Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - A Visit With Sir Arthur C. Clarke

Episode Date: March 24, 2003

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This is Planetary Radio. Hello everyone, I'm Matt Kaplan. He is one of the most famous science fiction writers of all time. At 85, Arthur C. Clarke still lives and works in his beloved Sri Lanka. This week, Planetary Radio visits with Sir Arthur for a few precious minutes. We'll also get a quick SETI at Home update direct from Puerto Rico, where the project's chief scientist, Dan Wertheimer, is looking for E.T. with the world's largest telescope. Bruce Betts will be back with What's Up, along with a new trivia contest question.

First, though, let's break the ice with Emily. Europan ice, that is. I'll be back with Sir Arthur in just a minute. Hi, I'm Emily Lakdawalla with questions and answers. A listener asked, If a spacecraft lands on Europa, will the ice break? We gave this question to Bob Pappalardo, a planetary scientist at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

He acknowledged that here on Earth, walking on thin ice can be very dangerous. But there are some places on Earth, like the Arctic, where it's very cold all winter long. The Arctic Ocean can become so cold in winter that the ice freezes to several feet in thickness, and people can drive four-wheel drive vehicles from island to island over the strong ice crust. But with the arrival of summer, the ice thins and becomes unsafe for such heavy equipment. But unlike the Earth, Europa has no dry land. Its entire surface is covered with a 100-kilometer-thick layer of water, the outer part of which is frozen, with a liquid water ocean under the icy crust. Could we break

that crust by landing a spacecraft on it? Stay tuned to Planetary Radio to find out. We are extremely honored to be joined on the telephone by Sir Arthur C. Clark, who is speaking to us, or will be speaking to us, from his home in Sri Lanka. Sir Arthur, thanks very much for joining us on Planetary Radio. Nice to talk to you. A couple of your fellow advisory council members for the Planetary Society, Kim Stanley Robinson and David Brin, have been nominated for

a certain British science fiction award. We thought, well, let's bring them on the radio show, and then we thought, well, why not get the award's namesake? So here you are. I wonder, why did you decide to help this award get underway back in 1986? I haven't the faintest idea. Anything beyond last week. It's the late Jurassic to me.

And I'm involved in quite a number of awards, too, in science fact, science fiction, and elsewhere, but I'm very happy to have this one going. In fact, as I was doing research on the web, I found another Arthur C. Clarke Award, apparently that was just handed out for this year, something to do with engineering, so I guess you do have a few out there. Are you familiar with the nominees this year?

I don't really know what your continuing involvement is with that competition. Well, they just tell me what's happening, and I'm sorry to say that I do practically no reading now. I haven't read a novel, I think, for a year or so, and I don't see any of the science fiction magazines. All I do see is Locus, which keeps me up to date on what is happening in the science fiction field. And, of course, I do read the magazines like Discover, which is you up to date on what is happening in the science fiction field. And, of course, I do read the magazines like Discover, which is sitting on my desk at the moment, and Sky and Telescope and New Scientist.

So I'm fairly well in touch with the real science. We should say, though, that the fact that you're not reading other people's novels doesn't mean that you've stopped writing them. After we take a break in a few minutes, hope you'll you'll talk to us about your current project that's underway a very intriguing title the last theorem you do occupy an extremely distinguished uh spot in the world of science fiction well in the world really and i wonder when you hear from writers who came to the world of science fiction long after you did, people like David Brennan, Kim Stanley Robinson, I mean, do they treat you like sort of a living god or a mentor or just one of the guys?

Well, I hope they don't. I hope they treat me like an ordinary human being. But I'm sorry to say I haven't had any contact with anyone for a long time. I don't travel anymore. Occasionally, you know, friends come through Sri Lanka. But, you know, talking about the distinguished science fiction writers, I've got a long email about Stanislas Lem. Now, if Lem wrote in English, none of us would have had a chance.

I'm not familiar with his work. Has it been translated? Oh, yes, much of it has been translated. It's been filmed, Solaris, an extremely interesting film. Yes, although I do hear that the original Russian film was far superior to the recent American one. That's what I gather. I've seen Tarkovsky's film, the Russian one, but I haven't seen any films nowadays.

I get a few DVDs. I'm happy to say I've got the DVDs of Lord of the Rings, the first two out. I knew Tolkien quite well, well, fairly well, and I'm very pleased to see this extraordinary revival of interest in his work.

Tremendous success. Let me tell you one of my clearest memories of Tolkien. I was sitting next to him at lunch once, and he pointed to his editor at the end of the table, a very small man, and said, that's where I got the idea for The Hobbits. That's a great story. Well, that would make a whole other wonderful interview to do with you sometime.

I wonder about the other greats in science fiction, the people who were your contemporaries and colleagues, the Asimov and Heinlein and Bradbury, who, of course, is still with us. You do certainly have your place in that pantheon of the greats of science fiction of the 20th century and the 21st. Do you ever ponder that? I mean, these were your friends, weren't they?

Oh, yes. You know, one nice thing about the science fiction world, I don't recall any really bad enmities. We all seem, possibly because we were a beleaguered minority and had to stand together. I guess if you haven't read that much lately, it's difficult to talk to you about how science fiction has changed over the years, but certainly the character of science fiction has changed a great deal. Well, even the cyberpunk sort of novels are almost passe now. But a lot

has happened since the period that a lot of people still refer to as the Golden Age, when you and the others I mentioned were very active. Yes, and none of us are around now, but the extraordinary exception is Jack Williamson, who's just celebrating not his 75th birthday, but the 75th anniversary of his first published book. Oh, my. Mm-hmm. That's incredible.

You said you are reading Locus, so you are keeping somewhat abreast of what's happening in the science fiction world. Does it seem that it is as lively or as important as it was 30, 40 years ago? Well, it's changed, of course, because so much has happened that we discussed. Much of science fiction I grew up with is no ancient history in the real world. Well, the best of it, of course, still holds up very, very well, I can assure you. world. Well, the best of it, of course, still holds up very, very well, I can assure you. And of course, a lot of your stories have places very, very firmly ensconced in that group. I hate to ask such a cliche question, but before we leave this area of the science fiction of the

past and move on to what you're currently up to, one of those questions that I'm sure you've been asked something like 6.02 times 10 to the 23rd times. What among your works are your favorites? Well, I change from time to time. But the Songs of Distant Earth, I think, is the one I'm fondest of. Although my best is probably Childhood's End. It's what everybody tells me. And The City and the Stars, too, is that sort of trio.

I wouldn't say I'm fond of one more than the other. It's just, you know, my attitude changes from time to time. I suppose that the way most people who would not call themselves science fiction readers, the way that they know you the best, of course, is 2001, followed, at least on the screen, by 2010. And, of course, for those of us who've read them, a couple of other books. Are they also sort of up there in your estimation, or do you put them below the childhood? Oh, no, I'm very happy. I've just had an email from Stanley's brother-in-law, and they're planning to get...

Let me just check on the screen. Oh, it's switched off. Stanley Kubrick, of course. Yeah, they're digging up some old black-and-white footage that was made when we were making the film, and the BBC's going to do something on this. You know, I still have a popular science magazine from, must have been about 1967, with wonderful photographs of the sets that Stanley Kubrick built. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yes, there's a lot of tremendous amount of coverage,

and there's a book about it called Filming the Future. Look, I'd have to hang up now for a few minutes. Could you call me back in about ten minutes? Yes, I'd be happy to. We're going to take a break, and then we'll return in just a minute or so with Sir Arthur C. Clarke. This is Buzz Aldrin. When I walked on the moon, I knew it was just the beginning of humankind's great adventure in the solar system. That's why I'm a member of the Planetary Society, the world's largest space interest group. The Planetary Society is helping to explore Mars.

We're tracking near-Earth asteroids and comets. We sponsor the search for life on other worlds, and we're building the first-ever solar sail. You can learn about these adventures and exciting new discoveries from space exploration in The Planetary Report. The Planetary Report is the Society's full-color magazine. It's just one of many member benefits.

You can learn more by calling 1-877-PLANETS. That's toll-free, 1-877-752-6387. And you can catch up on space exploration news and developments at our exciting and informative website, PlanetarySociety.org. The Planetary Society, exploring new worlds. Planetary Radio continues with our very special guest. On the phone from his home in Sri Lanka is Sir Arthur C. Clark. Sir Arthur, I was hoping that, as I said at the beginning, if we could talk for a couple

of minutes. I know you're very busy. We only have a few more that we can speak. But if we could hear a little bit about what you're up to now. You did send email making some very intriguing comments about the new novel you're working on. Well, I'm always glad to get a commercial. The novel is called The Last Theorem,

and it's about really Fermat's theorem, which baffled mathematicians for 300 years. It is one of the simplest things you can imagine. Everybody knows the relationship that two squares can be added together to give a third square. The best example is three two squares can be added together to give a third square. The best example is, you know, three squared plus four squared equals five squared, okay? And the problem is, does this happen for any higher powers? Can you have, you know, two cubes adding up to a third cube? And there seems to be no obvious reason why this shouldn't happen

since there's an infinite number, you infinite number of squares that do this. Well, Fermat himself, about 300 years ago, said he found a wonderful proof that no such relationships could exist, but it was too big to go in the margin of this book. And for 300 years, mathematicians have been trying to find this proof. And in the last decade, a young Englishman, Andrew Wiles, did discover a proof. His proof is about 150 pages long. So obviously it couldn't have been the proof that Fermat said he'd got. Anyway, it's a great mystery, and

my novel, which takes place in, which opens in Ceylon, it's Sri Lanka, which is unusual for my novels, you said in space, it begins here in Sri Lanka, but ends up on Mars, and

there's a a young Tamil mathematician who finds a simple proof of Fermat's last theorem. And I've written about a quarter of it now, and that's my main project, the last theorem. You know, I do remember one other novel of yours in which Sri Lanka played a very important part, and it's a concept that you've been very excited about for many years, the space elevator. Yes, that is now taken more and more seriously,

particularly since we have the material C60, carbon-60, which would make it possible. And here's an amazing coincidence, which I've mentioned many times already when I recorded the Founders of Paradise on an old 12 inch record you remember them?

well the one thing about those records there was a lot of room in the back for sleeve notes and the sleeve notes with a picture of the elevator were done by Buckminster Fuller himself. Oh, no kidding. And he never lived to see the discovery of the material named after him that would make

it possible. Isn't that an extraordinary thing? That absolutely is. Of course, the material will be a C-60, also known as Fullerines. Exactly, exactly. That is a nice lead into what maybe can be the last topic that we'll pick up in this short conversation.

The last time we spoke, which was during the Planetary Society's Planet Fest in 1999, I closed by asking you, since you have some success as a futurist and visionary, I wondered where you would point to,

what you would have us watch for something that might be truly revolutionary. And at that time you said, keep an eye on what's happening with vacuum energy, that odd quantum effect. I wondered, do you have any other thoughts you might want to add to that? I still take that quite seriously and think we should keep an eye on it. We're pretty sure the energy is there whether it can be tapped is another question whether it should be tapped is yet another i'm always fond of quoting i think it's larry niven i'm not quite sure who said that the supernovae are industrial accidents well i hope it's not an inevitable result of civilization.

I trust not. We should let you go. I know that you have many things going on. Would you like to hazard a guess as to when, if all goes well, this new novel, The Last Theorem, might be available to your readers? Oh dear.

Well, certainly in the coming year. I hope, in fact, by about a year from now, it all goes well. I hope to finish it this year, but, of course, the publishing schedules, you know, will determine it. Incidentally, the thing I'm also most involved with now, and I see the new Discover magazine, which I've not opened yet, has got a headline on the subject, Martian life.

I'm now fairly convinced, as a result of the extraordinary images coming from the Mars orbital camera, that Mars doesn't harbor life. It's infested. I certainly hope you're right. Well, I'm not sure. We may be in trouble when we land. Well, that's, I suppose, in one way, the kind of trouble you'd want. We were, in fact, talking about that on this show just a couple of weeks ago,

and, in fact, talking about SETI in just the previous program. It's an interesting time to be alive and watching the world of science, isn't it? Well, one of my chapter headings in New York is that old Chinese curse, may you live in interesting times. Which I think is a good corollary to any sufficiently advanced technology as indistinguishable from magic. Arthur C. Clarke, thank you so much for taking a few minutes to join us here on Planetary Radio. We wish you

continued great success, particularly with that new novel that we'll be looking forward to. Thank you very much. Good luck. Take care and good morning for where you are. Thank you. Arthur C. Clarke has joined us on Planetary Radio and we will continue in just a minute.

Hi, I'm Emily Lakdawalla, back with Q&A. Would a spacecraft landing on Europa break through its ice? The answer is no, at least not intentionally. Europa is much, much colder than any place on Earth. The surface temperature averages minus 160 degrees Celsius. At this temperature, the icy surface of Europa is frozen as hard as rock for 5 or 10, possibly even 20 kilometers down into the planet. Of course, it's the liquid part of Europa that scientists are most interested in, because the highly salty, relatively warm ocean on Europa is one place in the solar system that

could harbor life. How can we study the ocean if it's buried underneath 10 kilometers of rock-like ice? Luckily for us, Europa, like the Earth, has local variety in its geology. On Earth, there are places, called volcanoes, where rising plumes of warm rock bring stuff up from the depths to erupt onto the surface. Similarly, there are places on Europa where rising plumes of warm ice

come close to the surface. Landing our spacecraft near one of those places might give us a glimpse of stuff from Europa's watery insides. Got a question about the universe? Send it to us at planetaryradio at planetary.org and you may hear it answered by a leading space scientist or expert. Be sure to provide your name and how to pronounce it, and tell us where you're from. And now, here's Matt with more Planetary Radio.

We found ourselves with a couple of extra minutes here on Planetary Radio, so we thought we'd place a call to Dan Wertheimer, our main guest of last week's show. Dan, the chief scientist of the SETI at Home project, who we are now speaking to in Puerto Rico at the Arecibo dish, the largest telescope on Earth. Dan, how's it going there? Well, it's going fine. We've observed a number of our candidates. We have gotten a lot of data that we're going to take back to Berkeley to analyze and to send to the city-at-home participants.

We don't know if we've found ET yet. We're going to be observing more on Monday. We've got delayed a little bit. Can you talk about what happened? There was a solar flare, we hear. We were supposed to be observing right now, but we were bumped by some other astronomers here. This is a very unusual thing. It only happens every couple of years.

It's an event called a coronal mass ejection, where the sun sends off a huge amount of material that's actually coming towards the Earth and takes a couple of days to get here. And when it does, it might disrupt communications. It certainly changes a lot of things in the upper atmosphere, and that's what they're studying, and that's why they needed to bump us. But we're going to get the time back. They just moved everybody who was going to use the telescope for the last few days and delayed their observations.

So we'll still get to observe the city-at-home candidates. And you get a couple of extra days in a beautiful part of Puerto Rico. It's great to be here. It's a really lovely place. The people are just incredibly friendly, and it's a really interesting place to be because there are so many fascinating people to talk to. In the observation time that you've had so far, has everything gone well, all the equipment working well? That's right.

We've had four different instruments that have been running simultaneously, and so far everything's gone well. There are a couple of things that we went back and looked at because we thought we might have seen a little weak signal on the screen, but it didn't turn out to be anything, probably just interference. We've been able to look at about 100 candidates so far, and we hope to do at least another 50 candidates on Monday. And I remember you told us last week that some of the data

you're actually able to review in real time, although, as you said a moment ago, a lot of it you'll be bringing back. In fact, a lot of it you'll be parceling out to those 4 million SETI at home users. That's right. While we are observing, we do a cursory look at the data. It's not a very thorough look. We have various instruments which can display how strong the signals are at different frequencies, and we can get an idea, especially if the signal is strong and it's not very complicated,

we'll know right away if we've got something interesting. We do that because if we do find something interesting, then we will stop what we're doing, not go on to the next candidate source and try to figure out what we found. And I take it that hasn't happened yet, anyway. No, we had one false alarm where we said, eh, maybe that's interesting. It turned out to be a noise spike. Well, we'll wish you continued success there when you get back to the instruments on Monday, and we'll look forward to checking in again.

Okay, thanks for calling. Thank you, Dan, very much. Dan Wertheimer is the chief scientist for the SETI at Home project, and we spoke to him at the Arecibo telescope, the largest telescope in the world in Puerto Rico. Bruce Betts is on the phone, ready to bring us another edition of What's Up. Bruce, where are you reporting from this week? Well, in a related note to our earlier interview, I'm reporting from Middle Earth. I'm actually with a group of hobbits who are fascinated by planetary exploration. Apparently, it's due to their furry feet. And they resent the Arthur C. Clarke telling people that Tolkien came up with them on his own,

from his own imagination, after seeing his tiny editor. Yes, they resent that enormously and clearly feel, well, no, it's not true. Well, we issue an on-air apology to all of our beloved listeners in Middle Earth. Bruce, what's up? Well, in our Earth, you can see some pretty planets up in the sky. You can see Jupiter in particular in the early evening looks straight up really bright. You can also see Saturn sort of up above Orion, and it will set by the later evening. And in the morning, Venus, extremely bright in the east-southeast, and on March 28th, you can see the crescent moon to the right of Venus,

or Venus to the left of the crescent moon. And Mars is also out there in the early morning, but fairly dim and reddish and to the right of Venus. Now, what we also have is a marginally visible comet. Comet Jules Hoversome is visible in the northern hemisphere right now, both at dusk and at dawn, but it's not very easy to see. So in perfect conditions, you might see it naked eye as a fuzzy patch. With binoculars looking in the right place, you will see it as a fuzzy patch. But you need to look in the right place.

It is moving. It will be easier to see in the dawn now and especially in the next week or two for the northern hemisphere, and then in two or three or four weeks, the southern hemisphere will pick it up. If you want to look where it is i think that you gotta find uh... actual coordinates on a website it is a somewhat trickier object report but since we don't get the comments too often uh... putting out there one site for example if you can't help go fight

can't help dot com as coordinates where you can get this guy this is pretty exciting always is when the comet comes by, even if it's not terribly impressive or highly visible. This one, as is traditional, right, is named after its two discoverers? It is, and it's interesting. One is in the United States, one's in Brazil, and they were collaborating via the Internet.

And so this is the first time this one has been identified? Yes. Well, we'll have to keep an eye out for this. It's still on its way in toward the sun, so this might get a little brighter? Yes, although it gets closest to the sun in roughly mid-April. Okay, well, we'll probably revisit this subject and revisit this new visitor to the solar system. What's next, Bruce? This week in space history, March 29, 1974,

Mariner 10 became the first spacecraft to fly by Mercury. A few years from now, we'll have the next spacecraft at Mercury. Kind of a long way in between, but this at least will be a nice one, right? It's going to go into orbit, I think? Yes, the MESSENGER spacecraft will go into orbit around Mercury with a very full complement of instruments and teach us all sorts of stuff and show us the half of Mercury

that we've never seen from a spacecraft. Shall we move on to Random Space Fact? I was just going to ask if I need to put my finger on the echo button, and fortunately we were right there. Good job. What is this week's Random Space Fact? Well, I thought tied to our comet that's sort of visible in the sky, we have a random space fact about comets.

Comet tails point away from the sun at all times. Thus, when a comet is moving away from the sun, its tail is actually leading the comet. Comet tails are caused by dust and gas being lost from the comet and then pushed away from the sun by the solar wind, and then also by radiation pressure from the sun. So both sources from the sun, and so the tail is always stretching away from the sun. So this is not out of some bizarre form of religious respect by the comet for the sun. Not that we know of. We better move on very quickly.

Let's go to the trivia contest. All right, last week's trivia question, how many Earths could fit inside Jupiter based on volume, answering to the nearest hundred? And it turns out that because Jupiter is a big ball of gas, it's a little hard to define where it ends.

If you were out there searching on the internet or in books, you can find different answers for how big Jupiter is. So it turns out to not be as obvious a question as you would think, but roughly 1,300 or 1,400, and we accepted both answers for this purpose as being correct, Earth would fit inside Jupiter. So really, the big point to take away is Jupiter is really big. We had 15 or 16 correct answers, that is, people who responded with either 1,300 or 1,400 Earths. And there were a few people who said 1,000, which is, I guess, the number that you and

I both grew up with, Bruce. Yeah, it's just a simple thing. The order of magnitude, to use techie terms, the order of magnitude answer is 1,000, and the order of magnitude answer for how many Earths fit inside the Sun is a million, and therefore how many Jupiters inside the Sun is 1,000, and the magnitude answer for how many Earths fit inside the Sun is a million, and therefore how many Jupiters inside the Sun is 1,000. But if you really do the numbers, it comes out even more Earths inside Jupiter. And we did say to the nearest hundred, we did have one listener who shall go mercifully unidentified, who said 12 Earths, which was probably a guess, I would say.

which was probably a guess, I would say. But we also had this answer of 1,400 from Darlene Wright in Boone, North Carolina. Darlene, you are this week's winner. Your entry chosen randomly from all the correct answers. You will receive that T-shirt, Carl Sagan Memorial Station T-shirt, in the mail from the Planetary Society. Congratulations. Congratulations. Congratulations.

For this week's trivia question, who discovered Saturn's moon, Titan? Hmm. I have no idea. Don't tell me. All right. Okay. Discover of Saturn's moon, Titan.

How can people enter the contest? Go to planetary.org, follow the links to Planetary Radio, and it will tell you how to enter our contest. We better scoot out of here, and besides, you've probably got angry hobbits who want you to get back to the negotiating table there. So we'll talk to you again next week. That sounds good. And remember, when you look up in the sky, think about the word squeegee once in a while.

Thank you, and good night. And good night to you. Bruce Betts, the Director of of projects for the Planetary Society who joins us each week here on Planetary Radio next week join us for a lively conversation with David Brin and Kim Stanley Robinson contemporary science fiction writers whose names are almost as well known as Arthur C. Clarke's

and that's appropriate since they've both been nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Fiction. Thanks very much for listening. Would you let us know how you like the show? Write to planetaryradio at planetary.org. And don't forget that all of our past programs can be heard on the web at planetary.org. Matt Kaplan here wishing you a great week.