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Lonely Planets

Page 37

by David Grinspoon


  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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