© 2011 French-speaking Association of Readers of the Urantia Book
| The Year 1955, The Urantia Book….and the Poet | Le Lien Urantien — Issue 55 — Summer 2011 | Light 04-06 May 2011 (01) |
Twin sisters: There are billions of exo-Earths in our galaxy. Who will find the first?
Decoding: Who will discover the first habitable planet? The search for exoplanets has gone from a hobby to a competition where significant resources are involved
The news came as a bolt from the blue: an American team, Steven Vogt and Paul Butler, announced at the end of September that they had found another habitable planet, outside our solar system, around a star named Gliese 581. A star on which “there would be a 100% chance of finding life,” declared Steven Vogt. Crash: two weeks later, the team from the Geneva Observatory, which had itself announced the discovery of a planet in a habitable zone in 2007, took advantage of a symposium in Turin to claim that the observed object does not exist! Is the quest for “life elsewhere” heating up tempers in the scientific community? One thing is certain: the search for exoplanets has gone from a quasi-artisanal hobby to a competition where large resources are committed and with colossal scientific stakes.
More competitors but still two leagues
“In astrophysics, as in other sciences, there is competition that sometimes tends towards intellectual dishonesty,” comments Serge Brunier, a specialist in the popularization of astronomy, author of numerous works and contributor to the magazine Science & Vie. “Even if officially, all is well in the best of all possible worlds.”
The early years of the hunt for planets outside our system
The first exoplanet, their American competitors Paul Butler and Geoffrey Marcy had 65 stars in their sights. Beaten to the post by two “little Swiss”, they must be content to confirm the discovery. For ten years, the two groups will share the exoplanet market, counting their respective successes and multiplying, especially on the American side, the announcement effects.
The Geneva Observatory will stay one step ahead
“Things have changed over the past five years,” says Didier 'Queloz. "There is now an obvious desire for collaboration, driven by the fact that we need to pool our resources.
In addition, many new teams have emerged in the field. “From around fifty planet hunters in 1995, there are now more than 500, mainly in Europe and the United States. ”Certainly, admits Serge Brunier. But there is the Premier League and the others. Those who use the best technologies and those who do not have access to them."
Technological escalation to scrutinize the galaxy
Because fifteen years after the discovery of the first exoplanet, technology has evolved considerably. In addition to the development of ever more sophisticated terrestrial telescopes, such as the E-ELT (European Extremely Large Telescope) project in the Atacama Desert in Chile, it is in space that the competition is being played out with the launch of telescopes specifically designed for tracking exoplanets.
On the European side, the CoRot program, which began in 2007, scans the galaxy towards the constellations of Aquila and Licorne. On the American side, NASA responded with Kepler in 2009 to study the 156,000 stars in the constellation Cygnus. Its technological advantage is certain: more powerful, Kepler should bring back many more images than CoRot. “It is probably on the American side and Kepler that we will have the most important announcements in the coming months,” estimates Serge Brunier.
“Given the propensity for life to flourish wherever it can, I would say the probability that there is life on Gliese 581g is 100%” Steven Vogt, astrophysicist at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
“If there was an indication in our data allowing us to conclude the existence of Gliese 581g, we would have been able to find it” Francesco Pepe, astrophysicist at the Geneva Observatory.
“Science is anything but war. There are competitive aspects but more of the type found in the Olympic Games” Didier Queloz, astrophysicist at the Geneva Observatory.
Secret data and information warfare
Scientists say they are happy to share their information, but all the same, each camp generally keeps a privileged period of time to study the data from “their” instruments first.
Significant case: last June, a NASA commission authorized astronomers from the Kepler program to keep their data secret for six months longer than planned, until February 2011, which did not fail to raise some criticism from other American scientists. “The first astronomer who can prove the discovery of a planet similar to Earth will win a lot of prizes and esteem. It is logical that NASA would seek to have one of its missions find this famous planet,” defended Josh Huchra, chairman of the NASA commission, who had decided to grant this additional delay, in the New York Times in June. But this reserved time is perhaps also a guarantee of reliable information. Because in this climate of race for discovery, it is tempting to communicate at the slightest advance, even if it means making a mistake. On the European side, this tendency is described as “very American.” It is apparently directly linked to the system of obtaining credits for research: in the United States, without favorable media publicity, goodbye to funding. “When we discovered 51 Peg b, a Canadian scientist spent his time trying to prove that everything was false, says Didier Queloz. Consequence: the American team in Marcy saw its funding cut for two years.”
Life elsewhere, the issue that turns heads
In the meantime, on the NASA website the counter is ticking: 490 extrasolar planets discovered to date. The multiplication and especially the diversity of the stars revealed have already revolutionized planetology and cosmology. Starting with the fact that our solar system is not a model of planetary organization but a very limited sample of what constitutes the Universe. But the number is becoming less and less important. “Finding one planet or ten is not the main thing today,” notes Didier Queloz. What matters is to advance in the understanding of our Universe. Is our solar system unique? Are there lands elsewhere? Can life exist on these objects?" Life, the word is out. This is what ultimately motivates planet hunters and has fascinated Homo sapiens since the dawn of time. She explains that in 2007, the announcement by the Geneva team of the discovery of the first “habitable Earth” had the effect of a bomb. For a week, seven full-time researchers responded to journalists!
And the next step will be to agree on the criteria to qualify a super-Earth as habitable. First condition: that it be located at a distance from its star such that it is neither too hot nor too cold to allow the presence of liquid water on its surface. “These conditions alone are probably not sufficient,” recalled Michel Mayor in an interview with Science & Vie last January. “Complex debates are agitating the scientific community to define the conditions necessary for the appearance of life.”
Anne-Muriel Brouet Cathy Macherel/ 24 Hours newspaper
| The Year 1955, The Urantia Book….and the Poet | Le Lien Urantien — Issue 55 — Summer 2011 | Light 04-06 May 2011 (01) |