It seems as if man has always looked to the skies, and not just for answers to its own inherent mystery, either.  We told stories about the pictures we seemed to see in the stars.  We believed that close study of the positions of the celestial bodies could predict future events.  The night sky showed the homes and areas of influence of a whole flock of deities.  The more we could see, the more intriguing became the sight.

On October 2, 1608, application was made for a patent for a device which allowed “for seeing things far away as if they were nearby“.  Before that there was a rich history of men using lenses, mirrors, even rock crystals to see things far away as if they were nearby.  Aristophanes mentions the use of a “burning glass” (convex glass – a magnifying lens) in his 424 BCE play “The Clouds”.

Emblemata of zinne-werck, Johan de Brune 1624

Telescopes advanced through the centuries (the original had about a 3X magnification), first by stacking lenses together to create more powerful magnification, or variations of the same general idea (as with aerial telescopes).  There were reflecting telescopes (using parabolic mirrors), achromatic refracting telescopes (using different types of lenses to form a refracting telescope with a twist), giant reflecting telescopes like the Leviathan of Parsonstown, and adaptive optics, like those used on the Gemini telescopes.  You remember us talking about adaptive optics, right?  That’s where your telescope is, essentially, wearing glasses.

Woodcut 140 ft Johann Hevelius telescope, ca 1673

The twentieth century, beginning about 1931, ushered in radio astronomy and radio telescopes.  Arecibo and the Very Large Array are radio telescopes.  In addition to radio astronomy, we’ve had advancements with the light spectrum telescopes; the infrared, far infrared, ultraviolet, X-ray, and gamma ray telescopes.  Out of advances in these modern telescopes comes the hulking astronomical interferometer, in which an array of telescopes thousands of kilometers distant takes the shape of a single parabolic lens.  The Fast Fourier Transform telescope is an interferometer.

In a class by themselves are the space telescopes like the Hubble and the soon-to-be-launched James Webb telescope.  Space telescopes (or observatories) have the advantage of not having to work around and with the distortions caused by Earth’s atmosphere.  In addition, space based astronomy has a much wider range of frequencies with which to work.  X-ray astronomy is nearly impossible from the Earth, while infrared and ultraviolet are significantly limited.

NASA STS-82, Hubble Space Telescope

We’ve come a long way from being gobsmacked by a 3X magnification.  As advances in telescope design and technique continue exponentially, there is no telling what (or who) we’ll see in the telescopes of the future.  Imagine if Galileo and Newton could have had access to modern telescopes.

Imagine what the Newtons of tomorrow will discover.

For his post subject, Bill gave me the opportunity to pick a famous astronomer and do a “thumbnail” bio on him/her.  I’m going to take a bit of literary license here and talk about the astronomer I most admire.

The astronomer I most admire isn’t famous, for one thing.  He doesn’t get any recognition for his work.  He doesn’t even get paid for it; he does it for love of the science.

Yeah, like THAT'S going to stop us! Image found at sodahead.com

He is a scientist, really.  If you tell him, “The paint’s wet.”, chances are he’ll touch it.  Just to see if it’s really wet… and how wet.  He listens to the ideas of others; not just to be polite, but because he’s truly interested.  If the idea sounds like a load of equine offal, he’ll point that out.  It doesn’t matter if the purveyor of the equine offal is an astrophysicist with four or five PhD’s.  If it’s offal, my hero will say it’s offal.  And he’ll keep saying it, until someone can prove to him that the load of equine offal is, in fact, solid gold.

The astronomer I most respect has a regular job, and he puts in his hours there so he can provide for his family.  He’s still waiting to buy that telescope he wants.  He almost had it last year, but then he found out his daughter needed braces.  Maybe next year.

Image found at funnyanimatedemoticons.com

My guy wasn’t formally trained in astronomy.  Oh, he had the bare bones minimum they teach in public schools in order to kick you up to the next grade, but that was it.  What he did was start reading and learning on his own.  He found a fascination for astronomy; a love, a passion for the cosmos.  When he googles “star” on his computer, he’s looking for Epsilon Eridani, not Angelina Jolie.  He knows that Betelgeuse was a  star long before Michael Keaton’s claim for fame.

He argues passionately and intelligently about things like quasars and pulsars because it matters to him.

There you have it:  A thumbnail sketch of my favorite astronomer/scientist.  Now, you all know I really like Newton, Einstein, Galileo… the list goes on and on.  Still, my favorite scientist, the one I respect above and beyond all the others, is the one sitting at home (or work) reading this right now.  He’s tired.  He’s shouldering the responsibility of his family, and when he gets a few free moments he learns something new about the science he passionately loves.  He’s my hero.

The scientist I most admire and respect is you.

Wait!  Come back!  This isn’t nearly as confusing as it sounds.  You’ll have this down cold in five minutes.  Really.

Okay, let’s say astronomers have just found a planet circling a star 50 light years away from us.  That’s not too much of a stretch; that’s the distance 51 Pegasi b sits out from the Earth.  Anyway, back to our new planet.  Our scientists announce that the planet has hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen in its atmosphere.

Emission spectrum of Hydrogen

Emission spectrum of Iron

Cool!

Wait… what?

How did they do that?  How do they know what’s in a planet’s atmosphere, short of going there and taking a good, solid sniff?  For that matter, how do they even know for certain the planet has an atmosphere?  It takes some serious equipment to be able to find the planet, much less its atmosphere.

(Absorption lines in the Solar Spectrum)

You know how these planets are being discovered, right?  One very good way is to study the light intensity of a star and watch for little dips in the level which would signify something passing between you and the light source, blocking out part of the light you see.  Bingo.  Once a planet has been found, you watch the light as it passes close to your object, and if there is an atmosphere there, it will change the “tone”, or “quality” of light you’re perceiving.  Just a tiny bit… but enough.  That’s spectrophotometry; the image and comparison of various spectra for scientific analysis.

The concept itself isn’t difficult to master, once you get beyond the formidable name.  You know that light passing through water looks different depending on what’s in the water.  Well, an atmosphere is nothing really except an extremely… puffy… fluid.

Diagram by Kevin Saff - this shows how carbon in the environment impacts carbon levels in the atmosphere

Now, you know that every element has its own “signature” on the light spectrum, right?  We have applications for that in every day science here on Earth.  You’re especially familiar with the concept if you follow forensics.  That’s how you tell whether or not your victim has traces of arsenic in his/her body; arsenic has its own “signature” on the light spectrum based on what’s absorbing or reflecting light.

You take this tiny bit of light that’s passed through the atmosphere of your distant planet, separate it out (like the way a prism separates out visible light), and you have the signature of everything that’s in your planet’s atmosphere.  It’s as easy as if we were reading a list of ingredients; in fact, that’s in essence exactly what we are doing.

The science doesn’t stop here, of course.  If we knew that certain life forms (like… ours, maybe?) leave chemical “markers” on the atmosphere, markers that are there only in the presence of this particular life form; and then we find those markers in the atmosphere of another planet…

… wow.

When I was going to school, way back in the dark ages, matter was easily defined;  it was something that had mass and occupied space.  It could be quantified.  Weighed.  Measured.  Touched (if there was enough of it, and it wasn’t too hot or cold).  It had volume.  It existed in three states until I got to college the first time, then the schools were talking plasma.  It could be changed, but it existed in the same amounts at all times.  We were pretty sure we had a handle on matter.

That old, familiar image of the atom. This one was hanging out in PhotoBucket.

We didn’t.  By the time I went through college the second time (yeah, yeah… I never figured out what I wanted to be when I grew up), I had to re-take all those old undergraduate science classes because it was a whole new world.  Matter is a lot stranger, more dynamic, than originally thought.

The states of matter, the very strangeness of matter itself, works itself into thought proofs dealing with the eventual end (or not) of the universe.  A very (very) simplistic overview of the universe is that space and time exploded into being about 13.75 billion years ago in an event known popularly as “The Big Bang”.  Since the Big Bang the universe has been expanding out in all directions, and while the rate of expansion has varied, the average has shown a fairly constant rate of increase.  Finally, that the universe will eventually end in either a “Big Crunch”, or a dismal “Big Chill”.

I like Douglas Adams’ (author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) hypothesis; the universe will eventually end in an event known as “The Gnab Gib”.  A “gnab gib” event is the opposite of a “big bang” event.  Of course.

Diagram of the ergosphere around a rotating black hole, where the influence on nearby matter is expressed. Image by Messer Woland, some rights reserved.

Anyway; matter.  A good example of how our perceptions of the universe have changed would be antimatter.  The ideal of “negative” matter has been kicked around since at least the 1880′s as a staple of the vortex theory of gravity.  This particular model needed a fourth dimension from which originated the negative matter.  Now we know that antimatter doesn’t originate in another dimension, but is a state of ordinary matter.

As we learn more about the universe around us, we realize that very little is “ordinary” or commonplace.  It seems as though the unusual is the “ordinary”.  We know that as the universe expands outward, the inflation is accelerating instead of slowing down, as we expected…

…you know what?  Very little is quite what we expected, when you get right down to it.  It seems we have set our expectations very low.  There is more to consider in the commonplace than first imagined.  One facet of the action of the universe, i.e. its accelerating expansion, presents us with enough mystery to keep us here for a week.  Consider that not only is the universe expanding along its “borders” (if it could be said to have such a thing), it is also expanding within itself.  Faster and faster.

Given another decade or so, what is currently science fiction may very well be commonplace.  The ideal is both frightening and exhilarating, just like everything else in the universe.

This is the generation we discovered that other stars have planets.  That planet systems are, in fact, common in the cosmos.  That’s been proven, it’s no longer a “theory”.  Now we’re on the hunt for Earth-like exoplanets, and of course, the discovery of life on another planet.  We’re all hoping to find Mr. Spock, but more than likely our first true discovery will be something like pond scum in our own solar system.  Yes, right here.

NASA artist rendering of Earth-like exoplanet

The Kepler Mission is specifically designed to search out Earth-like planets (along with studying the diversity of planetary systems as a whole).  We’re finding all kinds of interesting planets out there; fascinating systems, places we never expected to find planets.  Now, we’re finding planets in these places that may be able to support life as we know it.  The variety of planet types is staggering.  In our solar system alone we have rocky terrestrial planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars), the gas giants (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune), then a handful of dwarf planets, or “plutoids”… in honor of Pluto.  We also are finding extremely interesting moons which may support life (Europa and Titan, for example).  How about life on Mars?  It’s looking good for critters in liquid water under the surface, especially at the poles.  That’s a tasty variety, just in one solar system.  There are billions out there.

Artist impression of a Carbon planet - by Lyuten, released to public domain

Okay, here are the types of exoplanets we’ve found to date:  Hot Jupiters, Hot Neptunes, Eccentric Jupiters, Pulsar planets, Goldilocks planets, Chthonian planets (they’re not sure about this one, but it’s a mess), Ocean planets, Carbon planets, Iron planets, Helium planets, and another mess called a Coreless planet.  We have Super Earths, Ocean Earths, more dwarf planets, Exiled planets of various flavors, and Silicon planets.  I think that’s it.  Exhausting, isn’t it?

ESO impression of Carot-7b, this hot mess is believed to be a Chthonian planet

What about verified (or almost verified) Earth-like planets?  There are six scientists are looking at now:  Gliese 581e, Gliese 581g, Kepler 10b, Kepler 11f, HD 142b, and Hd 17092b.  I think Gliese 581g is the current sweetheart of the group, believed to have the highest probability of liquid water, oxygen in its atmosphere, and sitting in the Goldilocks zone of its red dwarf parent star.  I know!  Isn’t that cool?  The jury is still out as more and more information on the planet becomes available.

NASA/JPL-CalTech, these are the planets around HR8799

Scientists have been playing around with thought proofs on what type of life may have evolved on these different planets, and there are lots of interesting programs on the Discovery Channel and the Science Channel.  Some have made it to YouTube, like this one, which is 90 minutes and very interesting.

One thing I’ve been interested in for years is what will happen when we discover life on another planet?  Let’s say we discover microbes on Mars tomorrow.  What will happen?  Do you think everybody will just go about their daily lives and really not think about it?  Or, let’s say my favorite astronomer Seth Shostak at SETI announces that they’ve verified a signal from an alien civilization.  Do you think that would have an impact on religion, the economy (i.e., would we suddenly put more funds into space exploration?), or the way we view our “destiny”?

Let me know what you think.