Does the universe really care about itself?

Talk for  Starmus 2014

By David J. Eicher

In the beginning, Earth was a difficult and dangerous place. Bathed in the cool light of a young Sun and awash in a liquid water environment, early Earth was rocked by flurries of impacts from planetesimals, asteroids, and comets that crowded the inner solar system. Following the so-called Late Heavy Bombardment, however, some 3.8 billion years ago, the situation on our young planet began to settle.

And then one day it happened. Somewhere in the broth of Earth’s oceans, atoms did their thing, because that’s what atoms do. Drawn by the electrical charges that pull them together in specific combinations, atoms in this hydrogen- and oxygen-rich environment, perhaps at first beside deep-sea hydrothermal vents, assembled to form amino acids, proteins, and eventually, RNA and DNA. From that point on, evolution took over. A young planetary world — at first a deeply hostile abode — had, over the span of a billion years since the planet accreted, given birth to life.

Since its appearance at least 3.4 billion years ago, life has transformed Earth, pushing it into new evolutionary directions. But it didn’t happen quickly. The first 1.5 billion years of life on Earth featured nothing more than prokaryotes, primitive microbes lacking a cellular nucleus. Eventually, though, a buildup of oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere led to dramatic changes. In the last half-billion years, Earth’s climate and its set of living organisms underwent a colossal overhaul. In the last 5 million years or so, mammals evolved, and humans came onto the scene. Our closest ancestors evolved over the past 2 million years and led, starting roughly 100,000 years ago, to Homo sapiens. And here we are

All life we know of in the universe as yet exists on our tiny planet Earth. And we are all products of the universe — from microbes to trees, to bees, to horses, cats, badgers, and humans — the atoms that make us up were born in the sizzling bellies of massive stars and cast out far into the reaches of the cosmos. Ours is a sample of one, of a single planet hosting beings that crawl around its surface and swim in its oceans, out of a vast universe that contains at a very minimum 50 thousand billion billion stars, any or all of which could host planets suitable for the development of the chemistry of life.

And yet this sample of one is sensational, almost miraculous in its nature. To be sentient, born out of atoms created from fusion reactors and yet be able to perceive, to feel, to reason, is an incredible power the universe has bequeathed us. And the numbers of sentient humans we know have lived on our planet is staggering: According to most estimates, at least 108 billion people have lived at some point in Earth’s history, with the human population at 300 million in Roman times, reaching half a billion by the Renaissance, cracking the 1 billion mark in the early 19^th century, and topping 7 billion today. This abundance of life is amazing, as we must all remember that life itself is a near-death experience.

Despite this almost miraculous story of life on Earth, it also contains a deep undercurrent of sadness, of unfulfilled promise. Carl Sagan used to tell me that 99 percent of people are born, live out their lives, and die without knowing their place in the universe. It’s a situation that seemingly is not getting a whole lot better as time progresses.

Let me use my own work as one example. Astronomy magazine is the largest periodical of its kind in the world, reaching in print some 109,000 people each month, and with about 400,000 unique visitors to its website each month. Additionally, the magazine’s brand is active on social media and has some 830,000 followers on Facebook and more than 45,000 followers on Twitter, as well as a Google+ following. These numbers are healthy, even impressive, but they mask an aging of active interest in astronomy that has been impossible to ignore over the past generation. Demographics show an aging readership, and too often, a roll call at star parties in the United States reveals largely the same people who have been going to these dark-sky sessions for 10 or 15 years running. Where is the younger generation?

There seem to be lots of barriers for young people getting interested in serious scientific subjects these days — at least in the United States, if not all over the world. For one thing, reality no longer seems as important to people as it once did. When I was young, real things carried lots more weight than fantasies. Now, you can go outside and show some kids an aurora, brightly shining and shimmering in the sky, and have them excited for, well, about five minutes. And then, too often, it’s right back inside to drag out the Xbox 360 and interact with a meaningless virtual world. What in the end does that accomplish? Hey, I’m not against having fun, but there’s maybe just a little too much of it going on, relative to the learning about real things in the real universe that can help these kids in the future.

The challenge isn’t made any easier by the daunting increase in light pollution over the last few generations. Every single would-be astronomer on Earth saw a dark night sky a century and a half ago, all aware of the constellations, of glowing stars, a luminous band of Milky Way, maybe even of a few star clusters or fuzzy nebulae. Certainly they were in tune with the wanderings of the planets and the cycles of the heavens, and the fact that in some small way they were a part of it. Now it’s very hard for many, probably most kids, to get a decent glimpse of a dark sky even if they want to get it more than anything else.

In addition, pseudoscience, doctrine, and nonsense abound in our culture. Now we have spirit guides, centering groups, dream workshops, bioenergetics, pyramid energy, primal therapy, inversion swings, flower essences, guided synchronicity, harmonic brain wave synergy, and psychocalisthenics. One recent poll claimed that three out of four Americans actually believe in real angels. What about zombies, goblins, vampires, krakens, medusas, leprechauns, banshees, centaurs, genies, and elves? Why are they not getting the press they should be getting in this day and age? Maybe bad publicists, huh?

On top of this challenge, we now live in a culture in which we are immersed in a constant stream of entertainment. Now I love movies, TV, sports, music, and the rest of that stuff just as much as the next guy, but for many the ubiquitous nature of fun and entertainment oversaturates their lives, in some cases deepening the push away from reality and into unreality. I counted 253 HD channels on my own TV service, and I guarantee you that I watch relatively few of them. But hundreds of channels are the norm, and it restrains too many people from ever doing anything beyond sitting back and letting it all flush over them night after night.

This is typified in the United States, at least, by so-called reality television, which is as far as I can tell, certainly about the farthest thing from natural reality you could possibly imagine. Whether it’s Duck Dynasty, Amish Mafia, The Undateables, Dog the Bounty Hunter, American Ninja Warrior, Ghost Hunters, or I’m a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here!, it’s almost certainly bound to enrich your life far more than knowing about what’s actually happening in the universe around you.

 The flakiness of television might not matter so much, but it’s clearly how the majority of people get their news about the world and also how they interact with science, if they do at all. Those who profess to being interested in science also have options in the great electron stream of cable TV. In the U.S., Science Channel, Discovery Channel, The Learning Channel, National Geographic Television, and others all offer what they state constitutes high-caliber science programming.

Not to pick on one network, but for the sake of an example, let’s look at Science Channel. Their executives claim that astronomy and space are the most popular area of science for them and constitute as much as 50 percent of their programming in high-viewership time slots. Their trademark series is Morgan Freeman’s Through the Wormhole, and they also feature several other space- and astronomy-related series, or at least subjects that connect to astronomy via the fringe element, including Are We Alone?, Alien Encounters, Outrageous Acts of Science, Wonders of the Universe, and How the Universe Works

I know, of course, that the networks are after ratings. Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and set aside the alien stuff. On that they get a pass. There’s no way they would pass up covering lots of UFO nonsense with the ratings driving the train. But let’s look a little at what they purport to be their mainstream, balanced, and journalistically centrist material.

 Now, I love Morgan Freeman as an actor and as a promoter of blues music in his great club in Clarksdale, Mississippi. But I am not completely in love with his Science Channel show. Among the topics explored have been “Is There Life After Death?”; “Does Time Really Exist?”; “Is There a Sixth Sense?”; “What Do Aliens Look Like?”; “Can We Travel Faster Than Light?”; “Can We Resurrect the Dead?”; “Is Reality Real?”; “Does the Ocean Think?” and “Is a Zombie Apocalypse Possible?”

 Morgan, bless you for the movies and the music. But this is a show that in coverage and tone is pseudoscience, not science.

Many of us in the astronomy field had high hopes for the second coming of Cosmos, the show that aired in the spring of 2014 that was the successor to Carl Sagan’s original Cosmos series that aired in 1980. The project probably would not have flourished as it did without the backing of Seth MacFarlane, who acted as executive producer. Written by Carl’s widow Ann Druyan and by Steve Soter, and narrated by Neil deGrasse Tyson of the American Museum of Natural History, the 13-part series spawned anticipation of covering the numerous areas of astronomy, astrophysics, planetary science, and cosmology that have blossomed or even been completely reinvented in the 34 years since the first Cosmos aired.

 The ratings for Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey seemed fair to pretty good, starting with 8 million viewers in the United States and fluctuating with each episode, and with a claimed vastly larger worldwide viewership when the show began its airing around other parts of the globe. Cosmos was generally very well written and Neil did, as always, a great job of hosting and explaining. I am a big fan of his in virtually everything he has ever done, and I adore Annie, as I had a great relationship with Carl Sagan, who was one of the major influences in my getting into astronomy as a career.

But I have to say that I was a little stunned by the new show’s coverage, given the incredibly vast array of important astronomy that has been assembled over the past generation, and even since Carl’s death in 1996. That the show largely opted to avoid much of this and instead focus largely on history, providing inspiring stories of individual scientists and their lives and discoveries, was surprising to many.

Each episode featured animated cartoon segments, along with the stories of notable scientists, in an attempt to enliven the presentation for younger viewers. The first episode focused on the persecution of Giordano Bruno by the Catholic Church following his challenge to geocentrism. The second episode examined life’s molecules and evolution, and the notable series of mass extinctions over the past 500 million years. Episode 3 focused on pattern recognition and described stories of Jan Oort, Edmond Halley, and Isaac Newton. Episode 4 described the speed of light, investigated black holes, and relayed events in the lives of William Herschel, Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, and others. Episode 5 explored the wave and particle nature of light. Episode 6 discovered matter on large and small scales, paying homage to Thales of Miletus for in essence inventing the scientific method.

Colleagues of mine at Astronomy and Discover magazines conducted weekly Google Hangouts online, discussing each of the episodes. Halfway through the series, we were amazed at the emphasis on history and on other elements of science that did not lie directly in astronomy’s wheelhouse. But we carried on nonetheless. Episode 7 focused on the age of Earth, radiometric dating, and the properties of lead. Episode 8 finally brought some attention to women astronomers in the form of a focus on Annie Jump Cannon, Cecilia Payne, Henrietta Swan Leavitt, and the so-called Harvard computers. Episode 9 explored the paleogeography of Earth. Episode 10 surprised us by spending most of its effort on describing Michael Faraday’s invention of the induction motor. Episode 11 explored the possibilities for the origin of life on Earth and the possibilities of life elsewhere in the cosmos. Episode 12 reviewed the scientific data relating to climate change and global warming. And the final episode finally connected with big and recent cosmology by examining issues of dark energy and dark matter.

 Clearly, the creators of Cosmos wanted to inspire a new generation of young people to think scientifically and to embrace science as a way of life, and perhaps even to make science exciting as a career path. But to many, they missed an opportunity to discuss the newest, most exciting discoveries in space.

 What also surprises me about TV astronomy, even in the well-done world of programs like Cosmos, is not only the coverage, that often strays away from the explosion of exciting, new, and important developments in our fields, but the almost irresistible tone of these programs to lean toward the improbable and the unlikely to make things as exciting as possible, at the expense of reality.

For example, Neil Tyson actually uttered the sentence, “No one knows what lies within a black hole — it could contain an entire universe.” 

 My response to that is, What exactly does that mean?

 No, a black hole could not contain an entire universe. Stop that. Stick with the facts of what we really know, please. I would sentence anyone who says such a thing to report to Kip Thorne’s office immediately.

But the lack of precision in writing for many of these programs, or the allure of making things just a little bit more compelling, seems unchecked and out of control essentially across the spectrum. Cosmos itself contained many such examples, and it is at the relative head of its class compared with some of the other programs on other networks. The episode on global warming proudly claimed that Venus, in its early history, was a very Earth-like world with lovely and abundant oceans and that somehow it had gone badly wrong, through excessive carbon dioxide induced global warming, and now is a hellish place, and we had better take a lesson from that.

 But no one knows whether or not early Venus had oceans. The planet globally resurfaced, volcanically, some three-quarters of a billion years ago, and so the evidence of oceans during the first 2 billion years of venusian history is essentially lost. Only scant clues from looking at ratios of deuterium to hydrogen remain, and they are suggestive at very best. Besides, the origin of global warming on Venus would have come from its water, not the carbon dioxide.

Further, the need for writers to lunge at the most exotic explanations to sexy up the show is sad. In another episode of Cosmos, which treated the origin of life on Earth, Neil Tyson mentioned organic chemistry and hydrothermal vents in early Earth’s oceans in a flying moment and then spent a full 10 minutes discussing the possibilities of panspermia, of bacteria arriving from space and being deposited on Earth — a far less likely scenario.

 So my request to writers of science TV shows would be, please get the facts straight and stick to the facts. Don’t get carried away with exaggeration, assumptions, speculations, or focusing on the highly improbable at the expense of the highly probable. That seems to be a disease that permeates television writing. And as everyone who really knows the details of recent astronomy, the facts are more compelling than the fiction!

 The news is certainly not all bad. Just think of what has happened over the past 20 years that provides us with exciting material to share with our fellow human beings. It’s absolutely staggering. In fact, it constitutes a revolution in our knowledge and our thinking that has taken place just in the last few years.

The astronomical revolution of the early 21^st century casts a wide net of topics to share with the public. They want death and drama? One major future event we now understand pretty clearly is how the Sun will die. The solar system is about halfway through its normal existence, some 4.6 billion years old. The Sun is of course a nuclear fusion reactor, and when it runs out of elements to fuse into heavier elements, it will become a red giant star, swelling outward and engulfing the inner planets, some 5 billion years from now. Following the red giant stage, the Sun will transform into a planetary nebula, a cocoon of glowing gas surrounding the dead Sun, which will then be an Earth-sized lump of carbon containing about 50 percent of the Sun’s original mass.

 At this stage, the Sun will be furiously bright, and its atmospheric carbon will settle onto the carbon-rich core. The last bits of helium burning within the star will fling the star’s outer layers off into surrounding space, forming a planetary nebula. Planetary nebulae serve as the recycling mechanism for turning the gas from many ordinary stars forward toward future generations of new stars, when it eventually compresses into a star-forming molecular cloud, pulled by gravity’s inescapable force, and flashes on as a newly born star.

 Just as we can forecast the distant future of the Sun, we can also predict what will eventually happen to life on Earth. Because the Sun is about halfway through its lifetime, simple logic suggests that life on Earth should be about halfway through its existence too. That seems a reasonable assumption, but such is not at all the case.

In fact, some of the earliest life known on Earth, 3.4 billion years old, comes from the Strelley Pool rock formation in Western Australia, where researchers discovered microfossils in 2007 and made their analyses public in 2011. These primitive bacteria fed on sulfur and were discovered in sandstones that, several billion years ago, formed a shallow water beach or estuary.

 We now know that the Sun is a variable star, and that its overall radiation output is steadily increasing over time. Recent work shows that in a far shorter timespan than had been previously imagined — a billion years or less, perhaps 800 million — the Sun’s radiation will increase to the point of boiling the oceans off planet Earth. At that point, it will mark the endgame for life on Earth. Given the knowledge of life on Earth existing for at least 3.4 billion years already, we can say the story of life on Earth is perhaps already 80 percent written. We are already in the late chapters of life’s adventure on our planet.

The Moon is a great place to start an amateur astronomer’s love of observing. And there are exciting scientific stories to go with our only natural satellite. Only in the last decade have planetary scientists really come to grips with the formation of the Moon. Compelling evidence about its origin came from analyzing Moon rocks returned to Earth by the Apollo astronauts. Tests on oxygen isotopes locked inside tiny crystals in the rocks startled planetary scientists at first because the isotopes were identical with many Earth rocks. Over the 1980s and 1990s, lines of evidence from the Apollo samples began pointing toward a radical conclusion. Called the Giant Impact Hypothesis, the accepted story of the Moon’s formation suggests that 4.6 billion years ago, two planets floated in the space now occupied by the Earth-Moon system. Proto-Earth had 50 to 90 percent of its current size and mass, and a Mars-size planet also existed, one that astronomers now call Theia (in Greek mythology, mother of the Moon goddess Selene). Planetary scientists believe some 4.53 billion years ago Theia struck Earth, creating a short-lived ring of debris that accreted into the Moon. The majority of Theia’s mass accreted into Earth’s mantle. Where did Theia go? You’re standing on it.

It might be fair to say that planetary scientists are obsessed with Mars — and the public enjoys hearing about the Red Planet. Certainly it’s now a cold, dry planet. So how did Mars go from warm and wet to cold and dry, and are there important lessons on the Red Planet for the residents of planet Earth? The mechanism by which Mars warmed is not yet entirely clear. It seems that substantial warming by a carbon dioxide-water greenhouse gas cycle would not work if the Sun were as faint and cool as it appears to have been in the early solar system. But perhaps the Sun was more energetic early on than planetary scientists believe. Or maybe other greenhouse gases contributed to early martian warming. Or maybe warm periods on Mars were episodic and local and/or regional, rather than planet-wide, over sustained periods.

Another strange mystery concerns our so-called “sister planet,” Venus, which could hardly be any more different than Earth. Venus and Earth are about the same size and Venus has a complex weather system, but beyond those similarities, Venus is a hellish world beset by temperatures hot enough to melt lead. The shock from Venus is that it has very few impact craters. The extensive surface flows of lava suggest the planet’s surface is very young — perhaps 750 million years old. This is a planet that geologically turned itself inside out; the planet was nearly entirely resurfaced. Why? What caused such a radical, planet-wide event that changed the character of the entire world?

Planets in our galaxy are one thing; the structure of the galaxy itself is another — and a puzzle as intriguing as any on TV. An important step in mapping the Milky Way took place in 2005 when astronomers from the University of Wisconsin used the Spitzer Space Telescope to conduct the GLIMPSE survey, short for Galactic Legacy Infrared Mid-Plane Survey Extraordinaire. This program imaged and cataloged 30 million sources to accurately map the galaxy for the first time. Further observations in 2008 revealed the Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy with a strong central bar, two prominent spiral arms, and several smaller spurs. Only in the past few years have we known the true structure of our home galaxy.

The same year, 2008, brought the realization of our galaxy’s fate. Harvard astronomer Abraham Loeb and his collaborators studied the future dynamics of the galaxies in our Local Group, which includes the Milky Way and the nearest spiral to us, the Andromeda Galaxy. Although on large scales the expansion of the universe is moving bodies apart, on more localized scales, objects often move toward each other due to gravity and localized motions. Some 4 to 5 billion years from now the Milky Way and Andromeda will collide, resulting in a tangled mess of a giant galaxy astronomers have dubbed “Milkomeda.” The fate of our own galaxy is now clear.

But there’s still a lot of things we’re left in the dark on. As early as 1932, Dutch astronomer Jan Oort postulated the existence of an unseen matter to help explain the orbital velocities of stars in the Milky Way. A year later Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky proposed the same idea to explain the “missing mass” in galaxies orbiting each other in clusters. Soon, astronomers realized a form of so-called dark matter must exist in the universe.

 American astronomer Vera Rubin pushed forward the study of dark matter when she examined the rotational velocities of galaxies in the 1960s and 1970s. We still don’t know what dark matter is, but recent cosmological studies from the Planck satellite and other sources suggest 26.8 percent of the mass-energy of the universe is in the form of dark matter.

If the challenge of dark matter wasn’t enough, astronomers observing distant supernovae upset the cosmological apple cart completely in 1998. In that year, two teams of researchers, the High-z Supernova Search Team and the Supernova Cosmology Project, collaborated to observe distant type Ia supernovae. These very distant exploding massive stars shine with a known intrinsic brightness. The observations of these unusual stars produced a stunning result. They showed the expansion of the universe is itself accelerating over time. This amazing discovery, which led to Nobel Prizes and reset the central focus of cosmology, led to the recognition of dark energy. 

In astronomy, mysteries come and mysteries go. When I arrived at Astronomy magazine as a young editor in 1982, black holes were merely a rumor. It wasn’t until the Hubble Space Telescope came along in the 1990s that ironclad evidence for black holes arrived. After Hubble observed the centers of active galaxies such as M87 in Virgo and many others, the evidence for black holes was concrete. Over the past few years, it’s become clear that all normal galaxies, dwarfs aside, have a central supermassive black hole. For most galaxies, these black holes were very active early in the history of the galaxy’s life, and as the black hole has lost material to “feed on,” it has become quiescent, going to sleep in a manner of speaking. Such is the case with the Milky Way’s own central black hole.

Black holes are hugely popular with the public and great for peaking interest, but sometimes we also have to provide people with a dose a harsh reality: The universe is REALLY BIG. The cosmic distance scale is almost unbelievable by human standards. We are on average 384,400 kilometers from our nearest cosmic neighbor, the Moon. The Sun is normally 149.6 million kilometers away. The outer edge of the Oort Cloud, the shell of comets at the perimeter of our solar system, is more than 1 light-year away. That’s about 10 trillion kilometers. The closest star system to us, the Alpha-Proxima Centauri system, is about 4.2 light-years distant.

 There are huge lessons for us in the distance scale of the universe, the likelihood of abundant life in the cosmos, and the possibility of ever getting to know that life. Because, lets face it: that’s the ultimate question. Are we alone in the cosmos? How abundant is life? Microbes? Civilizations?

 If money were no object and we could build the highest technology spacecraft now imaginable, and power it with say, ion propulsion, we could hypothetically travel to the nearest star system, Alpha-Proxima Centauri, in something like 75,000 years. This is where science and science fiction meet. The logistics of actually traveling from star system to star system are staggering. How do you put enough Twinkies in the pantry for a 75,000-year journey?

 And yet we’ve seen incredible hints of the possibilities for life in the universe. Everywhere we look at extreme environments on Earth — undersea vents, frozen blocks of ice — we find hints of the incredible tenacity and resilience of living beings. The evidence for the formation of life on Earth suggests it got going early on and started or restarted under incredible duress, during or just after the Late-Heavy Bombardment. Looking at the planets surrounding us in the galaxy, we see numerous examples of worlds where life could exist, and are starting to find Earth-sized planets.

We know the numbers game pretty well. The Milky Way Galaxy holds at least 200 billion and perhaps as many as 400 billion stars (astronomers don’t know exactly how many because dwarf stars, which are numerous, are faint and difficult to see over large distances). We know of at least 125 billion galaxies in the universe. Let’s say, to a first approximation, some 50,000 billion billion star systems could exist in the universe — and recall that’s just the visible universe. That’s an incredibly large number of potential places for life to exist on planetary systems.

 Could we be the only civilization in the universe? It seems terribly difficult to believe. And yet we now know of only one world where life exists. The utter immensity of the distance scale of the universe does suggest that — although we may know of other civilizations — the sci-fi dreams of standing beside beings from another world, shaking their hands in Central Park, is not likely now or in the future. As Carl Sagan once said, the universe may be teeming with life, but it may be akin to two people on Earth, one in Australia and one in central North America. The two might live their entire lives without ever knowing the other existed.

 And all of these incredibly active areas of research cry out to have their stories told, to have us, the scientists, explorers, musicians, writers, artists, and celebrants of the cosmos as we know it, tell the accurate and realistic story of the universe to our fellow human beings. We can do it. We can overcome the incredibly loud static of society’s stream of nonsense, of the challenge of light pollution blotting out the stars, of a generation that teeters toward celebrating the trivial and not caring for the meaningful. But we must do it together. We can do it with our research, with magazines, with planetarium shows, with websites and online social media. With songs and concerts and everything else that strikes us not only intellectually but also, perhaps more importantly, emotionally.

Does the universe care about itself? Yes, we born of the cosmos do care. But many more of us on this planet need the realization of where we are and why we are here. It’s a message that can liberate us all and make us a great, forward moving civilization of the future.

We need all the firepower we can get. The stakes are high. Knowing and appreciating the universe and how it works is too important to let slip away.

As a friend of ours once wrote, this world has only one sweet moment set aside for us. That moment is now.

David J. Eicher is editor-in-chief of Astronomy magazine, the world’s largest publication on the subject. He is president of the Astronomy Foundation, the telescope industry’s first-ever trade association. He is author of 18 books on science and history, and at age 15 he founded a magazine on observing galaxies, clusters, and nebulae, Deep Sky Monthly. An avid observer of astronomical objects for more than 35 years, he was honored in 1990 by the International Astronomical Union with the naming of minor planet 3617 Eicher. He is an accomplished rock and blues drummer and plays with the Astronomy Blues Band.