A Long Hiatus

It has been a year, 4 months and 10 days since I last posted, which I'm pretty sure is a record for this blog. Decidedly, it has been a very long hiatus. It's not so much that I stopped writing - very hard to do that - and indeed, I did write quite a few posts that are more or less ready to go. But in all that time, I just couldn't bring myself to hit the post button. So much second guessing about how others might read and interpret what I had to write*. Not to mention a great deal of wondering about why I should bother. Overall it just seemed to be an easier thing to simply put this conversation on hold.

While I was away, I've been busy. There's been a fair bit of stress, some unexpected challenges and a great deal of soul searching. I'd love to tell you that's all done now. But I don't think I'm quite there yet. Still, I've been feeling that it's time once again to put digital pen to digital paper, just in case this record is of any use to any of you. It's certainly been therapeutic for me, once or twice over the years! Besides, this has never been a sanitized "best life" record of my career. Frankly, I have a hard time understanding how such things are useful to anyone, including their authors.

So, in the interest of moving forward, allow me to sum up what has been going on in the last 16 months. 

There have been some definite highs in there: As of last August, I'm now a tenured professor at York and I was inducted into the Royal Society of Canada (!!!) last November - something I wouldn't have dreamed possible when last I posted (though I do know that even things we dare not dream can come true). I'm also now the director of a $7 million research network - which is thrilling and terrifying in equal measure; though I've found more confidence and encouragement than I expected when I took on the role.

However, on the other side, there have definitely been some lows. The tenure process is not an easy one and I must admit that I'm still working through some of what happened and what was said in the process. I'm told by colleagues at other Universities that this is not uncommon. I also served on a jury in a major criminal trial, something which permanently changes you in ways you don't expect. Last but far from least, my ophthalmologist likes to say that the warranty on a human being expires around the age of 40. For me, that seems to have been more like 37. I've spent 8 of the last 16 months on medication and my doctors cannot seem to figure out the problem. I suppose it shouldn't be a surprise to someone who works on the edge of a physical science that there is a huge gulf of the unexplained in medical science. Only TV medical dramas seem to tie up all the ends neatly with a diagnosis and cure within the hour; for the rest of us reality intervenes.

So there you have it. Look to this space over the coming weeks for a number of long-delayed posts. I might even have something to say about my Sabbatical which I'm currently enjoying down in Canberra, Australia with my unbelievably gracious hosts here at the Australian National University. Not to mention some of the exciting ideas for upcoming work that have been brewing.

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*Ahh the tenure process, is there a better crucible in which to forge self-doubt?

Dr. Hojatollah Vali's CATP Seminar

 Astrobiology's favourite martian meteorite, Alan Hills 84001 is shown alongside a Magnetosome, a bacteria that fixes iron within its body to form magnetite and gives itself a free ride (or orientation) courtesy of the Earth's magnetic field. Could the tiny magnetite crystals serve as biomarkers long after the host is gone? And what is the origin of these kinds of features in ALH84001?

Recently, we kicked off the CATP  seminar series for the 2011-2012 season! The first talk of the year comes from McGill University's Hojatollah Vali. Dr. Vali's work is mainly concerned with the ability of iron-fixing bacteria to serve as biomarkers long after the bacteria have long since passed away. It's just one way that we can answer the question of how to detect past biological activity in the absence of well-developed morphologically distinct fossils.

LPSC Notebook: Trouble Ahead

An artist's conception of a submarine exploring the Europan Ocean is shown in this NASA-JPL illustration. Currently, I'm not even 30 and the chances that I will see pictures like this in my lifetime looks like they will decrease tomorrow once the planetary decadal survey is released.

Something's in the air here in the Woodlands, and it's not pleasant. I certainly got my week off to a bad start with some hotel snafus here at the 42nd LPSC that have seen me in a different room each night. I must also report that I'm a bit disappointed in the location. Basically, we're located at a pedestrian-unfriendly high-end strip mall, though I do understand that this location is cheaper and more accessible for many. Oh, and now this: leaked details of Steve Squyres' Planetary Decadal Survey as described by Space News.

Ed Cloutis' PSERF: Feb 4, 2011

Plumes of methane on Mars as detected by Mike Mumma's group using the IRTF facility. Top concentrations are 45 ppb or so and are centered on the Nilli Fossae region of Mars.

Ed's talk was all about Methane on Mars, the discovery of which in the Martian atmosphere has, in his words, reinvigorated our exploration plans for the planet. Where in the past Martian Exploration was all about "Follow the Water" Ed contends that it is now "Follow the Methane." Certainly that makes sense from a Canadian Analogue Mission perspective with two separate groups (the other being led by Mike Daley of York University) running analogue missions to examine the problem of how rovers can help ferret out the sources of methane.

Dr. Ralph Pudritz's CATP Seminar, January 14, 2011

Some of the previous work by McMaster's Ralph Pudritz, a member of the Origins Institute and CATP Speaker on January 14, 2011 (Image is from Amazon.com)

Dr. Pudritz's CATP Seminar was built around the work he has done understanding the thermodynamics of biomolecules on the early Earth. The reason that this is interesting is because life is known to rely heavily on certain very specific compounds as building blocks, but not others. While there are almost an unlimited number of possibilities for carboxylic acids (which amino acids resemble) only 20 different amino acids are used by all life with an additional two found in some organisms, but not others.

Adding to the mystery is chirality, a sort of molecular handedness. Just like you could tell a right hand from a left one, if you found it on its own, all amino acids (with the exception of glycine) have at least two possible configurations. Since both forms are very similar, chemically speaking, nature produces essentially equal amounts of each through abiotic (that is, non-biological) processes. But where life is concerned, only one form is actually used. This incredible selectivity of biological processes is surprising, and sufficiently odd that it has often been talked about as a biomarker; a smoking gun that we have run across a biology or its byproducts.

Dr. Paul Wiegert's PSURF, January 21, 2011

(Sorry for the delays! Fuller updates are on the way!)

Can life, or at least meteorites, travel between the stars? If so, how would we know where they had come from? Paul Wiegert addressed this question in his PSERF talk on the 21st of January, 2011

This week's PSURF Talk (a link will be posted here once it is online) dealt with a topic of eminent importance to us Astrobiologists - the concept of panspermia. What is panspermia, you might ask? Well, basically it describes a theory wherein life does not need to originate separately one each body where it is found. Life could originate at one place, at one time, in conditions that are truly extraordinary and then propagate to other worlds and other situations. If you believe the theory, then there is no need to be bounded by the conditions of the early Earth when considering life's abiotic origins. Instead, we can also consider whether life got an easier start on Mars, or inside a differentiated asteroid (this was discussed extensively at the York University Physics and Astronomy Journal Club last week; last week's CATP seminar, which I will post soon!) or even within Giant Molecular Clouds.

Of course, wherever life formed, it needs some way to get from there to here. This is where Paul Wiegert's research comes in. Paul is part of the meteor group at UWO in Physics and Astronomy. Together, this group operates a network of ground stations which examine a particular volume of sky in Southwestern Ontario for meteors. From the triangulation that the network makes possible, it is possible to back out the trajectory of the incoming particles, their speeds, and if they are big enough (fireballs) where any meteorites might land.

2010 In Review

Above: a photo of a fossil of the feeding arm of the Cambrian creature anomalocaris taken by the author at the Mt. Stephen Fossil Beds, British Columbia, Canada during the summer of 2010. Below: Nobu Tamura's rendering of the whole of the creature, as shown on wikipedia (email:nobu.tamura@yahoo.com www.palaeocritti.com).
Note: The whole set of images from the Walcott Quarry and Mt. Stephen Trilobite Beds can be seen here.

Since this was nominally started as a blog about career and academic job finding, today is a good day to look back upon 2010 and examine the progress made. I've got to conclude that it has been a very good year. When the year started, I was working at York University, back again doing planetary science with friends from the Phoenix Mission after having spent a year doing terrestrial science with Environment Canada. That was already a good start and things improved from there.

CATP Seminar Series, Dr. Gordon Southam

Astrobiology is a big, big field and so many of its aspects remain a bit of a learning experience for me. One of the fun parts of being a fellow of the Canadian Astrobiology Training Program (CATP or "Cat-Pee" to us in the program, part of NSERC/NRCAN's CREATE program) is that we hold seminars every two weeks that are broadcast across the country. The seminars give those of us working in one part of the field a chance to see what is happening in other parts, and to learn about potential synergies with our own work. My area of focus is habitability and water cycles, and so last week's talk, given by Dr. Gordon Southam of the University of Western Ontario, a hard-core microbiologist, was quite a departure.

While I'll be the first to admit that some of the material was over my head, there were a number of interesting aspects which were a little surprising for me. I plan on using this space to discuss those aspects from this talk and from future talks. So hopefully the "CATP Seminar Series" will become a regular feature here. Don't think of it so much as a review, but instead look at it as an exploration or a discovery journal. The full list of upcomming talks can be found on the CREATE website, located here.

Dr. Southam's talk, delivered last Friday, was entitled "Biogeochemical Processes from the perspective of a Bacteria." His main take-home point was that conditions that are extreme (high temperature, pressure, salinity, pH) to you and me are normal to certain strains of bacteria. At first that statement seems a bit simplistic. After all, if bacteria have evolved to take advantage of so-called extreme conditions, then naturally those would be the environments under which they would be most "comfortable" (by which I mean their biological processes would be optimized). Thus even the term for these organisms, extremophiles, is a bit misleading.

An Astrobiology tempest: Arsenic Life?

Is this an SEM Image of the first known lifeform to use a different biochemistry from the rest of us?

So many interesting things to mention about the recent findings of (partially) Arsenic-based life in Mono Lake, CA. First of all there's the discovery itself, detailed in a paper by Felisa Wolfe-Simon over at Science Magazine. But there's also something to be said about the way that NASA has handled the media surrounding the discovery. Additionally, in the week since the announcement, we've had some serious backlash by bloggers, including particularly pointed remarks by fellow science blogger, and microbiologist Rosie Redfield over at RRResearch. Some seem to think that "research paper review by blog" is a good thing and a sign of the times, but is it a substitute for the peer review process? Most troubling of all are the questions being raised in some spheres about the scope of NASA's astrobiological work and the worth of the planetary sciences. After all, they argue, what's Space got to do with studying pond scum on a lake in California?

Dr. Catherine Neish (Conversations at the DPS, profile 2)

A world of possibility: Dr Catherine Neish at Racetrack Playa in Death Valley, CA in 2006. Photograph by Diana Smith.

It was only recently, once I finished a dissertation on "habitability," that I finally admitted to myself that I am a bit of an Astrobiologist. Perhaps a bit of the reason I was so slow to come to that realization was that I tend to eschew the sorts of things that are in fashion and, especially a few years ago, nothing was more in fashion than Astrobiology. However, this week's Astronomy.fm interview subject, Dr. Catherine Neish, has always been an Astrobiologist and has said it loud and proud. Even during her undergrad at UBC, it was a topic of interest and led her to complete an REU at the famous Arecibo observatory in Puerto Rico and to the presidency of their Astronomy club. Since that time, you could often see the SETI screen saver putting away, participating in a program to help process all the accumulated data, searching for signals from the sky.

When it comes to academics, she's no dilettante either. At the University of Arizona, Catherine held down a Julie Payette fellowship from the Canadian Government, the most prestigious fellowship on offer, and was a Galileo Circle Scholar. At the time, she specialized in laboratory experiments to simulate the prebiotic chemistry of Saturn's moon Titan (a tough task, to be sure!). Somehow, even with all of that she managed to participate in student government as the president of the U of A's graduate and professional student council. She also was the Principal Investigator of her Team-X class.

These days, she holds down a postdoctoral fellowship at NASA's Applied Physics Lab in Baltimore, MD, where she works on Lunar Science with the mini-RF team, a component of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Also, as a dual citizen, she straddles the line between the Canadian take on planetary science and that of the United States, able to move effortlessly from one to the other. As such, she offers a unique perspective on the space aspirations of both countries, which I enjoyed fleshing out during our conversation.

Catherine's Interview runs Monday, November 1st at 8PM EDT over on Astronomy.fm's "Live at York U" program. I'll be on-air to discuss further the topics from the interview, so if you'd like to ask a question, join us over at www.yorkobservatory.com. I'll happily answer any questions from the audience on the air!

DPS Notebook, Odds and Ends

Still emptying the DPS journal folks, one more to go after this one, but that one won't be about DPS per se, just general musings on the profession, conferences, etc. (something I wrote at 4AM on the plane home, so I've yet to decide whether to throw it up).

The first thing to mention is that I was lucky enough to get a total of six interviews with early career folks at the DPS and I feel they went rather well. After speaking with my colleagues at "Live at York U" over on Astronomy.fm, we have come to a decision regarding the schedule. Things kick off with a little introduction from me on October 18th, including some clips from talks by Ray Arvidson, Bob Pappalardo, Steve Squyres and Jim Green, then we get into the meat of things:

October 25th - Dr. Jason Barnes (Idaho)

November 1st - Dr. Catherine Neish (Johns Hopkins/NASA-APL)

November 8th - Dr. David Minton (SwRI/Purdue)

November 15th - Dr. Britany Schmidt (Texas)

November 22nd - Dr. David Choi (Arizona)

November 29th - Dr. Jonathan Fortney (Santa Cruz)

Note that all interviews will run over on Astronomy.fm at 8PM Eastern, 5PM Pacific. I believe that we will be shifting with the clocks when that happens, so for listeners in Arizona, note that time change. I am also happy to report that all the interviews will run in complete form, and have only been slightly cut. So look for 20-30 mins for the interviews.

I'm planning on doing a little blurb about each of the subjects on the day their interview airs. But I will reveal this much now: in addition to planetary science we all share a connection to the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona. Some of us are still there (Choi) and most of us got our PhD's there (exception: Schmidt [UCLA]). In part I picked these people because I was familiar with them, even if I don't know them that well personally. But it is a testament to the program at LPL that I didn't have to look outside to find a wide range of expertise and planetary targets for study. We will be spanning the entire solar system both in time from its formation to the present day, and from the Earth, through the Asteroids, Jupiter, Europa, Saturn, Titan, the Ice Giants, the Kuiper belt and on to Extrasolar Planetary Systems.

Are you a Planetary Scientists and would like to be the subject of a future interview? Drop me a line in the comments! If you're located in the Greater Toronto Area or will be at next March's LPSC, we can arrange something taped, otherwise we can do a live interview. Either way we'd love to hear from you!

Other interesting tidbits (based on my #DPS2010 posts):

(1) Mars just keeps getting more warm and wet in the past - we've found exposures of the missing carbonates exposed by impact craters all over the place. The absence of carbonates was a major mystery for a long time. However, it seems that much in the same way that most of the water-altered minerals at Gusev were buried by later deposits, the carbonates are not absent, merely covered up! I was less impressed by the atmospheric modelling teams who used today's martian terrain and obliquity to describe the movement of volatiles 4 billion years in the past. While it's true that we don't know what that Mars would have looked like, it seems clear that Tharsis, at least, would not have existed. Since, in the current day, Tharsis is a major obstacle for a moving air mass and causes a great deal of atmospheric condensation through orographic cloud formation it should not be present in past models. Still, the authors did point out that it is difficult to support liquid on Mars with the faint young sun, even if you assume a very thick 5 Bar CO2 atmosphere.

(2) A consensus is emerging over lunar swirls - as someone who has done some geomorphology, I'm a sucker for an interestingly shaped surface feature. The lunar swirls have been a mystery for a long time since they were first seen in the 1960s. In an impressive series of talks in the lunar session, observations made by LRO placed brick after brick in the foundation that these are features in which variations frozen into mare lavas have been emphasized by differential space weathering. The anomalous magnetization of these features show that they deflect the solar wind. Thus, in addition to their differing magnetization they show differing albedos and a lack of solar-H implantation (so no hydrated water). However, Radar backscatter shows no difference in roughness, implying that the swirls are only skin deep (less than 15cm)!

(3) The disappearing exoplanets announcement - a great deal of excitement surrounded a talk called "Title Embargoed." After all, if we couldn't know the title ahead of time, it must have been a pretty big discovery! However, through the magic of delayed peer review, the presenters took to the stage only to announce that Nature would not permit them to speak about the work. Speculation as to what was to be reported was rampant, as were thoughts as to why the reviewers might be drawing out the process. In this highly competitive field, it could be that the reviewers are stalling until they can replicate the result. Or it could be that the discovery is itself uncertain and the authors are having difficulty satisfying the reviewers that their discovery is genuine, above the error bounds of their measurement. For an example, just take a look at the discovery (or not) of an earth-sized planet just this past week.

(4) Titan surface geology outpaces our wildest hopes - data from Radar and VIMS were presented in which wave height in the Titanian lakes was constrained both from specular glinting and backscatter. As well, the controversial proposition that the equatorial "coffee ground" sand dunes show interspersed liquid hydrocarbon seepage was debated.

(5) Faster computers make dynamical calculations better - some of the major problems in solar system formation are beginning to sort themselves out, in particular the long-standing puzzle of why Mars is so small. It seems that the solution may be that as the Giant Planets migrated inward then outward, they created a sharp edge to the disc of planetessimals which formed the inner planets. As well, the outward migration would have scattered a great deal of icy material in past the solar system's snow line, enhancing the amount of water delivered to the terrestrial planets. This is troubling from an astrobiological point of view, since to make this situation work you need two large gas giants which form early and in just the right places and then evolve until they hit a resonance with one another many millions of years down the road. How common is that type of formation? At the very least it adds another term to the drake equation.

Planetary Parks System

Almost a year ago, I wrote an entry on the benefits and issues of the current Planetary Protection regime. Clearly there is a necessity to require that the stricture of decontamination procedures be proportional to the biological interest of the destination. You certainly do not want to bring a false positive along with you, or forward contaminate an area to the point of making it unsuitable for future study. However, I was troubled by the trend towards avoiding areas of high interest because of strict decontamination procedures. After all, reducing the amount of decontamination is an attractive descope option for spacecraft on a tight budget as it does not degrade functionality. This is the route that Exo-Mars intends to follow.

But what if there could be a compromise? I spoke with a colleague yesterday who suggested that perhaps what was necessary was a planetary parks system. Under this scheme, some sensitive areas would be set aside for preservation while others could be opened up to study. It's an intriguing idea. You could, for instance, restrict landings to some gullies on Mars, but not all gullies. That way, you could begin to study the gully ecosystem today with cheaper, ready-to-go technologies, while preserving much of the occurrences of this land form for future study or complete preservation.

This is not dissimilar to the way in which returned samples are curated. Current protocols divide any such sample into four pieces, one of which remains untouched, awaiting more sophisticated future analysis. In the context of a park system, similar gradations could be applied. This would lead to a multi-tiered system in which concentric boundaries could mark areas in which landers with successively more stringent decontamination could be placed. This would allow for early and cheap study of these interesting regions, while preserving areas for future study.

In the process we could learn more about the potential for life in these areas. If these early spacecraft show a high astrobiological potential, this increases the chances that an adequately sterilized, expensive and highly sensitive mission will be sent to the parks area. In contrast, today's system of restricting all landings on type-IV special regions, actively discourages missions from visiting these areas.

My colleague also suggested an added benefit of such a policy. Defining the limits and extent of the areas would become a mission objective in and of itself. A good parallel is the scientific bonanza which has resulted from Canada's desire to map the arctic continental shelf for economic and political reasons. As a former engineering student, I see no issue with doing Science in support of a practical goal.

Unfortunately, the parks scheme doesn't solve everything. The liquid water subsurface of Europa, which likely mixes, is not easily subdivided into park-like zones. Thus areas like these should still be off-limits to all but the most sterile spacecraft. However, the parks system strikes a good balance between an open free-for-all, and complete preservation.

Astrobiological Disparity: A Commentary on the International Year of Biodiversity

From left to right: Deinoccocus radiodurans, a hardy extremophile capable of life in nuclear reactors, middle, the strange body plan of the now-extinct cambrian animal Opabinia Regalis (As envisioned by Nobu Tamura), an afican wild cat (as photographed by Wikipedia user Sonelle). General Sherman, a sequoiadendron, the tallest tree in the world at 275 feet.

2010 is the International Year of Biodiversity, following up 2009, the International Year of Astronomy. This makes it a particularly good time to discuss the field that links these two subjects, Astrobiology. Much of astrobiological work today occurs along two linked themes. The first is assessing habitability and the potential for life elsewhere in the Universe. This is what we are trying to do by following the water on Mars. However, this endeavour cannot proceed without input from the second theme, understanding the origins of life and its early development on the earth.

Unfortunately, both of these themes face a fundamental problem. Even though there is great diversity between extant forms of life on Earth, there is remarkably little disparity, from a cosmic perspective. This difference is a subtle, but important one. While diversity is a measure of the number of different forms in a collection of organisms (usually taken as the number of different species, or non-reproductively mixing groups), disparity is an expression of the degree of differentiation between these forms often in terms of body plans and survival strategies. So a collection of 500 species of shrimp is more diverse, but less disparate then a collection of 100 species made up of plants, fish, crustaceans and plankton. Notably, neither measure takes into account any measures of the success of a particular species in terms of number of organisms, range, species longevity, etc.

Since we only have one example of a planet with life, it is worth asking: how disparate is life on Earth? While there may be as many as 100 million different species present on the planet today (most remaining as yet undiscovered), these can be divided into just three domains of life based upon the form of their constitutive cells. These domains are Bacteria, Archaea, and Eucarya. Yet even these large meta-groups have inter-relationships. Eucarya, the domain of which we and nearly all other macroscopic life are a part, is thought to be the result of a beneficial symbiosis between an Archaean and a Bacterium at some time between 1.7 and 2.7 billion years ago. More fundamentally, all three domains are based on the replicative abilities of a single polymer, DNA and share a common ancestor. Thus in terms of strategies for propagation, the disparity of life on Earth is zero!


The three domains of life with Archea in Green, Eucaryotes in Red and Bacteria in Blue. Note that all three domains share a common ancestor which would be located at the center of the tree. The close relationship between the Archaea and Eucarya is shown as a larger subgroup before linking back to the last universal common ancestor.

Part of the reason for this could be the surprising observation that while diversification increases in time, disparity actually tends to decline. For instance, Stephen J. Gould observes that the number of different body plans (loosely equivalent to the classification level of phyla) in animals present just after the Cambrian Explosion is significantly greater than today. Analogously, it has been hypothesized that several different biopolymers, including RNA, PNA and TNA might have been able to perform functions similar to that which is played by DNA today. All may have been present on the early earth, but DNA, having advantages, outcompeted all of these other forms. The history since has been written by the victorious molecule.

However, this also suggests that even on the earth there may have been greater disparity in the past and that had conditions been different, then the balance could have been tipped in favour of other forms or strategies. As a result, we are left contemplating not just where in the Universe we might find life that has been successful on Earth, but where other kinds of life, as yet unknown, might be possible. There are some theoretical bounds we can put on such a problem; however, I expect that this is an area in which we will be surprised by discovery in the future. As many prognosticators are aware, it is always a dangerous proposition to define the limits of the possible.

Instead, we can proceed by determining what factors will tend to improve the odds of life beyond the earth, based on our limited earthly experience. For instance, liquid water certainly helps the chemistry that we require to function. The presence of certain elements in particular Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Phosphorous and Sulphur (collectively referred to as CHNOPS) are also helpful, allowing for systems that can replicate and store energy. Similarly the presence of an energy source to power cellular reactions is critical; both chemosynthesis and photosynthesis, in which energy is gained from chemical disequilibrium or radiation, are practiced on the Earth. This has led to the hypothesis that the powerful oxidants found in the martian soil by the Phoenix Lander could represent a power source for a martian biochemistry.


Above: a soil sample is collected for analysis. On Mars, solar UV causes oxidants to form in the soil, building up to as much as 1 percent by weight of the upper layer. Perchlorate, discovered by the MECA instrument aboard Phoenix represents a potential power source for chemosynthesis, if there is an organism available to metabolize it.

But the most important factor seems to be time. Over time, organisms evolve to move into new habitats that were previously empty. To illustrate this, consider that despite the incredible biodiversity on the Earth, certain niches remain unfilled. Why do the deserts or the summits of mountains not flower with plants and animals? Turn the question around and ask why the continental surface was barren half billion years ago? And why, before that, no animals, plants or larger creatures beyond bacterial colonies filled the seas?

It is worth keeping in mind that all of these biomes, including the terrestrial abodes not filled today, are far more clement locations for the kind of life we know then exists on Mars, Enceladus or Europa. That these are the leading candidates for life elsewhere in our Solar System underscores not only the difficulty of our Astrobiological quest, but also the fragility of life on our planet. It requires that we protect something so rare in all its diverse forms. This is the realization that is at the foundation of the year of Biodiversity.


From left to right: Earth, Mars, Europa and Enceladus (showing water plumes)

As a final thought let us consider what the evolution of intelligence on the Earth has meant for the survival of life on Earth. The fragility of life relates directly to three factors: environmental variation, diversity/disparity and range.

The effects of the first two factors are simple to grasp. The greater the frequency and magnitude of the variation in environmental conditions, the more difficult it is to maintain a stable system. Likewise, the more diversity and disparity there is amongst organisms inhabiting a particular region, the more likely that one or more species will be able to deal with the environmental variations that do occur.

Range, however, is the most crucial. By spreading itself over a large territory, life cannot be extinguished easily by isolated events. This is the advantage of large animals. We cannot tolerate the extremes that bacteria can, but we can deal with inclement conditions by adapting or moving on. Migration is a particularly good example of an adaptation unavailable to simpler life which allows the organism to derive benefits from a much larger range.

Intelligence is by far the best known means of increasing the range of a species. Through our use of tools and clothing, human beings now inhabit the entire planet and can claim a range in pressure, temperature, salinity, pH, you name it - larger than that of any other organism, bacteria included. As such, the Intelligence habitable zone (IHZ) for a solar system housing intelligent life is limited only by the availability of raw materials and energy; aside from politics and economics, there is no reason why humans could not establish a permanent presence on Europa or even further out in the solar system.

As such, we are the first organism produced by our planet with the capability to outlive the death of our Sun, four billion years hence. Thus spaceflight represents the most important adaptation ever produced by life on Earth, and it is an adaptation that we must not lose if we are to preserve life in our corner of the universe.


With the emergence of intelligent life, the habitable zone (HZ) increases in size. This larger Intelligence Habitable Zone (IHZ) shows how through the use of spaceflight and nuclear energy generation, it is possible to spread life to any location with sufficient raw materials, mainly water ice. Discarding waste heat is a difficulty which corresponds to the left edge of the purple trapezoid, but the right edge has no well-defined boundary.

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For an interesting introduction to some of the central questions posed by Astrobiology, I highly recommend the book Rare Earth (most recently, 2003) by Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee. For a more advanced read, try Lunine’s Astrobiology (2005), a tome well-worth close study. Those looking for background on questions surrounding the initial emergence and diversification of animals (more generally “complex metazonans”) are advised to consider Stephen J. Gould’s Wonderful Life (1990). As a note on the images, I have selected NASA or Wikipedia media wherever possible and have made an effort to attribute the base images. If I have missed something, please feel free to leave a comment or contact me and I will fix it! With the exception of the Phoenix and planetary images, assume all image content is covered under: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Free_Documentation_License.

Pragmatism and Vision on the occasion of an Anniversary

Today is July 20th, 2009 – the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. One thing I can assure you is that before the day is out, a great deal of ink will have been spilled on both looking backwards and forwards to the past and future of NASA. Childhood memories of that fateful step will abound, as will calls for a bold new way forward, or assurances that we are already on our way back to the Moon, Mars and beyond. Some may even speculate about colonization or draw comparisons between the initial exploration and ultimate return to Antarctica. But the fact remains that there seems to be no real urgency in the air. Something seems to be missing.

Like any living creature, an agency needs a sense of purpose in order to survive. This purpose is articulated through achievable and desirable goals. For many agencies and government departments this is a straightforward exercise. Each of their overall goals can be broken down at many levels into prioritized subtasks to be carried out by individual people. The organization remains relevant and current through constant re-evaluation and by pruning off side tasks. Altogether, this is a remarkably pragmatic process.

While this formula works well for many departments, NASA has always been a little different. At the start it was very pragmatic, and very highly focused on “placing a man on the moon and returning him safely” prior to 1970. But since then the ultimate goal of the agency has broadened and become more ephemeral then most, despite attempts to bring it into the realm of the pragmatic. What is NASA’s purpose today? At its most broad (2002-2006) is was: “To understand and protect our home planet; to explore the universe and search for life; to inspire the next generation of explorers ... as only NASA can.”

But what does this somewhat circular statement really mean? Is NASA a builder of rockets and spacecraft and maintainer of an elite corps of explorers? Or is it a funding agency for fundamental knowledge about the earth, solar system and the universe? Or is it an inspirational vehicle whose benefits are indirect and therefore inherently less measurable? In many ways, all three have come to apply, giving a very broad set of potential mandates which defy attempts at focus.

To make matters worse, each area is in tension, and even within each subgroup there are many disagreements. To illustrate, let me recount a conversation I had a few years back in Tucson with another planetary scientist and an astronomer. Each of us felt that NASA’s overarching goal was to explore the universe, but we disagreed about the way to go about it. The other planetary scientist felt that human exploration was critical, despite the cost, since only “boots on the ground” would inspire the next generation of explorers. At the time, I felt that shuttle launches were a waste since for the cost of each we could explore several places in the solar system robotically. The astronomer felt that we should instead be investing the money in fundamental astrophysics because it alone could answer the big questions about the universe.

If three people closely aligned in interest and profession can have this kind of debate within a single phrase of the motto, it begs the question as to whether these areas are really reconcilable. Thus, should NASA be split up?

There is certainly a good argument to be made that terrestrial, planetary and astronomical research could be conceptually accommodated under the National Science Foundation (NSF). As well, with the new Global Exploration Initiative, the way forward through 2030 seems to be largely settled and negotiated with international partners. An agency entirely focused on implementing this plan might be more effective. It would also mean less uncertainty for those of us working within the field for whom funding seems to be framed as a zero sum battle between the Science Mission Directorate (SMD) and the Space Exploration Directorate (SED) for limited resources.

Ultimately you have to ask the question: why does NASA even exist – why do we do this? Despite all the arguments about technology transfer, innovative management examples and fancy mattresses, it isn’t about the tangible benefits (though these are real and important). One part of the equation, still relevant even after Apollo, is national pride. We want our nation to be a leader in space, and we are willing to pay a certain amount for that. Another is the appeal of the unknown and our curiosity about it, the visionary aspect. This pioneering spirit has been close to the hearts of many Americans, even if it is not lived day to day, and is probably the reason that per capita spending on space agencies in the US is the highest in the world at about $56 per person. Compare that to $17 for Japan, $9 for Canada, $7 for Europe, and $1.10 for India.

But even the per capita funding within the United States has fallen from a peak of almost $180 (adjusted for inflation) per person in 1965 (when the federal budget was much also smaller). Why has this drop-off occurred? Paradoxically, it could be a sign of increasing prosperity on Earth combined with the decreasing novelty of space travel from which the average citizen sees little direct benefit. For instance, grand plans for cities in space from the 1960s and 1970s looked good when conditions at home were poor, but lost their lustre when things improved. “Going to work in space” may have helped people relate to NASA in the 1980s, but it wasn't long before they started to question why they were being asked to cough up $2 every time someone needs to ride the space bus. Finally, today there is very little non-governmental space industry that is viable, so there isn't a whole lot of direct interaction.

So what can an agency caught in transition do? Crewed exploration purely for the benefit of simply refining science works well for Antarctica, but may be too costly to be done off planet. Of course, this may be a good way to stimulate industry, as the return to the Moon is trying to find out. But if we want to have a more relevant mission statement then a make-work program, instead we need to use our resources to answer the big questions. It’s no longer enough to have flags and footprints and after Apollo, I’m not sure that just landing on Mars or some other piece of real estate in the solar system, exotic as it is, will be enough. We need to capture the public’s imagination if we are to justify the expenditure of so many of their tax dollars. Thus we don’t so much need a place to go as a quest of sorts. Mallory’s famous quote no longer suffices.

And what could be better then determining the role played by life in the universe? This is a theme that we all can relate to at a fundamental level. Who hasn’t wondered about their place in the world? It’s a dream that we can chase, from Mars, to Europa and Enceladus and beyond. So let’s go to these places and focus intently on getting there and uncovering the story. Let's be sure to communicate our enthusiasm to the public so that they can share in our adventure.

This idea is just one of several possibilities. But no matter what we choose to do we need to be sure that along with the ‘how’ we’ve got a good answer for the ‘why.’ I’d happily pay 56 bucks for that.