Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Going South to Look for ET

Episode Date: June 25, 2007

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Going south to look for E.T. this week on Planetary Radio. Hi everyone, welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final frontier, and this week to Argentina. I'm Matt Kaplan. to the Final Frontier, and this week to Argentina. I'm Matt Kaplan. Our guest is the director of Southern SETI, the only continuous search for extraterrestrial intelligence in the Southern Hemisphere. Guillermo Lemarchand will tell us why his project is uniquely exciting.

Bruce Betts is searching for a unique mineral called armacholite. You'll hear what he has dug up in this week's exciting installment of What's Up. And Emily Laktawalla will be along shortly with a great new space Q&A segment. We can only spare a few moments for space news led by the return to Earth of Space Shuttle Atlantis. The crew made a safe landing on Friday at Edwards Air Force Base in the Southern California desert. Passenger Sunita Williams ended her nearly 195 days in space aboard the International Space Station. How does spacecraft manage to take beautiful pictures in near total darkness? Emily wants to shed some light on that subject.

Here she is. I'll be back in a minute with Guillermo Lamarchand. With Guillermo Lamarchand. Hi, I'm Emily Lakdawalla with questions and answers. A listener asked, How can Cassini take good pictures at Saturn when it's so far from the Sun? Isn't it too dark? It's true that a camera optimized for lighting conditions on Earth would have a tough time in the Saturn system. Saturn is almost 10 times farther from the Sun than Earth is, which means that the Sun is about

a hundred times weaker there. Fortunately, Cassini's engineers planned for the low light levels at Saturn, and the camera is quite sensitive enough to take excellent pictures with relatively short exposures, even in this hundred times weaker sunlight. In fact, Cassini's camera is so sensitive that it doesn't need direct sunlight to take pictures. With longer exposures, Cassini can see a lot of detail on the night sides of Saturn's moons when they're lit by sunlight reflected off of Saturn. Cassini is not the most sensitive planetary camera out there. New Horizons' camera has to be optimized for lighting conditions at Pluto

that are well over a thousand times dimmer than they are at Earth. New Horizons' camera is so sensitive that when it passed by Jupiter earlier this year, many objects in the Jupiter system were too bright for it to look at. Of course, spacecraft that head toward the Sun have the opposite problem. Stay tuned to Planetary Radio to find out more. Guillermo Lemarchand began his personal search for extraterrestrial intelligence while still a physics student at the University of Buenos Aires. That was 21 years ago when he and some other students convinced the Argentine Institute of Radio Astronomy to let them have some time on the Institute's radio telescopes. Their primitive receiving equipment would soon be replaced by some of the most advanced in the world. Now he is preparing for

another upgrade, one that will vastly improve his ability to pick out a signal that will once and for all tell us we are not alone. He recently spoke to me via Skype. Guillermo, thank you so much for joining us on Planetary Radio. You're in Buenos Aires as we speak? Yes, I am now at Buenos Aires City. The observatory is 45 kilometers south from the city. And that's where you are the director of the Southern SETI project, using these two 30-meter dishes?

That's correct. Since 1990, the Planetary Society is sponsoring the first Southern Hemisphere SETI sky survey, and we have been performing this search all over these 17 years. I've been performing this search all over these 17 years. This is a very significant thing, as I've read recently, a very excellent article by my colleague Amir Alexander on the Planetary Society website. And we'll provide a link to that February article that describes in great detail your operation. But you have certain advantages working in the southern hemisphere as part of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. And I guess a part of this is that you regularly have an excellent view of a part of the sky with far more stars than we can see in the northern hemisphere. That's correct for the fact that the Milky Way, the center of the Milky Way, is just over our heads.

The center of the Milky Way, if you are looking with a radio telescope that has an angular resolution, in our case of 30 minutes of arc degree, you are able to observe simultaneously, if you point your antenna to the center of the galaxy, something close to 100 million stars in only one beam. So that is a great advantage because in the northern hemisphere, you don't have that opportunity because you cannot see the total part of the galactic plane

where most of the stars are. So something like 100 times as many stars at any point within that plane that you may point your telescope. Yes, but let me say that a few of the telescopes that are installed in the northern hemisphere have also the opportunity to observe the galactic center. But because it is very low through the horizon, you have a lot of natural interference generated by the temperature of the observation from the northern hemisphere when you look at the galactic center are very low because of the noise that you get in those observations. In our case, in our particular case, the galactic center is almost at the zenith of the sky, at the central part of the sky during several parts of the year. And so just like with optical astronomy, the higher the object you're looking at is in the sky, the better off you are.

Yes, that's correct. But the second advantage that we have is that we have two telescopes, and one of them is dedicated half of the total time for SETI projects. I didn't know that. That means at least 12 hours a day we have the opportunity to use our telescope to perform SETI observations. And that is a real advantage considering that it is very difficult to obtain observation time in other radioastronomical facilities around the world. That's a tremendous advantage where only a tiny percentage of time on many of the major instruments in the northern hemisphere is available for SETI. In spite of this, you have been held back maybe too strong a term,

but certainly you've been somewhat handicapped by the aging electronics, the receiving equipment and signal discernment equipment that you have there. But I guess toward the end of this year, you're looking at a major upgrade in the so-called back end of your SETI search. That's correct. In 1989, almost 20 years ago, the Planetary Society helped us to build a twin version of the backend that were operating at those days at Harvard that was called the Meta Project. In 1990, one year later, we dedicated the first high-resolution spectrometer for making SETI research in the Southern Hemisphere. For the first time in history, there were two telescopes, one at Harvard and the second one near Buenos Aires, performing SETI research with an extraordinary extraordinary high resolution in frequency. That was done from 1990 to 1995. That was the date when the spectrometer at Harvard was changed

for a second generation called the Beta System that was also built with the sponsorship of the Planetary Society. But in our case, we were performing observation over all these years with the same spectrometer that was an 8.4 million channel analyzer with a spectral resolution of 0.05 hertz. That was an extraordinary resolution. Now, again, with the sponsorship of the Planetary Society, we are planning to build, by the end of this year, a new spectrometer to replace this Meta 2 spectrometer that will have 256 million channel analyzers that will expand our bandwidth observation, instantaneous observation bandwidth, that means all the frequencies that you can observe at the same time with a factor of 600.

That is a major, a major improvement. It certainly is. And when you talk about 256 channels simultaneously, I'm sorry, 256 million channels simultaneously. Each of those one hertz wide. Yes, because when we started with the meta project that has 0.05 hertz resolution, we thought that at that time that it was possible to detect those narrow band artificial signals.

But during these years, there were several theoretical studies that showed us that the turbulence that is within the interstellar media, this turbulence, the physical term is scintillations, disturb the hypothetical narrowband signal, making it more broader. So in that way, we don't expect any artificial signal below 1 Hz of Narrowband. I don't know. My English was not, my phrases were not correct. I think you're doing an excellent job. So obviously this improvement is critical to the detection of these hypothetical artificial signals coming from other civilizations. That's correct.

The advantage is that with this new spectrometer, we have other possibilities. we were unable to detect very weak signals because the design of the spectrometer doesn't allow us to observe the same point in the sky for more than 20 seconds. If you are able to collect for more time photons that came from the same region of the sky, you have the possibility to improve signal-noise ratio and to detect more weak signals, okay?

Weaker signals. Yes. With this new spectrometer, we will have that opportunity, too. So, at the same time that we are making SETI observation, probably we will have the opportunity to make some serendipitous discoveries within astronomical frameworks. That's Guillermo Lemarchand. We'll hear more from the director of Southern SETI in one minute when Planetary Radio returns. Hey, hey, Bill Nye the Science Guy here.

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The Planetary Society, exploring new worlds. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan. Guillermo Le Marchand directs Southern SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, based near Buenos Aires at the Argentine Institute of Radio Astronomy, or IAR. Guillermo, before we run out of time, I want to talk about something else that you're doing as part of the Southern SETI search, and that is use of these natural cosmic masers, which do for microwave radio radiation what lasers do for light, that they may actually amplify the signal coming from an alien civilization. That's correct. It is a tremendous advantage.

Let's say that a typical astronomical laser has the possibility to amplify a signal with a factor of 10 to the 7 to 10 to the 11. So we are talking about an amplification factor between 100 million and 10 billion. You can be detected if you send a weak signal at the same resonant frequency of the maser, of the astronomical maser, througher, of the astronomical maser, through the direction of that astronomical maser, you can be detected from any part of the galaxy. Not bad in terms of gain, as you talk about. Yes, yes, yes.

And these are really just clouds of interstellar gas. Yes, yes. Most of them are clouds of interstellar gas, and some of them are circumstellar mes that they might very much be expected to use these to add this enormous amplification to their systems, to their signals. Not only the amplification. In this way, you will know the exact frequency at which you should search, and you will also know at which place in the sky you should aim your antenna. will also know at which place in the sky you should aim your antenna.

So you are combining a place in the sky, the position of the astronomical maser, with a specific frequency to search for an extraterrestrial signal, that is, the resonant frequency of the natural astronomical maser, with the amplification factor that gives you to send a signal through that astronomical measure. That is a combination of three unknowns in only one search. That is the real advantage of performing this kind of experiments. We can do that because we have the possibility to use the antenna at least 12 hours a day. And that gives us the opportunity to move the antenna to a particular region of the sky and to observe that particular region of the sky for several hours.

Other observatories that are using the 7-Dip mode of observation have not the opportunity to move the antenna to a particular region of the sky. They are observing and getting information from the sky while other astronomical observations are performed. Yeah, they're piggybacking on other observations. Exactly. That's correct. I want to go back to something I mentioned in your introduction, which is that you began this something like 20 years ago as a student. And here you are this many years later, still directing this program, still searching for that signal that so far as we know, no one has yet found. Are you still as excited about this effort as ever? Yes. The problem is I invest probably 90% of my career in this project

without the possibility of obtaining any positive result. But I think that in the meantime, you learn a lot about what you expect from other civilizations. And in trying to think about that, you are learning about ourselves. You are learning about the history of the humanity, what things should the humanity change in the future, what we know about the universe, and what we don't know about the universe. That is, I think, the most important teaching of doing this kind of project.

Very well said. I want to congratulate you on what you are accomplishing there. And I would love to check back with you when this new receiver, based on the Serendip 5 built by Dan Wertheimer's team at UC Berkeley, when that is up and running, which you said to me might be early in 2008, sometime in 2008? Sometime in 2008. It depends on a lot of factors because we will start building it at the end of this year, and it will take some months to do that, and then some months to send that equipment to Argentina, and some time to install it into the observatory. Sometime between May and July of next year we'll be in operation.

Then we will plan to talk to you in about a year when you achieve the SETI equivalent of first light. Well, we can do that, and if we do it before, I call you. Excellent. Thank you very much. Well, we can do that, and if we do it before, I call you. Excellent. Thank you very much. Guillermo Lemarchand is a physicist in Argentina where he is the director of the Southern SETI Search at that facility operated by the Argentine Institute of Radio Astronomy just outside of Buenos Aires. We will be right back with Bruce Betts for this week's edition of What's Up

after a return visit from Emily. I'm Emily Lakdawalla back with Q&A. When we send cameras to the outer solar system, the cameras are designed to be supremely sensitive in order to capture beautiful scenes lit by a much dimmer and more distant sun. Cameras that go to the inner solar system don't need to be so sensitive. MESSENGER, which is headed to Mercury, will enjoy lighting that's almost seven times brighter than at Earth. However, being so much closer to the sun creates a different problem.

Seven times more light comes along with seven times more heat. All of MESSENGER's instruments and electronics are shielded from the Sun by a reflective sunshade bolted to one side of the spacecraft. As it studies Venus and Mercury, MESSENGER must always keep its instruments protected under that parasol. Without it, MESSENGER would quickly overheat and the mission would be over. Got a question about the universe? Send it to us at planetaryradio at planetary.org. And now here's Matt with more Planetary Radio.

Time for What's Up with our genuine planetary scientist. He's certified. He's ready to go. Bruce Betts is here, the director of projects for the Planetary Society. Hello. It's true. They make planetary scientists register now. No matter where you're living, they don't want to make this kind of a dangerous location in Pasadena. Planets don't kill planets. Planetary scientists do. Hey, only with good cause.

But anyway, that's taking us on a very strange digression. Let us talk about the night sky, shall we? And, of course, this will be my last chance, at least for some of our listeners, to promote the, what do you call it? The Great Conjunction. Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. Yes, the evenings of June 30th and July 1st, Saturn and Venus will be conjuncting. They will be snuggling. They will be nearby in the sky.

If you look to the west, you cannot miss Venus still. Venus, by the way, will start working lower over the coming weeks and months after hanging out pretty high up for Venus recently. So bright. It's the so bright, can't miss it, brightest star-like object up there in the west. Saturn is closing in on it before that date coming from above, and we'll be getting within a degree of Venus on those two evenings.

And if you follow a line between the two, you will go up to Regulus, the brightest star in Leo, where Saturn has been hanging out. And so, again, I encourage you, if you want to take pictures with those spiffy foregrounds or otherwise and email them to us, we may give you a prize. Or we may not.

Or we may post them. Or we may not. It's all very exciting. We want funny stuff. Well, something in the foreground. Yeah, it could be majestic. It could be, you know, Grand Canyon. Pyramid, Grand Canyon. I was going to say not to be outdone, but it is outdone. But Jupiter is over on the other side of the sky, over in the east, and is the brightest star-like object over there in the early evening. And Mars

finally, you know, kind of working its way up in the sky slowly in the pre-dawn sky over there in the east. And it'll head towards its opposition in a few months. So that's what's going on in the sky. Let's go on to this week in space history. Ten years ago, the spacecraft NEAR, Shoemaker NEAR, flew past the asteroid Matilda on its way to Eros. So it gave us our only looks at asteroid Matilda on its way to Eros. So it gave us our only looks at asteroid Matilda. We had in 1971, a sad fact, the three-person crew of Soyuz 11 died during re-entry from an air leak.

They were the first successful docking with the first space station, Salyut 1, but an air leak killed them before re-entry. And that was Vladislav Volkov, Georgi Dobrovolsky, and Viktor Potseyev. In 1908, speaking of doom and destruction, Tunguska event. 99 years ago we had a big

airburst. Big bang. Big airburst. Fortunately over Siberia, but leveled forest over huge areas from this near-earth object that got a little too near Earth and blew up. So coming up on the 100th anniversary next year of the Tunguska event. Random Space Fact! I go back for some what I thought were interesting space facts about the Soyuz 11 tragedy.

U.S. astronaut Tom Stafford was a pallbearer. Is that right? I never heard that before. Well, that's what I'm here for. What a nice thing. And I'm not going to stop there. They, as with every space tragedy, people learn and move on.

The Soyuz spacecraft was extensively designed after this incident. They then only carried two cosmonauts for many years. So they had more room for a safety stuff and more significantly more room so they could wear pressure suits for launch and re-entry. Sounds similar to what the U S learned the hard way. 15 years later, they came out with a new Soyuz,

the Soyuz T in 1980, which freed up enough space for three cosmonauts to wear spacesuits. There you go. All right, we move on to the trivia contest. We ask you, for whom the mineral armalkalite was named? Hey, that wasn't bad, was it? You did very well there on the pronunciation. So how did we do with the listeners?

It was great. It was great. Everybody figured it out. And we're going to mention the winner first. But you also asked if anybody could get humorous about this. We didn't have too many. There were just a couple of things, but it turns out that the funniest thing about our Miracle Light is unintentional. But first, the winner, Andrew Boyle, who says it was named after the crew of Apollo 11. It squishes the names of Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins. And Andrew says,

I find that downright cool. Well, we hope, Andrew, that you're going to find your t-shirt downright cool, because we're going to send you a planetary radio one. And a very nice job of accentuating the syllables and the astronaut names. Now, here's the funniest one. I thought this was pretty cute. This is from Kevin Thoma, who lives in Marburg, Germany. Kevin said that he got it right, of course. Everybody got it right. Neil Armstrong, Aldrin Collins. He said the ite, I-T-E, was probably added to make it sound more minerally. It's a technical minerally term. I like that. All right, but here's the best one. And we did get this from a couple of people. This one happens to be from George Baker, who provided all kinds of information.

People send us enormous amounts of information about the questions. You had said last week that this mineral was first found there on the moon, but then later on Earth. Do you know where it was found on Earth? It was found in Jimmy Carter's closet. No, no. Then I do not know. Well, not until later. Not until later.

Okay. Okay, four places on Earth, three of which are pretty funny. One of them, South Africa, in Kimberlites on South Africa. Kimber. Okay. Who lives down in deepest, we're in Kimberlites on South Africa. Kimber. Okay. Who lives down in deepest, darkest Africa? Kimberlite. Okay.

It was funny. Okay. Okay. You ready? No, you're funny. Here's one. Pripyat Swell. Pripyat Swell.

Wow. It's in the Ukraine. You're Pripyat Swell. Thank you so much. In Traki Basel. Traki Basel. Traki Basild. Whatever. Well done.

Okay. You ready? Here's one that's really good. Disco Island. Disco Island? Yes. Everything's trapped in the late 70s? I guess that's where they all went.

I guess it's off Greenland. Disco Island. Okay. And here it is. The number one place to find our Marcolite on Earth, Smokey Butt, Garfield County, Montana, in lamproite dikes and plugs. Well, there you go. Who knew?

Who knew there was such interesting? I got nothing. And what an honor for the Apollo 11 astronauts. It's true. They will be forever known in Smokey Butt. Smokey Butt? Smokey Butte, I'm sure, but it's enhanced for your listening pleasure. Okay.

You're having a little fun with us there. Let's go to another trivia contest and do something a little different here. This is not just Google it and find the answer. This applies some I don't know what. Some kind of skill. Or at least some time. What space shuttle mission patch of course the space shuttle just having been up

What space shuttle mission patch is most similar to the current Planetary Society logo? A little comparative shopping. So check out the current Planetary Society logo. Okay. A little comparative shopping. Yeah. So check out the current Planetary Society logo. It's been our logo for a few years now.

And compare it to space shuttle patches. And I thought it was pretty obvious and straightforward. We'll see what the listeners think. And go to planetary.org slash radio to send us your entry. Going to make you work for this one. You've got until July 2nd, Monday, July 2 at 2 p.m. to get us that answer. And of course, the funny stuff made us go really long. So say goodnight. Goodnight.

Thank you, everyone. Go out there, look up in the night sky and think about Suede. Suede? Suede. What's up with Suede? I can't come up with anything that's up with Suede. He's Bruce Betts, the director of Projects for the Planetary Society. He joins us every week here for What's Up.

Nice hush puppies. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California. Have a great week, everyone. Thank you.