Cosmology Bus

Carl Edward Sagan

Proof that time flies: Cosmology Bus is one year old today! It's been a real treat posting here and -- count on it -- I'm already looking forward to the year ahead.

Thanks to all of you who visit regularly, as well as to those who stop less often but still linger long enough to read awhile. Your interest and support are greatly appreciated!

A couple of posts back (A Billion Bytes) I mentioned several Carl Sagan connections and recommended the very solid Sagan biography by Keay Davidson. Since then I finished his well-researched book and am keeping my eyes open for a copy to add to my bookshelf. It's that good.

Another recommendation: if you aren't one of the estimated 600 million people on the planet who've already had the pleasure, then do yourself a favor and sample any of the original 13 episodes of Cosmos, A Personal Voyage, Sagan's unmatched presentation of the universe (co-written with Ann Druyan among others) which aired on PBS in 1980. It was a milestone in his life, in his career, but more significantly, in the history of making science accessible to a general audience. One measure of its phenomenal success is the large number of (then) young people who were inspired by the series to pursue careers in science. But, for me, its real strength will always be found in the ideas it contains and their unique expression through a very gifted individual.

Some readers may also know that Sagan wrote the novel Contact, which later became a successful motion picture starring Jodi Foster, Matthew McConnaughey, Tom Skerritt, John Hurt, and James Woods. Keay Davidson devotes a whole chapter to the film, which he introduces this way:

Contact is not a great film, but it is a good and noble one. It is far superior to the usual special-effects-jammed blockbusters with microsecond editing, assembly-line dialogue, Dolby racket, and casual brutality that we now glumly know as "the movies" . . . It is a miracle that any good film is ever completed -- especially a film as intellectually ambitious, and with so unlikely a herioine, as Contact. She was a scientist, an atheist, and a woman. "Strike three!" one imagines the studio head snapping during the pitch meeting.

Davidson reminds his readers that when Contact was published, some thought its depiction of the main character, Ellie Arroway, was sexist, primarily based on interpretations of the novel's ending. Davidson concludes otherwise, and recouts how Sagan, Druyan, and producer Lynda Obst made careful efforts to make Arroway believable as a woman scientist and radioastronomer who struggled for acceptance in a male-dominated profession and in late 20th century American culture. His insights into the story of how the film was made will appeal to anyone who enjoys science fiction and behind-the-scenes Hollywood.

Of course, there was much more to Carl Sagan than Cosmos and Contact. He left a very impressive body of scientific and popular work, including more than a dozen bestselling books, some co-authored, all of which concerned in one way or another either the prospect of life beyond Earth or the curious nature of life on Earth. He also had children through two marriages, a transforming third marriage to Ann Druyan, and long-term professional collaborations and personal friendships that for the most part weathered his own shortcomings as an individual. When he died at the relatively young age of 62, in December 1996, he left far more admirers than detractors.

My immersion in Sagan's life story in recent weeks occasionally raised a question: is there anyone in the scientific community today who is in the public eye in a similarly effective way? The answer is clearly no, and not even close.

The few scientists who today reach potentially millions through television and the web don't have the same presence or, for that matter, the same audience. The world has changed since Sagan captured the public's imagination. Today there are too many competing channels of information, too many divided interests, and probably too many personal agendas to make this even a remote possibility. (Though British particle physicist Brian Cox, former D:Ream keyboard artist, is certainly one worth watching. His documentaries on subjects such as time, gravity, and CERN's massive Large Hadron Collider are visually interesting and well-produced.)

Carl Sagan and the Dalai Lama at Cornell University in the early 1990s. Credit: Jon Reis Photography.

Meanwhile, in my own researches, I've also found much to appreciate about Sagan's views on science and religion. His contributions in these areas made, and still make, my world a richer place. "His argument was not with God," Ann Druyan wrote in her introduction to The Varieties of Scientific Experience, Sagan's posthumously published 1985 Gifford lectures, "but with those who believed that our understanding of the sacred had been completed."

Thank you, CES. And happy birthday, CB.

Next stop: tbd 

Banner bus photo credit: Dorothy Delina Porter

 

A Billion Bytes

Time slips away once again. I can't believe today is September 21.

Since my last post I've been reading Keay Davidson's well-researched and well-written biography of Carl Sagan and appreciating several timely Sagan connections: with recent news from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission and the European Southern Observatory (ESO), concerning Richard Dawkins' new book, and with this coming Saturday's trip to the Yerkes Observatory with my friend, Richard.

I'll get to the connections momentarily, but first I want to recommend Davidson's book to anyone who has an interest in Sagan's career, scientific accomplishments, professional shortcomings, and (pretty much like the rest of us) sometimes painful personal life. Carl Sagan: A Life (1999) is as informative about America's growing fascination with science and the intrigues of academic career-building in the 1960s, 70s and 80s as it is about Sagan's own story. I also like Davidson's style, which is literary and often punctuated with memorable passages like the following one, which appears just after mentioning that in the early days of solar system exploration, most U.S. scientists weren't that interested in placing cameras on board spacecrafts. Instead they wanted instruments that measured things. Now, of course, no one in their right mind would think of excluding them:

Time and again, space probes with cameras have exposed the unexpected. As a result, the solar system has proven to be far more complex than ever anticipated. With few exceptions, each new world seems unique unto itself, like a hitherto unknown epoch in the history of abstract art. Mere numbers cannot convey such richness. In space, a picture is worth a billion bytes.

Maybe more than a billion bytes, because cameras on current space missions have dramatically improved since Davidson's work was published ten years ago.

The connections? Coincidentally, soon after reading the passage above NASA announced the release of more than 1,500 new images from its Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. They're so impressive and art-like that even if there were no other photographs of celestial objects available for our Earth-bound eyes to take in, these would inspire us to find ways to collect more. Two of my favorites appear below, but the complete set can be sampled here.

Spider Trough Network (ESP_013827_0950). Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Sagan enthusiastically supported the idea of life in the cosmos, including intelligent life, often detrimentally to his scientific standing with colleagues. In fact, his entire career and much of his great popular appeal was associated with the prospect of life beyond Earth both inside and outside our solar system: How does life originate? What is it like? What will its eventual discovery teach us? Sagan would have marvelled at the details captured by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. He would not have been surprised at the images suggesting water once flowed across the Martian landscape. He and Jim Pollack, his first graduate student and collaborator over three decades, correctly anticipated the diverse character of the planet's topography long before it was mapped by orbiters.

Spectacular gullies near Gorgonum Chaos (PSP_003583_1425). Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Given his interests Sagan also would have appreciated last week's news resulting from the first detailed measurements of the smallest exoplanet so far discovered, a world some 500 light years away called CoRoT-7b. Using the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) spectrograph attached to the European Southern Observatory's 3.6 meter telescope at La Silla in Chile, astronomers spent an unprecedented 70 hours collecting precise data on CoRoT-7b's star in order to determine the planet's mass and density. The conclusion: CoRoT-7b has roughly five times the mass of Earth and a similar structure. But it orbits at a high rate of speed and very close in, which means its surface temperatures are extreme. In theory, lava or perhaps boiling oceans exist there.

Artist's impression of CoRoT-7b orbiting its star. Credit: ESO/L. Calcada 

The connection with Dawkins is much closer to home, but first some background. Sagan was clearly the most effective popularizer of science and scientific thinking in recent history, beginning with his bestselling book, The Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective (1973), and culminating with the groundbreaking PBS television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which first aired in September 1980. According to The Science Channel, the 13-part series has since been seen in more than 60 countries by over 600 million people.

Dawkins, a biologist and atheist who arrived on the scene with a popular work called The Selfish Gene (1976), has written other bestselling books about evolution and the urgent need to abandon religion in human affairs. For Dawkins, science alone is sufficient to answer the largest questions about life and its purpose. Perhaps not surprisingly, he has little patience for believers who also do science -- and also apparently for believers who like reading about science.

This all came into clear focus last week when I read a review of Dawkins' latest work, The Greatest Show on Earth (2009), on New Scientist. Written for a general audience, it makes the case for evolution at the expense of creationism and intelligent design. What caught my attention was the reviewer's following observation:

Implying that your audience is stupid does not qualify as a great new angle.

The reviewer (Randy Olson) doesn't say The Greatest Show on Earth is a bad book. He points out that Dawkins has an axe to grind, and wonders why the author is still so intent on sharpening it after all these years.

In contrast, Davidson shares an anecdote about Sagan which is insightful and, to me, very likeable. In 1974, Sagan refused to sign a petition titled "Objections to Astrology," which was then circulating among prominent scientists. Eventually 186 signatures were obtained and the document was published in the September-October 1975 issue of The Humanist. Sagan's reasons for not signing were published a few months later; in part, he thought the petition had an "authoritarian tone" that could "do more damage than good." He didn't believe in astrology, but he recognized that many do, and he didn't want to be a part of an effort that might cut important dialog short.

And then there's this coming Saturday's trip to the Yerkes Observatory on Lake Geneva in Williams Bay, Wisconsin. I've never seen it, and neither has my former driving colleague and good buddy, Richard, who I'm pleased to say enthusisatically agreed to join me when I suggested the idea several weeks ago. Richard and I share an interest in astronomy (among other subjects), and I'm sure we'll enjoy this trek much as we have our other excursions. 

The connection I discovered through Davdison's book is that Sagan studied and worked at Yerkes for a year when he was just 22 and beginning his doctoral program in astronomy at The University of Chicago. Back then (1956-1957), the astronomy department was based at Yerkes, so Sagan moved to Williams Bay and, like all the other Yerkes staffers at the time, he gave public astronomy lectures in the observatory on Saturday afternoons.

I'll think about him doing that as we listen to the program a few days from now.

I'm looking forward to it.

Next stop: tbd 

Banner bus photo credit: Dorothy Delina Porter

Murmurs of Earth

In my last post I wrote about the twin Voyager spacecrafts, still hurtling through the heliosphere some 10 billion miles from Earth, and still communicating daily with a handful of engineers affiliated with NASA/JPL’s Deep Space Network. That's impressive enough, but so is that fact that if any of those engineers are under the age of 32, they weren’t even born when Voyagers 1 and 2 launched in 1977.

 

This stop is also Voyager-related, and specifically about the Voyager Golden Record or simply the Gold Record: the gold-covered phonograph record attached to the side of both crafts. Embedded in each disc are sounds and images from Earth -- artifacts essentially about ourselves collectivley comprising a message to possible extraterrestrial civilzations that might one day discover them. As was also mentioned earlier, the story of how they were proposed, created, and permitted to travel on the probes at all is as interesting as the content itself.

 

A Voyager spacecraft showing the record affixed to a panel of the instrument housing. Credit: NASA.gov 

 

The definitive source describing the origin and content of the record is Murmurs of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record, co-authored by Carl Sagan, F.D. [Frank] Drake, Ann Druyan, Timothy Ferris, Jon Lomberg, and Linda Salzman Sagan. The original edition was published by Random House a year after the launch, but copies of it and later editions are still available from Amazon and AbeBooks at an affordable price. We are fortunate that they are, because the authors -- an accomplished group of astronomers, artists, writers, and educators -- gave very serious thought to what the discs might contain.

 

But first things first. The initial gathering to discuss the Voyager message took place in Honolulu at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in January 1977, between Carl Sagan, his soon-to-be wife Linda Salzman, Frank Drake, and possibly others. Drake's account is in the book and makes for interesting reading because he also supplies helpful context. Before Voyager 1 and 2 there were messages sent with NASA's Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecrafts (launched in 1972 and 1973, respectively) and from the Aricebo Observatory in Puerto Rico (in 1974). Sagan, Salzman, Drake, and others were involved in these, too, and they benefited from the experience.

 

Among the lessons learned by the group responsible for the Pioneer message content: never engrave a naked man and woman on a gold anodized aluminum plate bound to leave the solar system. It became abundantly clear after the launch that many Americans don't especially like the idea of their tax dollars being used to send "porn" into space.

 

The backlash had far-reaching effects. As the group meeting in early 1977 soon found out, NASA was committed to avoiding further public scorn (and political problems) with Voyager. Not only did pre-launch photos of the spacecrafts purposefully show them from angles that hid the records from view, the agency also nixed an embedded photograph of a nude male and female (a silhoutte was substitued on the sly). But the real shocker came later: NASA conveniently rejected the disc on a technicality after it was completed. In an editorial to the New York Times commemmorating the 30th anniversay of the Voyager program, project member Timothy Ferris explained why:

 

"Late one night in a New York sound studio, when we’d finished cutting the master, I inscribed the words, 'To the makers of music — all worlds, all times,' in the 'takeout grooves' next to the label. (The Voyager record is a metal version of the 33 1/3 vinyl records of the day, recorded at half-speed to double its data content. Etching an inscription between the takeout grooves was a trope I’d picked up from John Lennon.) A NASA quality-control officer checked the record against specifications and found that while the record’s size, weight, composition and magnetic properties were all in order, its blueprints made no provision for an inscription.

So the record was rejected as a nonstandard part, and the space agency prepared to replace it with a blank disc. Sagan had to persuade the NASA administrator to sign a waiver before the record could fly."

Critics and bureaucrats aside, many appreciate Sagan's success. Each record includes 118 images; the first two bars of Beethoven's Cavatina from the String Quartet No. 13 in B flat, Opus 130; greetings from the President of the United States (Jimmy Carter); greetings from the Secretary General of the United Nations (Kurt Waldheim); greetings from 14 UN delegates; greetings in 54 human languages, "greetings" from a Humpback whale; the names of many U.S. senators and representatives (more on this below); a 12-minute audiory essay consisting of 19 "Sounds of Earth;" and 27 musical selections.

Image 111, "Page from a Book," from The System of the World (1687), by Isaac Newton. Credit: NASA.gov 

The variety of images and sounds is impressive. Jon Lomberg assembled the pictures of Earth. Linda Salzman acquired the greetings in human languages. Timothy Ferris selected the music. Ann Druyan was responsible for the Sounds of Earth essay and served the project as creative director. (Druyan later co-wrote the Cosmos television series and co-produced the film Contact. She and Carl Sagan married in 1981.) Each part of the production had its own challenges and drama, which are chronicled by the authors in chapters titled "Pictures of Earth," "A Voyager's Greetings," "The Sounds of Earth," and "Voyager's Music." Within them the actual images, sounds, and music are described in the order they appear on the disc, often with behind-the-scenes anecdotes.

Not surprisingly, Carl Sagan guided the entire project. This was no small feat; the spacecrafts launched in August and September 1977, giving a window of only seven months to get the job done. His own contributions to the book -- "For Future Times and Beings," "The Voyager Mission to the Outer Solar System," and an Epilogue -- are gems placing the record project and the mission in helpful perspective. He also provides anecdotes that instruct and sometimes amuse. Here's one about what happened after President Carter decided to add a greeting:  

" . . . NASA officials were concerned that the separation of powers in the U.S. Constitution might imply that if the President could greet the stars, so must the representatives of the legislative branch of government. After weighing the matter for about a day, NASA decided it was essential to include on the Voyager record at least the names of a large number of senators and representatives, especially those whose committees had cognizance of NASA activities. As a result, four additional pictures were added at the very last moment . . . I was at least pleased that NASA did not insist on including the names of the members of the U.S. Supreme Court, as the logical conclusion of the separation-of-powers argument. This part of the Voyager message is without doubt a signal to down here rather than to up there."

Today you can sample almost the entire interstellar record on the NASA/JPL Voyager Interstellar Mission site. (The chimpanzee track on the Sounds From Earth page makes me laugh out loud every time I hear it but, hey, I'm easily entertained.) The Golden Record Flash page is worth a visit, too.

Murmurs of Earth ends with Carl Sagan's words describing a possible encounter between one of the Voyager crafts and intelligent life in the vicinity of star A + 79 3888, which, at the time the book was written, appeared to be the closest star either craft would pass after leaving our solar system and traveling perhaps 60,000 years:

"They would wonder about us. They would know that 60,000 years is a long period of time in the hisory of civilizations. They would recognize the tentativeness of our society, its tenuous acquaintence with technology and wisdom together. Had we destroyed ourselves or had we gone on to greater things? Some of the Voyager music intentionally expresses a kind of cosmic loneliness, which would perhaps communicate itself across the expanse of light-years and the differences in evolutionary histories. We, too, were time-capsuling, searching the skies and seeking another civilization with which to communicate.

But one thing would be clear about us: no one sends such a message on a journey, to other worlds and beings, without a positive passion for the future. For all the possible vagaries of the message, they could be sure that we were a species endowed with hope and perseverence, at least a little intelligence, substantial generosity and a palpable zest to make contact with the cosmos."

The Voyager mission and the message attached to each spacecraft are all of this, and more. They are symbols of human culture reflecting the idea that the cosmos evolves and includes life -- what historian Steven Dick calls the "biological universe as a cosmological worldview."

Clearly, when we listen to the sounds or look at the images embedded in the discs, one does not have to be an astronomer or engineer to tap into those human traits expressed by Sagan, or imagine an encounter one distant day ahead.

That we can do this so easily suggests the biological universe, our current worldview of the cosmos in the extraterrestrial life debate is, for many, as pervasive as star dust.

Next stop: Worldviews 

Banner bus photo credit: Dorothy Delina Porter

 

More Good Reads

Bringing the Sacred Home (11/11) mentioned Lonely Planets: The Natural Philosophy of Alien Life, by David Grinspoon -- a book that's always on my short list of good reads about the prospect of life beyond Earth.

The rest of the short list -- five in all -- inlcudes two histories of the extraterrestrial life debate, a volume on theological perspectives, and a posthumous gift of inspiring writing from Carl Sagan. I consider these must-reads for anyone interested in acquiring a clear and well-grounded understanding of the subject. (Actually, there are no "musts" on this route, so let's call them read-if-you're-inspired selections.)

The histories were written by Michael J. Crowe and Steven J. Dick, two historians of science I hope to meet one day. Crowe is the Rev. John J. Cavanaugh Professor Emertus in Humanities in the Program of Liberal Studies and the Graduate Program in History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Notre Dame. An author of several distinguished volumes, his book The Extraterrestrial Life Debate, 1750-1900 traces the story as it unfolded in the West in meticulous detail. This is a work of formidable and impressive scholarship on every level: Crowe also covers the participants who wrote in langauages other than English. Not eveyone will appreciate the fact that there are some 80 pages of endnotes and an extensive bibliography, but I do. I consult this resource often, and never stop admiring the author's complete grasp of his subject.

Steven J. Dick, an astonomer and historian, is Chief Historian at NASA. His Life on Other Worlds: The 20th Century Extraterrestrial Life Debate (first soft cover ed. 2001), brings readers current on the evolving nature of the discussion in an equally engaging but different narrative style than Crowe's. Because it covers more recent thinking, the book includes chapters on the UFO phenomenon and SETI. FYI, Life on Other Worlds is an abridged and updated version of Dick's The Biological Universe: The Twentieth Century Extraterrestrial Life Debate and the Limits of Science (1996).

Dick also edited Many Worlds: The New Universe, Extraterrestrial Life, and the Theological Implications, mentioned in my 11/11 post. I have this on the list because it's the only volume I know that addresses theology from a diverse collection of individuals: physicists, astrophysicists, biochemists, planetary scientists, philosophers, historians of science, and theologians trained in science. That said, the title is a bit misleading: more scientitists than theologians contribute, and the subject, as large as it is, certainly deserves additional coverage from world religions and other spiritual traditions.

Rounding things out is Carl Sagan's The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God, edited by Ann Druyan. Published in 2006, this volume presents a series lectures Sagan gave in 1985 commemorating the centennial of the Gifford Lectures at the University of Glasgow, Scotland. In his talks Sagan outlined his personal views on what used be called natural theology, or as he described it, "everything about the world not supplied by revelation." In doing so, he spoke across a broad range of topics relevant to science and religion, including extraterrestrial intelligence, the implications of extraterrestrial folklore for the evolution of religions, and the God hypothesis. Sagan's approach to the lectures -- each one self-contained, revealing, and enjoyable from beginning to end -- is artfully described in Druyan's introduction. I have the Penguin Books soft cover edition. Speaking as a former publisher, it's hands-down beautifully designed and illustrated.       

There are, of course, dozens of other books well worth reading on the subject of life beyond Earth, including others by the authors referenced here. (Just last month, Crowe's The Extraterrestrial Life Debate, Antiquity to 1915: A Source Book, was published by the University of Notre Dame Press.)The more I've researched, the more surprises I've discovered. Future posts will call selected ones to your attention.

Meanwhile, if you've come across a volume that you'd like to share, I'd enjoy hearing from you!

Anytime.

Next stop: Saturn's Venting Moon

Banner bus photo created by Dorothy Delina Porter