KEPLER HAS DIED: BUT IT WAS NEVER NECESSARY ANYWAY

I have worked for NASA, and specifically at the Ames Research Center, on the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI).  In the 1970's one telling question was why bother with SETI when science had not yet confirmed even one planet outside our solar system.  So in 1976 NASA created Project Orion and brought together 19 faculty members from throughout the Nation to devise methods for detecting extrasolar planets.  Most the group worked together to design an interferometric system to indirectly find extrasolar planets.  I was given an opportunity to develop a direct method, called the Planetary Abstracting Trinterferometer (or PAT).  Click here for the full details.  I have thus followed this effort now for nearly 40 years.

I have been critical of the NASA extrasolar planetary search:

  1.  First, yes, sour grapes, but NASA ignored my proposal, deciding that the microwave band (wavelength from one mm to one meter--between infrared and radio waves) was the means by which aliens would communicate with us, and irrationally eliminated efforts at optical (visible spectrum, 390 to 700 nanometers, or violet to red) search frequencies:

for finding extrasolar planets.  They are unrelated.  Let me here editorialize that the choice of only measuring star wobbles or lucking out at seeing a diminution of light if a planet passes across a star (the Kepler method) was incredibly elementary.  The technique I advocated, through the guidance of  1974 Nobel Laureate Charles Townes (left), was a lot more sophisticated, based on planetary atmospheres lasing, resulting in discrete frequency peaks which could be detected and tracked in spite of the starlight.  Also, these frequencies would determine the atmospheric composition.  I had recently obtained a PhD, with my dissertation focused on tunable lasers, so I was well-programmed to explore this field.  I remain confounded that both NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) continue to base their searches on wobbles and transits.

  2.  In 2006, the ESA sent COROT (above) into space to search for extrasolar planets.  It succeeded.  Thus, I wondered why three years later the USA had to spend so much money on another spacecraft to do the same thing.  True, COROT suffered a computer failure late last year, but it was at the end of it's lifespan anyway.

  3.   In the early 70's, the extrasolar planet total was maybe one, perhaps something around Barnard's Star. Peter van de Kamp kept analyzing wobbles since 1938 for a quarter century, but, embarrassingly, was proven wrong, and key in this investigation was George Gatewood, who was an advisor for Project Orion.  Today, however, let us declare victory, for astroscience has found almost a thousand extrasolar planets. Kepler (right), though, has reported alone discovering 2700 extrasolar planets, so something is awry here.  These findings were used by the Center for Astrophysics to determine that there are at least 17 billion Earth-sized exoplanets just in our own Milky Way.  Then, there are at least 100 billion galaxies, so there no doubt there are a lot of Earths in the Goldilocks Zone in our Universe.  But is there any extraterrestrial life?

  4.  Oh yes, I did not quite say, yet, but Kepler,   NASA's extrasolar planet seeking spacecraft, is crippled, and probaly will die.  Technically, two of four reaction wheels (left) seized. The spacecraft is located too far away to fix.  The budget was $600 million.  However, the spacecraft successfully completed its primary 3 1/2 year mission.  NASA has the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (or Tess) planned for 2017.  But why?  What is to gain from finding another few billion more Earth-sized planets?  Let the European Space Agency send out GAIA later this year, then maybe even Darwin, a Rube Goldberg-like space system, and possibly PLATO in 2018, all to find extrasolar planets.  The mission has been accomplished.  We now know there are trillions of planets out there.  Let's get on with the real Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.  Where is Jodie Foster anyway?

I've never meet her, but Foster portrayed Jill Tarter, the Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI at the SETI Institute in Palo Alto.  Give her a lot more money.  I did work with Barney Oliver on the Orion Project.  He was a commanding figure.

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