By throwing its official weight behind the search for life in the universe,
and sending the signal loud and clear that it is respectable and safe for
serious scientists to think about such things, NASA has moved these
questions from the fringes to the center, where they belong.
Of equal significance, astrobiology is bringing our space research
more into line with the public’s desires for NASA. You could look at
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this as merely improved marketing, but NASA administrators are
encouraging us to pay more attention to what people respond to. As
well we should. It is your tax dollars that pay for our science and
exploration. We need to avoid the “Europa Effect” and not pander or
issue near reruns of press releases to boost our ratings, but by focusing
on the question of life we are giving the people what they want.
A revolutionary discovery of life elsewhere could arise from these
efforts, but astrobiology’s certain radical potential is in the way it bucks
two deep trends in modern science. One is the tendency, in recent
decades, for science (like everything else) to become much more market-
driven. Profit is hot. Pure knowledge is not. An increasing portion of
research is corporate-funded, which often blurs the lines of scientific
ethics. Particularly in the biosciences, corporate support has led to trou-
bling conflicts of interest between scientists’ pursuit of knowledge for
the sake of humanity and the pursuit of private gain.* At the same time,
government-funded research has increasingly had to justify its existence
in practical, economic terms. Fortunately, Darwin and Einstein did not
face this pressure when they developed their useless theories.
Swimming against this stream is astrobiology. It is not for profit and
can’t pretend otherwise. We explore space for reasons that are romantic
and idealistic. The universe beckons. We want to go because we want
to know. With astrobiology there is no fronting that the rationale is
practical or the benefits material—we do it out of curiosity and long-
ing, to satisfy the human need to know the cosmos that spawned us.
Fancy that: a scientific movement that is justified on fundamentally
spiritual grounds.
Astrobiology is also potentially revolutionary in its attempt to
reverse the slide toward increasing scientific specialization and isola-
tion. We want to blur the borders and tear down the walls that modern
academia has erected. Astrobiology at its best is a step toward the
reunification of science and, perhaps, the rebirth of natural philosophy
(see chapter 16).
Right now, this cultural shift is more important than any new scien-
tific result. Scientists from different fields are working harder at com-
municating with one another. We have to. When I was invited to give a
*Some mad scientists out there think they own parts of your genome!
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talk on planetary atmospheres last year at the University of Washington
Astrobiology Program in Seattle, my audience consisted of biologists as
well as geologists and astronomers. I had to think more carefully about
the language that I used, avoiding jargon that might slip in if I was
speaking to a roomful of fellow planetologists.
One cool thing about planetology has always been the chance to learn
a lot of different kinds of science. Now this includes biology, too. For
this reason I love going to astrobiology conferences. You never know
what you’re going to hear. The official support for astrobiology is mak-
ing scientists braver in attempting to bridge disciplines. I say “attempt-
ing” because we’re out of practice being interdisciplinary, and so there is
an aggravating side to it, too. The enticingly eclectic mixture of disci-
plines can also be a recipe for frustration because we don’t all speak the
same language. All scientific conferences provide some mixture of fun
and exasperation. Astrobiology meetings have more of both.
The interdisciplinary intentions of astrobiology are a challenge not
just for scientists but for many others who round out the cultural enter-
prise of scientific research and communication. A life sciences editor at
New Scientist magazine recently told me that astrobiology stories are
always falling through the cracks because the life sciences editors want
to give the stories to the space sciences editors, and vice versa. We are
all used to driving along in well-worn ruts.
Astrobiology is embraced by many in the planetology community,
but others feel that it is being forced down our throats. Some think that
we were doing just fine before astrobiology became all the rage, and
that it is strategically dangerous for the planetary community to iden-
tify too closely with the search for life. Believe me, no small amount of
grumbling and cynical joking about astrobiology goes on in the hall-
ways of astronomy departments and research institutions.
Yet, there may be no turning back. NASA has thrown itself into
astrobiology, and our administrators have let the planetary science
community know that we are to be astrobiologists. We need the biolo-
gists now. By making ourselves dependent on astrobiology we’re plac-
ing a lot of trust in that relationship. This is no longer just a flirtation—
we’re committed to an ongoing dance with biology. A divorce at this
point would be messy, embarrassing, and costly. After all, add biology
to astronomy and you get astrobiology, but try to remove the bio from
astrobiology and what are you left with? Astrology: an astronomer’s
worst nightmare!
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H I V E - M I N D E D
In its interdisciplinary nature, astrobiology may be breaking essential
ground for the future of all science. Our progress in understanding the
universe is hindered by our inability, and/or reluctance, to cross the
artificial boundaries imposed by our institutionalization of science. But
if interdisciplinary work remains a huge challenge, it is not only
because of bad attitudes. There are good reasons why we specialize.
We need to be generalists, but not dilettantes. Different scientists
need to pursue separate specialties for us to collectively maintain, and
increase, our physical understanding of the myriad “small picture”
problems that help us test our ideas about the universe in concrete
ways. This is why we are reductionist—we have to break the universe
into little pieces to have a chance at understanding any of it. The pic-
ture only gains solidity from the detail work, which must often be done
at close range, with a narrow focus. Then we need to step back and
take in the larger view.
We know too much. Our squishy little brains can’t handle it all. Our
knowledge has increased exponentially and nobody knows every-
thing.* We can only transcend the limits of individual knowledge, and
narrow disciplines, to the extent that we can talk to each other and
trust one another. Like a distributed computer network that is much
/>
more powerful than any single node, we can create a larger whole, and
the combined effort is something that no individual, or individual field,
could pull off.
The problem, then, is not specialization. It’s isolation. We can see
more by dividing the universe into pieces, but only if we are able to put
it back together again. Forging a common scientific language is hard,
but necessary. When we do this, the scientific community functions as a
sort of “hive mind,” in which the capacity of the collective is greater
than that of the individuals involved. By using our ability, however lim-
ited it may be at present, to achieve a kind of group mentation, we get
smarter and extend our powers, as a species, to comprehend the cosmos.
We also extend our capabilities by becoming machine/human
hybrids. Integral to the Astrobiology Institute is an effort to use new
telecommunications technologies to facilitate virtual collaboration
*And the ones that do are too annoying to talk to, unless they’re also very funny, like Isaac Asimov, but his kind do not come along often.
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between distant research groups. Novel forms of scientific visualization
allow us to extend our limited senses, rendering visible previously hid-
den patterns of nature. With all of our telescopes, laboratories, and
interconnected computers, we are as cells in an evolving superorganism
in which the planetary/human hive-mind reinvents itself, grows new
organelles of metal and glass, and sprouts veins flowing with electrons
and light. Like a baby reaching for mysterious objects floating over the
crib, we extend our hands away from Earth.
This global mental activity encompasses not only the science and
technology that allows us to gain new insights about the cosmos, but
also the collective awareness of this expanding view by the entire
species. We are gathering knowledge for all mankind, for the noo-
sphere, but only if we get the word out. So outreach beyond our own
professional communities needs to be an integral part of our science.
If astrobiology is going to be a new metadiscipline, communication
must play an unprecedented, central role. The skills we need to commu-
nicate with other scientists—to make our work comprehensible to all—
are the same skills we need to communicate with the public. A spin-off
from the move to mix disciplines is that, as we get better at talking to
those outside our little science cliques, it spills beyond the boundaries
of the professional world and out into the streets, where compelling,
comprehensible science is wanted and needed.
J U S T G O T T A P O K E A R O U N D
In the past few years I’ve been willingly sucked into the maelstrom of
committees, administrators, congresspeople, scientists, engineers, law-
yers, journalists, activists, and bureaucrats that is space policy. This
started in 1998 when I was asked to join NASA’s Solar System
Exploration Subcommittee (SSES), a group of twelve scientists that
reports to the associate administrator for space sciences, providing sci-
entific input for NASA’s space exploration plans, and making policy
recommendations.
Right now there is a hot new word in space policy: astrobiology. A
debate is going on over whether our exploration strategy should be
“biocentric.” Should “the life question” be the stated rationale behind
our entire exploration program? Funding for exploration always feels
precarious because of the constant danger that it could be declared an
unnecessary frill by the powers that be. Along with art and education,
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exploration is one of those activities that a society can briefly convince
itself it can do without.
Some believe that astrobiology can save planetary exploration by giv-
ing our program an attractive and exciting new focus. Others feel that
this strategy would be unwise. Mindful of the cyclical history of public
support, and scorn, for our search for “little green men,” they wonder
at the wisdom of putting all of our eggs in this alluring but potentially
fragile basket.
While the scientists debate this, NASA and the last two presidential
administrations have already decided that our exploration program is
to be focused on astrobiology. A biocentric approach to exploration is
even specifically mandated in President Bush’s 2003 budget request for
NASA, which states that from now on our missions will have “clear
science priorities that support key goals in understanding the potential
existence of life beyond Earth and the origins of life.”
So, there you have it. The president wants us to find life. That’s cool.
I don’t have a problem with that. But how do we actually go about
exploring in a biocentric way? This means different things to different
people. For some, it seems to translate into “Explore Mars and Europa
and everywhere else can wait.”
When we propose new space missions, we have to make the case as
compelling as possible, because our proposals are just chirps in a
crowded nest of hungry little birds, beaks open wide and desperately
hoping for that big worm from Mama NASA. These days everyone
knows that if we want to get fed, we had better squawk loudly about
astrobiology. We all want our planetary missions to be as sexy as possi-
ble, and “to seek new life” has an enticing ring, whereas simply “boldly
going where no one has gone before” sounds like a rerun. Making this
connection is sometimes seen as a great challenge for planets that are
generally regarded as big biospheric losers.
It’s hard to think of two more different planets than Venus and Pluto,
yet politically they have in a way ended up in the same boat (I hope
they’re not sharing a cabin because they’d be fighting the whole time
over the thermostat.) Pluto’s biggest problem is that it is not Europa.
Venus’s biggest problem is that it is not Mars. Both Venus and Pluto
should factor into a broad biocentric exploration plan. Venus is, in
many ways, our best hope for learning about the ongoing functioning
of complex Earth-like worlds. As a representative of a completely unex-
plored realm, Pluto is an unopened time capsule dating from the earli-
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est days of the solar system. Pluto will teach us about the history of
planetary ice and how some of it became water and then life on Earth.
Pluto also seems to have an active interchange between its surface and
atmosphere, so we are almost guaranteed to find some kind of complex
phenomena there that will surprise us when we finally see them. It is
also the case, if you are attached to “life as we know it,” that even a
liquid water ocean in the interior of Pluto cannot be ruled out. Only a
misguided notion of what it means to be biocentric would deter us
from going to Venus or Pluto. Right now things are looking good for
both the little cold one and the big hot one. The first ever mission to
Pluto—a flyby that will hopefully
launch in 2006—is being funded, and
for the first time in many years plans are being drawn up for a major
new American Venus mission. Yet, these missions have both faced
major uphill battles. Each has been accused at various times of not
going to Mars or Europa.
In my capacity as an adviser to NASA, I have argued that astrobiol-
ogy should not change our strategic exploration plans to a large extent.
Never mind “still haven’t found what I’m looking for”: we still don’t
know what we’re looking for, and we won’t know until we find it and
hear ourselves ask, “How come no one thought of that!?” We should
simply continue to explore the solar system widely, seeking a more
complete understanding of the planets, always keeping one astrobiolog-
ical eye open for the strange, the anomalous, the complex, the improb-
able, the “unnatural” signs of life. Certainly we should have an openly
biocentric attitude as we explore and keep thinking about the kinds of
features and patterns that might indicate life. If we do find something
that really seems like a sign of life, we will immediately alter our strate-
gic plans. If it looks like somebody might be home somewhere, we’ll
toss our plans out the window and go back for another visit.
Approached from this perspective, biocentric planetary exploration
is just a slightly longer and more compelling phrase for planetary
exploration. Having said this, I don’t have a problem with calling our
exploration program biocentric. If it speaks to why we do what we do,
why not say it?
The problem is, we want to tap into the public fascination with the
question of life to build support for our missions of exploration. It’s
much easier to do this by building a specific expectation of finding life.
Even when we don’t do this deliberately, it’s natural for journalists to
want to play up this angle. The “search for life” makes better sound
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bites than does “a wide effort to illuminate the mysteries of the solar
system,” but the latter might end up teaching us more about life.
Of course it would be worth almost anything to find out what life
really represents in our universe. But we have limited resources.
Investing money in a targeted search for life elsewhere is more risky
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