Messages From The Stars Communication and Contact With Extra-Terrestrial Life

MESSAGES FROM THE STARS
Ian Ridpath is a freelance science journalist, writing regularly on astronomy and space science for New Scientist and the Observer. He is also closely associated

with amateur astronomy, and for seven years edited the astronomy magazine Hermes. He is now Vice President of the Federation of Astronomical Societies. He is the author of Worlds Beyond: A report on the

searchJor life in space (1975') and the editor of the Encyclopedia of Astronomy and Space (I 916) ..

IAN RIDPATH

Communication and contact with extra-terrestrial life

FONTANA/COLLINS

First published by Fontana Books 1978

Copyright © Ian Ridpath 1978

Made and printed in Great Britain by William Collins Sons & Co .. Ltd, Glasgow Set in Linotype Pilgrim

CONDI'1110NS OF SALB

This book is sold subject to the condition

that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise,

be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed

on the subsequent purchaser

CONTENTS

PREFACB

I. ARE WB ALONE?

2. STARS AND PLANETS

3. LIFE IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM

4. WHAT VIKING FOUND ON MARS &. LIVING OUT THERE

6. OUR FIRST SHIP TO THE STARS 1. MESSAGES FROM THB STARS

8. HOW WE COULD TALK TO THE STARS

9. MESSBNGBR PROBES

JO. CONSEQUENCES OF CONTACT

...

9

II 26

4S 64- 80

98

112

II. THE CASE OF THE ANCIENT ASTRONAUTS 12. THE AMPHIBIANS OF SIRIUS

13. VISITORS FROM WHERE?

129 14S III 171

189 20]

To Carl Sagan

All the night

I heard the thin gnat voices cry Star to faint star across the sky

Rupert Brooke The Jolly Company

PREFACE

Does life exist elsewhere in space? This is the single most important scientific question which we are currently capable of. answering, and certainly the most exciting. Messaoes from the Stars is an attempt to tell the story of the search for life in space, a story which should appeal to every human being and particularly to those millions who buy science fiction either in the form of self-confessed adventure stories or in the guise of speculative fact as purveyed by writers on UFOs and ancient astronauts.

Messages from the Stars begins by looking at the scientific basis for the belief in life elsewhere in space, and at the attempts by scientists to find such life, either by sending spacecraft such as Viking in search of lowly lifefoims on the planets of our own solar system, or by listening with radio telescopes for signals from advanced civilizations on planets circling other stars. The book also considers how we might colonize space and travel to the stars, as well as speculating upon the consequences of such actions. It ends with a critical examination of the claims by those such as Erich von Daniken and writers on UFOs that we already have been, or are being, visited by extraterrestrials, and I attempt to place these fantastic claims in perspective against the results of the scientific search for extraterrestrial life.

When I put the finishing touches to my first book on this subject, Worlds Beyond, at the end of 1974, I did not suspect that two years later I would have embarked on a sequel. But such has been the pace of advance that this sequel has become necessary. The scientific search for extraterrestrial life has become a boom subject. It has grown from the part-time concern of a few enthusiasts to the stage at which NASA has put its authority and facilities behind plans for two major new searches. Within the next five to ten years we should either

9

PREFACE

~

have detected messages from the stars, or if not we will at least

have placed severe constraints upon the likelih ood of their existence. Whether we find messages or not, I strongly suggest in Chapter 8 of this book that we should also consider whether to begin radiating deliberate signals of our own ..

If a sense of puzzlement, even of paradox, emerges part-way through the book, it is an accurate reflection of the reaction of many people, myself included, to the fact that, while life ouoht to be abundant throughout space, we have as yet found no clear sign of it. As of now, it must be admitted that we do not know that there is life out there to be detected. But I for one would like to know whether or not there is life elsewhere in space, and it will certainly be exciting to try to find out. The discovery that we are not alone would rival major landmarks in our civilization's development, such as the release of atomic power and the first landing on the Moon, and J believe Itwould

eventually come to dominate them in importance. For both author and reader, the search for extraterrestrial life is the

biggest science story of our day. .

Since the subject is so big, it is not surprising that it takes more than one average-sized book to do it justice. Although Messaaesfrom the Stars is designed to be read and understood on its own, readers interested in more background information on some of the topics covered will find this in its predecessor,

Worlds Beyond (Wildwood House,· London; Harper & Row, New York). The two books are intended to be complementary.

As before, I must thank the scientists and other thinkers who have made this subject so rich in activity and insight;. without them there would be no book to write. They are credited individually throughout the book wherever their results or ideas appear. I must also thank Graham Massey and Peter SpryLeverton of BBC- TV, producer and researcher respectively of the Horizon special on ancient astronauts, fot help with the last section of the book, particularly Chapters I I and I 2 • And to Andrew Best, Bob Woodings, and Helen Fraser, who believe in giving readers facts, not fantasy.

IAN RIDPATH

10

I

-

ARE WE ALONE?

Ir. 1976, the United States landed two 'automatic biology laboratories · on the surface of the planet Mars - a billion ... dollar commitment to the possibility that life has arisen OIl another planet in space.

In 1974, 'a radio message announcing the existence of human life on Earth was beamed from the giant Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico towards a cluster of 300,000 stars in the constellation Hercules .. At present, the Pioneer 10 and I I spacecraft are heading through the

solar system before leaving the Sun's environment entirely and drifting out towards the stars, carrying plaques engraved with a message to other civilizations that might intercept them deep in the Galaxy.

By 1980, America's National Aeronautics and Space Administration hopes to begin a large-scale search for

possible interstellar radio messages, building on the experience of several pilot projects by radio astronomers in recent years. The Soviet Union in 1974 announced two five-year plans of its own to detect messages from the

stars.

Astronomers with large telescopes are currently scan-

ning nearby stars for the existence of planets, potential habitats of life elsewhere in the Galaxy. A group of British engineers and physicists is outlining the design for a . nuclear-powered starship that could . reach the nearest of these planetary systems.

Against the backdrop of this scientific investigation, many citizens of Earth are prepared to believe that other civilizations in space are also undertaking similar projects

- with us as a target. Optimists have placed bets with Ladbroke's, the London bookmakers, that a UFO will land or crash on Earth with alien life on board. A lady named Ruth Norman from EI Cajon, California, who claims to

II


have been in touch with extrat · als, regularly renews

her bet on this proposition; so far she has staked a total of several thousand pounds.*

The scientific investment in the search for extra .. terrestrial life is also, in its own way, a gamble. since no one has any real proof that such life will be found. But the scientific gamble is sure of at least some return, for the investigation will clarify understanding of the forma ... tion of stars. planets - and of life itself .:

The popular belief in life beyond Earth frequently manifests itself as a kind of space-age religion. such as in the form of flying saucer cults. In contrast, the scientists' belief is based on a more rational assessment of the Universe around us.

As long ago as I961. a group of highly qualifiedAmerican scientists held a symposium at the Natlonal Radio Astronomy Observatory, Green Bank. to estimate the possibility of extraterrestrial life. In the Soviet Union. similar informal discussions were also underway. The two sides met for an international scientific summit in 1971 at the Byurakan Astrophysical Observatory in Soviet Armenia. where they concluded that as many as one million civilizations capable of interstellar communica-

tion may exist in our Galaxy.

To arrive at their conclusion. the scientists discussed what is known as the Drake equation, named after the American radio astronomer Frank Drake who first put it forward at the Green Bank conference in 1961. Drake is also famous as the progenitor of Project Ozma, the first

attempt to listen for messages from the stars. The Drake equation allows scientists to calculate the number of civilizations in space from an assessment of the various

unknowns involved in the origin and evolution of extraterrestrial life. Unfortunately, the estimates for most

of the unknowns are little more than educated guesses,

* But UFO sceptic Philip Klass of Washington, D .. C., has risked 10,000 dollars that such an event will not happen .. See

Chapter 13.

12

ARE WE ALONE?

and the final conclusion is correspondingly uncertain. Improving our understanding of the various factors in the Drake equation is one of the main tasks in the search for life beyond Earth.

The Drake equation multiplies together the following factors: the rate of star formation at the time the Sun was born; the fraction of those stars with planets; the number of planets in each system that are suitable for life; the fraction on which life actually does arise; the likelihood that such life will develop to the stage of intelligence; the desire among that life-form to communicate; and the longevity of the civilization. This simple formulation has been the jumping-off point for much speculation about life in space.

Each of the factors seems innocent enough in itself, but

each conceals a morass of assumption and speculation.

One factor that we can assess with reasonable accuracy is the first: the rate at which stars were fanned when the Sun itself came into being. Stars are glowing balls of gas, and the Sun is an average example. If we could

get as close to the other stars in the sky as we are to the SUD, then we would see that all stars are incandescent spheres, some larger and hotter than the Sun, others smaller and cooler, but all emitting their own light and heat.

Because of their extreme distance we are unable to

· e stars in the same detail as we study the Sun, but astronomers can sort stars into broad classes of size and temperature by analysing their light in spectroscopes attached to telescopes. In this way the full range of star

types from blazing supergiants to feeble dwarfs has been listed, and with the help of theorists a consistent picture of their birth, evolution, and death has been pieced together. Fortunately for us, it turns out that the

Sun is a relatively long-lived star, in stable middle age, and certain to go on shining steadily for thousands of millions

of years yet. _

· All the stars we see in the sky are part of a Catherinewheel-shaped aggregation known as the Galaxy. The Sun

13


lies about two-thirds of the way to the edge of this stellar congregation, in the galactic suburbs. The nearest stars to us appear scattered over the night sky, forming the familiar shapes of the constellations. The more distant stars of the Galaxy cannot be seen individually, but form the faint, hazy band around the sky known as the Milky Way. The name Milky Way is often used as a synonym

for our Galaxy.

Astronomers estimate that there are 100,000 million

stars or more in our Galaxy. The whole Galaxy is so large that it would take a beam of light 100,000 years to cross from one side to the other. In the jargon of astronomy. the Galaxy is therefore said to be 100,000 light years in diameter. The distances between individual stars are of the order of a few light years. For instance, Alpha Centauri, the nearest other star to the Sun, lies 43 light years away."

The Galaxy in its early days .. 10,000 million or so years ago, consisted mostly of hydrogen gas from which stars were forming. As the amount of gas declined, so did the rate of star formation. The Sun is believed to have formed about 4600 million years ago, when the Galaxy was approximately half its present age, so the rate of star formation at that time was probably the average of that over the entire history of the Galaxy. Production of 100,000 million stars over a - ro.ooo-million-year span

means an average birth rate of 10 stars a year. We have therefore estimated the first factor in the Drake

equation. - .

The second factor, the existence of planets, is more problematic. Planets are non-luminous bodies smaller than stars; a total of nine planets, including the Earth, orbit the Sun. The Sun and planets are believed to have come into being together from the same cloud of dust and gas in the . Galaxy, a process which theory suggests

• Strictly, Alpha Centauri is a group of three stars linked by gravity. The name when used without further qualification is taken to mean all three stars.

14

•

ARE WE ALONE?

should happen .around many othes stars. Spotting planets around other stars is difficult. and not one other planetary system has been identified with complete certainty. However, astronomers are stepping up their search to clarify this vital factor (see Chapter 2). For the moment, it seems reasonable to suppose that at least one star in ten may

have planets.

How many planets. in each planetary system will

possess the right conditions for life? At least one such planet exists in our own solar system - the Earth. Probably the number would be the same in other systems. But the very existence of a suitable planet is no guarantee that life really will arise - Mars seems to be an example of a planet with the right ingredients for life, but on which life never gained a foothold. With no firm knowledge to go on, we have no clear idea of how likely or unlikely

the emergence of life is.

My own suspicion is that, while plant life is easily formed. the emergence of major forms of animal life is the most difficult evolutionary step of all. A typical example of extraterrestrial life could be a forest of trees or a meadow of tall grass. Plant life is probably dominant throughout space; it certainly dominated the existence of life in this planet, up till 600 million years ago when the first sea creatures crawled on to land.

Some scientists believe the emergence of life is very likely on suitable planets, while others think it could b.: rare. Similar disputes occur in estimating how frequently life will become intelligent and develop the ability and desire to communicate with other beings.

Perhaps life is commonplace, but only rarely does it become able and willing to communicate. Or perhaps life is infrequent" but the evolutionary advantage of intelligence Is so great and the desire to inquire is such an inescapable 'aspect of intelligence, that life will nearly always develop to an advanced state.

Whatever the truth. the general conclusion from these discussions among scientists is that the Drake equation can be boiled down to the statement that the number of

15


advanced civilizations in the Galaxy at the moment is

1/10 L, where L is the lifetime of each civilizationthe one factor we have not so far taken into account. Without worrying about L for the moment, the conclusion means that one technological civilization like our own comes into being in the Galaxy every ten y'ears or so. This figure could, however, be badly in error because of the uncertainties in estimating each of the individual factors.

The lifetime, L, of each civiliz.ation is important because not all the civilizations formed in the past will still be with us: many, or all, may, already have died out, which would leave us with no one to talk to. If the lifetime of each civilization is short, then our con ... temporaries in the Galaxy are likely to be so thinly spread that we will have to search a long way off in order to find them. But if lifetimes are long, then we could be lucky enough to have intelligent neighbours around some of the closest stars. Therefore, to complete our calculation of the total number of our contemporaries in the Galaxy. we must estimate the average lifetime of all advanced civiliza tions.

But here we are stuck, because we have absolutely no

evidence to go on. Our own civilization has reached the advanced stage of being able to communicate with the stairs in only the past decade or -so. We have no way of knowing whether the mistakes of this faltering young civilization will wipe it out Within the next few centuries, or whether we shall transcend our present difficulties of population, food, energy, pollution. and unruly behaviour towards one another, and emerge on to the stable plateau of maturity and genuinely cosmic wisdom.

One widely canvassed view is that there are two types

of civilization: the overwhelming majority which rise and then subside precipitously in only a few generations; and those that come through their bad patch to live for thousands of millions of years, which are the minority. (If all civilizations reached this stage then the Galaxy

16

ARE WE ALONE?

would be swarming with intelligent creatures, which we don't see.)

Optimists hope that we on Earth belong to the latter category rather than the former, but it's touch and go. Perhaps there is some subtle flaw in evolution which makes intelligent creatures so competitive that they eventually destroy themselves as well as their adversaries. The overkill capacity of nuclear weapons is the prime example of this, although a more futuristic idea was presented at the 1971 Byurakan conference by Soviet mathe-

matician M. Y. Marov who visualized a society of robots among whom a certain elite were given to dismantling and reassembling others in order to preserve their own power. There is no reason to sUPIX>se that intelligent robots or even advanced computers will not have the same shortcomings as mankind: ambition, greed and envy.

Assuming that the lifetime of advanced civilizations, averaged over both long-lived and short-lived types, is 10 million years, then the number of civilizations like ourselves or more advanced in the Galaxy is one million. lhis works out at one civilization between every 100,000 stars, and indicates that our nearest neighbours with whom we may communicate are several hundred light years away.

Another complicating aspect is the different lifeforms one might expect to find throughout the Galaxy. Noted astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle rekindled visions of his black cloud science-fiction concept in a recent paper with N. C. Wickramasinghe of University College, Cardiff. Hoyle and Wickramasinghe propose that the complex molecules of life can be made in the dust and gas clouds between the stars. The possibility here is that the cloud as a whole might eventually act as an advanced fOTID of life, with implications that are beyond the realm of scientific speculation at present.

One limiting factor on the origin .and development of advanced Iifeforms may be the occurrence of the stellar

j

17


cataclysms known as supernovae. As a giant star flares up in a supernova explosion, it throws off its shattered outer layers and sends beams of dangerous radiation flying through space. A supernova is expected within 50 light years or so of the Earth every few hundred million years. Its consequences, as astrophysicist Malvin Ruderman of Columbia University, New York, has calculated, would be drastic for life on Earth.

Dr Ruderman finds that radiation from the supernova could strip away the layer of ozone in our upper atmos .. phere that keeps out the Sun's ultraviolet light. This shielding layer could be destroyed for up to a century. Although radiation from the supernova itself need not reach the ground, the vast increase in ultraviolet light from the Sun reaching Earth would cause death of simple organisms, skin cancer in humans and animals, possible poisoning by overproduction of vitamin D in our bodies, and an epidemic of mutations. Such a catastrophe may well have happened several times in the history of the Earth. Perhaps we have been lucky to have survived so

far.

Whether there is anyone around for us to talk to or n-r, throughout the Galaxy there must be many extinct civilizations and planets inhabited by intelligent creatures who have not developed high technology. The few civilizations that rise to the level of interstellar spaceflight will thus become the biologists and archaeologists of the Galaxy, studying the various primitive lifefonns and remains of bygone ages on the surfaces of other planets around distant stars - the role envisaged in space fiction stories such as the Star Trek series.

'Ihis aspect has been investigated by space scientists J. Freeman and M. Lampton of the University of California at Berkeley. 'Throughout cosmic time the Galaxy may have harboured several hundred million technically- advanced civilizations, and thousands of - millions of intelligent species," they said, adding that these conclusions do not depend on the disputed conjectures about the average lifetimes of advanced civilizations.

18

ARE WE ALONE?

From a modified form of the Drake equation, Freeman and Lampton calculated that the number of advanced (i.e. <.ommunicative) civilizations that have evolved so fur in the history of the Galaxy is 250 million, and that, the

number of planets housing intelligent creatures without contact capacity has totalled ten times as many (assuming that only one in ten intelligent civilizations rises to the communicative level). Whereas we have no idea about the lifetime of an advanced civilization, we do have one very good example of the lifetime of an intelligent but

non-communicative family - our ancestors. Anthropologists say that our evolution from the stage of ape-men to _ the present day has taken at least three million years. I into the Drake equation, this longevity implies that there are three million planets inhabited by creatures of at least ape-like intelligence at present - one around every 300,000 stars, giving a distance of perhaps 150 light years to the nearest.

Freeman and Lampton's treatment leads to the result that there are a total of 2500 million stars around which intelligent life once existed, making the nearest 18 light years away; and that the remains of extinct advanced civilizations will be found around 250 million stars, meaning that we would have to search out to 40 light years to find the nearest.

Would-be galactic archaeologists .and biologists will have to wait a few centuries until interstellar ttavel is developed to take them on their field trips, But there is plenty to interest the rest of us in the meantime. Already we have the ability to exchange radio messages with any advanced beings that may exist around other stars, and the apparently optimistic results of the Drake equation have prompted the first brief searches for interstellar signals (see Chapter 7).

Some problems in this field, stemming from the various likely lifetimes of advanced civilizations, have been considered by Gerrit Verschuur of the Fiske Planetarium in Boulder, Colorado. Verschuur is a former radio astronomer who made one of the earliest searches for signals from

19


the stars. Now, in effect, he admits he may have wasted

his time. ·

If the average lifetime of a civilization really is only a century or two, then the Drake equation predicts that there can be no more than 10 or 20 of them around in the Galaxy at present, making the nearest about 2000 or more light years distant. Even :if we could find this nearest civilization among the tens of millions of stars within this radius, the travel time for a radio message each w3JY would be 2000 years (radio waves travel at the same speed as light), and the round-trip for an exchange of greetings would be 4000 years. But such a two-way conversation could never take place, because the lifetime of each civilization is too short - the line would go dead before the reply could be received. Therefore, says Verschuur, for a short lifetime 'We are effectively alone in the Galaxy:

If it seems impossible for short-lived civilizations to contact each other, how much do things improve for a longer average lifetime? Verschuur is pessimistic. An average lifetime of 10 million years means a typical separation between communicative societies of 100 light years or so, thus giving an approximate round-trip time of 200 years for messages. In a long-lived and stable society. two centuries would not be a particularly long time, such societies would seem well suited to under .. taking long-term projects of that sort which daunt us and our short-term mentalities.

Yet Verschuur sees difficulties, among them being the fact that two societies are unlikely to reach the same stage of development simultaneously. He illustrates his point by reference to apes: if, in thousands or millions of years, they develop the ability to talk as we do at present, the chances are that we would still be unable to exchange ideas or discuss concepts with them because our own evolution would have progressed.

'It is simply unrealistic to believe that society on this planet, or any other planet. will be remotely similar for a thousand years -let alone a million or billion years,' he declares. 'The inevitable conclusion that evolution never

20

ARE WE ALONE?

stOPS leads to the assumption that L [the average lifetime of civilizations with whom we may communicate] is a

small number.'

This seemingly powerful analogy is weakened by many factors. Prominent among them is the fact that we already can communicate in simple form with chimps: the famous chimp Washoe was taught sign language used by the deaf and dumb, and another chimp, Sarah .. was taught a Ianguage using coloured plastic shapes for words. The

language abilities of dolphins may be even greater, but communication here is hampered by the creatures' lack of manipulative ability - perhaps the main reason why we, not they, developed technology.

Any highly advanced civilization will realize the problems of interstellar discourse and so .. if it wishes to talk

,.

with as many people as possible, it will use the simplest

possible method for establishing that all-important first contact. The main interest of an old and advanced civiliza ... tion may be in the developing creatures of the Galaxy, as the anthropologists of the western world are increasingly fascinated by the stone-age societies that remain on Earth.

An altogether more optimistic outlook was presented w. 1975 by .Bernard Oliver of the Hewlett-Packard electronics company of Palo Alto, California. Oliver's treat .. ment of the Drake equation and the factors affecting interstellar communication is probably the most thorough yet made .. and is worth relating in detail.

Oliver draws attention to a factor previously overlooked: that communication might begin between civiliza .. tions that were COincidentally close together, and then spread outwards to more isolated communities. He notes

that the older stars near the Galaxy's centre are two or three times closer together than the younger stars in the Sun's vicinity, so that interstellar communication is most likely to have begun long ago in these dense central regions.

Stars are moving through space at different speeds' as they orbit the Galaxy. Therefore, a star's closest neigh-

21


~

bours are continually changing, so that stars undergo a

general mixing which can only increase the Dumber of encounters between civilizations. Additionally, Oliver points to some theoretical predictions that planets could

also exist in systems where two stars orbit each other; this factor is not normally taken into account in the Drake equation. which instead concentrates on single stars only. Stable orbits for planets are theoretically possible around twin stars at 2 Y2 times or more the stars' separation; in other words, the planet would orbit around the outside of both stars. In such a situation the planet would probably be too far a;way from the stars to be warm enough for life. But things improve if the two members of a double-star system are sufficiently wide apart for planets to exist around each individual star. Stable orbits are possible around the more massive component at up to one-

half of the stars' separation, while around the smaller component planets could orbit safely at up to onequarter the stars' separation. Examples of both types of orbit are ·provided in the solar system: if Jupiter is regarded as a dark companion of the Sun, then the outer planets beyond Jupiter can be said to orbit both the Sun and Jupiter, while the inner planets and the satellites of Jupiter follow stable orbits around each individual

component. -

Observations by astronomers tend to confirm these theoretical speculations about the possible existence of planets in double-star systeins (see Chapter 2). Since double stars far outnumber single stars, even though only a fraction of them will be suitable for life, Oliver estimates that this modification of the Drake equation leads to a tripling of the number of possible civilizations in the Galaxy.

Occasionally life would arise on planets orbiting both components of a double-star system. Since both members of a double-star system are of similar age, this tends to synchronize the emergence of life in their vicinity. If the average lifetime of civilizations is 10 million years, Oliver suggests that something like 100,000 such civiliza-

22

ARE WE ALONE 1

tions will have arisen within the same double-star system, and one million within a distance of 10 light years of each other. 'Interstellar communication will have been established independently countless times,' he asserts.

Over the millennia, such contacts will have profoundly modified the science, philosophy, and destinies of the races in contact. Additionally, his figures suggest that there have been approximately 40 million cases where a space voyage by an advanced culture around one component of a double-star system has found either simple

life or the remnants of a long-dead advanced civilization on the planets of the other component star.

Even if the lifetimes of civilizations are far shorter than the 10 million years assumed here, and there is little direct effort at sending messages to other stars, one civilization could still detect another from the radio noise accidentally leaking into space from its domestic trans .. missions. 'For a cost less than that of space programmes we have already undertaken, we could construct a receiving system that would detect the presence of signals like our own UHF television at a 5o-light .. year range,' he

said. He was here referring to the Project Cyclops plan for a giant radio receiving array, described in Chapter 8.

We have been radiating UHF TV signals for 15 years, and are likely to continue doing so for at least another 35 years. Even if a civilization radiates such leakage signals for only 5~ years, Oliver estimates that up to 500 civilizations could have corne within a 5o-light-year eavesdropping range of their neighbours over the

Ga!! axy's history. ..

Once such evidence of another civilization came to light, Oliver envisages, the eavesdropping society would be encouraged to search deeper into space for further signs of life and also to radiate a beacon that would attract others. With a deliberate beacon operating in the

'Galaxy, the possibility of interstellar contact brightens enormously. Explains Oliver: 'The same system that could detect leakage radiation at 50 light years could detect a 25o-megawatt beacon at 500 light years and thus

23


reach one thousand times as many stars. ,

'The number of close civilizations, although uncertain, seems large enough to support the hypothesis that an intercommunicating galactic community of advanced cultures already exists.'

Oliver's work, like that of many before him, emphasizes above all that the only way to find out for sure whether or not there are messages from the stars to be intercepted is to listen for them. This point was first made in 1959

by physicists Philip Morrison and Guiseppe Cocconi in a paper which first openly suggested a search by radio astronomers for interstellar messages, and thus brought the subject out into the light; the point remains as strong today as ever. The Drake equation cannot give us final answers, but it can act as a guide. Its most valuable con ... tribution is that it gives us a rational basis for the hope that we are not alone in space. And, of course, any other intelligent civilization can make a similar calculation that will reveal to them both the prospects and the problems of interstellar communication. If they are by nature pessimists, they may abandon the project immediately; or, as one hopes, they will be optimistic enough to make allowances for the problems and proceed with the business

of getting in touch with whoever may be around.

There may be humane reasons why advanced beings should wish to attract the attention of other civilizations in space. If it is true that the majority of cultures live for only a short time, there may come a take-off point at which a civilization lives just long enough to exchange messages with beings elsewhere. ·Ihis exchange could provide the spur that, a civilization needs to enter the longlasting phase of its evol ution. Our work today on interstellar communication could be our life insurance for the future.

Ultimately, the value of our present discussions about interstellar communication may be philosophical, rather than scientific. In debating the possible lifetimes of civilizarions, we become more aware of our own mortality. We should therefore strive to ensure that we are the one

ARE WE ALONE?

civilization in a hundred - or the first ·one ever - that survives for millions of yeats.

And if we are the first, we inherit a responsibility that goes far beyond the bounds of tiny Earth. For if no one before has reached the plateau of cosmic maturity, our radio call signs in the future may be the lifeline" that pulls other developing civilizations in space out of the despair of their own isolation.

Freeman, J., and M. Lampton. Icarus vol. 25. p. 368 ..

•

1975·

Hoyle, F., and N. C. Wickramasinghe .. Nature, vol. 266~ p.

24I~ 1977.

Oliver. B., Icarus vol. 25, p, 360, 1975.

Ruderman, M. A., Science, vol 184, p. 1079, 1974. Verschuur, G., Astronomy. p. 47, December 1975.

\

2

..

STARS AND PLANETS

Every star in the sky is a sun - a potential centre for flife in space. Stars are born from giant clouds of gas and dust, like the famous nebula in the constellation Orion. Gravity compresses parts of the clouds into tiny spinning gas blobs called protostars, at whose centres nuclear reactions begin to flare, making the object a true star. These nuclear reactions in the star's interior produce heat and light so that the star shines. Starlight is intimately

linked with life in space.

The heat and light from the Sun is the basic source of energy that sustains life on Earth: plants use sunlight for photosynthesis, the process in which they break down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, taking in carbon for their bodies and releasing oxygen for us to breathe. Plant life, such as plankton at sea or grass on land, provides the first link in the food chain that leads eventu ..

ally to man, Whereas an advanced technological society couIs! provide its own energy sources and inhabit the most inhospitable depths of space, the inert chemicals from which life formed on Earth 3500 million or so years ago had no such ability. They had to rely on the energy of sunlight to assemble them into the first living things, which themselves continued to rely on solar energy for photosynthesis. It is difficult indeed to imagine how life could emerge and develop without the natural energy

source of a nearby star.

The Sun is an ideal star to nourish life, for it is not so hot as to produce searing amounts of dangerous shortwavelength radiation, nor is it so faint that it has little w · effect on the surrounding planets. Its surface !emperature is 5800°K, which places it just below midway m the range from the coolest known stars to the hottest. In colour. the SUD appears yellowishv whereas the hottest

26

STARS AND PLANETS

stars are blue and the coolest are red. The Sun is a stableburning star, not given to unpredictable changes in energy output, and it is also fairly long-lived - its total predicted lifetime is about 10,000 million years, of which it has completed approximately half.

A star's lifetime depends on its mass: the heaviest stars bum the brightest, using up their nuclear fuel in the shortest time. For instance, if the Sun had only 25 per cent more mass, it would already have burned' out. A star such as the white-coloured Sirius, with a surface temperature of about I 0,000 OK, is more than twice as massive as the Sun and thus is expected to live for perhaps one tenth the total time. 'Ibis is not long enough for life to develop on any planets it may have, if the pace of evolution on OUf own Earth is typical. By contrast, a red dwarf star such as Barnard's star, with a surface temperature only about 28000K and a mass perhaps one tenth that of the Sun, could live for 100,000 million years or more, at least ten times as long as the Sun.

Therefore the hottest stars, with their intense radiation and short lifetimes, seem the least likely centres of extraterrestrial life, whereas the dimmest stars, despite their glow-worm output, have the advantage of longevity to compensate. We live around a star which seems to have a good compromise between the conflicting requirements of luminosity andlongevity. Over 5 per cent of the stars in the Galaxy have roughly the same mass and temperature as the Sun; the most abundant stars of all are the red dwarfs, which are 10 times as frequent as Suntype stars.

But the existence of a suitable star is not by itself sufficient for the origin of life. Astronomers have found that the gas clouds around forming stars are rich in the chemicals that go to form life - simple substances such as carbon, nitrogen, and water. What is needed are places where these chemicals could become c onoentra ted, and give life its first footing. Planets can act as rendezvous points for the chemicals of life. Planets provide an atmosphere which traps heat. supplies chemicals, and provides

27


~

pressure which keeps substances such as water in liquid

form. Therefore, if we want to find potential homes of life in space, We should look for planets. So how many stars have planetary systems?

The majority of stars in the sky seem to come in groups of two, three, or even more. For example, the nearest star of all, AJpha Centauri, is actually triple, and the bright star Castor in Gemini is a system of six stars, although in both cases only one star is visible to the naked

eye. A major lesson from contemporary astrophysics is that stars never seem to come in to being singly; the formation of stars from clouds of gas and dust in the Galaxy seems to lead naturally to the formation of multiple stars, or of a star with planets, like the Sun and its solar system of which we are a part. Therefore planets could, in theory, be as numerous in the Galaxy as are stars. But the problem is that no planets of other stars are directly visible from Earth. Since planets, by their nature, are cold nonluminous objects that shine only by reflecting sunlight and give out no light of their own, they are too faint to be seen by existing methods. Even from the nearest star, QUI.: own solar system would be invisible through an ordinary telescope.

Astronomers Helmut - Abt and Saul Levy of the Kitt Peak Observatory in Arizona have attempted to estimate the number of planet-bearing stars from a study of a number of double and multiple stars near the Sun. Their work, published in 1976, is a major advance in our understanding of the formation of stars and planetary systems, and is worth reporting in detail.

Abt and Levy examined 123 bright stars near the Sun with masses ranging from the same as the Sun to 50 per cent greater- in other words, stars as bright and as hot as the Sun or slightly above. In addition to 69 stars already known to be double or multiple, they found an ... other 25 hitherto unrecognized double 'stars. These discoveries were made by studying the visible stars' light. Regular variations in the wavelength of light from a star reveals that it is moving round in orbit with another star

28

STARS AND PLANETS

too close to be seen separately; a system of this kind is known as a spectroscopic binary.

The Kitt Peak astronomers made allowances for possible

companion stars that they may have missed detecting. For instance, if the two stars orbit each other in a plane perpendicular to our line of sight, so that they do not move alternately towards and away from us, then there will be no wavelength change in the spectrum and their binary nature will escape detection; equally, the companion star may be of such low mass that it scarcely has any effect on the movement of the visible star. Other, more distant, companion stars which ought in theory to be seen separately may also have been missed because they are too faint to pick out from the mass of background stars.

Abt and Levy made the important discovery that dou ble-star systems fall in to two distinct classes: those with orbital periods of more than about 100 years, and those which orbit more quickly'. The period of a binary star's orbit, like the period of a planet around the Sun, depends on the separation of the two objects, with the widest pairs having the longest periods.

In the short-period binaries one finds progressively fewer pairs as one looks for companions with progressively smaller masses than the primary; but in the long-period systems, there are 'progressively more pairs as one moves

to companions of decreasing mass. Abt and Levy believe that this distinction arises from the different ways in which wide-separation and close binaries are formed. Probably, the close binaries were formed when a condensing protostar split in two because it was spinning too quickly for stability; the tendency is for a proto-star to split into two equal halves. The wide binaries arise where two stars were born from independent protostars but were then captured by each other's gravity. There is no preference for equal. .. sized partners in this group; rather. it reflects the increased abundance of

smaller stars.

The orbital period of roughly 100 years which divides

29


these two classes of binary corresponds to a separation

between the stars about equal to the distance of the planet Neptune from the Sun, which is probably the characteristic size at which a shrinking protostar begins to divide. A mass of 2.4 Suns spread over this diameter gives a density of gas similar to that assumed for the gas cloud around the Sun from which our own planetary system formed, This fits in well with theories of planetary formation, according to which the solar system formed from a small fraction of the so-called solar nebula sur .. rounding the Sun, the unused remainder being lost into space. Abt and Levy therefore speculate that the formation of a planetary system is one result of the splitting of a protostar.

Such a view is backed up by the fact that the gas in

protostellar blobs is observed to be moving at about 1 km/sec: but as the protostar gets smaller it spins faster. By the time the blob has condensed to the size of a star, its rotation will have speeded up so that it should in theory be spinning at up to 1000 km/sec, which is too high for stability. In fact, the observed rotation speeds of

stars are about I to 10 krn/sec. So what has happened to the lost rotation? In typical binary systems, between one hundred and one thousand times as much rotational energy is con tamed in the stars' orbital motions as in their axial spin; equally, most" of the rotational energy

in the solar system seems to be contained in the orbital motions of the planets rather than in the spin of the Sun. This suggests that, to get rid of their surplus spin, all condensing protostars split to form either a double star or a star with planets.

Abt and Levy found that two-thirds of the stars they studied have short ... period stellar companions. The other One third of stars had no detectable stellar companions.

If this remaining one-third of the stars sampled were also formed by shrinking and splitting gas blobs, then they too should have companions - but these companions would be too small to be visible stars.

'Ibis brings up the interesting question of what con ..

30

STARS AND PLANETS

stitutes a true star. According to calcula tions by the University of Virginia astrophysicist Shiv Kumar, the smallest mass at which a protostar can tum on nuclear reactions to become a genuine star is O~07 times that of the Sun, or about 70 times the mass of Jupiter. Then

there comes a transition region between true stars and planets. A shrinking gas blob with a mass in this region will glow from the energy of its contraction before finally fading to become a black dwarf, sometimes

termed a degenerate star. Even our own Jupiter is giving out a vestige of internal heat, one cause of which might be a slight shrinkage; Jupiter has been termed the star that failed. *

According to Abt and Levy's calculations, 15 per cent oi their sample stars should be accompanied by degenerate stars and 20 per cent by planets, thus underlining the theoretical speculation that no star ever forms alone. In fact, if astronomers are right in their understanding of how stars form, each shrinking blob has to split into two because of its high speed of rotation. Abt and Levy also find that 72 per cent of the stars in their sample are wide binaries - that is, with companions that orbit in more than 100 years. Each member of a wide binary should itself have a close twin, thus producing a quad-

ru pIe system.

..

• The stars of smallest mass were once believed to be the components of the binary star UV Ceti (also catalogued as

L 726-8), each of which was estimated to have a mass 0.04 that of the Sun: this would have meant that they were still contracting before fading out to become black dwarfs. However, more recent work (Harrington and Behall, Astronomical Journal, vol. 78, p. 1096.. 1973) gives a more accurate figure of 0.1 solar mass for each object, thus making them true stars. The stars now of smallest known mass are the two components of Wolf 424, and the smaller component of the double star Ross 614: in each case the estimated mass is 0.06

that of the Sun, thus placing them on the theoretical borderline between real and degenerate stars.

•

3I


...

These cone! usions have deep implications for our

understanding of stars and their formation. From such a limited sample, it is difficult to be certain to how many stars Abt and Levy's findings apply, But it seems that they should hold for all stars of suitably long lifetimes for life to develop - that is, of I.5 solar masses and smaller. Therefore, around all stars in this range that are not close binaries, including the individual members of wide doublestar systems, we should expect to find planets on which life might conceivably fonn.

The conclusion helps clarify a long .. standing disagreement about whether or not planets would be expected in multiple-star systems. Some astronomers, such as Tom Heppenheimer of the Max-Planck-Institut fUr Kernphysik Dol West Germany have argued that the presence of a degenerate star would prevent the formation of terrestrialtype planets. Robert Hohlfeld and Yervant Terzian of Cornell University have suggested that the difficulties in the formation of planets in a double-star system should lead to a reduction by a factor of 50 in the number of civilizations predicted by the Drake equation.

But theoretical work indicates that planets, if they can form, should be able to survive around the com ..

.

ponents of a double star, as long as the components were

sufficiently separated; there is ' an analogy in the solar

system, where Jupiter is sufficiently far from the Sun to possess a family of moons like a small-scale solar system. If the component stars are too close, any planets would be forced out of the system or into one of the stars by gravitational effects; the analogy in the solar system is Mercury and Venus, neither of which can possess moons,

The stability of planetary orbits in a binary system has been examined most recently by Robert S. Harrington of the US Naval Observatory, Washington. He has affirmed that planets can exist if they are sufficiently close to the individual members of a binary or if they are sufficiently distant that they orbit around the outside of both stars (the analogy here is Uranus, Neptune, and

..

STARS AND PLANETS

Pluto, which can be said to orbit around th,e Sun .. Jupiter double system).

Harrington mathematically tested known binaries to see if planets could exist in them. He found that planets are stable 'as long as the outer body (be it a star or planet) comes no closer than three to four times the separation of' the two inner objects. Additionally, the region of planetary stability for most known binaries includes the area in which conditions on the planets would be suitable for life. Interestingly, Harrington found that if the Sun

were replaced by a close binary of two 0.5 solar-mass stars, or if Jupiter were replaced by a r-solar-mass star, the Earth's orbit would remain stable and temperatures on Earth would not be significantly different from today.

Alpha Centauri could be an excellent example of a multiple-star system with planets. The two main stars of Alpha Centauri are both similar in nature to the SUD, and orbit each other every 80 years; presumably they are the two halves of a protostar that split. But a third mem ...

her of the Alpha Centauri system is a faint red dwarf named Proxima Centauri, which is marginally the closest of the three to the Sun. Proxima Centauri is so far separated from the two main members of the Alpha Centauri system that, it must take about a million years to orbit them. It was presumably captured by the other two stars, -and is certainly far enough from them to possess a planetary system. Unfortunately, it has not been studied for any evidence of planets.

Richard Isaacman and Carl Sagan of Cornell University have simulated on a computer the formation of planets froma nebula around a star. Their results broadly support the observations of Abt and Levy, in that they find either the production of a multiple .. star system or of a planetary system around the parent star. By varying the mass of the original cloud and the conditions within it, Isaacman and Sagan created a whole range of possible outcomes,

from multiple stars with planets to a single star with a

M.F.S.

33

B


large family of asteroids. In many cases recognizable planetary systems were formed, with an average of about 10 planets. Isaacman and Sagan conclude that planetary systems are most likely widespread throughout the Galaxy. although their appearances are quite diverse

- many of them will not look like our solar system.

Astronomers are now finding what they believe to be

examples of planetary formation in action. In 1975.

University of Minnesota astronomer Edward Ney reported an hourglass-shaped blob of gas in the constellation Cygnus, dubbed the Egg nebula. Its shape is apparently caused by a ring of dark dust around the nebula's central star, which absorbs its light to produce the dark 'neck' of the hourglass, and re-radiates the star's energy at infrared wavelengths. One possibility is that the ring of obscurin3 dust is similar to the dense disk around the young

Sun from which our own planetary system is believed to have formed 4600 million years ago. In 1977 astronomers from the University of Arizona led by Rodger I. Thompson announced the discovery of a forming star in Cygnus, designated MWC 349, surrounded by a Hat disk from which planets may be forming.

Other examples of stars surrounded by obscuring rings of material include the so-called double-fan nebula in northeastern Orion: the two bright 'fans' are caused by a young star illuminating a surrounding cloud of gas, with a dark lane between them which is apparently the shadow of a disk of dust around the star's equator.

Lick Observatory astronomer George Herbig has, been foremost in examining young stars, known as T Tauri stars after their prototype. which still seem to be settling down after their recent birth from gas blobs. T Tauri-type stars appear to be ejecting vast amounts of matter, as is believed to have happened when the remaining nebula around the young Sun was swept away, leaving only the planets. T Tauri stars should provide considerable infonnation about planetary formation in action, and a group of Swedish astronomers, l~_ by G. F. Gahm of Stockholm 'Observatory, believe they have found just such an ex ..

34

STARS AND PLANETS

ample of a forming planetary system round the star known as RU Lupi, in the southern hemisphere constellation of Lupus, the wolf. Observing from the European Southern Observatory in Chile, the Swedish astronomers found that the star's brightness rises and falls every few days, ap-

parently due to the passage of obscuring material across the star's face. They calculate that these obscuring bodies are actually dust clouds with the mass of asteroids and moving at planetary distances - in other words, mini planets in the process of formation. This fits very well with the assumptions of theorists that the disk of dust around the Sun first built u'p asteroid-sized bodies which then aggregated into planets. Remnants from this sweeping-up process are the meteorites that occasionally hit the Earth.

A rather different example of possible planetary forma ... tion is provided by the star Epsilon Aurigae, which is eclipsed every 27 years by an invisible companion that blocks off half its light. Observations of the eclipse indicate that the obscuring body cannot be rounded, like a star, but must be a flattened disk. According to a recent analysis by mathematicians Michael Handbury and Iwan Williams of Queen Mary College, London, this secondary body is actually a protostar surrounded by a disk of dust in which planets may be forming. Thus Epsilon Aurigae helps provide support for the supposition that planets can arise in a binary system if the stars are far enough apart - in this case, about 3500 million km, or midway between the

distances of Uranus and Neptune from the Sun.

Are there any signs. of planets that have already formed - solar systems like our own? Since planets around other stars cannot yet be seen directly, astronomers have to use indirect methods of detecting them. One such method is to search for the gravitational effect

that an invisible star or planet has on the motion of its visible parent star.

Stars near the Sun show a systematic 'drift in position Over the years, termed proper motion, which results from their rotation around the. Galaxy. Like cars on a giant

35


~

racetrack some stars move ahead of the Sun, while others

fall behind. A star's proper motion is imperceptible to the naked eye, but it can be detected on large-scale photographs taken with long-focus telescopes. A single star should move in a straight line; but if the star is double or if it has planets, then its motion will be unbalanced.

It will therefore show a slight wave-like wobble in its path as it swings around in orbit with its invisible companion. The .amount of wobble. and its frequency, reveals the mass and orbital period of the invisible com ... panion, A detailed study of the motions of nearby stars, captured on photographic plates taken over the past 40 years. has 'rewarded astronomers with the discovery of at least one possible planetary system, as well as many previously unknown low Mm3SS stars.

Peter van de Kamp of the Sproul Observatory, Pennsyl ..

vania, began a regular 'photographic survey of the stars within 30 to 40 light years of the Sun in 1937, using the observatory's 61 em refractor.* In 1963, van de Kamp announced that the red dwarf Barnard's star, the second closest star to the Sun, had a possible planetary system. Barnard's star, lying 6 light years away in the constel .. lation Ophiuchus, h,3S a mass of 0.14 that of the Sun and gives out 0.00044 the Sun's light - too faint to be seen without a telescope. The wobble of Barnard's star on the Sproul photographs indicated the presence of .a planet roughly I ~ times the mass of Jupiter .. orbiting every 24

years. Six years after his first announcement, van de Kamp raised the possibility that not one planet existed around Barnard's star but two, with masses similar to Jupiter and periods of 26 ,and 12 years. Other astronomers suggested th'at even more planets might be present.

But it was later found that a spurious kink in the observed motion of Barnard's star had been caused in 1949 when the Sproul telescope's lens was placed in a new retaining cell made of cast iron, instead of the old

• The roo.oooth photographic plate in the programme was taken on March I, 1974.

STARS AND PLANETS

aluminium one. This kink meant that previous interpretations of the movement of Barnard's star had to be modified, although the existence of a planetary system

was not disproved.

The high-quality Sproul observations from 1950 onwards have confirmed that the stair's motion does waver. Using

-the accurate new data, Peter van de Kamp in 1975 published a new anal ysis of the motion of Barnard's star ir. which he concluded that the existence of at least one planet 'appears to be well established'. The existence of a second planet was, he said, 'admittedly marginal'. but helped satisfy the observations. He also noted that photographs of Barnard's star taken at the Allegheny and Van Vleck observatories contained evidence for a wobble in the star's motion caused by at least one planet.

From data extending into 1976 Dr van de Karnp h,as calculated the probable masses of the Barnard's star planets to be 0.9 and 0.4 time; that of Jupiter, with periods of 1 1.7 and 18.5 years, orbiting at distances of 410 million km 'and 560 million km. Planets like the Earth might also orbit Barnard's star. but their effects would be too small to be detected.

A second star with a possible planetary system or degenerate stellar companion found by van de Kamp is Epsilon Eridani, one of the nearby stars most like the Sun. Epsilon Eridani, '10.7 light years away. is slightly

cooler than the Sun, with three-quarters the Sun's mass and giving out one-third the light. Van de Kamp first proposed a massive planet-like companion for Epsilon Eridani in 1973. Using data into 1976, he finds' that this companion has a period of 26 years and a distance from Epsilon Eridani" of 1200 million km. The estimated mass is at least 6 times that of Jupiter, large by solar system standards burt well below the minimum mass for a true star.

Other stars being tracked at Sproul for. possible planetary systems are EV Lacertae (also catalogued as BO +43°4305) and 130 +5°1668, both red dwarfs of about one-quarter the Sun's mass, 16 and 12 light years aw~y

37


respectively, The red dwarf star Lalande 21185, -8.1 light years away in the constellation Ursa Major, was once credited with a planetary companion about 10 times the mass of Jupiter, but follow-up studies have failed to confirm this. Other possible wobbles quoted in the past have turned out to be false alarms, although one star,

61 Cygni, remains controversial. It is a double star, the components having slightly over one-half the Sun's mass and orbiting each other every 720 years. The slightly larger and brighter star of the two, 61 Cygni A, was once suspected of having Jl. planetary companion with a mass of about eight times that of Jupiter, but more recently it

was crossed off the list.

Then, in 1977, two Soviet astronomers from Pulkovo Observatory, A. N. Deutsch and O. N~ 'Orlova, reported

the possibl · renee of three companions to 61 Cygni,

with m·as of seven, six, and I I times that of Jupiter

and periods of six, seven, and 12 years respectively. There is some indication, the astronomers reported, that the two largest planets orbit one component of 61 Cygni, while the smallest planet orbits the other star. When their own data from Pulkovo was combined with more extensive data from Sproul, the calculated masses of the planets

were halved. ·

The star has also been under survey by Murray Fletcher

at the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory in Canada.

He has used a sensitive spectroscopic method to search for the approximately five-year period of the planet around 61 Cygni A reported some years ago. In 1977, after

five years of observations, he reported results which showed that if any planet exists around 6 I Cygni A it must have a mass smaller than 10 solar masses. It seems that the case with regard to 6 I Cygni is too uncertain to draw 'any firm conclusions at present.

Photographic materials, plate-measuring techniques, and data-analysis have all improved greatly since van de Karnp began his search in the 19305. Astronomers can now track the tiny wavers in a star's motion with less effort and greater accuracy than ever before. thereby increasing

38

STARS AND PLANETS

the 'number of stars around which they might find planetary systems. A new search has in fact been started a t the University of Pittsburgh's Allegheny Observatory by a you·ng astronomer, George Gatewood, who has assumed van de Kamp's mantle as a planet-hunter.

The detectability of a planet depends on its mass, the mass of its parent star, and the star's distance from Earth. Gatewood estimates that planets the mass of Jupiter would be detectable with the Allegheny Observatory's 76 cm refractor around 10 or more of the Sun's neighbour stars (see taole), All these stars are red dwarfs,

Stars around which [upiter-like planets are detectable (in approximate order of detecta bility)

.

Star Distance (light years) Mass (Suns)

Proxima Centauri 4·3 0.11
Barnard's star 6.0 0.14
~
Wolf 359 ~ 7.6 0.10
G 51-15 12.0 0·09
Ross 154 9·5 o~I5
Ross 248 10·3 0.13
L 789-6 10·7 , 0.15
Ross 128 10.8 0.15
Groombridge 34B I 1.6 0.15
Kruger 60B 12·9 0.13
G 158-27 14.6 0.10 although planets larger than Jupiter could be detected around more massive stars. Answers are not expected for decades. Gatewood's search, like that of van de Kamp before him, may need to continue for a lifetime to be sure of the minute effects that are searched for. The slow

pace of this research is dictated by the long times that planets take to go around their orbits - the largest planets of our solar system, Jupiter and Saturn. have orbital periods of 11.9 and 29.5 years respectively.'

One strong ray of hope for the future comes from the plans for large telescopes in space .. which will en ..

39


able astronomers to plot starpositlons with far greater accuracy than is currently possible through the dense, turbulent blanket of the Earth's atmosphere. NASA's 2 .. 4 m space telescope, due for launch by the Space Shuttle in the 1 98os, is expected to improve positionmeasuring accuracy ten times.

There has been an explosion of }'ate in the number of feasible planet-spotting techniques being suggested. One method now being introduced is a sensitive refinement of the technique for finding spectroscopic binary stars. The technique involves measuring slight changes in wavelength of light from a visible star as it swings around in orbit

with its invisible companions. This wavelength change is known as the Doppler effect, and occurs in light from all moving bodies.

At the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary

Laboratory, astronomer Kristopher Serkowski is monitoring the spectra of bright Sun-like stars for such tiny wavelength changes, using the laboratory's 155 em reflector in the Santa Catalina mountains outside Tucson. He began by artificially polarizing different wavelengths of light from the star to assist in measuring any slight wavelength changes, but in 1976 switched to a device known as a Fabry-Perot interferometer which transmits only certain very narrow wavelength intervals. Any slight wavelength changes are registered by a detector.

Serkowski hopes to be able to measure star motions an small as 5 metres a second, which would be sufficient to reveal the existence of planets the size of Jupiter around his target stars. In our own solar system. the Sun is slightly unbalanced by the presence of Jupiter, which is the only planet that matters, since it is 2 Y2 times ·the

mass of all the other planets put together. The Sun and Jupiter act like the two halves of a very uneven dou ble star. Although it is true for most practical purposes to say that Jupiter orbits the Sun, when dealing with precision astronomical measurements one must also take

. ~

mto account the fact that the Sun moves around the

centre of gravity of the Sun-Jupiter system at about

40

STARS· AND PLANETS

12.7 m/sec. Therefore. a distant observer would see a cyclical change in the wavelength of light from the Sun of the type that Serkowski is seeking. This is in fact another, more sensitive. way of finding the same star wobbles as sought by photography. Unlike the photographic technique, it is not restricted to the nearest

stars •

......

For his study, Serkowski has selected 25 stars similar

to the Sun. All are brighter than magnitude 6, appear

nearly overhead at Tucson, and have no known stellar companions. In addition, he is extending the work of Abt and Levy by observing the 52 stars for which they found no detectable companion. Each star needs to be observed on at least four nights a year to obtain the desired accuracy of 5 m/sec in its motion. Serkowski estimates that the programme will take a decade to complete.

A similar project is planned by Dr George Isaak. of Birmingham University. who has developed a system that accurately compares specific wavelengths in a star's spec .. trum with a wavelength standard on Earth. In trials of this system. Isaak ... and his team have found what they claim to be regular oscillations of about 10 km in the outer layers of the Sun.

Another sophis rica ted approach has been suggested by Harold McAlister of Kitt Peak Observatory. He has noted that it should be possible to detect the presence of any planets in binary star systems by the technique known as speckle interferometry, which unscrambles the blurring caused by the Earth's atmosphere to give the accurate relative positions and orientations of the members of close double stars. Plants themselves could not be seen directly With this technique, but speckle interferometry promises to give star positions in binaries at least 15 times as accurately as with direct photography, thereby allowing astronomers to search for slight wobbles in the paths of the com .. ponents of double stars caused by the presence of planets.

In 1976 a team of astronomers and engineers met for a summer study on planetary detection at NASA's Ames Research Center in California. During the study, called

41


.

Project Orion, they ca.me up with a proposal for a so-called

imaging interferometer, a twin telescope whose two views of a star field are combined to give more accurate JXJSi ..

tions of stars than are possible with a single telescope alone. Such a twin telescope, either on the Earth or in space, could detect the wobbles in star motions that would reveal the existence of Earth-sized planets around 400 stars out to a distance of 32 light years, or Jupiter-sized planets around most stars out to 150 light years, which is vastly better than the single-telescope astrometric studies being made by van de Kamp and Gatewood.

But what are the chances of seeing planets of other stars directly? The problem is that the faint light from planets is swamped by the light, often 1000 million times brighter, of their parent stars. Even space telescopes, such as the 2.4 m reflector due to be launched by the Shuttle, will not be able to resolve planets on its own. But Charles

KenKnight of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona has pointed out that special optical systems can be devised to cut down the amount of light from 'parent stars, thus revealing images of any bright accompanying planets from among the glare. He believes that a 2 m telescope in Earth orbit equipped with suitable optics could see planets like jupiter or even Venus (because of its brightness) around nearby stars.

As the results from these searches come in over the next decade, astronomers' will for the first time have observational evidence to back up their theoretical speculation that planets are common in space. For the moment, though, only one star is known with certainty to have

planets - the Sun.

Ironically, although stars provide the heat and light to nourish an¥ life around them, they also drive that life away when they die. About 5000 million years from now, the Sun will begin to heat up at the centre. It will slowly swell to a red giant star, 100 times its present diameter, engulfing the planets Mercury, Venus, and perhaps even the Earth. Then it win puff off its outer layers into space" leaving its hot core as a slowly cooling white dwarf.

42

STARS AND PLANETS

Long before that happens, of course, all remaining life on Earth will have been incinerated. Once the Sun starts to heat up it will cause widespread changes in the Earth's climate, a melting of the polar caps, and consequent flooding of lowland areas. Then the seas will evaporate, leaving the Earth as a parched 'and bare cinder. Any distant descendants of ours will have left the Earth in search of another home around a younger star. Other civilizations, if any exist, may already have been through this enforced emigration from their home star.

Once a star starts to die, the existence of planets around other suns becomes more than a matter of academic curiosity . It is a matter of life or death.

REFERENCFS

Abt, iH. A., Scientific American, April 1977, p. 96.

Abt, H. A., and S. Levy, Astrophysical Journal Supplement.

vol. 30, p. 273, 1976•

Deutsch, A. N., and O. N. Orlova, Soviet Astronomy. vol.

2I~ p. 182, 1977. .

Fletcher, M., Science Dimension, vol. 9, p. 18, 1977. Cahm, G. F., et al., Astronomy and Astrophysics, vol. 33.

p. 399, 1974·

Gatewood, G., Icarus, vol. 27, p. I, 19n.

Handbury, M., and I. P. Williams, Astrophysics and Space

Science, vol. 45, p. 439, 1976.

Hartmann. W. K., Astronomy, p. 6, September 1977. Heppenheimer, T. A., Astronomy and Astrophysics. in

press, 1978.

Herbig, G. H., Mercury, vol. 5, p. 2, 1976.

Hohlfeld. R., and Y. Terzian. Icarus, vol. 30• p. 598,

I9n·

Isaacman, R., and C. Sagan, Icarus, vol. 31, p. 510, 1977.

van de Karnp, POI' Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, p. 295, 1975.

Van de Kamp, P., Astronomical Journal, vol. 79, p. 491,

1974·

43


van de Kamp, P., Astronomical Journal, vol. 80, p. 658, 1975·

van de Kamp, P., Vistas in Astronomy, vol. 20, p. 501,

1977·

KenKnight, C. E., Icarus, vol. 30, p. 422, 1977.

McAlister, H. A., Icarus, vol. 30, p. 789 .. 1977.

Ney, E. P., Sky & Telescope .. vol. 49, p. 21, 1975. Project Orion, Spaceiliqtit, vol. 19, p. 90, 1977. Serkowski .. K., Icarus, vol.. 27, p .. 13 .. 1976.

Thompson, R. I. .. et al., Astrophysical Journal, vol. 2 18, p.

170• 1977·

_-

3

LIFE IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM

The nine planets and associated debris of our solar system provide a vast range of conditions, from searing heat to near-absolute cold .. from total vacuum to dense gas, from zero gravity to many times Earth gravity .. and from arid sterility to a seething soup of organic chemicals. If, as seems probable, there are other planetary systems in space, there is likely to be something of these conditions in every one of them. By studying our solar system, we should gain clues to the possible niches in which life may fonn in space. 'Ibis study will illuminate the third un .. known in the Drake equation - the number of habitable planets in each solar system.

Mercury, the closest known planet to the Sun' (there may be some smaller asteroids closer still) is probably typical of the smaller planets in space, at least on its outside. Internally, it is remarkable in having a giant iron core, comprising about four-fifths its total diameter; the core is made from the heavy elements that remained closest to the Sun in the cloud from which the planets formed,

Mercury's rocky surface, first shown in detail in 1974 by the Mariner 10 spacecraft, has been badly battered by impacts from debris left over after the formation of the solar system. Mercury's craters, basins, and lava plains are very reminiscent of th'e Moon - not surprisingly so, for Mercury's diameter of 4880 km is only 50 per cent larger than our Moon; some of the satellites of the outer planets are larger than Mercury, The Moon and Mercury do not have sufficient gravity to hold an atmosphere that would shield them from meteorites.

Mercury turns on its axis once every 59 days .. twothirds of the time it takes to orbit the Sun. The remark ... able consequence of this is that from one Mercurian noon

45


,10 the next takes 176 days; during this time, the planet has orbited the Sun twice and spun three times on its axis. Mercury's rotation has been braked by the gravita .. tional pull of the Sun.

Standing among the lunar-like craters on the dayside of Mercury, you would see the sun 2~ times larger than it appears from Earth. Without the filtering effect of an atmospheric blanket, you would be bathed in deadly levels of short .. wavelength radiation as the Sun heated surface rocks to 4ooo,C or more at maximum, hot enough to melt tin and lead. But during the three-month Mer-

curian night, the temperature of the surface rocks around you would drop to - 170°C.

Mercury is simply too close to the Sun for life to exist on its surface. If the Sun were slightly cooler, a planet with an atmosphere at Mercury's distance would I be at the right temperature for life. But around the smallest and coolest stars of all, red dwarfs like Barnard's star, a 'planet would have to be even closer than Mercury to be kept warm enough for life - so close that its axial spin would be locked by gravity so that it kept one face forever turned towards the star, like the Moon keeps one face turned to the Earth. Life on a planet with permanent day in one hemisphere and eternal night on the other, would be 'a little monotonous, but not necessarily im- ,

possible. ~

How near to a star or how far from it must a planet be to support life? Each star is surrounded by a habitably' warm zone known as its ecosphere in which, like around a bonfire, temperatures are neither uncomfortably hot nor

uncomfortably cold. The size of a star's life zone depends on the stars temperature: the coolest stars, like faintly. glimmering bonfires, warm only a small area, whereas the hottest stars spread heat 'and light over a much larger area. Our Earth, not surprisingly, is at the very centre of the Sun's life zone. Venus, the second planet from the Sun, is just at the inner edge of the habitable zone, and it is instructive to compare the differences between Venus and . Earth to see how finely the scales are balanced be-

46


tween an uninhabitable planet and one that teems with life.

On the face of it, Venus and Earth appear very similar.

Venus is only slightly smaller than Earth (12,I04 km diameter, as against 12,756 km), and they come closer together(within 41 million km) than any other two planets. Both Venus and Earth have copious atmospheres. A longstanding nickname for Venus was Earth's twin. But the results of space-probe :research have shown what a devilish misnomer this is. For Venus has more in common with Hell than our own Earthly paradise.

Venus appears brighter in the sky than any other planet, because sunlight is reflected strongly from the dense clouds that obscure the planet's surface from the prying eyes of astronomers. Only radar can see through the clouds, to produce crude maps of the surface which show Venus to be Peppered with craters, cut by canyons, layered with lava flows, and crested by mountains that look suspiciously similar to the giant volcanoes of Mars. Apparently Venus has had an active geological history.

One distinct curiosity about the planet is that it rotates on its axis every 243 days from east to west, instead of the usual west to east, longer than the 225 days it takes to orbit the' Sun. From Venus, therefore, the Sun would appear to rise in the west and set in the east, taking I 17 days to go once around, the sky (half Venus's year). The rogue back-to-front rotation of Venus is a major puzzle, but it may somehow be connected with the combined gravitational pulls of the Sun and Earth" .

The clouds themselves are now believed to be composed of a strong solution of sulphuric acid, in about 80 per cent concentration. The cloud tops visible in telescopes are at a height of 60 km above the plarret, and according to spacecraft measurements extend down to 35 km from

the surface. Below that is a thick atmosphere of almost pure carbon dioxide, which reaches a pressure of 90 Earth atmospheres at the surface - equivalent to the pressure half a mile under the ocean on Earth, sufficient to crush a submarine like tinfoil.

47


.

Not surprisingly, the first Soviet probes to parachute

into Venus's atmosphere were destroyed before they ever reached the ground. Only in 1970 were the first signals received from the surface of Venus, transmitted by the probe Venus 7 which had been specially strengthened to withstand the forces that had crushed its predecessors. Subsequent probes have sent back data indicating that the rocks on Venus are similar to granite and basalt on Earth, and have taken photographs of the rocky surface which show that as much light penetrates the clouds as does on a cloudy summer's day on Earth.

These probes have confirmed previous findings that th·e temperature at the surface of Venus, on both day and night hemispheres, is a furnace-like 475°C. A luckless astronaut who crash-landed on Venus would thus be simultaneously crushed, roasted, and suffocated.

Two planets, similar in size, in the same part of the solar system and apparently of similar composition - why should Earth and Venus today have such startlingly different condi tions ~ . Venus, by virtu e of its proximity to the Sun, receives nearly twice as much solar radiation as the Earth; but 80 per cent of this is reflected by the clouds, so the surface temperature should be comfortably warm. Why, then, is Venus so roastingly hot? And where has its water gone?

One point of similarity between Venus and Earth, not obvious at first glance, is- that both planets have comparable amounts of carbon dioxide; on Earth, though, most of this is locked up in limestone sediments, a .result both of natural chemical processes and of the action of sea creatures in the past. Carbon dioxide traps heat very effici-

ently, in a process known as the greenhouse effect (indeed, one of the fears on Earth is that the extra carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels may cause drastic changes in our climate). Sunlight can warm Venus in the normal way but the presence of so much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere prevents the heat from escaping again, thus building up the planet's high temperature.

48


Both Venus and the Earth are believed to have obtained their present atmospheres from gases released from their interiors .. particularly through the mouths of volcanoes. The volcanoes broke through the crust as the interiors of the planets heated up from the decay of radioactive atoms; bodies such as Mercury and the Moon would have been too small to heat up sufficiently, which is why they have

no large volcanoes.

This degassing through volcanoes would presumably have produced similar gases on both planets - mostly water vapour, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen. But already the evolution of the two planets' atmospheres was being altered by their different temperatures. Venus, being closer to the Sun, would have .been hotter than Earth to start with, and this higher surface temperature would have

affected the chemical reaction that binds up carbon dioxide in the planet's crust. While chemical reactions on Earth removed carbon dioxide from the. atmosphere and kept the planet down to a reasonable temperature for life to form, on Venus this process would not have occurred. The carbon dioxide would thus have built up in the Venus atmosphere, making the planet still hotter, and leading to the oven-like temperatures of today.

What of the water on Venus? The main product of volcanoes on Earth is water vapour, which has condensed to fill our oceans. But water on Venus today is almost non-existent. The reason seems to be quite straightforward. Since Venus is so hot, its water would have

remained as vapour in its atmosphere, where it would be broken up by sunlight. This process, called photodissociation, splits water into its component hydrogen and oxygen atoms. The hydrogen, being lightweight, would be lost into space, while the oxygen could both combine in

chemical reactions with the crust and help to make the sUlphuric acid clouds. Water vapour in the atmosphere would have worked with the carbon dioxide to block the loss of heat from Venus, thus leading 'to a runaway greenhouse effect that quickly produced the hot, arid, sterile planet we see today.

49


It is possible that, in the past, Venus had oceans.

Theories of stellar evolution indicate that the Sun would have been slightly cooler thousands of millions of years ago, so that the greenhouse effect on Venus may not then have got underway. Venus. in fact, may once have been quite Earthlike, with volcanoes belching gases into the sky and cooling streams running over the faces of continents to fill the oceans. In those oceans. fed by a rain of organic molecules from the planet's chemically rich atmosphere, life could have begun to evolve at the same time as it did on Earth, nearly 4000 million years ago. But eventually, after perhaps 3000 million years. the warming Sun would have snuffed out that life as the planet's climate changed catastrophically. The fossils of dead sea creatures may lie in the rocks of the deep basins on Venus, mute

testimony to a planet that, a few million kilometres farther from the Sun, could have been as fertile as the Earth.

One day, the Earth will become like Venus. As the Sun swells into a red giant star at the end of its life, in thousands of millions of years' time, it will begin to heat up the Earth. As the Earth gets hotter, the carbon dioxide will be liberated from the rocks in which it is chemically

trapped. Water will evaporate from the seas, be broken up by sunlight, and be lost. The runaway greenhouse effect will take charge in the predominantly carbon dioxide atmosphere, and Earth will become a burning Hell.

The strong sulphuric acid clouds of Venus and the lack of water (no more than one part per thousand, possibly one hundred times less) seem to rule-out the suggestion made some years ago that Venus could be made habitable by seeding its atmosphere with algae that would break down the carbon dioxide to release oxygen. The situation might be saved if we could arrange to import more water - perhaps by diverting an icy comet into the clouds of Venus.

liquid water is the one factor which selects Earth as the most favourable planet in the solar system for life.

50


. Water itself is not lacking in the solar system; its simple combination of two hydrogen atoms with one of oxygen is plentiful, particularly on the giant outer planets. But there it is either frozen as ice or in droplets as water vapour. On Earth it is abundant as a liquid because our planet lies in the middle of the Sun's life zone - that celestial green belt in which we expect to find a star's lifebearing planets.

Water is the liquid of life. It acts as a solvent in which chemicals can come together and react; as far as we know, life originated in or around the oceans of the early Earth. Water is also the major component of living things; about 90 per cent in the case of many vegetables

(think of dried potato powder or packet soup), and twothirds in the case of human beings. Without water, organisms cannot live.

According to the theories of the origin of life, basic organic chemicals which comprise proteins and nucleic acids were made easily in the atmosphere of the primitive Earth - many of those organic chemicals have been produced in experiments that simulate conditions 4000 million years ago. And those component chemicals are the same in the proteins and nucleic acids of every form of life on Earth - only their arrangement is different, like different shapes made from the same set of building blocks.

Such similarity at the microscopic level gives a truly breathtaking glimpse of the basic unity of all life on this planet, from microbes to man.

Proteins are the structural material of life, whereas the nucleic acids, DNA and RNA, guide reproduction and growth (the genetic code). Cells are, at their most basic, a shell of protein wrapping nucleic acids. How the first proteins and nucleic acids were built. and how they came together in cells to form the first living organisms, a.re unsolved problems that remain at the forefront of biochemical research.

Chemical fragments of proteins and nucleic acids seem to have helped in each other's mutual development, a two-way process which eventually built up today's full-

51


sized proteins and nucleic acids. Proteins and nucleic acids still bear thee imprint of their intimate evolutionary relationship, as shown by the model-building experiments of American biologists Charles Carter and Joseph Kraut, who found that twisted chains of protein wrap neatly around the famous double-helix spirals of nucleic acid.

Leslie Orgel and Iris colleague Andre Brack at the Salk Institute in Califomia concluded that the first protein would most likely be made of al temating chains of the amino-acid chemicals glycine and alanine, which are the most abundant amino acids formed in simulations of con .. di tions on the 'primitive Earth. The genetic code for this protein would require a chain of alternating nucleic acids, as observed in the nucleic acids of today. Thus the genetic code would have originated by interactions between the first simple proteins and the first simple chains of nucleic acids.

The vast complexity of the origin of life has been amply depicted by organic chemist Dr Peter Molton in an outline of 18 major steps to the formation of a cell, involving the synthesis and amalgamation of chemical units that developed separately in the pre-biotic soup of the Earth's young oceans. Each of those first chemical units was prob·ably the barest arrangement capable of, doing the job; they were improved by later. additions, producing the highly complex molecules we see today. Some cells .incorporated a unit that allowed them to use carbon dioxide as food - the reaction known as photosynthesis. Thus came the division of life into plant cells (the photosynthesizers) and animal cells (those that preyed on the plant cells. and on each other). Eventually. co-operation between cells produced the astounding multi-cellular organisms that dominate the Earth.

Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe in their 'black cloud' paper of 1977 joined the ranks of those who propose that the Earth may have been seeded by life from outer space .. Astronomers know that the dark clouds in space contain microscopic graphite and silicate dust, and about 40 molecules of varying complexity. Hoyle and

52

LIFE IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM Wickramasinghe quoted evidence from the absorption of life at ultraviolet wavelengths by dust in space that even more complex molecules, including the molecules of life, can be built up on the surfaces of the dust grains in clouds such as the Orion nebula. Rocky meteorites, such as that which landed at Murchison, Australia. in 1969, have been found to contain quite complex organic molecules, including amino acids, apparently formed in space under the conditions that Hoyle and Wickramasinghe

describe.

Later in 1977, Hoyle and Wickrarnasinghe noted that the 'absorption of light by dust clouds in space at certain infra-red wavelengths reveals the apparent existence of cellulose in space, formed from stable rings of the organic molecule formaldehyde {H2CO) which is already known to be abundant, Cellulose, of course, is the structural

material of plant cell walls. '

Hoyle and Wickramasinghe pr9POse that the clumping and breaking up of dust grams in the interstellar clouds could eventually produce simple forms of living organism, trapped and preserved inside grain clumps and feeding off the nutrient of the surrounding gas. These organisms would divide and grow like an,y normal biological system as the grain clumps split and recombine, except that once a grain clump and its kernel of organic material i~ isolated from the surrounding cloud it beco-mes bio .. logically inert, rather like a spore. Such a spore, if it became included in a meteorite, would remain in a stare of suspended animation until released in a suitable planetary atmosphere, when it would spring back into life and begin to evolve in its new environment.

More recently, Hoyle an-! Wickramasinghe have argued that comets are the favoured sites for the origin of life, and that not only may life have been started by an impact of a cornet with Earth, but that encounters with micrometeorites from comets in modern times are respcnsible for delivering periodic waves 'of disease to

Earth. On this basis, life would be expected to be frequent throughout the Galaxy, and also to be built on similar

53


biochemical lines to ourselves. ·

Most biologists remain sceptical of the view that the

Earth was seeded with life from space- they feel that conditions were far more conducive for life to have evolved on Earth in the ·first place. Also, no 'living' spores have been detected in meteorites, and the failure to detect life on Mars seems to argue against the pro-

posal.

Despite these advances in unravelling many of the steps to life, no scientist is anywhere near being able to create life in the laboratory. Until that can be accomplished - and it may eventually happen - the origin of life remains a mystery. And while it remains so, the corres .. ponding factor in the Drake equation is totally un .. certain.

It has traditionally been assumed that life might arise on one planet in ten with suitable conditions. But this is nothing more than an assumption - an expression of faith, some might call it. lhis is why the hunt for traces of life on another planet assumes such overriding importance.

Evidence that life has arisen spontaneously on another

body in space would place our existence in perspective more sharply than any other discovery we could make. It would .. in the words of physicist Philip Morrison, tum the origin of life from a miracle into a statistic. One

point of optimism is that traces of the earliest, single-celled organisms on Barth extend. back 3500 million years or possibly longer .. thus indicating that life, however caused.

did not take long to get going. "

Two other factors in the Drake equation - the probability of intelligence and the frequency of technological civilization - 'are as uncertain as the origin of life. Jntelligence took much longer to develop on this planet than life itself. Only during the past .few million years have beings of the Homo lineage been present, on Earth; latest discoveries of fossil man place the split of true man from the ape-men at 3 to' 4 million years ago .. By contrast, our development from the use of stone tools to the level of

54


high technology has been the fastest stage of all in our evolution. Some biologists believe that high intelligence is such an advantage that it is almost certain to develop, given time. And the inquisitive, dexterous nature of highly intelligent beings is bound to make them into a technological civilization that starts to question and ex ..

amine its surroundings, probing even for evidence of other beings elsewhere in space. But further discussion of these matters is for anthropologists and sociologists, and we must return to the solar system.

Throughout this century the planet Mars, next past the Earth, has seemed the most likely place to find evidence of other life in space. In the popular vision, con .. structed by astronomers such as Percival Lowell at the turn of the century and eagerly supported by science fiction writers since, Mars was a dying world whose inhabitants were fighting a losing battle against the planet's parched deserts .. Their technology had produced artifacts visible clear across the multi-million-kilometre gap to Earth: irrigation canals for channelling melted water from the polar caps to their crops near the equator. Lowell and his followers drew an intricate network of canals, interspersed with dark patches they termed oases, and charted what appeared to be vast areas of crops which varied seasonally in extent and coloration.

The large dark markings were real enough; moderatesized amateur telescopes will show the largest of them, and they have been captured clearly on photographs. But what of the canals? They first came to prominence after the close approach between Mars and Earth in 1877 (the same occasion, incidentally, on which the two moons of Mars were discovered). The Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli drew a series of linear markings on the planet which he termed channels. Schiaparelli always kept an open mind about their true nature; but, for the American

astronomer Percival Lowell, they were clear signs of an advanced technological civilization on the planet.

Lowell, a member of a famous New England family,

55


built his own observatory in the dry, clear air of northern Arizona to study Mars*. During the years following the observatory's opening in 1894. Lowell and his collaborator Earl C. Slipher charted an increasingly complex network of canals. These findings, coupled with Lowell's romantic visions of the decaying civilization on Mars. fired the public's imagination - despite the fact that most other observers failed to see the canals, and denied their exist-

ence.

After Lowell's death in 1916 the debate rumbled on, with most astronomers regarding Lowell's claims with increasing scepticism. The dispute was finally laid to rest in 1965 with the arrival of the Mariner 4: spacecraft, which radioed back to Earth a string of photographs as it sped past Mars. The photographs showed a cratered sur-

face that looked more like the Moon than the Earth. Of the canals - or of life - there was no sign. The Mariner 6

and 7 craft which photographed more of Mars in 1969 were no more encouraging, indicating that Mars was a dry, frigid, and near-airless world.

But a full photographic survey had to wait until

1971-72, when the Mariner 9 reconnaissance probe went into orbit around Mars. As expected, the large dark and light patches noted by Earth-based observers were found to correlate with areas of darker and lighter rock or dust on the planet, But where were the fine, straight lines

drawn by the canal observers? Cornell University astronomers Carl Sagan. and Paul Fox overlaid Earl C. Slipher's definitive map of the canals on to a mosaic of Mariner 9 pictures. In only a few cases did the 'ca..a.s' correlate

with real surface features, such as a chain of craters or a dark surface streak, and in many instances there were topographic features or markings which showed no sign of having been recorded by Slipher despite the fact that

* The Lowell Observatory at Flagstaff, Arizona, is today one of the foremost centres of planetary research. The astronomers there now seem a little embarrassed about the observatory's sensational early history.


they are much wider than many of the supposed 'canals' which he drew. Basically, therefore, it seems that most of the canals are unexplained. Sagan and Fox characterized the canals as monuments to the imprecision of human observers under difficult conditions.

Any hope of finding patches of vegetation on the surface of Mars were finally dashed by the Mariner 9 pictures. The changes in shape and intensity of the dark markings are caused by dust being blown around by seasonal winds, not growing vegetation.

But the space probes did not completely rule out the possibility of life on Mars. In fact, they discovered one critical factor which made it more likely: Mars has volcanoes. and spectacular ones, too. The main volcanic mountain on Mars, Mount Olympus .. is the largest known volcano in the solar system, dwarfing even the volcanic Hawaiian islands on Earth. Volcanoes on Mars opened the prospect of water on the planet - and Mariner 9 photographed numerous examples of what looked suspiciously like dried-up Martian rivers, which presumably flowed during more clement times in the planet's history.

The present atmosphere of Mars is scanty. It is made mostly of carbon dioxide gas, as thin as the Earth's air at a height of 32 km. Consequently, temperatures on Mars are well below freezing, but the Mariner 9 findings held out hope that Mars may have had a denser atmos .. phere in the past, particularly at the time when the volcanoes were active. With a denser atmosphere, Mars would also have been wanner. Had Mars been a slightly larger planet - it is half the diameter of the Earth - it would have become hotter inside and degassed more, ~uilding up a substantial atmosphere that could have kept

It comfortably warm for life. On this view, the Earth at the distance of Mars could still be a habitable planet.

Even so. Earth-type organisms could just about cling

to survival under present-day Marti:an conditions. Opti ..

Illistic biologists believed that life might' once have arisen on the 'planet .. and that traces of it might still be found in the Martian soil. The two American Viking

57


,

probes were designed to find out. Their results are described in the next chapter. !

Beyond Mars, the solar system grows colder. ThiS is the realm of the giant planets - and none is larger

than Jupiter, king of our solar system, containing over twice as much mass as all the other planets wrapped up: together. In contrast to the four small. solid bodies ofJ the inner solar system, the four giant planets of th~. outer reaches are mostly made of gas, similar in com ... position to the Sun. Jupiter, in particular, is like a star that failed. It still releases a pale warmth of its own, possibly caused by a continual overall shrinkage of about I millimetre a year.

When we look at the outer planets, all we see is a cloudy atmosphere. The thick cloak of gases around each of these planets is a remnant of the cloud around the Sun from which the solar system first formed. Similar primitive atmospheres may also have surrounded the inner planets shortly after their birth, later being blown away by solar, radiation. By contrast, the giant planets, being larger and] cooler, retained the gases of their primitive atmospheres.] The main components of Jupiter, as of all the outer planets, are hydrogen and helium, the two lightest and] most abundant substances in the Universe. Small percentages of other substances, in a body the size of Jupiter, provide plenty of molecules for chemical reactions. Since helium is chemically unreactive, the most abundant reac .. tive materials on Jupiter are hydrogen, methane, ammonia" and water- those same constituents from which life: formed in the Earth's early atmosphere. Jupiter is thus a kind of space fossil. When we look at it we are viewing

conditions on our Earth 4000 million yearn ago. )

Simulations of jupiter's atmosphere, like the simula .. tions of the primitive Earth, have shown that organic molecules are plentifully formed from the gases by the action of ultraviolet light, electric sparks, and shock waves,

The atmosphere of Jupiter provides rooo times the volume for organic synthesis than the atmosphere of Earth. Many


of the resulting molecules are highly coloured, from red (azobenzene, the starting point of many organic dyes) to blue (azulene), which can help explain the welter of transitory colour seen in the clouds of Jupiter. Evidently, organic synthesis in Jupiter's atmosphere continues today, and traces of such molecules should be detected by the infra-red spectrometers being carried by the Voyager

I and 2 probes, due to reach the planet in March and July

1979·

But the presence of organic molecules, formed by

simple chemistry, does not of itself imply the existence of life. The white cloud tops of Jupiter are made of frozen ammonia at a temperature of - 120°C; this is not a likely habitat for life. Slightly below the clouds, however, temperatures may be warm enough for liquid ammonia droplets, which raises the question of alternative biochemistries to those we know on Earth. A plausible ar .. rangement for life is to use liquid ammonia as a solvent instead of water. and it may be that the atmospheres of the outer planets provide the ideal conditions for a liquidammonia lifeform.

The ammonia clouds form jupiter's turbulent weather layer, responsible for the continual changes in the planet'S appearance visible in telescopes. Below this is a much more stable region where temperatures lie between the freezing and boiling point of water, at pressures that in .. crease with d~l?th from five to ten times the Earth's a~mospheric pressure. Here. about 80 Ion below the visible cloud tops. clouds of water vapour form, making this the most promising locale for Jovian life. Lower still. temperatures and pressures increase rapidly until the hydrogen of which the planet is predominantly made is comPressed first into a liquid, and then into a super-dense state with the properties of a metal. Jupiter has no solid SUrface as we know it on Earth; any biology must therefore be restricted to its clouds.

Carl Sagan has joined with Cornell University colleague E. E. Salpeter, an astrophysicist, to ex a. mine the possible

59


ecologies of jupiter's atmosphere, concluding" that then is an 'abundant biota' in the Jovian clouds. They corn pare the warm, wet cloud layers with the seas of Earth which have simple photosynthetic plankton at the top level, fish at lower levels which feed off these creatures! and marine predators which hunt the fish. The hypo. thetical jovian equivalents of these organisms are re spectively termed sinkers, floaters, and hunters.

The sinkers will drift downwards from just below the level of the visible clouds into the deeper atmosphere of Jupiter, eventually being burned up by the planet's internal heat. Before then, they must have reproduced in order to maintain a steady-state population.

As the sinkers drift downwards, they provide food

that is mopped up by the floaters. Organisms that can propel themselves around to coalesce with other bodies in the clouds of Jupiter are the hunters. The approach and coalescence of two organisms serves to exchange genetic rnaterial- the same function as mating. Some highly evolved Jovian organisms ffi'ay include aspects of all three life styles in their life cycles.

The creatures that Sagan and Salpeter envisage are gasbags that move by pumping out helium, retaining the hydrogen for balloon-like buoyancy. Hunters in the clouds of Jupiter could grow to be many kilometres across, within the resolution of the cameras carried by the Voyager I and 2 probes.

If Sagan and Salpeter are right, we may already have visible evidence of life in jupiter's clouds: they say the clue lies in the red coloration so frequently seen on the planet" Their estimates show that the direct action of sunlight does not seem to provide adequate supplies of red-coloured molecules at the right levels in the at mOS· ph ere , below the white ammonia clouds. Instead, they claim that sufficient red coloration can come as a result of biological activity by jovian organisms capable of photosynthesis, like simple algae on Earth" In other words. Jovian organisms are themselves red, like certain coloured

plankton on Earth that give the Red Sea its name. The

60

...

LIFE IN TIlE SOLAR SYSTEM

great red spot,an updraught of heated air with prominent coloration, may thus be particularly favoured for life. *

Sagan and Salpeter do not speculate on how life may have arisen on Jupiter in the first place. One possibility is that, on a planet with no solid surface, organic molecules may join together into forms of life on the surfaces of tiny particles, both liquid 'and solid, floating in the atmosphere. While the basis of Jovian life will probably be carbon, which is contained in such substances as methane, ethane, and acetylene in the planet'S atmosphere, other details of jovian biochemistry are completely uncertain. As Sagan and Salpeter say, it is possible there exists a variety of different paths to the origin of life, some of which favour the Earth while others favour

Jupiter. ·

An entry probe into jupiter's atmosphere carrying sensitive instruments could detect the level of organic molecules predicted by the biological hypothesis of Sagan and Sal peter. The current Voyager spacecraft will not enter the atmosphere of Jupiter; that will be left for a planned orbiter/entry mission in 1982. Voyagers I and 2 will photograph Jupiter as they fly past before proceeding to the ringed planet Saturn, which they will reach in November 1980 and August 1981.

Saturn, like Jupiter, is mostly made of hydrogen and helium, and also seems to have an internal heat source. Saturn has dusky brown and yellow bands between white belts of ammonia clouds, but the markings on Saturn are less prominent and less variable than the turbulent clouds of Jupiter. Also present in the atmosphere is a small percentage of methane, from which the action of sunlight bUilds up traces of other hydrocarbons such as ethane, ethylene, and acetylene. More complex organic molecules are also likely on Saturn. The similarity between Saturn's and Jupiter's atmospheres leads Sagan and Salpeter to proPOse possible airborne organisms in the clouds of Saturn,

* Conventional astronomy attributes the spot's colour to red Phosphorus.

61


although with less certainty.

Some of the satellites of the giant planets are possible sites for synthesis of organic molecules, notably Saturn's largest satellite, Titan, which has an appreciable atmos. phere. But if there is no life on the far more Earth-like surface of Mars, there is unlikely to be life of any kind on these small bodies.

OUf knowledge of conditions on the planets beyond Saturn is woefully slight, but what we do know is not

promising for life. The outer gas giants, Uranus and Neptune, show virtually no features in their greenisH methane atmospheres thereby indicating an almost tota! absence of the turbulent mixing that makes Jupiter's clouds so chemically complex.

There may be seas of liquid methane deeper under these clouds, where low-temperature life might survive, bu~ sunlight at these distances is so weak that the synthesis of complex organic compounds or the origin of photosynthetic organisms must be considered highly unlikely. There is a hint that Neptune, like Jupiter, produces it own

internal heat, which may improve matters slightly. But overall these remote, frigid bodies seem forbidding to life.

A group of American scientists, led by biologist Lynn Margulis of Boston University .. reported in 1977 that the probability of a terrestrial organism being able to survive in the atmosphere of Uranus or Neptune is nil. There seem formidable barriers to the growth of Earth organisms even in the more hospitable atmosphere of Titan. Therefore, the chances of life having arisen under these conditions must also be zero.

If the two Voyager probes to Jupiter and Saturn are successful, the second will be sent on to examine Uranus, arriving there by January 1986. We should then learn more about the prospect of life in the outer reaches of the

solar system.

•

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REFERENCFS

Carter. e., and J. Kraut, New Scientist, vol. 65. p. 784. 1975·

Hoyle. F., and N. C. Wickramasinghe .. Nature .. vol. 268, p.

6I~, 1977.

Hoyle, F ... and N. C. Wickramasinghe, New Scientist, vol.

. 76, p. 402, 1977·

Margulis, L., et al., Icarus, vol. 30, p. 793, 1977.

Molton, P. M., Journal of the Btitisli Interplanetary Society.

in press, 1978.

Orgel, L., and A. Brack, Nature, vol. 256• p. 383, 1975. Ponnamperuma, C., Icarus, vol. 29, p. 321, 1976.

Sagan, ,C., Space Science Reviews, vol. I I, p. 827. 1971. Sagan C., and P. Fox, Icarus, vol. 25, p. 602, 1975. Sagan, C .• and E. E. Salpeter, Astrophysical Journal Sup-

plement, vol. 32• p. 737, 1976• ·

Wickramas inghe, N. C., New Scientist. vol. 74, p. I 19.

1977·

4-

WHAT VIKING FOUND ON MARS

America's Viking I space probe landed on Mars on 20 July, 1976, in the most difficult technical achievement in the history of the space age. Its landing site was the flat low .. land known as Chryse, the plain of Gold. Its mission, and that of its sister craft Viking 2 which landed on September

3 was to answer the question: Is there life on Mars?

Each Viking lander carried a tiny biological laboratory to analyse Martian soil collected by the craft's remotecontrolled sampling arm. By incubating the soil in three different ways and seeing if anything grew, the biolo-

gists hoped they would find whether or not there was any life on the Martian surface .. One experiment, called the gas-exchange experiment, assumed that Martian organisms, like terrestrial organisms. would respond to the addition of water and a rich mixture of nutrients. It simply attempted to detect changes in the gases above a sample of Martian soil which was fed with this nutrient solution, colloquially

termed 'chicken soup'; proportions of various gases would be expected to change as any Martian bugs breathed, ate, grew, and reproduced.

Two other experiments looked for the release or uptake of carbon by Martian micro-organisms. One of these, the labelled .. release experiment, fed a Martian soil sample with a nutrient solution containing radioactively labelled carbon; any carbon dioxide or other carbon-containing gas

released by the sample would be detected by radioactive counters. The other experiment, the pyrolitic-release ex" peri men t , looked for evidence of photosynthesis in the soil, as would be expected if plant-like organisms existed there. In photosynthesis, carbon is taken from the atmosph ere, which on Mars consists mostly of carbon dioxide (a trace of carbon monoxide also exists). In the pyrolitic-

3


release experiment, soil samples were incubated under an artificial Martian atmosphere of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide which had been labelled with radioactive carbon; th-e soil was then heated (pyrolysed) to drive off any carbon that may have been taken up by micro-organisms and the resul ting gases were again

analysed by radioactive counters.

Working alongside these three strictly biological experiments was a fourth, closely related experiment which analysed the surface soil with a device known as a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer (GCMS for short). I'fhis heated a Martian soil sample to drive off gases, and the gases were sorted according to weight for identification by the mass spectrometer. Its purpose was to detect whatever compounds, particularly organic ones, there might be in the Martian soil.

And of course there were the television cameras aboard each lander, which were capable of making the simplest and most positive identification of Martian lifeby photographing whatever was growing or moving on the surface,

The Viking missions got under way from Cape Canaveral, Florida, when a Titan-Centaur rocket boosted Viking I into space on 20 August, 1975. Viking 2 followed on September 9. Both Vikings were identical, and each came in two halves: an orbiter with cameras and other instruments to survey the planet from above, and the allimportant lander, sterilized and hermetically sealed in a shell to prevent contamination by terrestrial organisms before launch.

A series of landing sites had been selected by scientists from the Mariner 9 survey of Mars in 1971-2. These sites had to be lowlands. so that the landing parachutes could give the maximum braking effect. and also because the wannest temperatures and the maximum amount of water were likely to be found in lowland areas. But the landing sites had also to be as flat and smooth as possible, because rocky terrain or steep slopes could tip the tiny lander over. Therefore the Vikings took a further close

M.F.S. 65 C


..

look at the target sites from orbit before releasing their lander craft.

After its ro-month voyage, Viking I went into orbit around Mars on June 19 and immediately began surveying its projected landing site in an area known as Chryse (rhymes with 'icy'), Chryse was a lowland drainage basin into which water was believed to have flooded during the wet times on Mars. Viking's first photographs from orbit, more detailed than those of Mariner 9, confirmed that water had indeed flowed over the C e area, but they also showed that the intended landing site was far rougher than had been anticipated, with many tiny craters and eroded channels not seen on the Mariner 9 photo-

graphs. Scientists cancelled the landing, originally planned

for 4 July, the bicentennial of the United States, and began to search for a smoother, safer location.

An alternative site, northwest of the original target

area, was tentatively selected, but radar reflections from Earth showed that this was also too rough for safety (reflections of radar beams can reveal the texture of a surface on a scale too small for the orbiter'S cameras to see). 'Eventually a site was chosen farther northwest, about

900 km from the original target area but still in the Chryse basin. Viking I' S lander touched down successfully at 22.27°N, 47.94°W, on 20 July, 1976, seven years to the day after the first manned landing on the Moon.

Viking I'S orbiter had also begun to scan the intended landing area for Viking 2, which was then approaching Mars. It found that the intended site was again dangerously rough. On August 7 Viking 2 joined its predecessor in orbit around Mars .. and together the two probes sought out a safe new landing area. Mission scientists decided on a basin known as Utopia .. lower even than Chryse but farther north, in an area covered by frosts during the winter. Viking z's lander touched down here success .. fully on September 3, at 47.67°N, 225.71 oW - almost ex-

actly on the opposite side of the planet from the Viking I lander. Two craft were on Mars, making the first on-thespot search for life on another planet.

66


One important clue to the possible existence of life on Mars carne within hours of touchdown from the instruments that analysed the composition of the planet's atmosphere. In addition to the 95 per cent carbon dioxide

already known to exist, the Viking landers detected 2 ~ per cent nitrogen in the atmosphere of Mars; the remaining few per cent is made up of traces of argon, oxygen. carbon monoxide, and one or two other gases. 'Ibis was the first time that nitrogen had been identified in the Martian atmosphere, and it meant that, along with carbon and water, all the basic ingredients for life had been found to exist on the planet. Added to the fact that the Martian atmosphere seems to. have been denser in the past, when the volcanoes erupted and water flowed, prospects for Martian biology looked better than ever.

What was there to see on Mars? Viking lander I began to survey its surroundings within minutes of touchdown. After transmitting a picture of one of its footpads resting gently on the stony surface, the· lander looked up towards the horizon, about 3 km away. The scene, consist ... ine of scattered rocks and sand dunes, resembled nothing

so much as one of the stony deserts in the southwest United States. Colour photos from the Viking landers confirmed that Mars is indeed a very red planet. Not only are the surface rocks rust-red, a result of the large amounts of iron oxide they contain, but the sky itself is pink, because of fine dust caught up by winds and suspended in the atmosphere. Yet of life there was no sign.

I, for one, was disappointed not to see a Saguaro cactus or two dotting the landscape, along with an occasional Martian equivalent of a Joshua tree. Optimistic biologists had suggested before the mission that organisms large enough to be easily visible by the lander cameras might exist on the surface of Mars. These organisms, the

speculation ran, would obtain water that was trapped in the rocks, or they would melt frost; even a thin nightly layer of frost would contain enough water to support a cover of moss or lichen OYler much of the surface. Large organisms would keep warm more easily in the freezing

67


~

te·mperatures than small organisms. One suggested possi ..

bility was that the Martian plants might have developed deep roots down to the permafrost layer below the topsoil, and have silica domes like sunshades to ward off the Sun's ultraviolet light. Shells from dead organisms, or their fossils. would have remained visible to the lander cameras even if such life had died out. Alas .. the first

photographs disproved these daring speculations.

Some indication of the harsh conditions that any Ma rtian creatures would have to withstand was provided by Viking's meteorology instruments, which measured a maximum air temperature in Chryse of - 29°C in the

mid-afternoon, falling to a minimum of - 85°C at dawn

- 'and this in the Martian summer I Temperatures were similar at the Viking 2 site, but as winter advanced during 1977 at this northern site temperatures fell to - 123°C, so low that carbon dioxide frost began to form on the ground' around the lander. Atmospheric pressure at both sites was around 7.5 millibars, equivalent to the pressure at a height of about 35 km above Earth. At neither Viking

site does the ground temperature rise above ooe at any

time of the year.

Viking's cameras photographed the rising and setting ci the Sun every Martian day, or Sol, which lasts about 40 minutes longer than our own 24-hour day. On Sol 8, Viking lander I reached out its soil-sampling arm to scoop up the first handful of Martian surface material and . tipped it into the -I 'ental apparatus on board for analysis, One non-biological experiment was designed to analyse the composition of the surface material, which it found to contain about 13 per cent of iron, agreeing with the supposition that the red colour of the rocks is caused by iron oxide. But, inevitably, most interest centred on the results from the three biology experiments.

What do they tell us about life on Mars? First, let's look at the gas-exchange - ent, the one that fed the soil with 'chicken soup' nutrient in the hope that Martian bugs would respond to the same kind of nutrients as terrestrial organisms: its results are the easiest to inter-

68


pret and, as it turned out, are the least interesting from the point of view of Martian biology. The gas-exchange experiment worked in two stages: in stage one, a few drops of the nutrient solution were added to the test chamber, just enough to dampen the atmosphere, on the assumption that the soil already contained sufficient nutrients to support life. The reaction of Martian soil to this breath of water vapour was then measured. In stage two, sufficient nutrients were added to enrich the soil and the resul ting gases were again analysed,

When the experiment was run on Viking lander I, things began to' happen immediately the soil same into contact with water vapour in the first stage of the test. Dramatic increases in the amounts of carbon dioxide and oxygen were recorded in the test chamber; there were fluctuations in the amount of nitrogen recorded. Scientists already realized that any sudden and dramatic response would be a sign of soil chemistry, not life, and so it

proved: the reactions levelled off after the initial fivefold increase in carbon dioxide and an astounding 200 times increase in the amount of oxygen.

A better clu- to the existence of life would be given by the second stage of the experiment, in which more nutrient was poured in to soak the soil; reduction or elimination of the reaction would confirm that chemistry was responsible, whereas a repeat of the reaction would have argued for biology. In fact, only carbon dioxide was given off in stage two, and at a reduced rate; the amount of oxygen present in the chamber declined. Similar results Were obtained from the gas-exchange experiment at the Viking 2 Utopia site, although rather less gas was given off.

Vance I. Oyama of NASA's Ames Research Center in California, the leader of the gas-exchange team, was quick tc interpret the results from this experiment in terms of

Soil chemi . Since Mars is a very dry world, the surface

material in the test chamber was meeting copious water vapour for the first time in at least millions of years. Probably the water vapour was displacing carbon dioxide

69


gas that had collected on the surface of the soil particles, thereby explaining the initial surge of carbon dioxide in stage one of the experiment. The oxygen production requires another explanation, involving the chemical nature of the soil. Evidently the surface of Mars is highly oxidized, and this abundant oxygen was being released in chemical :reactions on contact with the water vapour during stage one: the decomposition of peroxides by water is known to proceed well in the presence of iron compounds, and there is plenty of iron oxide on Mars to catalyse such a reaction. The lower response of the soil at the Utopia site is presumably beca use there already exists about 2 ~ times as much water vapour in the atmosphere there than at Chryse,

In the second part of the test, when the soil was soaked with nutrient, the resulting depletion of oxygen was probably due to chemical recombination of the oxygen with ascorbic acid (vitamin q in the nutrient. The continued production of carbon dioxide in stage two can be explained by further displacement of the gas from between the soil particles, or by oxidation of the carbon compounds in the nutrient by the highly oxidized Martian soil. The changes in nitrogen abundance can also be explained by chemical reactions. Therefore, the gas-exchange experiment tells us nothing about life on Mars, but

it does provide important clues to the chemical nature of the Martian surface .. and it also aids understanding of the results from the second e · ent we shall discuss, the

labelled-release e · ent.

The labelled-release experiment also assumed that Martian organisms need the addition of moisture and some nutrients to aid their growth. A solution of seven simple organic substances .. including the amino acids glycine and alanine, was injected into the Martian soil in the test cell. The carbon in the nutrients was radioactively labelled, and the gas above the soil sample was periodically monitored in the hope that any Martian bugs feeding off the nutrient solution would give themselves away


by realeasing gas containing the radioactively-labelled car .. bon.

As with the gas-exchange e · ent, results were im ..

mediate and electrifying: on injection of the nutrient into the first Chryse sample, there was a sudden and definite emission of radioactive gas into the chamber,

resembling that displayed by biologically poor but nonetheless life-bearing terrestrial soils from the Antarctic.

However, within a day the increase slowed down and then levelled out, remaining almost constant for five sols. Seven sols after the first injection of nutrient, a second dose was added. The overall effect was a drop in radioactive gas in the chamber, which then slowly climbed again. Could this be the first, definite sign of life on Mars? One way to find out was to run the experiment again with a control sample that had been heat-sterilized to kill any organisms that might be present. So the test cell was cleaned out and a second sample introduced,

which was heated to 160°C for three hours. Injection of nutrients into this heat-sterilized sample produced an entirely different response from before, one like that which had been obtained from sterile lunar soils in pre-flight tests on Earth: after a small initial peak, radioactivity fell away to the level of background noise, and even a second injection of nutrient failed to provoke a

response. Whatever was causing the reaction had therefore been eliminated by the heat treatment.

]his looked very good for Martian biology, although chemical reactions were by no means ruled out. A third trial run remained to be done to clinch the matter: if, Over a long period of incubation, radioactive gas continued to be produced at an increasing rate, this would argue for the growth of Martian micro-organisms. Gas production from a chemical. reaction, on the other hand, would tend to flatten out with time. A third soil sample Was therefore tested at th'e Chryse site in the labelled ... release experiment. This sample behaved similarly to the first sample after its first and second injections of nutrients;


then a third dose was added, and experimenters sat back to watch the results. Again, the addition of more nutrient led to a drop in radioactive gas, which then began to climb.

After a total incubation time of 60 sols, the radioactive gas had returned to its former level, where it seemed to remain constant. There was no sign of the hoped-for increasing rate of gas evolution th.at would have been a tell-tale sign of Martian life.

Two samples tested at the second landing site, Utopia, showed similar responses to the first and third Chryse samples. At Utopia, a sample was also subjected to heat treatment before incubation, but this time only to 50°C

- not enough to kill all organisms had it been a sample of terrestrial soil, but vastly greater than an · g th'at Martian bugs ever encounter. 'Ibis so-called 'cold' sterilization led to ·a reduction by about half in the output of radioactive gas.

So what can we conclude from this experiment? Ex-

perimenters Gilbert Levin. and Patricia Ann Straat noted that the results of the labelled-release experiment are con .. sistent with a biological interpretation" although they also discussed possible chemical explanations. We must remember the similar sudden response of the gas-exchange experiment to the introduction of water and nutrient. Biologist Cyril Ponnamperuma of the University of Maryland was quick to point out a possible chemical explana-

tion for the results of both gas-exchange and labelledrelease tests, resulting from the highly oxidized state of the Martian soil; both experiments were probably measuring different aspects of the same chemical reactions between the injected nutrient and the Martian surface .

. Probably what was happening in the labelled .. release experiment was that formic acid (chemical formula HCOOH) in the solution was reacting with the hydrogen peroxide in the soil to produce carbon dioxide, which was the gas being detected by the radioactive counters, and water .. which contained no radioactive carbon and


thus went undetected. The drop in gas after subsequent injections of nutrient is explained by absorption of the carbon dioxide in the moist nutrient. It should be remembered that the reaction was not eliminated by heat treatment at 50°C as would have been expected if Martian bugs were the cause of the gas ,production- Martian organisms would not previously have encountered such

a high temperature and should presuma bly have been damaged or killed by it, unless they are highly resistant to sudden elevated temperatures as well as to continual sub-zero ones. Therefore, although it must be admitted that the results of the labelled-release e · ent are ambigu .. OUS, it seems that they can be adequately explained by chemical reactions, without recourse to the supposition of

Martian micro-life.

Biology test three, the pyrolitic-release experiment, was designed to operate under conditions 'closely matching those on Mars, and thus might have been expected to give the most reliable clues to the existence of Martian biology. In fact. its results are the most complex and most difficult of all to explain in terms of chemistry. Nevertheless, it seems that these results are still not due to Martian biology.

In this experiment, also known as the carbon-assimilation experiment, a sample of Martian atmosphere was trapped above th'e soil sample in the test chamber. To this genuine atmosphere was added some radioactively-labelled carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide; any carbon from

the atmosphere taken up by the soil, for instance by living beings, would be detected by its radioactivity. A lamp illuminated the test chamber with simulated sunlight:

small amounts of moisture could be added to the soil if required, but no nutrients, thereby keeping conditions in the test chamber as Mars-like as possible. The main departure from conditions on the surface was that heat from the spacecraft kept the soil sample around terrestrial room temperature, considerably warmer than the sub-zero ground temperatures normally experienced.

73


The soil sample. was incubated under simulated. Martian conditions for 120 hours, then the soil was heated to drive off any carbon-con taining compounds which would be detected by a radioactive detector. The first test at the Chryse site gave a positive response - not as strong as

that from terrestrial soils, but positive nonetheless. Some .. thing in the Martian soil was fixing radioactive carbon from the atmosphere, A control test was then run .. steriliz-

ing the soil at 175°'C for three hours before beginnillg incubation. Any living organisms in the soil should have been completely destroyed by this heat treatment; but the uptake of radioactive carbon did not completely cease. It sank to 10 per cent of its previous level, significantly

higher than expeoted from a sterile soil. Whatever was causing the reaction was clearly affected by heat, but not so much as one would have .. expected for biological

•

organisms.

A third test run at Chryse showed another positive re ... sult, although less pronounced than on the first run; the first Chryse sample tumedout to have produced the greatest response of all the Viking pyrolitic .. release tests at either site. One contributory factor might have been the ground temperature: the first Chryse sample was collected at 7 a.m. local time, as against I 1.20 a.m. for the third s·ample when the ground. temperature was 60DC higher.

In all, six pyrolitic-release tests were conducted at the Chryse site. Chryse sample four produced a response slightly higher than that of sample three. Sample five was heat treated to 90o,C for two hours before incubation, which should have been sufficient to kill off any microorganisms in the soil; but the carbon uptake of the soil was unaffected. Chryse sample six had water vapour added, but produced a similar level of carbon uptake to

samples four and five. ,

At Utopia three pyrolitic-release tests were success .. fully conducted, two being performed without the light source switched on; one of these runs in the dark gave a positive result .. showing that the existence of light is not

74


essential for the reaction to occur. The second Utopia sample to be incubated in dark, dry conditions was taken from underneath a rock, and did not absorb carbon. One

Utopia sample was incubated in the light with added water, but for some reason produced virtually zero response,

So what is the explanation here? According to pyroliticrelease experimenter Norman Horowitz and his colleagues. the fact that uptake of carbon by Chryse sample five was undiminished by heat treatment at 90°C, and the failure of sterilizing at 175°C to completely eliminate the reaction in sample two, argues strongly against a biological explanation. Differences in response between different unsterilized samples are probably due to differences in their composition. One significant factor may be their history of exposure at the surface: perhaps only surface material recently exposed to solar radiation can fix carbon from the atmosphere. Even so, as of early 1978 a convincing

chemical explanation for the reactions had not emerged, although attempts were being made to simulate the pyrolitic ... release results with synthetic Martian soils.

In discussing the possibility of life on Mars, we must take into account the results from a fourth Viking ex .. periment which, while not strictly concerned with biology, is an important adjunct to the three biology experiments. This is the gas chromatograph mass spectrometer (GallS)

which analysed the soil for the presence of organic compounds - that is, compounds containing carbon, the basic constituent of life as we know it. The search for organic molecules is important because it provides information on the composition of Martian organisms, their food, and the products of their decay.

A total of four soil samples was studied by this instrument, two at each site. Each sample was heated to drive off gases, which were anal ysed according to their weight.

On heating to 200°C, carbon dioxide was .given off; with further heating to 500o,C, oxygen was given off as well. No organic compounds from the soil were detected at either site.

75


This failure to detect organic material. on Mars has caused considerable surprise. Tests with an identical GCMS on Earth showed that it is sensitive enough to detect organic material in soils from the Antarctic. and even the traces of organic compounds present in meteorites. Since meteorites regularly land on Mars, many scientists had expected that traces of organic molecules from these would have shown up in the GC1vIS results. The answer seems to be that the organic matter from meteorites is so thoroughly mixed up in the Martian soil that it becomes too diluted to be detected by the GCMS.

Organic compounds would also be expected to be synthesized on Mars from the carbon of its atmosphere by the action of ultraviolet light. But ultraviolet light can break up molecules as well as produce them, particularly in the presence of oxides like those on the Martian surface. The results from the GCMS show that, if organic com ... pounds are produced at all on the surface of Mars, they must be broken up just as quickly as they are formed,

Although the ·GCMS is . sensitive, a small population of Martian micro-organisms could still exist in the soil ant ~ go undetected - for instance, the amount of carbon fixed by the pyrolitic .. release experiment. enough to support a few hundred bacteria, would be below the level of sensitivity of the GCMS. But pre-flight tests with samples of biologically poor Antarctic soil have shown that there is 10,000 times as much organic matter in the

form of debris in the soil than there is in the bodies of organisms that live in the soil. This debris provides food for the organisms and consists of the remains of dead bodies. But the negative results from the GClvfS show that no such level of organic debris exists in the soil of Mars. Therefore. GCMS experimenter Klaus Biemann and his team conclude that organisms based on terrestrial biochemistry are unlikely to exist on Mars unless they are very much more efficient at scavenging organic debris than organisms on Earth.

The GCMS results help underline the message of the Viking biology experiments: Mars is not teeming with

76

~.


life. In ail, a total of 26 experimental tests were carried out on Mars by the two Viking landers, twice as many as anticipated, in an attempt to clarify the problem of whether or not there is life on Mars. The red planet turns out to be frustrating for biologists - it is so nearly favourable for life, but not quite. ~I am reminded of an old cartoon depicting the return to Earth of the first astronaut to visit Mars. He is besieged by reporters clamouring to know: 'Is there any life on Mars l' He replies: 'There's a little on Saturday night, but it's pretty dull for the rest of the week.' · · e, Viking is telling us that, from the point of view of life. Mars is pretty dull right now.

Although it is fair to say that Viking did not discover life an Mars. the possibility of Martian biology cannot yet be completely ruled out. For one thing, the Viking biology · ts were limited in scope; a small population of lifeforms might exist that did not respond to the Viking biology " · ents, As Viking chief biologist Harold Klein has put it, looking for life on Mars is like fishing in an unknown lake with several different

types of bait; perhaps Viking used the wrong bait. Alternatively, a much larger population of organisms might exist at more favoured locations, such as around the polar caps. Whatever the case, it is certainly true that Mars does not contain an abundant t ,;'al ... type biota at the Viking landing sites in Chryse and Utopia.

What of the future? A number of plans have been sugfor future exploration of Mars, although nothing has been decided as of this writing. The simplest plan, a straight repeat of Viking with new biology experiments. does not find much favour. A better idea might be a Mars rover. similar to Viking but on caterpillar tracks so that

it can be steered around on Mars in search of the most in · g sites to examine. Another suggestion is the Mars surface penetrator, a long and pointed Instrumented package that parachutes to the surface of Mars at high speed, burying itself several metres into the ground to analyse the subsurface composition and to sense Marsquakes. Such a surface penetrator would probably be

77


•

dropped from a Mars orbiter. ·

Most exciting of all, though, is a Mars sample return

mission - actually bringing back. soil from Mars by an automatic vehicle like the Soviet lunar landers which have automatically returned samples of Moon soil. Perhaps only in this way can we finally answer the question about life on Mars. A modified Viking could be sent to the sur .. face of Mars, scoop up a sample of surface material, and feed it into a return capsule which blasts off for the

journey back to Earth. Such a mission was strongly favoured by a US National Academy of Sciences report on POSt-Viking biological investigation of Mars published in 1977. Although technically possible, a Mars sample return is unlikely to take place until 1990 at the earliest.

And even if there is no life on Mars today, we will eventually put life on the planet. Men will one day stand on Mars, although that is going to be such a difficult and expensive und · g that no one can tell when it is likely to happen -_ certainly not before the turn of the century. A summer study at NASA's Ames Research Center in 1975 considered the possibility of making Mars fit for human habitation - that is, engineering the planet so that it had free oxygen, water, and a bearable climate.

Such an adventurous piece of planetary engineering could be accomplished by · I the planet with ultra .. violet- · nt bugs which would break down the carbon dioxide atmosphere to produce free oxygen. But it would take 100,000 years to make Mars habitable in this way. An alternative is to warm Mars up by increasing its absorption of sunlight. This can be done by decreasing the reflectance of its polar caps, either by planting vegetation on them or by sprinkling dark dust over them. The extra heat 'absorbed as a result of this treatment would vaporize the polar caps, increasing the density of the atmosphere, melting the ' frost under the surface of Mars, and producing a habitable environment. Even so, this new climate might still not become stable for 10,000 to 100,000 years. We might reduce this timescale by bioengineering a super-microbe capable of a vastly improved rate of photo-

78


synthesis, and we could artificially pump more heat into the polar caps to increase their rate of evaporation.

But that is far into the future. In the meantime, let us turn towards some more readily attainable goals.

REFERENCES

Biemann, K., et al •• Science, vol. 194, p. 72, 1976.

Biemann, K., et al., Journal of Geophysical Research, vol,

82 .. p. 4641, 1977.

Horowitz, N. 'H., et al •• Science, vol. 194, p. I32!, 1976• Horowitz, N. H., et al., Journal of Geophysical Research.

vol. 82, p. 4659, 1977. .

Horowitz, N. ·H .• Scientific American, November 1977 •

."".

P·52•

Klein .. H. P., et al., Science .. vol. 194, p. 99, 1976.

Klein, H. ·P., Journal of Geophysical Research. vol. 82,

P·4677,I977· ~

Levin,G. V., and P. A. Straat, Science. vol. 194, p. 1322,

1976.

Levin, G. V •• and P. A. Straat, Journal of Geophysical

Research, vol. 82, p. 4663, 1977.

Oyama, V.I., et al., Nature, vol. 265, p. I 10.. 1977.

~. a, V. I., and B. J. Berdahl, Journal of Geopb ysicol Research, vol. 82,p.4669, 1917.

Ponnamperuma, C... et al; Science. vol. 197.. p. 455.

1977·

79

LIVING OUT THERE

...

Colonies in space have been a dream of mankind since the time of the Soviet space prophet Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, who in an 1895 science fiction story, 'Dreams of Earth and Heaven', visualized what we would now term a space station orbiting the Earth. Tsiolkovsky went further in his 1903 book The Rocket into Cosmic Space, introducing the idea of spinning the station to provide artificial gravity, and using sunlight for power. He and his readers felt the lure of living in space, and recognized the promise of new freedom that it afforded. Now, we are ready to take those first few steps that may lead to mankind's eventual colonization of the Galaxy.

Since Tsiolkovsky's work was little known outside Russia, impetus for space-station studies in Europe came from the German spaceflight pioneer Hermann Oberth who in his SInal} but influential book The Rocket into interplanetary Space published in 1923 envisaged the use of manned stations for observing the Earth and heavens, as well as bases for constructing and refuelling a spacecraft in orbit. Hermann Noordung (the pen-name of an Austrian army captain named Potocnik) in 1929 proJX>Sed a wheel-

shaped station spinning to provide gravity, an idea which sounds very familiar today. Noordung's wheel was 100 ft in diameter and carried large mirrors to focus sunlight to provide power. In _ 1951, Wernher von Braun designed a larger wheel-shaped station built in orbit from prefabricated sections. 'This concept was widely publicized, and

from then on the whole idea was up for graps. ,

For instance, 'Dandridge Cole in 1963 envisaged hollowing out an asteroid to create living space. Arthur C. Clarke in A Fall of Mootuiust, 1961, pointed out the advantages o~ the gravitationally stable Lagrangian points in the Moon's orbit as locations for space stations. The idea

80

LIVING OUT THERE

of building giant cylinders in space, I Ian long and 300 m in diameter. to provide living space for up to 20,000 people, was broached in a daring 1956 proposal by Darrell Romick.

These speculations lay around like prefabricated components awaiting assembly into a coherent whole when in 1969 Princeton physicist Gerard K. O'Neill realized that not only was space colonization technically feasible within our lifetimes, but that it had strong merits which made it highly worthwhile. Since then, colonies in spacehave beckoned as the next major goal once the Space Shuttle transportation system is in operation. Beyond

that, space colonization (or, as O'Neill terms it, the 'humanization' of space) has major implications for inter-

stellar travel and communications - both by us and by any other civilizations that may exist. In looking at space colonies we may be seeing the genesis of manned starships and of space communication bases.

O'Neill's interest in space colonization began by chance at a seminar for a first-year Princeton physics class. O'Neill is a high-energy physicist, noted for his invention of the storage ring technique for increasing the collision energies of atomic beams from particle accelerators. His imagination had already been caught by the opportunities of space- in 1966 he applied as a scientist-astronaut for the continuing programme of space science that NASA was then planning. But that programme was cut back in

1967 just before the final intake of new astronauts was selected, and O'Neill remained at Princeton. There are no regrets, as he expla ined to me in an interview for New Scientist: 'I don't think. that any of the things I could have done 'as a scientist-astronaut would have made nearly as much of a contribution as I can hope to make

with the humanization of space:

His attempt to make physics relevant on a wider scale in the face of the apparent disillusionment with science in the late 19605 led to that 1969 physics seminar at which he set his class the question: Is a planetary surface the

right place for an expanding technological civilization 1

81


The answer, it soon emerged, was No. The surface areas of the Moon and "Mars. for instance, would no more than double the available land area of Earth, and of course their environments would need to be radically engineered to be suitable for life. These limitations do not apply to an enclosed colony In free space.

There are three basic shapes for a colony rotating to provide gravity: a wheel, a sphere, or a cylinder. O'Neill's group felt that a wheel was more appropriate for a space station than the mini-worlds of which they were thinking. This left the cylinder as the best choice. for it has the maximum inner surface at full artificial

gravity - in the sphere, gravity falls off as the sphere curves in towards its rotation axis. Rough calculations of mechanical strengths soon showed that cylindrical colonies could be built with diameters of several kilometres, offering enough land area to support millions of people. The colonies would be constructed of materials mined from the Moon. They would be heated and illuminated by

sunlight reflected in through large windows by mirrors on the outside. Eventually, using the asteroids for new building material, it would be possible to construct enough colonies to provide for 20,000 times the Earth's current

population.

Fascinated by now. O'Neill·continued the study in his spare time. He quickly saw the possibilities of providing pleasant living conditions without the problems of pollution, overcrowding, food shortages, and energy crisis that

mar our technological age on Earth. Immediately, the stifling Limits. to Crowth philosophy, which predicted gloom and doom for our technological future, was seen to be undermined by the opportunities of space .: the very

enterprise which many Limits to Growth supporters criticized as the most wasteful and irrelevant of all.

These utopian possibilities quickly attracted a follow .. ing on the college circuit as O'Neill lectured about his ideas. With some supporters, he held a modest conference at Princeton on space colonization in May 1974. In Septem .. ber 1974, the magazine Physics Today published an article

82

LIVING OUT THERE

.

by O'Neill outlining his propos~s which. other magazine; had dismissed as little short of science fiction. The response from scientists and public alike was immediate and

positive.

It became apparent from that first Princeton conference

that there were no insupera.ble technological obstacles to building the colonies, if we so wished, by the tum of the centuryr all that was needed was a commitment. But why should we build space communities? What would be the economic return that would make investment in them worthwhile?

At the end of 1974, with the feasibility of the space-colony concept secure, O'Neill began to consider the possibility of using his colonies as construction bases for the satellite solar power stations proposed several years earlier by Dr Peter Glaser of the Arthur D. Little company

of Cambridge. Massachusetts. Each solar power satellite would produce 10,000 megawatts, enough to power a city. In geostationary orbit around the Earth. these satel .. lites would collect sunlight via solar panels, tum it into microwaves (short-wavelength radio waves) and beam it back to receivers on Earth where it would be converted into electricity. In an e · ent to test this technique, a bank of 17 lamps was lit by a microwave beam of 30 kilowatts power transmitted across one mile from the 25 m NASA tracking dish at Goldstone, California.

An alternative to collecting sunlight with solar cells is the approach of Gordon Woodcock and Daniel Gregory c i the Boeing Aerospace Co., who have considered using sunlight as a heat source to drive gas turbines, which generate the power that is beamed back to Earth in the form of microwaves. A turbine-powered satellite may be more readily constructed than the version using solar cells envisaged by Peter 'Glaser, because the silicon crystals of solar cells are both expensive and intricate to makethat's why they have not already displaced traditional

power sources on Earth. Cheaper and simpler solar cells

are on the way, but they may never be competitive with turbine-generated electricity, either on Earth or in space.

83


, The advantage of placing solar power collectors in,' orbit -is that sunlight in space is at least four times as plentiful as at the sunniest place; on Earth. In space, the Sun never sets, and there are no interruptions due to bad weather. Sunlight seems the ideal energy source, because it is clean, endless, and free - apart, that

ic, from the cost of harnessing it. Solar power satellites have the drawback. that they are large and heavy, which would make them expensive to launch from Earth. But with an O'Neill colony there are no launch costs, because fthe space colonists build the power stations in space using the same techniques as they used to build the colonies themselves. They then sell the electricity to Earth.

The whole economics of satellite solar power stations is therefore transformed, as O'Neill reported in the magazine Science in December 1975. He noted the enormous poten ... tial market for electricity in the US, where it is estimated that around 100,000 megawatts a year of new generating capacity will be needed by the year 2000. Building power stations on Earth to meet such demand will require in .. vestment of several hundred thousand million dollars,

and the environmental th.re.at from such a profusion of new power plant, coal-fired or nuclear, is itself alarming, Solar power from orbit not only has environmental advantages, in the long run it will be cheaper than building power stations on Earth.

A rough estimate of the total outlay to produce the first space colony which will start building power satellites is 100#000 million dollars. That first colony will be under construction for six years or so, and the first 10,000 megawatt power satellite will come into operation one to two years later. More colonies will then be built, which will produce their own power satellites, so that the enterprise becomes self-perpetuating without further help from Earth.

· years after the start of the project. the power

satellites could be supplying sufficient energy to meet the US annual need for new generating capacity.

To ensure market penetration, the electricity must be competitively priced, O"Neill assumes a starting price of

84

LIVING OUT THERE

1.5 cents per kilowatt hour, equivalent to the lowest-cost electricity currently available in the US, which comes from nuclear reactors. This price would be progressively dropped so that solar power satellite electricity was by far the cheapest available. Even at these low rates, after 24 years the whole project will have paid itself back, and be returning handsome profits.

Solar power from space thus appears to be an attainable and desirable solution to our energy crisis. If the economic and technical arguments stand up to scrutiny, then the colonies will certainly be built. Once the colonies are in 'existence, of course, their other advantages such as sites for materials processing and space industrialization, as a jumping-off place for the rest of the solar system, as

an astronomy platform, and simply as a desirable place to live, would come as an added bonus. NASA has been sufficiently impressed to fund Of Neill's research since

1975· - ~

O'Neill originally envisaged his first colonies as small

cylinders, I km long and 200 m wide, spinning three times a minute to provide Earth-normal gravity. For stability. the cylinders would be linked in pairs, rotating in opposite directions: they must be kept with their long axes oriented towards the Sun. As many as 10,000 people couId be housed in the first colony. Once this is set up, its occupants provide the workforce for building new and larger models, pairs of cylinders up to 32 km long and

6.4 km in diameter, with space for millions of people. O'Neill foresaw that the colonies would be established at the gravitationally stable Lagrangian points of the Moon's orbit. As seen from Earth, these lie 60° ahead of land behind the Moon, and are known as L4 and L5 respectively. These are the points at which the gravita-

tional effects of the Earth and Moon exactly cancel, as calculated in 1772 by the French mathematician Joseph Louis Lagrange. Highly complex calculations performed by computer in 1968 showed that the additional gravitational effects of the Sun destroyed the stability of these theoretical points, but replaced them with something

8S


at least as good: stable kidney-sbaped orbits centred on 4 and L5, along which a colony would take 89 days to travel. There is room on each orbit for thousands of colonies, so the situation is actually better than if we

were stuck with 4 and L5 alone. *

Apart from their stability, the areas at L4 and L5 have the advantage that they are seldom eclipsed by the Earth, and they are easily reached from the Moon's surface, which is where the construction material will be mined. The vital knowledge, without which the colonization concept could not have got underway, was the chemical composition of the Moon, as revealed by the samples brought back from the Apollo missions. It turned out that the Moon is surprisingly rich in aluminium, titanium, and iron; it is from these metals that the colonies will be built. There is also plentiful silicon, which will be used for the glass of the colonies' windows, and abundant oxygen, which will serve both to make an atmosphere and also as a rocket fuel. Lacking in Moon rock is carbon, nitrogen. and hydrogen, which will initially need to be brought from Earth, but will eventually be obtained from asteroids.

A mining team of perhaps 150 men will be located on the Moon with bulldozers and scoops, probably on the south-eastem Mare Tranquillitatis, where they will scrape up and shoot into space a million tons of lunar topsoil a year. Even a generation of digging will not produce a crater large enough to be seen from Earth. It is not a rocket that propels the lunar material into space. but a device called the mass driver, which uses the technology developed for magnetically levitated trains. Parcels of lunar soil are fitted into so-called buckets, which are then accelerated along a guideway by magnetic fields at 100 g to the escape velocity of the Moon, 2.4 km/sec, The bucket shoots out from the end of the track and is in free flight, where its trajectory is checked by laser beams

* There are three other Lagrangian points, one behind the Moon as seen from Earth, one between Moon and Earth, and one on the opposite side of Earth from the Moon.

86

LTVING OUT THERE

and is corrected if necessary by magnetic impulses. Then the bucket enters another section of track where it is rapidly decelerated, allowing the payload to shoot out into space; As the payload curves away from the Moon the bucket is ferried back to the starting point many kilometres away for reloading. A model mass driver with an acceleration of 35 gravities was demonstrated at the third Princeton conference on space manufacturing in

May 1977; models with greater performance have since been developed.

Two payloads will be launched each second. After two days' flight through space they will reach L2, the Lagrangian point 64,000 km beyond the Moon as seen from Earth. Here the parcels of Moonstuff will be caught by a rotating bag made of Kevlar fabric, the synthetic material used for bullet-proof vests. When full, the catcher moves off to the colony site where the ore processing plant is wait .. ing to reduce the precious lunar material into metal and

glass for construction. ·

In addition to O'Neill's yearly Princeton conferences.

NASA has held a number of summer studies at the Ames Research Center, California, to examine the space colonization concept. At the second of these, in 1976, it was realized that the 4 and LS Lagrangian points might not

after all be the best locations for the first colonies. A high

Earth orbit, two-thirds of the way from the Earth to the Moon, now seems as good. a location as any; it is easier than 4 and L5 to reach both from L2 and the Earth, and it would also be easier to deliver power satellites from there to geostationary orbit. This discovery was somewhat embarrassing, for the L5location in particular bad become closely associated with O'Neill's vision - a grassroots organization formed to support O'Neill's space colonization aims has styled itself the L5 Society. But the large, primarily residential colonies foreseen by O'Neill may yet be

stationed at L4 and LS. . __

The first NASA summer study, in 1975, had also led to a revision of ideas about the shape of that first colony. Whereas O'Neill had been thinking in terms of small

87


cylinders that would need to rotate three times a minute to provide Earth-normal gravity, a medical student named I any Winkler maintained that such a speed of rotation would produce motion sickness in the occupants; a rotation rate of one revolution per minute was the maximum he considered allowable. A cylinder shape was still acceptable for the largest colonies, capable of housing millions of people, because they would need to rotate at only

I r.p.m, or less to simulate Earth gravity. But in the case of the small first colonies, the occupants would either have to be specially selected to withstand motion sickness, or they would have to put up with a slower spin that gave them less than Earth gravity. Or the colony would need to be redesigned.

The greater the diameter of a colony, the slower it need spin to simulate Earth gravity, so the 1975 summer study participants looked again at wheel-shaped designs and came up with a concept that was dubbed the Stanford torus. Tbis was a ring like a bicycle tyre, 1.8 k.m in diameter; the tyre tube itself, inside which the 10,000 colonists live .. is 130 metres across. The torus rotates once a minute to provide Earth-normal gravity on the inside surface of the tyre rim. Docking ports for arriving spacecraft are situated at the station's hub, from where passengers transfer to the outer ring along spoke-like corridors. At the hub, gravity is virtually non-existent because the rotational forces are so low. Here would be the

station's main recreational area, in which the inhabitants could experience the delights of low-gravity living, including human-powered flight. Attached to the hub by transfer tubes are the manufacturing areas of the colony, where space freighters will unload their cargoes of lunar materials to be processed into the metal tubes, girders, and panels for building the power satellites that govern the colony's economy.

Unlike an O'Neill cylinder, whose rotation axis is aligned towards the Sun, the axis of the Stanford torus points at right angles to the Sun. Above the colony, opposite the manufacturing areas, hovers a giant mirror

88

LIVING OUT THERE

a kilometre or so across, angled at 45° to reflect sunlight down on to the colony. A second set of minors around the hub reflects the light into the torus; tilting these mirrors up and down produces the effect of day and night. To the inhabitants of the colony, who would have their feet on the outer rim of the torus, sunlight would appear

to come from overhead.

O'Neill, though, preferred to forge a comprorrrlse be-

tween the lower recommended rotation rate and his favoured colony shape. He rejected the Stanford torus design; for the ro.ooo-inhabitant Island One, as it became called, he suggested instead a 460 m diameter sphere, rotating twice a minute to give Earth-normal gravity at its equator. 'lnis is the design that has been widely illustrated and is sometimes referred to as a Bernal sphere, 'after the Irish scientist 1. D. Bernal who foresaw the construction of 'space arks' for space colonization. Gravity on the inner surface of a spinning sphere falls off towards the axis of rotation, so most of tlie human habitation will be in the equatorial region. Soil from the Moon will coat the inner surface of the colony. Around the equator. a river may meander.

If Island One is made of an aluminium shell, the thick-

ness of the sphere will vary from a maximum of about 18 em at the equator to 5 em near the rotational axis. Since the gravita tiona! stresses are least near the axis, that will be the best place for the windows. There will be a ring of windows around the axis at each end of the sphere, but they will not look out directly into space; instead, they will be surrounded by a circular mirror which deflects sunlight inside.

Agriculture is carried on in areas at the ends of the sphere. surrounding the docking ports on the axis of rotation. while the industrial regions are entirely separate, reached by commuter ships. All power for the colony is supplied by an on-board solar power station,

Whatever the shape of Island One, or wherever it Is eventually located" one thing is clear: construction will not begin until considerable experience has been gained in


~

living and working in space via the Space Shuttle. the

re-usable space transportation system due to come into full-time operation in I980. According to current NASA plans, the Shuttle will probably be used in the mid-rosos to establish a full-scale space station, far more impressive than the makeshift Skylab of 1973-4. Although it is too early to be sure exactly what such an interim station would look like, it will. probably be made from individual units that plug together, and could house up to 200 people. The 'experience in space industrialization gained

through such a station would be an essential stepping stone to O'Neill's space colonies, which could begin to dot the sky like faint new stars between the years 1990 and 2000.

Even 200 men, though, will not be enough to build the first space colonies. Before Island One can begin to take

shape, we would need to set up an industrial facility, colloquially termed the construction shack, containing a workforce of perhaps 2000 .. who would process the lunar ores fired into space. For the workers in the construction shack and the lunar colony, life will be rather like that on an offshore oil rig: hard and monotonous, and perhaps hazardous. Room will be at a premium, for these initial structures will need to be delivered into space from Earth. One pro design foresees the shack as a sphere 100 m in diameter. It would need to contain rolling mills

and casting beds to produce the metal sheets and cables required for the construction of Island One and the first satellite power station. Its total weight might be 10,000 tons; a similar weight of material might need to be delivered to the lunar surface to set up the first mining base. In addition to these materials, there will also be many thousands of colonists requiring transport into

space.

Even the modern Space Shuttle is too small and too expensive to cope without adding considerably to the space colonization budget. What is needed is a still larger and more economical launcher, ten ned the Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle (HLLV). Various studies based on an ex-

90

LIVING OUT THERE

.

tension of the current Shuttle system or even a re-usable version of the Saturn V first stage show that although

such launchers may take several billion dollars to develop they will still be worth it: launch costs make up the major part (perhaps 60 per cent) of the 100 billion dollars estimated for the total colonization scheme. which is

about three times the cost of project Apollo at current prices. Without the new vehicles, the colonization cost will be almost doubled. Nevertheless, the need to develop them so soon after the introduction of the Shuttle may be a political stumbling block to space colonization. So would the frequency of launches: one a day for several years, which is considerable for a spaceport although trivial in comparison with aircraft movements.

'One of the dangers to the workers in the construction shack will be radiation damage. The walls of the shack can be shielded to exclude most cosmic rays, but every so often flares erupt on the surfac€ of the Sun, spewing out beams of radiation strong enough to kill a man. The construction shack workers will then have to retreat to lead .. lined flare shelters for a day or so until the danger is past. But what about the colonies themselves? Many people assume that long-term exposure to radiation and

the chances of meteorite impact will make living in space unacceptably hazardous.

It turns out that radiation can easily be screened out, by surrounding the colonies with soil two metres thick. For the Stanford torus, 10 million tons of shielding will be required; the Bernal sphere has a much smaller surface area and would require only one third as much shielding mass, which is another reason for favouring it. These figures compare with a mass of half a million tons for the colony structure itself. In either case, the shielding will be nothing more glamorous than the slag left over from industrial processing of the lunar soil, and so will not require to be sent up specially from the Moon. Only the window openings present a problem; they must ~ shielded from a direct view of space by the angled mirrors that reflect light into them. In the case of the largest

91


colonies, the giant cylinders of O'Neill's grandest vision, the thickness of the cy linder structure and the depth of atmosphere will be sufficient in themselves to absorb cosmic ray particles without further shielding. Thus. space

colonists in all sizes of habitat can live as safe from

radiation as people on Earth. ·

Meteoroid damage will be more of 'a problem, but it will

not be the catastrophe one might instinctively guess.

Most meteoroids are so small that they would have little more than a gentle sandblasting effect on the outer skin of the colony. while many of the larger ones are so fragile that they would break up on impact like clods of soil- most of the meteorites that encounter the Earth never survive the passage through the atmosphere. The thick cosmic-ray shielding of the early colonies will also

serve to absorb meteorite impacts. In the largest colonies, which will have plentiful window areas, glass panels will probably be broken every few years by meteorites of

around 100 grams weight. Since the panes of glass will be similar in size to those in domestic windows, leakage will be slight: loss of one window panel in a large colony will

lead to complete decompression over many years; which gives repair teams plenty of time to patch the leak. Meteorites weighing a ton or more, capable of punching a large hole in the shell, will be encountered every few million years, so that space colonization will be less hazardous than most other forms of human activity ..

Ev · g about a space colony will be exotic, in ..

eluding its interior. O'Neill imagines that Island One might be given a tropical climate like that of Hawaiicolonies can control their temperature by regulating the amount of sunlight they allow inside. Tests on Moonsoil have shown that plants grow very well in it, with the addition of water and nitrates, so there would be plentiful vegetation in the colonies - trees, bushes, and attractive flowers. Gardeners will not be troubled by weeds or pests because these will be left behind. Strict regulations

will prevent the import of undesirable parasites and

LIVING OUT THERE

Despite the projected population for Island One, the inside area of the sphere is so great that there will be ample room for everyone. Building materials will be bricks cast from slag, metal extracted from lunar soil and glass made from the silicon which is abundant in the lunar crust. Therefore apartments and houses in the colonies will consist of much the same materials as in modem. buildings on

Earth.

Occupants looking out from their apartment or garden

in Island One will see the sphere curving away on all sides. Trees, buildings, and people would jut out at the horizontal up the sides of the sphere and appear to hang upside down on the opposite side of the sphere, 460 metres overhead. As you walked uphill to the rotation axis, you would feel lighter as the effect of artificial gravity diminished. At the axis itself you would be weightless; here would be the low-gravity swimming pool, and from here the high-fliers of the colony would launch themselves into the air to attain man's dream of humanpowered flight.

Atmosphere, water, and food are the prime requirements of any colony. Many people assume that the colonies must be regularly supplied with consumables from Earth, but this is not so. Each colony will be a mini-Earth, with its own closed ecological system. Wastes must be recycled while plants will remove carbon dioxide and re-

plenish oxygen; other air-freshening will use the same techniques as in submarines. Water will at first be made by combining hydrogen brought from Earth with oxygen released from the Moon's crust, but eventually other sources of hydrogen will be found - notably the asteroids. Since most of the Earth's atmosphere is nitrogen which is not important for our breathing, atmospheric pressure in the colonies can be reduced without danger. Apollo astr0- nauts, for instance, breathed pure oxygen at a pressure onethird that at sea level. In the colonies, some nitrogen will be mixed with the oxygen to bring up atmospheric pressure to half that at sea level on Earth.

Agriculture in the colonies will actually be easier than

93


on Earth. Farm areas will be kept separate. from the,' living areas, so that their conditions can be tailored to the crops being grown. Since the climate can be controlled, ~ the growing season would be continuous. One estimate is that a colony of 10,000 people can be supplied. amply by 100 acres of agricultural area. There will be cereals, fruit, and vegetables. Goats will provide milk, and for j meat the most efficient source would be rabbits and 1 chickens. Fish should also be easy to rear in space. Steak ' will literally be rare at first in the colonies, because cattle are both heavy and inefficient at using feedstuffs. Eventu .. ally, though, popular pressure will lead to the introduction of a wider selection of farm animals.

Good though the living will be in Island One, and its

sister worlds in space, it will still fall short of the ultimate possibilities of the largest colonies. Once the return from' the power satellites has put space colonization on an economic footing early next century, attention will be turned towards building the second-generation colonies. Various nations may wish to design and place orders for their own versions. Plausible designs would be a larger

Bernal sphere, 1800 m in diameter, or a cylinder 3.2 km

long and 640 m diameter, both capable of housing over 100,000 people. By the middle of next century the time may be right for Island Three, _the very largest colonies of all, housing millions of :people in cylinders 32 km long and 6.4 km in diameter spinning every two minutes (the largest cylinders that could be built within the physical strength of materials are 120 k.m long and 24 km in diameter, but it is unlikely that the engineers would want to go so far).

With colonies the size of Island Three it would be possible to provide new living area at a rare faster than the growth of population on Earth.

Down the length of each cylinder would run three strips of land, alternating with three strips of window. ite each land strip would be a window, through which sunlight would be reflected by a longitudinal mir ... ror outside the colony. Tilting and turning these mirrors will give reassuringly familiar impressions of sunrise

•

LIVING OUT THERE

and sunset during each. day. Even more Earthlike, in cylinders of such size the sky appears bl ue, and clouds

form at around 1000 m altitude. There will be rainstorms

and a small but definite variety of weather from day to

day.

Whereas the first colonies would serve primarily as bases

for power satellite construction workers and for scientists, the larger colonies are seen as permanent habitats for humans. Whole families will move permanently to the colonies in search of new opportunities, like the flood of immigrants to America in the last century. Not only will the colonies offer high living standards in an attractive, pollution-free environment; they will also offer freedam.

Residential colonies will demand a much greater variety of foodstuffs than would be available in Island One. O'Neill suggests that there should be a ring of smaller agricultural cylinders which can be adapted to provide abundant food of all kinds. Unless diseases unexpectedly invade agricultural cylinders (in which case the cylinder will be closed and sterilized) there will be no chance of crop failure, so that food will be more abundant than

on Earth.

Of course, we must expect problems. Will the moisture in the atmosphere condense on the colony windows 1 What unexpected ecological effects will arise in the artificial biosphere? Will there be corrosion and fatigue like in bridges and aircraft? What will be the political relationship between the colonies and Earth as they become increasingly independent? What, above all. will be people's response to living in an enclosed environment? Space living may suit only a small proportion of humanity.

As the number of larger colonies grows, the smaller ones may be refurbished for special uses. For instance, they might be occupied by scientists carrying out danger .. ous experiments such as in genetics that require total isolation; or social groups may take colonies over for ex ..

perimenrs in community living. Zero-gravity laboratories at the axes of the colonies could· make astounding develop-

95


ments in physics, medicine, or metallurgy, .generating further valued income for the colonies. Space colonies are likely to become the scientific mecca of the next century. Astronomers will be fighting to set up large telescopes in the colonies to observe the Universe free of the- blurring effects of the Earth's atmosphere. One colony, equipped with giant radio telescopes, may become the headquarters of the search for messages from the stars. Another might be adapted as an interstellar spacecraft.

We need not despoil the Moon to build these additional colonies. We can instead use the raw materials contained in asteroids, many of which are believed to offer the. hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon that is missing on the Moon. Although it would require considerable energy

to bring back an asteroid from the main belt between Mars and Jupiter, a select group of asteroids have orbits

that bring them close to Earth. There may be 100,000 asteroids larger than 100 m diameter that pass suitably close to Earth. Astronomer Brian O'leary of Princeton has calculated that an Earth-approaching asteroid 200 m across weighing 10 million tons, containing enough material to build 10 satellite solar power stations, could be retrieved

a: a cost no more than half, and perhaps as little as one-tenth, that of bringing the same mass up from the Moon. Many asteroids - the carbonaceous chondrites - are rich in complex hydrocarbons, which the space industrialists can use to make plastics. Eventually, the major manufacturing industries of Earth will be forced to move out into space where raw materials are so much more plentiful.

I t will not be many decades before colonies are set up elsewhere in the solar system .. With a suitably modified mirror system, O'Neill colonies could function on incident sunlight out to the orbit of Pluto. Beyond about three light days from the Sun, the light becomes ·too weak to use

without impracticably large mirrors. But with a nuclear power system on board, the colonies could travel through space as self-sufficient interstellar arks.

This is the real, long-term significance of the space

13

LIVING OUT THERE

colonization programme. Not many years after the first colonies have been set up they will be totally independent of Earth. Even if some disaster should totally eradicate life on Earth, they would be able to carry on. The colonies thus act as a lifeboat for humanity, effectively making mankind as a species immortal. And once mankind has made this first breakout into space, interstellar traveleven colonization of the Galaxy - follows naturally.

The question is: since that first breakout into space can occur so readily, with even our relatively primitive level of technology, has it happened elsewhere? And if so, where are they?

REFERENCES

Heppenheirner, T. A., Colonies in Space, Stackpole Books, 1977·

He ppenh ei mer .. T. A., and M. Hopkins, Astronautics and

Aeronautics, March 1976, p. 58.

O'Leary, B., Science, voL 197, p. 363, I977. O'Neill, G. K .. , Science. vol. 190, p. 943, 1975.

O'Neill, G. K., Astronautics and Aeronautics, October 1976, p. 20.

O'Neill, G. K., The High Frontier, (Morrow .. New York, 1977; Jonathan Cape, London, 1977).

O'Neill, G. K., Astronautics and Aeronautics, March 1978.

Ridpath, Ian, New Scientist, vol. 74, p. 718, 1977.

Ridpath, Ian, New Scientist, vol. 78, p. 520, 1978. Salkeld, R., Astronautics and Aeronautics, September 1975,

P·3°·

M.F.S.

97

D

6

OUR FIRST SHIP TO THE STARS

Less than twenty years after the orbiting of the first Sputnik, four probes to the outer planets had been launched - Pioneers IO and I I, and Voyagers I and 2- that will eventually leave the solar system and drift dead and dark among the stars millions of years hence. They each carry messages for any civilization that may intercept them - see Chapter 8. Therefore we already have the ability to reach the stars, albeit slowly. When the Pioneer and Voyager probes leave the solar system they will be travelling at 17 km/sec, faster than any object before them. But even at that speed they would still take the best part of, 80,000 years to reach Alpha Centauri.

The O'Neill colonies described in the previous chapter

could act as habitats for long-duration manned interstellar missions, like the space arks of science fiction. But they, too, would provide a very slow boat to the stars. Can we hope to reach the stars inside a human lifetime 1 And, if so, when might it be possible?

These questions have been addressed by a rz-man, and one-woman, team of engineers, physicists, and astronomers from the British Interplanetary Society in a design study called Project 'Daedalus. Their aim was to design an unmanned craft, based on. the technology likely to be available by the tum of the century, that could fly to Barnard's star within about fifty years. Barnard's star was chosen as a target because of its high probability of having

planets, although there is nothing to stop the probe being sent instead to other nearby stars. In fact, there could be a whole fleet of Daedalus craft built to examine the Sun's stellar neighbourhood. The four-year Project Daedalus design study, which terminated after more than 10,000 man ... hours of work in April 1977, proved

that it would theoretically be possible to send unmanned

98

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