Five minutes with Dr Jill Tarter
Dr Jill Tarter is the director of the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute which was set up by NASA and is now privately run, a major contributor being Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. The mission of the SETI Institute is to explore, understand and explain the origin, nature and prevalence of life in the universe.
Dr Tarter provided the inspiration for Carl Sagan’s book Cosmos which was made into a film starring Jodie Foster. Carl Sagan was himself a director of SETI. She speaks to Andrea Malcolm.
Obviously you think there’s a possibility of extra terrestrial life. Why is that? Is it based on probability or do you have other reasons for thinking so?
“From what we currently know about the universe, life - even intelligent life - may exist elsewhere. That doesn’t mean that it does, that doesn’t say how probable it is, only that we have not found reasons to exclude the possibility. In the past two decades we have begun to discover planets orbiting other stars, and to appreciate extremophiles that live in environments once thought to be unsuitable for life. The universe today has the appearance of being more bio-friendly than it did when I was a graduate student, but we all know that appearances can be deceiving. There is no substitute for scientific exploration to answer this question.”
What would be the most likely first sign of life existing outside Earth? Would it be radio signals or something else? Do you ever come across inexplicable signals from space?
“We might detect a radio signal or a light pulse or some other evidence of an alien technology first, from which we would infer the existence of other technologists. Or our first indication of life on another world may come as the result of probes sent to Mars or Europa in search of microbes, or telescopes that will image terrestrial planets orbiting nearby stars and deduce that some sort of biology is producing the chemical disequilibrium indicated by the remote analysis of their atmospheres.
“In our SETI Institute observing projects, we have occasionally found interesting signals that at first appeared to be coming from a distant star - but in every case, we eventually were able to show that we had detected an unexpected bit of our own technology.”
New Zealand (through Auckland University of Technology) is currently working to become part of the world’s biggest telescope project ever, the Square Kilometre Array. The Square Kilometre Array project will create a telescope (effectively thousands of linked telescopes including two sited in New Zealand). How will the SKA help with this search? What is the reason for your visit to New Zealand? Is there any other way a small country like New Zealand could get involved?
“The SKA will have 100 times the collecting area of the Allen telescope array that the SETI institute and the University of California Berkeley are now building. Therefore it will be able to detect SETI signals that are 100 times fainter than those the Allen array can find, or find the same strength signals coming from 10 times farther away. It will be able to explore a much bigger portion of our own Milky Way galaxy for SETI and also do amazing science that we are just beginning to define. The SKA will be an international telescope whose construction can/should involve the whole world. I’m hopeful that the SKA will adopt an ‘open skies’ policy so that the very best scientific proposals for observing time get accepted, independent of the country from which they originated.
“This will allow for tests of general relativity within black holes, and enable scientists to explore the question of how the galaxy evolved, the possibility of extra solar planets and whether there is extraterrestrial intelligence. It will be sensitive enough to search for signals no stronger than those generated for television.”
How many people participate in SETI@home?
“SETI@home is run by UC Berkeley, so I haven’t looked lately. Last time I did look, more than 5 million people around the world had downloaded the screen saver and maybe 1/2 million were using it at any time.”
I understand you want to encourage more girls to become interested in science. How do you think this can be done? Do you have any advice for universities about how to recruit more girls into these areas of research? What percentage of SETI staff are women?
“We have a lot of women on the scientific staff of the SETI Institute. Among my small team doing SETI, there are now three of us - a big percentage! University is too late to try to recruit women into science - you have to start much younger, at age 8 or 9, by encouraging them, by not telling them that they cannot do science because of their gender, by incorporating different styles of learning in the classroom (one size never fits all) and particularly by impressing all young students about the importance of math - for any sort of science or engineering they might eventually decide to do. We lose women out of the science pipeline at the first opportunity they have to opt out of taking math classes - we need to encourage them to continue and find ways to make it more enjoyable and meaningful for all students.”
If you weren’t doing the job you’re in, what other job would you like to do?
“Hard question, since I think I have the best job in the world! An astronaut, an architect, or a movie director (do you have any idea how much cool technology, innovation, and intellectual effort actually goes into making a movie?) would be high on my list.”
Jill Tarter will give a public lecture at 4pm on Friday July 7th at WA220 lecture theatre, AUT University, 55 Wellesley Street, Auckland. Andrea Malcolm works for AUT.
Dr Tarter provided the inspiration for Carl Sagan’s book Cosmos which was made into a film starring Jodie Foster. Carl Sagan was himself a director of SETI. She speaks to Andrea Malcolm.
Obviously you think there’s a possibility of extra terrestrial life. Why is that? Is it based on probability or do you have other reasons for thinking so?
“From what we currently know about the universe, life - even intelligent life - may exist elsewhere. That doesn’t mean that it does, that doesn’t say how probable it is, only that we have not found reasons to exclude the possibility. In the past two decades we have begun to discover planets orbiting other stars, and to appreciate extremophiles that live in environments once thought to be unsuitable for life. The universe today has the appearance of being more bio-friendly than it did when I was a graduate student, but we all know that appearances can be deceiving. There is no substitute for scientific exploration to answer this question.”
What would be the most likely first sign of life existing outside Earth? Would it be radio signals or something else? Do you ever come across inexplicable signals from space?
“We might detect a radio signal or a light pulse or some other evidence of an alien technology first, from which we would infer the existence of other technologists. Or our first indication of life on another world may come as the result of probes sent to Mars or Europa in search of microbes, or telescopes that will image terrestrial planets orbiting nearby stars and deduce that some sort of biology is producing the chemical disequilibrium indicated by the remote analysis of their atmospheres.
“In our SETI Institute observing projects, we have occasionally found interesting signals that at first appeared to be coming from a distant star - but in every case, we eventually were able to show that we had detected an unexpected bit of our own technology.”
New Zealand (through Auckland University of Technology) is currently working to become part of the world’s biggest telescope project ever, the Square Kilometre Array. The Square Kilometre Array project will create a telescope (effectively thousands of linked telescopes including two sited in New Zealand). How will the SKA help with this search? What is the reason for your visit to New Zealand? Is there any other way a small country like New Zealand could get involved?
“The SKA will have 100 times the collecting area of the Allen telescope array that the SETI institute and the University of California Berkeley are now building. Therefore it will be able to detect SETI signals that are 100 times fainter than those the Allen array can find, or find the same strength signals coming from 10 times farther away. It will be able to explore a much bigger portion of our own Milky Way galaxy for SETI and also do amazing science that we are just beginning to define. The SKA will be an international telescope whose construction can/should involve the whole world. I’m hopeful that the SKA will adopt an ‘open skies’ policy so that the very best scientific proposals for observing time get accepted, independent of the country from which they originated.
“This will allow for tests of general relativity within black holes, and enable scientists to explore the question of how the galaxy evolved, the possibility of extra solar planets and whether there is extraterrestrial intelligence. It will be sensitive enough to search for signals no stronger than those generated for television.”
How many people participate in SETI@home?
“SETI@home is run by UC Berkeley, so I haven’t looked lately. Last time I did look, more than 5 million people around the world had downloaded the screen saver and maybe 1/2 million were using it at any time.”
I understand you want to encourage more girls to become interested in science. How do you think this can be done? Do you have any advice for universities about how to recruit more girls into these areas of research? What percentage of SETI staff are women?
“We have a lot of women on the scientific staff of the SETI Institute. Among my small team doing SETI, there are now three of us - a big percentage! University is too late to try to recruit women into science - you have to start much younger, at age 8 or 9, by encouraging them, by not telling them that they cannot do science because of their gender, by incorporating different styles of learning in the classroom (one size never fits all) and particularly by impressing all young students about the importance of math - for any sort of science or engineering they might eventually decide to do. We lose women out of the science pipeline at the first opportunity they have to opt out of taking math classes - we need to encourage them to continue and find ways to make it more enjoyable and meaningful for all students.”
If you weren’t doing the job you’re in, what other job would you like to do?
“Hard question, since I think I have the best job in the world! An astronaut, an architect, or a movie director (do you have any idea how much cool technology, innovation, and intellectual effort actually goes into making a movie?) would be high on my list.”
Jill Tarter will give a public lecture at 4pm on Friday July 7th at WA220 lecture theatre, AUT University, 55 Wellesley Street, Auckland. Andrea Malcolm works for AUT.
2 Comments:
Jill Tarter may not yet have found alien intelligence but she has supplied a new and useful word and a frightening concept.
'Extremophile': not in my dictionary but so useful. Hey, I love Rob: does that make me an extremophile?
As for receiving extraterrestrial TV: the new neighbours may be even worse than the old. But that is statistically unlikely so, carry on, Jill.
Hi John,
"Extremophile" is in fairly common useage in biology. There's a girl in my department who works on them (she's part of the Astrobiology unit, I kid you not).
Google for "Black smokers" for lots of that stuff.
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