Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Touring the Planets With Dava Sobel

Episode Date: October 31, 2005

Dava Sobel has just written The Planets. Not a drop of water on Jupiter's moon Io in Q and A, space headlines, and Mars comes close.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcription by CastingWords Frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan. You may know her by her previous bestsellers, Longitude and Galileo's Daughter. Now she takes us from Mercury to beyond Pluto in her lyrically written new book, The Planets. We'll visit with Deva Sobel in just a couple of minutes. Bruce Betts has his eyes on Mars as the red planet passes close to Earth once again. He also has exciting news about the new Planetary Society website. Well, we're excited. Speaking of news, by the time you hear this, JPL may have published the latest radar images of Saturn's moon, Titan. On October 28, the Cassini spacecraft flew right over the spot

where the Huygens probe touched down about 10 months ago. Background information is at planetary.org. The Mars rovers are moving on. Spirit is headed back down Husband Hill. That's where it got to take in a spectacular Martian vista. Around on the other side of the planet, Opportunity continues to prove that a rolling rover gathers no dust, or not much anyway. that a rolling rover gathers no dust, or not much anyway.

It's headed toward what lead scientist Steve Squires calls a particularly tasty-looking promontory. More info at planetary.org. But don't just read, for gosh sakes. Go outside and look at that big orange ball with your own eyes. There may only be two people in space right now, but they're celebrating. The International Space Station has had men and women floating around in it for a solid five years. Many members of past crews from around the world are also marking this anniversary. Whatever you may think of the ISS, doesn't this make you just a little bit proud to be human? You know, we don't

want to act all superior, but the chimps and the dolphins haven't even gotten their space station plans off the drawing board. Here's one important note for our podcast listeners. We hope we haven't thrown you for a loop. With the new website, we've also got a new address for the Planetary Radio podcast. It's www.planetary.org slash rss slash podcast dot xml. Sorry about that. We promise not to do it again for a long time. Emily's up next with the shocking news that there are no jacuzzis on Io, not one.

I'll be back with Deva Sobel in a minute. Hi, I'm Emily Lakdawalla with questions and answers. A listener asked, I heard that Io has much less ice than the other Galilean moons. Could that be due to its constantly erupting volcanoes? Io is indeed very different from the other large moons of Jupiter because it lacks water. A spectrometer sitting on Earth and pointed at these four worlds reveals that Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto are all covered with water ice.

But Io is incredibly dry, its surface having fewer than four parts per million of water. And it's also true that Io is the most volcanically active place in the solar system. At the rate its volcanoes erupt now, it could have completely recycled its entire interior dozens of times over the whole age of the solar system. Are Io's volcanism and its dryness related? Did its volcanism drive off all of its water, or was Io dry even when it first formed?

Stay tuned to Planetary Radio to find out. David, thank you for this, your second appearance on Planetary Radio. We had you on, what, a couple of years ago? Yes, yes, the night, the evening with Galileo and his daughter. That was such fun. It was very exciting. We even got to talk to Galileo. Galileo himself was there, yes. Well, you have continued to enjoy enormous and well-deserved success in your writing. Your latest work is what you're

on tour for right now. In fact, we're meeting in a meeting room kindly provided by the Regent Beverly Wilshire. They've set us up in this beautiful room for a conversation about a beautiful book, The Planets by Deva Sobel. It is a wonderful read. If I had no interest in astronomy, I would still have enjoyed this book because it is, it's just beautiful. Thank you. And every chapter takes a different approach. Yes.

Which makes it great fun, and we'll have to talk about that a little bit. But one of the recurring themes in this is poetry. Scientists who are discovered to be poets, poets who have a deep appreciation for the night sky and what's in it. Does this tell us a little bit about what you were about with this book? Yes, because I wanted to make the subject accessible to people who are really ignorant of the subject and perhaps even uninterested in it. And to make them feel at home, I looked for the planets in the everyday world, in mythology, science fiction, the days of the week.

They're everywhere. And that seemed to me to be the way in, especially since there's no way to talk about the planets in a continuous narrative. There isn't a storyline here. There isn't a storyline here. There isn't a particular hero. And so the approach that I came up with was to make it a collection of short stories, really. And so each planet has its own chapter and its own theme. own theme. Not one hero, but you found a series of heroes. Yes, absolutely. At least one of them inanimate. You have

one entire chapter from the viewpoint of a rock. Of the famous Mars rock who captured headlines in 1996. Yeah, that seemed a very science fiction thing to do in the spirit. Mars is the science fiction chapter because there's been

more science fiction written about Mars than about any other planet. So as I was reading about Mars or talking to today's planetary scientists about their work with the Spirit Rover, Mars Express, I was also reading a lot of science fiction. And with each of these chapters, there was a place where the two threads met. And so the way they met in this chapter was to have that rock be the narrator and tell about the planet and about the current status of exploration. It's a stretch, but it's fun, and I think it works. You stretch in other ways in other chapters. Before I even got the book, someone said,

you know, one chapter is written about astrology. And I thought, oh, really? Well, it's the chapter about Jupiter. And it turns out that it was extremely enjoyable, and I think you were having a little fun with us. I was having fun. I was also having grave doubts because I thought, It turns out that it was extremely enjoyable, and I think you were having a little fun with us. I was having fun. I was also having grave doubts because I thought if Carl Sagan knew that I was writing about astrology, what would he say?

You know, he was so good to me. But I really felt that to ignore it would be ridiculous, and especially since Galileo dabbled, he didn't believe it, but he certainly had to do it. And he had done his own chart. So it was irresistible to me to have an astrologer interpret his chart. I think I got a better feeling reading that chapter that followed this theme of astrology so closely, I got a better feeling for the intricacy of astrology. Oh, yes. I mean, what you read in the newspaper, you know, today if you're Capricorn, this will happen.

That is complete nonsense. But the lore of astrology is ancient and deep, and astronomy certainly grew up together with it. Kepler was also an astrologer. So it's wonderful to mine that and see how rich it was. And it was also fun, of course, to do the horoscope for the Galileo spacecraft. Oh, that's right. Of course.

I forgot. Yeah, which had right. Of course, I forgot. Yeah. Which had some very interesting points in it. For me personally, though, of course, I had the book read by numerous astronomers. And everyone who read the Jupiter chapter wound up making a note in the margin at some point that said something to the effect of, but how does it work, really? Which was, of course, an unanswerable question. Well, it is, as I said, it's great fun.

Yeah. And you do tie it beautifully to our history of discovery at the Jovian system. Yes. The book, we should say, is written, was published, obviously, after the Huygens probe arrived at Titan. Yes. So it's pretty current, although you do lament at the end of the book that you can't. I lament.

It cannot be. No book can really be current. But that's great because, again, the point of the book is to give people a way in, people who have felt barred from an understanding of the planets. This is the invitation because once you're interested, there's no shortage of information. Your website, NASA's website, the Hubble Telescope has a website, the European Space Agency. Once you want to know about the planets, you can have them 24 hours a day.

Easier now than ever before. Absolutely. I've got to mention at least one other chapter with a couple of heroes, our heroines, one astronomer writing to another. Yes, Uranus and Neptune. This was another risk I took. But it occurred to me that Caroline Herschel, who was William's sister and right arm in all of his work, that she really was present

at the creation. She had been with him at the discovery of Uranus and was still alive at the discovery of Neptune and still in touch with the world of astronomy. She had only the year before, she was in her 90s, but she had received a medal delivered to her by Baron von Humboldt. And so I thought she was a discoverer of seven or eight comets, and there was only one other woman in the world who had also discovered a comet, the young Mariah Mitchell in Nantucket. And I had a fantasy of Caroline writing to Mariah to congratulate her on the discovery of her comet, which was news, and being motivated to recount her own memories of the planetary discoveries, both of them.

And I just had great fun with it. It is a beautifully written chapter among beautifully written chapters. Thank you. And written very much in the style that you might have expected from this English woman to a fellow spirit. Right. A fellow spirit, but a young American. Fellow is the wrong word for it. No, no, it's fine. It's fine.

There is a memoir by Carolyn Herschel that was put together by one of her relatives, collected from her letters and things she said to the family. And it took me a long time to get hold of that book, but it was gratifying once I got it to find that I had her voice. I'll be right back to continue our conversation with Deva Sobel, author of The Planets. 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. We didn't just build it. We attempted to put that first solar sail in orbit, and we're going to try again. You can read about all our exciting projects and get the

latest space exploration news in depth at the Society's exciting and informative website, planetary.org. You can also preview our full color magazine, The Planetary Report. It's just one of our many member benefits. Want to learn more? Call us at 1-877-PLANETS.

That's toll-free, 1-877-752-6387. The Planetary Society, exploring new worlds. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. We continue our conversation with author Deva Sobel. The former New York Times science writer has added a new work to her stable of bestsellers, including Longitude and Galileo's Daughter. Each chapter in The Planets

considers a different region of the solar system, and each follows a different theme. Before the break, we were talking to her about the section that features two pioneering female astronomers. You also tell an anecdote about another woman, certainly not an astronomer, but a friend of yours, Carolyn.

I have what I hope will be a surprise finish for this story, but she has an interesting meal that you mentioned. Yes, she was given a sample of moon dust. Living near a university and having a boyfriend who was an astronomer analyzing moon rocks, he gave her some of the dust. And so she told me about this. I'm sure she knew I'd be interested. And before I could even see it, she ate it.

So to this day, I'm frustrated that she didn't wait. And maybe the saddest part is she didn't marry the astronomer. No, no, she didn't. They didn't last too much after that. Maybe that reaction had something to do with it. I really don't remember. I have to tell you about a story told to us by Kim Stanley Robinson, the great science fiction and speculative writer.

Yes, Red Mars, Blue Mars, Green Mars. Exactly, and you even mention him in the book. On this program, Kim Stanley Robinson told us about the night that he took the little bit of a Martian meteorite, much like the meteorite that narrates one of your chapters, ground it up, climbed up on the roof of his house, and ate it. So there's one for your friend, Carol. So there's more than one.

Apparently it's a subspecies of some kind of neurosis or a great appreciation of the universe. Somewhere between there, yeah. Do you have any other particular favorite chapters where you're particularly happy, I guess I'm trying to say, with how things came out as you worked your way to the outer reaches of the solar system? Yes. Well, I found myself feeling more and more isolated as I got farther out in space.

It was a strange experience. I really like the Pluto chapter. I think that worked particularly well. It's a little bit like asking me which of my children I like best. They all have something that took a lot of energy and thought. And we should say that chapter goes well beyond Pluto, out to the Kuiper Belt. Yes. You should say that chapter goes well beyond Pluto, out to the Kuiper Belt.

Yes. And you point out that the discovery of Pluto, we can probably thank poor old Percival Lowell and his canals as much as we can thank good, solid Midwestern Clyde Tombaugh. Exactly, exactly. Their lives were entwined by a series of circumstances. And I think people my age probably want to see Pluto remain a planet. That was the most frequently asked question I had while writing this book. How do you treat Pluto?

And the second most frequently asked question, actually there were only those two questions, how do you treat Pluto and do you listen to Holst while you're writing? And you do, of course, talk about that work. Yes. Yes, I do. And I found it fascinating that Holst actually did have a favorite planet, a favorite movement, and that was Saturn. We could talk endlessly about this book, which is an easy read and, as I said, a delightful read.

Probably my, if I had to pick a favorite chapter, it might be The Planeteers, the last one. Not because it's better written, but because it goes so far in doing what we hope this radio show also does by bringing these scientists right down to Earth and into their backyards. Exactly. I was privileged to be at a celebration when the Cassini spacecraft inserted itself into orbit without a hitch, flew through the rings of Saturn twice, and it was a thrilling

event. And all the people who worked so hard at it got to be at a party together and just cheer the moment. And made a Saturn out of, I forget what they made it out of. Yeah, they had an old tether ball, and they put some paper rings around it and hung it up in the driveway so people would know this is the house where the party's taking place. You said that you, as you got farther out in the solar system, got this increasing sense of isolation, and that kind of leads me to asking you to read a couple of paragraphs

that are right very close to the end of the book. Okay, this is the very end of the Pluto chapter. The outlying ancient debris distributes itself over such a distended area that the solar system's periphery is transparent as a crystal ball. Through the bubble of its outer boundary, we can see forever,

across the Milky Way home of our sun, into the other galaxies that twirl like pinwheels strewn across the universe, their many billion stars frothing with planets. Sometimes the stupefying view into deep space can send me burrowing like a small animal into the warm safety of Earth's nest. But just as often, I feel the universe pull me by the heart, offering in all its other Earths elsewhere

some larger community to belong to. Lovely. Thank you so much. Thank you. I will only add that the book has extensive notes, an extensive bibliography, and an extensive list of acknowledgments, the people that you salute in helping to create this work, and my pride in being able to say that a large number of those folks have also been guests on this show.

And it's been delightful to have you back. A lot of generous spirits in the planetary science community. The book is The Planets by Deva Sobel. She, of course, is also the author of Longitude and Galileo's Daughter. It has been published by Viking and I guess is available now

at your local bookstore and local online outfit. Dava, thanks very much for joining us. My pleasure. Dava Sobel on Planetary Radio. We'll be back with Q&A. Why does Io have no water on its surface in contrast to the other large moons of Jupiter?

A key clue lies on these other moons. Spectroscopic studies of Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto have proven that each of the moons has more water the farther it lies from Jupiter. It may surprise you to find out that of the four moons, Europa, with its subsurface oceans, has less water than Ganymede, which itself has less water than Callisto. This progression of less water at Io to more water out at Callisto has led researchers to assume that there was a temperature gradient in the nebula from which the Jupiter system formed. It would have been hottest near massive Jupiter and coldest far away from Jupiter.

In fact, current models for the formation of the Jupiter system suggest that it would have been hot enough where Io formed that water vapor could not condense into liquid or ice. As a result, from the date of its formation, Io probably never had any water. 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 on Planetary Radio.

We've got Bruce Betts here. He's the director of projects for the Planetary Society. He's got all kinds of great news for us, and it's not all happening up in the night sky this time. Hi, Matt. Yeah, and let's start out with that so I don't forget it. We've got a whole new, redesigned, beautiful, highly functional website that's just debuted. This has been, what, years in the making? Years in the making, about a year of real solid work on it,

and it's debuting right now. So planetary.org, you'll find all sorts of new ways to explore the solar system, more ways to participate in solar system exploration, much higher functionality, and you can look around and have fun. Are we charging admission now because this is so much improved? No, not yet. That's a really good idea. Can we do that?

Yeah. Micropayments. Oh, and for now, still no ads. So go to our website and, of course, Planetary Radio, a charming focus of the website. And I've seen a preview. It really is nice. I mean, it is a vast improvement. And it's just going to be really fun to navigate. And there will be lots of great content lots of cool stuff you know which may

have been there before but you had to dig for and i guess there'll be some new stuff too there is there's new stuff there's reorganization there's deeper content especially check out the explore section uh lots of good planetary information good stuff speaking of good stuff of course mars celebrating halloween look at, see orange and black together. For those out there celebrating Halloween. Yeah, Mars, really, really bright, of course, right at closest approach to the Earth at the end of October. It comes through these cycles about every two years,

every 26 months or so, and where the Earth and Mars grow closer. But because Mars has a pretty elliptical orbit, that distance changes. And, of course, two years ago was when we had the amazing encounter that was the closest in tens of thousands of years. Well, this is also a really good encounter, and it's higher up in the sky, which makes it even easier to see.

So go out there. If you can possibly look with a telescope, you might be able to see some light and dark markings, some polar caps. And it is the object to look at right now. Mars rising right around sunset, as it will have want to do around opposition when it's on the opposite side of Earth from the sun. And setting around dawn and looking brighter than any star in the sky. And appearing in the east and headed to the west as things, as they do. As they usually do.

Yeah, yeah. And in the west, right after the sun sets, you can also see Venus still looking like an incredibly bright star, even brighter than Mars, but without that spiffy, orangish hue. Hue. You can also see Saturn up high, rising around in the middle of the night in the east and then high before dawn. But right now, that focus is Mars.

Mars. On to this week in space history. Matt, I cannot believe how quickly time flies. It is that time of year again. What time? November 3, 1957, Sputnik 2 carried Laika, the first dog, first living creature for a little bit, to orbit. first living creature for a little bit to orbit.

Our respects go out to Laika, Sputnik 2, as the first creature in orbit. Our favorite pooch. Our favorite space pooch. But in the trivia contest, we're going to talk about some more space pooches. Really? With much happier endings. Oh, yeah, because we won't get into it. We'll wait until next year to give the true story of Laika again. Look it up, folks.

Stay tuned. It's not quite as humane a story as the Russians wanted us to believe. The Soviets wanted us to believe at first. But wait until next year. It's too depressing right now. Okay. Yeah, it's much better for even-numbered years. Yeah, right.

Happy story coming up soon. On to Random Space Fact! Io, moon of Jupiter. Its extensive volcanic activity is 100 times more active, 100 times greater than the volcanic activity on Earth. That sucker's just getting squeezed and mushed and making stuff come out. And this is a wonderful coordination with Q&A from Emily today. It's Io Day. Excellent.

Io's getting good coverage on Planetary Radio. All right. It's Io and Dog Day. It's a hot topic. It's a volcanic topic. It's a sulfurous topic. Okay. Moving on to the trivia contest, which I should have done even sooner, apparently.

We asked you, what is the largest number of people who have been in space at one time? How did we do, Matt? It was a crowd. It was a big crowd. And we had a crowd of people who entered. Our winner this time around, Rose Carpenter of Port St. John, Florida. Rose, we hope you came through the latest of the hurricanes well. And we're happy to tell you that you're our winner.

Rose let us know that from February 11, 1997 to February 21, 1997, there were 13 people in space at the same time. The missions were Discovery, the space shuttle, Mir, Soyuz TM-24, and Soyuz TM-25. We won't name all the names, but maybe we'll put them on the website. How's that? Okay. Thirteen people in space at once. Yeah. That's, you know, a lot compared to usual.

I think it's thrilling. Of course, someday it'll be 13,000 or 13 million, but it'll do for now. It's pretty good. Right now it's two. Yeah, that's right. On the space station. What's up for next week? Dogs, dogs and more dogs.

The happy story of the first dogs that came back successfully from space with a bunch of rodents that really ticked them off from all the squeaking while they were up there. Tell me, what were the names of the first two dogs to fly to space together and be safely returned to Earth? What were their names of the first two dogs to fly to space together and be safely returned to Earth? What were their names? Huh. Okay. Go to planetary.org slash radio, where you'll see our beautiful new pages,

and find out how to enter the contest and win a beautiful Planetary Radio t-shirt. You regulars, you can figure out the deadline, can't you? But I'll tell you anyway, especially for the newbies, it's Monday, October. It's Monday, November 6th at 2 p.m. Pacific time. Monday the 6th. Get those entries in to us. We'll make sure that you are considered for this newest space trivia contest on What's Up. We're done.

Excellent. I'm so happy. All right, everybody. Go out there. Look out in the night sky, and think about dogs barking. And why? Thank you, and good night. Woof.

Bruce Betts. I knew that was coming. Bruce Betts is the director of projects for the Planetary Society. He joins us every week here for What's Up. I never claimed to be a very good reader of calendars. I never claimed to be a very good reader of calendars. The deadline for the trivia contest is, of course, Monday, November 7 at 2 p.m. Pacific. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California. Back next time with more music of the spheres.

Have a great week. Thank you.