The Accelerating Search for Exo-Planets
In the first 8 years of the 21st century I have witnessed an almost feverish acceleration of astronomer attention on the discovery of "exoplanets" - planets around stars other than our own Sun. Already some solar systems very similar to our own have been discovered and some tentative measurements of the atmospheric content of these planets is underway. In April 2008, a new method was announced for finding planets that are both in the habitable zone and have water on the surface. I believe it is only a matter of months or years before an oxygen-rich "earth-like" planet is discovered. Prognosticator of prognosticators that I am, I'll even go so far as to suggest a date: before the end of 2012.
But who cares when it happens, if it does happen, what then? What next? Will there be any debate that the concentration of oxygen implies that life is present on this newly discovered world? Will it take the imaging of an exoplanet to "prove" that life exists elsewhere in the universe? Will it take more?
And finally, will anyone care? Not the geeks. Not the astronomers or the scientists or the science fiction writers, but the average person on the street. At the time of writing, each exoplanet discovery is treated to an orgy of poorly understood journalism. It seems the idea of "planets around other stars" is something the mainstream audience can understand just enough and goes well to fill that slot in the news between the sports and the weather. Will this fad wear off by the time the startling discovery of exoplanet life is made? Or worse yet, will such an amazing discovery get exactly the same amount of coverage as the average exoplanet discovery gets now?
Ultimately the whole thing could be a terrible disappointment. Imagine, for a moment, that not only do astronomers discover life on an exoplanet but they actually discover intelligent life on an exoplanet. Pretty little pictures of roads and factories, ships at sea, planes and rockets in flight. Some serious questions would need to be directed towards the SETI program.. as it seems highly unlikely that a modern society could exist without emanating some signals that SETI should have picked up. Maybe a thorough search of the archives will reveal that many possible signals from that part of the sky were ignored accidentally.
In any case, now that we know they're there, how do we go about contacting them? Should we? Who gets to decide? Is that a pointless question as there's just no way to stop someone from sending a signal if they want to? And then there's the long long wait for the signal to get there and maybe no-one is listening or maybe the signal is too corrupted or just not decipherable by an alien mind. Decades may pass with no message returned. The general public will lose interest, although some people disagree with me on this. Can you imagine?
QuantumG
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John Dom says:
Now read this too: http://www.technologyreview.com/printer_friendly_article.aspx?id=20569
Nate says:
Exoplanets without any feasible form of ever contacting them within human lifetime (given mainstream physical consensus saying loudly that FTL is flatly impossible) *is* boring, and the general public are right to be bored by it. If the results of a scientific investigation can never ever conceivably affect your society *even in theory* - and if it costs millions of dollars and ties up many smart people to do that investigation - you're probably not making the smartest investment pursuing it. It's fun entertainment for the rich and curious, but it's angels on pinheads kind of stuff.
Exoplanets plus FTL however, now that would be the equivalent of Columbus discovering the New World. But we're told it's impossible.
It doesn't help that people my generation (mid-30s) were sold a huge propaganda lie about how the Space Age would lead to orbiting Hiltons by 2001, plus interesting places for humans to explore. Didn't happen. Robot planetary probes took the astronauts' jobs, and spy sats and Minutemen missiles took the space warriors'. So there's no economic reason left to be interested in anything outside LEO, since we'll never get there.
The general public's not dumb, it's just very very efficient at short-term optimisation, and if 'contacting life on other planets' is something that even *scientists* currently think is a way long shot, you can't blame the rest of us for going 'yeah, we'll worry about that if it ever happens'.
QuantumG says:
Scientists thought the sound barrier would never be broken too. Some scientists said that traveling in a train over 30 miles/hour would cause people to burst into flames. I don't doubt that tomorrow someone could announce they have broken the light barrier and have the math to prove it.. and assuming that "there's no-one out there" or "they're too far away to matter" is just strategically stupid. If we spy a sophisticated space faring civilization that is 100 light years away, that means they are now 100 years ahead of what we've spied them doing. That puts them at least 70 years ahead of us.. so if there's even the slightest chance that the light barrier is breakable then we need to get our shit together if we're going to catch up.. or do we have to wait for a battle cruiser in solar orbit first?