward a grand unifying theory of life in the universe -- how to explain the evolution of the universe from the Big Bang to our big brains. We know Earth isn't a cosmic island -- did life arrive here from another planet, the concept of panspermia?

Ironically, astrobiologists are grappling with these questions of cosmic evolution at a time when the evolution debate in the U.S. is at a cyclical peak, and only several blocks from a White House occupied by a president who tacitly supports the teaching of intelligent design. It's an evolutionary debate that astrobiologists are eager to widen -- not only to talk about our evolution from earlier hominids, but from stardust. And finding life, or not, on another world will open a new chapter in our relentless quest to understand not just the cosmos, but ourselves.

The Search for ET

First Copernicus, then Darwin. Two of our greatest scientific thinkers transformed the way we see ourselves in relation to the cosmos. Now astrobiologists believe we're on the brink of another revolution. This week, science journalist Jacob Berkowitz is taking the pulse of the frenetic global effort to find extraterrestrial life. It's a journey that takes us from deep below the Canadian High Arctic to the conference floor as the world's leading alien-seekers meet this week in Washington, D.C. for the fourth Astrobiology Science Conference.

© The Ottawa Citizen 2006

[Bill_Thompson]

Decades ago there was a huge reflective mirror build to send morse code to the moon. Did that turn into hard science too?

[azazul]

Decades ago there was a huge reflective mirror build to send morse code to the moon. Did that turn into hard science too?

I have a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell.

Hey Bill, I believe the article Lance posted was talking about astrobiology, not some "huge reflective mirror build to send morse code to the moon". Strawmanization attempt denied.

[Lonewulf]

Decades ago there was a huge reflective mirror build to send morse code to the moon. Did that turn into hard science too?

A long time ago, we used very primitive tools for plowing.

Did that turn into hard science, too?

Once more: Strawmanization denied. Try coming up with something better.

[Superluminal]

I've never heard of using giant mirrors to send morse code to the moon. If it was around the time of the invention of morse code, then who ever did it was using the best technology available. Just as we are today.

If there are aliens out there, and if they are using some type of technology far more advanced than anything we are capable of, then our best radio telescopes maybe no more effective at finding, or contacting them, than using mirrors.

What was the state of science at that time? Had astronomers of the day proved beyond a doubt that there was no intelligent life on the moon? Sounds ridiculous today, but to the Lonewulf's and Bill Thompson's of that earlier era, may have seemed quite reasonable.

[Lonewulf]

What was the state of science at that time? Had astronomers of the day proved beyond a doubt that there was no intelligent life on the moon?

This is also what I was thinking of. At the time, we knew almost nothing about the moon, its atmosphere, or even if it could hold life. Bill is at the opposite spectrum of science: Make assumptions, and act on those assumptions. That's not how Science works (but sometimes, it does have to not do something out of expenditure or reasonability; but it goes towards the side of exprimentation in almost all cases where it is reasonably possible to go that way).

Science is about testing things and finding out if it's true or not. It's better to fail in the search for ETI because they're not there instead of because of lack of trying.

Do we know if there's no life on the other worlds in our solar system? Well, I don't know; it's doubtful for some, but some hold out hope. Either way, what's the point if we don't go and see?

Same with communications. Beam it out as far as it can go and hope. As it is, however, our beams don't go out very far.

Even if alien life is rare, isn't there still the possibility that one could be relatively close? Even in cases of rarity, there have "one in a million" likelihood occurences. You just don't know.

And that is the point; we don't know. Thompson acts like he's talking from a position of incredible knowledge and data, when really he isn't. No matter how arrogant he continues to be in his manner, nor how he talks down to people who disagree with him.

Also, as mentioned before (one of the things Bill conveniently ignored, like the other millions of things he's conveniently ignored) is that SETI has learned and relearned how to work with radios, and thus has brought about some technological changes and advancements. This is a good thing. Bill doesn't seem to realize that.

To be honest, I'm fucking tired of this issue. Why is it continuing to be debated? Why is Bill still berating people? His avatar is very fitting; the horse is dead, Bill. It's just dead. Until you can bring more data to light, then you're just repeating yourself. And the further you try to ridicule the other side, the more they do not want to listen or take your points to heart.

[Bill_Thompson]

Decades ago there was a huge reflective mirror build to send morse code to the moon. Did that turn into hard science too?

I have a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell.

Hey Bill, I believe the article Lance posted was talking about astrobiology, not some "huge reflective mirror build to send morse code to the moon". Strawmanization attempt denied.

No, I think it is a good question. Did this huge reflective mirror lead to any good science or not?

Just because something led to good science does not mean that we would have been lead to the good science anyway without this freaking waste of time and energy.

astrobiology is a science that I am pretty sure would have progressed without SETI getting geeks interested in using computer down time to parse out random cosmic radio discharge.

[Bill_Thompson]

I've never heard of using giant mirrors to send morse code to the moon.

It was years ago. But I distinctly remember people doing wacky stuff like that reported on a PBS special.

I will look it up at the library this weekend and post what I find on Monday.

[Lonewulf]

astrobiology is a science that I am pretty sure would have progressed without SETI getting geeks interested in using computer down time to parse out random cosmic radio discharge.

Childish claim that SETI is populated by "geeks" that don't know what they're doing noted for future reference.

[Bill_Thompson]

astrobiology is a science that I am pretty sure would have progressed without SETI getting geeks interested in using computer down time to parse out random cosmic radio discharge.

Childish claim that SETI is populated by "geeks" that don't know what they're doing noted for future reference.

Misunderstanding and misinterpretation is the norm for you and there is no need to make any note for future reference since you provide a bounty with every post you make.

If the latest knowledge of biology was a prereq. for gratuating high school there would be less enthusiasm for SETI@Home.

[Lonewulf]

Misunderstanding and misinterpretation is the norm for you and there is no need to make any note for future reference since you provide a bounty with every post you make.

I had to laugh at this. Misunderstanding and misinterpretation is my norm?

You haven't taken a look at yourself like I advised, I suppose.

[I Am He]

Bill pulled his used box of crayons and scribbled: "Just because something led to good science does not mean that we would have been lead to the good science anyway without this freaking waste of time and energy."

If you would only take your head out of your Hippy ass and throw away those White Sugar Cubes, then maybe, you would notice, I said maybe, you would find out what's going on in the real world. But in your case I think it's to late, sad to say. You're the type of guy that would have us still living in caves.

Answer me this, Bill. What is your idea Good Science?? I can answer that for you, Bill...You Don't Have The Faintest Idea, Do You??

I see you're playing stupid again, and this time you've won.

[FZR1KG]

No, I think it is a good question. Did this huge reflective mirror lead to any good science or not?

Just because something led to good science does not mean that we would have been lead to the good science anyway without this freaking waste of time and energy.

astrobiology is a science that I am pretty sure would have progressed without SETI getting geeks interested in using computer down time to parse out random cosmic radio discharge.

WOW!

Let me get this straight, if something doesn't lead to anything useful then it's a waste of time, if it does it was still a waste of time unless it's purpose has what in your opinion is valid.

You seem to have a huge superiority complex and are extreamly self opinionated about issues you seem to show little understanding in.

Science is unbiased while you and your opinions are not. Yet you claim to be scientific.

Maybe you should find out for yourself just how many scientific advancements have occured as a result of trying to study something else.
History is filled with them, chemistry, physics and even computing.

Why don't you stand by your principles and reject everything that resulted from misguided attempts at one thing or another. You'd be living in the stone age just so you know.