Did dinosaurs evolve on other worlds? Could we spot a planet with glowing organisms? Which nearby star systems are positioned to observe Earth passing in front of the sun?
These are just some of the questions that Lisa Kaltenegger has been happy to tackle. As founding director of the Carl Sagan Institute at Cornell University, she has pioneered interdisciplinary work on the origins of life on Earth and the hunt for signs of life, or biosignatures, elsewhere in the universe.
The new book by Dr. Kaltenegger’s “Alien Earths: The New Science of Planet Hunting in the Cosmos,” to be published April 16, chronicles her insights and adventures covering an idyllic childhood in Austria in her Cornell office, formerly owned by astronomer. Carl Sagan. She spoke with The New York Times about the intense public interest in extraterrestrials, the wisdom of trying to make contact with intelligent civilizations, and the strangest creatures she’s raised in her lab. This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.
You are looking for real aliens in the observable universe. How important is the diversity of people’s opinions and feelings about the search for extraterrestrial life to your research? Or it is UFOs and Sci-Fi ETs something to tune into?
For me, it’s an inspiration that so many people are excited. The other side of that coin is that we’re so close because we have the James Webb Space Telescope that can now look at these small planets that could potentially be like Earth. We no longer have to go with dubious or difficult-to-interpret evidence.
I wrote this book because I believe that many people may not be so aware of where we are right now and that we are living in this important period of history. We can all be a part of it.
How should people prepare for a possible detection of signs of something living in the atmosphere of a distant planet that is not like you see in the movies, which might be less satisfying?
If we were finding signs of life—any signs that we can’t explain by anything other than life—then that just means we live in a universe teeming with life, because we’re right on the verge of being able to find it. And it’s so hard, even with the best telescopes, so if we find something, that means there’s so much more to learn there. I’ll celebrate it, no matter what.
The title “Alien Earths” refers to alien worlds, but also past and future versions of Earth that are alien to us. What is a moment in Earth’s history that you would like to go to?
The moment and place where life began. Why is it such a mystery? The entire planet does not need to have conditions for life to begin. It could be a position somewhere. It could be an asteroid that hit with just the right speed and energy and mixed the chemicals on Earth just the right way. It could have been on an ice shell or in a shallow lake.
There is an overlap between the pioneers of the search for extraterrestrial civilization and the development of nuclear weapons. Do you think this kind of complex legacy has shaped expectations about the longevity of intelligent cultures?
Absolutely. I think buried in our search for life is the hope that if we find life everywhere, on planets bigger than us, that we will succeed. By definition, to be able to travel to the stars quickly or with propulsion that can take you very far, that same technology can destroy the world you live in and everyone in it.
The question that always comes up, and I think it’s a normal question, is: Will you have the wisdom to use this power for good or evil? That’s usually the story. Will you have the wisdom to survive this skill and this technology?
There is a heated debate about whether we should actively try to make contact with extraterrestrial life or whether we should just passively look for signs of it. Where did you come up with this question?
I was at a Vatican Observatory conference and I was actually the speaker after Stephen Hawking. Oh my god, right? Awesome. But it’s really interesting because he was one of the people who warned a lot about it.
We are two billion years too late to worry about that. Anyone who had looked at us for two billion years would know that there is life on this planet. Basically, the cat is out of the bag.
But I think it’s a very valid concern from a social science or sociology point of view, because we don’t want to do anything to scare people. It is worth asking ourselves the question: Are we all at the point where we would really like to communicate with other cultures? And what would we like to ask?
What inspired you to create it Carl Sagan Institute at Cornell?
I am an astronomer by training and worked on designing a mission to find signs of life in the universe. We were only looking at carbon copies of the modern Earth. But we know that the Earth has changed, so if we only look at this tiny part of Earth’s history, compared to its 4.6 billion years, we will miss new and future Earths.
To really answer the question of how our planet works, you need a network of many different parts and many different ways of life. The more diverse backgrounds you can get, the more ideas you can get and the more complex problems you can solve.
You have a lab where you grow microbes to inform the search for life. What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever grown?
A pink fungus. You have to be very careful with fungi because they spread like crazy. This is why I work with microbiologists. One of the microbiologists on my team says, “I’m not touching this and infecting all of Cornell with pink fungus.” Imagine that.
So you had to take special precautions to make sure this alien didn’t invade.
I just imagine a world overgrown with pink fungi.
You have posted a piny that simulated conditions analogous to the era of the dinosaurs on other worlds. How can we specifically search for alien dinosaurs? Because I want to find alien dinosaurs.
During the time of the dinosaurs, there was more oxygen and also more methane, and this allowed for these huge creatures. At least that’s the idea, right? More oxygen can actually make the creatures bigger, thus huge dinosaurs.
The fun part when I talked about this with my teammate, geologist Rebecca Payne, is that actually it could be a lot easier to find a dinosaur planet, to find “Jurassic World.”
Now the question is of course: Should they be dinosaurs? They could be really fun different kinds of organisms that don’t look like dinosaurs.
The realities of probability tell me that dinosaurs can probably only exist once and yet my heart won’t believe it.
We have 200 billion stars in our galaxy alone, and there are billions of galaxies. We have billions and billions of possibilities.
Let’s say we’re optimistic and say where life could begin, it does. This is an assumption: We have no idea if this is true. But maybe dinosaurs twice is actually an option.
