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Date: January 19, 2011

Title: Are We Alone?

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Podcaster: Kate Becker

Organization: SpaceCraft science writing: www.spacecrafty.com
Inside NOVA: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/insidenova/author/kathryn-becker/
The Daily Camera: www.dailycamera.com
Social media: http://www.facebook.com/katembecker, www.twitter.com/kmbecker

Description: What do you see when you look up at Gliese 581? Your answer may say as much about you as it does about this star and its intriguing planetary system.

Bio: Kate Becker is a story researcher for NOVA, the public television science documentary series, and an astronomy columnist for the Daily Camera in Boulder, Colorado. Kate studied physics at Oberlin College and astronomy at Cornell University, and she’s had the good fortune to observe with the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico and the Very Large Array in New Mexico—two of the very best places on this pale blue dot of a planet, if you ask her. Kate lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Today’s sponsor: This episode of “365 Days of Astronomy” is sponsored by — no one. We still need sponsors for many days in 2011, so please consider sponsoring a day or two. Just click on the “Donate” button on the lower left side of this webpage, or contact us at signup@365daysofastronomy.org.

Transcript:

This is Kate Becker, with the 365 Days of Astronomy podcast. But before we jump into the astronomy, here’s a question: Have you every been alone in a strange place, a place where you don’t think you know anyone at all, when suddenly you see someone familiar? The back of a head, the color of a coat or a hat, so familiar that you’re sure you’ve spotted that old college friend, or long-lost cousin, or your dad or your mom or your dogwalker or the guy from the supermarket checkout in your hometown. And then the person turns around, and oops—it wasn’t who you thought it was at all. Just another stranger.

Sometimes, we see what we want to see, and the night sky is a perfect canvas. Our ancestors looked into the sky and saw the characters and creatures of their mythologies: blood-red Mars, the god of war; glittering Venus, goddess of love and beauty; the whole spinning carousel of the zodiac, telling tales of love and betrayal and punishment—all while helpfully predicting that “Monday will be a good day to take chances.”

We don’t believe in astrology or mythology anymore—well, most of us don’t, at least—but modern science isn’t immune from wishful thinking. Remember Percival Lowell, who looked at Mars through his telescope, and was positive he saw canals? Canals built by Martians? Even when other astronomers failed to see Lowell’s canals—when a pair of scientists showed how an optical illusion could create the appearance of canals when there were none—he kept right on believing.

Science fiction writers looked up at Lowell’s Mars and saw their own set of stories: Little green men, getting ready to attack the Earth, steal our resources, and turn us all into pets. Or something different: Little green men, with advanced technology and peaceful ways, headed to Earth to teach us–to save us from ourselves. We see what we want to see.

The search for life on Mars—or, I should say, the search for past and present habitable environments on Mars—continues. Each new experiment, each new observation, is a fresh check on our expectations. Wild dreams like Lowell’s haven’t stood up to the scientific test. But now the search for life on other worlds is expanding to planets around other stars.

Take the planets of a red dwarf star called Gliese (GLEEZA) 581. Back in October of 2010, a team from the Lick-Carnegie Exoplanet Survey reported two new planets around this star, which is practically our next-door neighbor—it’s just 20 light years away. Two new planets might seem like no big deal, except that one of them—Gliese 581 g, is special. It’s probably rocky like Earth, and because it orbits about 14 million miles from a cool star, its temperature should be not too hot, not too cold—just right for liquid water. Gliese 581 g might be habitable.

That’s a big deal. Of all the known exoplanets—and there are more than 500 right now—none are likely to be conducive to life. Most of the planets are gas giants like Jupiter, without a surface to stand on, and fatally scorched by their stars. But Gliese 581 g could be different.

It could be. Just after the discovery was announced, another team, this one from the Geneva Observatory, looked through their own data on Gliese 581 and couldn’t find evidence of the planet at all. That doesn’t mean it’s not there—but it does mean we need more data before concluding that Gliese 581 g is real.

But while astronomers are watching and waiting, we Earthling can’t help hoping. We can’t help seeing, in this hint of a habitable world, that familiar face in the crowd of strangers. The face that means we’re not all alone out here after all.

Back to Percival Lowell for a minute. He didn’t just look at Mars. He also spent time studying Venus. And on Venus, he saw a pattern of spokes intersecting at a mysterious central dark spot. Today, we know there are no spokes, no dark spot, on Venus. So what was Lowell looking at? One idea: He was seeing the reflection of blood vessels in his own eye. Peering tens of millions of miles away, using the best equipment he could get his hands on, Lowell ended up seeing something he could see in the mirror everyday: Himself.

This is Kate Becker with the 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast. Want to get in touch? Email me at kate at spacecrafty dot com, or find me on Twitter—I’m @kmbecker—or Facebook, where I’m katembecker. Wishing you clear skies.

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