Earthly type

Raise your hand if you have come across at least one material in the last six months - the news on the tape, the repost of the link in the social network, anything with the words “ nasa ”, “exoplanet” and “extraterrestrial life”. Raise your second hand if, looking at this material, you didn’t doubt at least for a second: is it definitely NASA , and not some kind of society of pure flying plates? Is it exactly what it is written there about the inevitable and imminent discovery of the living outside the Earth was not invented by the press secretary of the institute and/or a journalist who were not taken to the scriptwriters of “secret materials”?

Surrender to the topic of exoplanetary research and astrobiology is easy. In the past 25 years, with the detection of the first planets in other stars, the number of news reasons in this area is only growing: the number of confirmed exoplanets from the Kepler orbital telescope has exceeded a thousand, and the number of candidate objects in four thousand. The headlines about the planets, twins, cousins ​​of the Earth are greeted either by enthusiastic “photos from space telescopes” (a little slower, guys, before that is still very far away-while these are all illustrations of NASA artists), or the question “What, again?”

And leading scientists in this area, from Sarah Sieger in MIT to Ellen Stophan, the main thing in science ( Chief Scientist ) in NASA , we are sure that convincing evidence of the existence of life outside the Earth will be found somewhere in this growing pile of exoplanets for the next 10-20 years. That is, over a quarter of a century, the phrase “Life on other planets” made a conditional cultural path from freaks with circles in the fields and the film “Alien” to a half -million “Grant for geniuses” from the MacArthur Foundation for the same Sieger in 2013.

Healthy skepticism about doubles is clear. And in the world of reposts about “secret planets threatening the Earth” is necessary. But today, unlike the previous twenty centuries, the question of life outside the solar system, it seems, can really finally be discussed without giggling, channels on Mars, close contacts of the third degree and tabloid headlines. And with notes with small prints, which are not two orders of magnitude more than the reasoning themselves.

The French zoologist Edmond Perry, already being a respected invertebrate specialist, wrote a small book about what life on other planets in 1911, if we proceed from the fact that we know about these same planets and about life on Earth. First of all, he was interested in Mars, which was then considered the “planet of flowers and butterflies” (description of the scientist himself), but, in principle, nothing prevented him from applying the same logic to any other world. Recognizing that there is no experimental confirmation of his hypotheses and is not expected, Perme nevertheless wrote in his book: “No one forbids dreams.”

Even the glory and honor in the zoology of invertebrates certainly did not save the perrier from the skeptically raised eyebrows from readers. Even when other worlds were already found, humanity did not believe in exoplanets immediately: NASA rejected the project of the Kepler telescope four times for the serial search for exoplanets before finishing it in 2001. But now, even those who call on the media and society to patience and warn from excessive optimism, agree: this optimism has already resulted in a massive influx of young scientists into this area and space research in general, as well as in new technologies.

There are no general statistics on the growth of masters and graduate students in exoplanetary studies yet, but there is something like a private one: in the first lesson of an advanced course in Harvard, where new facilities-candidates for exoplanets are looking for homework as homework, we did not have enough chairs.

The Fermi paradox can be formulated as follows: if there are so many opportunities for life in space, then where is this life? Why doesn't he call, doesn’t he write?

All this will bring its results (it is more correct to say not “if”, but “when”). The leading universities of the planet are ready to put the reputation and money for this: Cornell, for example, on Saturday, May 9, solemnly opened his own Institute for Pale Blue Dots , "Institute of Pale blue points."

As for the name, the organizers were a little checked and already on the Saturday conference announced that the institute would be named after Karl Sagan (which was probably inevitable). The American astronomer and one of the great popularizers of science, who, according to his own confessions of the audience, almost crawled owed the idea to go to scientists, worked just in Cornell . In 1990, at the insistence of Sagan, the Voyager-1 probe took a picture of the Earth from a record distance of almost 6 billion kilometers . The planet on it looks like a tiny dust suspended in the rays of the film projector; In his book, Sagan will later write that this pale blue point is our only house and everything that happened to us fits on it.

Of course, the creation of an interdisciplinary institution of future analogues of the Earth at a time when such analogues are still far ahead, may seem prosperity. Still, if the optimism of scientists who achieve financing their work could be used as fuel, we would have already drank tea on Mars. There is no news in the fact that humanity is inclined to look at real and see the desired.

And our obsession with our own cosmic loneliness is obvious: any solid collection of scientific articles on the history of astrobiology begins, as expected, with Levkippa, Democritus and Aristotle. One of the first, the term “astrobiology” was used by Gabriel Adrinovich Tikhov, a graduate of Moscow State University , a contemporary of Edmon Perry, who in 1947 founded the Department of Astobotanics at the Observatory in Alma-Ata. (Interestingly, Tikhov, who studied the so-called ash light of the moon, in 1914 correctly concluded that the earth for an observer in space will be pale blue-pale blue, Karl!)

The NASA Consulting Council for Bionauks announced the search for extraterrestrial life of one of the agency’s key tasks in January 1960 - even before Gagarin’s flight, and the first symposium in the United States on this problem was completely held in Arizona four months before the satellite. UFO, life on Mars, spaceships flying behind the comet Elenin, and almost all science fiction was already remembered - it is clear that we really, really want to know if anyone else is alive.

Karl Sagan died in 1996, at the head of the exoplanetary era: then no one realized that the number of planets in the Milky Way is most likely measured by billions. Nevertheless, the Sagan was already convinced that the Earth and the solar system as a whole-in general, is not that unique and unique snowflakes, on the contrary: we live "on an insignificant planet of an ordinary star on the outskirts of a galaxy hidden in a far corner of the Universe."

The results of Kepler suggest that, albeit with some reservations, this is a fairly fair assessment. As William Boroki and Natalie Batalya from the Eims NASA research center, this telescope, created specifically in order to understand how common in the Earth -type planet, said at the Saturday conference, fulfilled its task by 100 percent (if they knew about 146 percent, I would be sure that this would have formulated this this way).

The telescope eventually turned out to be able to find not only planets, but also entire planetary systems: here, for example, Kepler 11 eyes (and ears) of an astrophysicist from Harvard Alex Parker. The scientist took all the passage of six planets registered by Kepler on the star of the star and for each assigned the height of the sound and volume depending on the radius of the orbit and the size of the planet. It turned out, without exaggeration, cosmic music .

In the first lesson of an advanced course at Harvard, where new objects - candidates for exoplanets are looking for a homework as a homework, we did not have enough chairs for everyone.

In the field of view of Kepler, only one small piece of the sky falls - a quarter of a percent of the heavenly sphere, and in addition it gives out inevitably distorted statistics: first of all, those planets that are easily detected by the transit method , by changing the luminosity of the star when passing the planet before its disk. Small (like earth) planets, which are not too close to their star - and just such are primarily interested in us - they do not belong to those.

From this, firstly, it follows that today of all the planets known to humanity, the most common, so-called mini-neptins-which are no more than 10 times heavier than land-are not represented at all in the solar system. Literally-they are “there”, and there are many of them, but we somehow did not get such planets “here”. Secondly, since we well understand the restrictions of our own tools, we can look at the observed distribution of Kepler exoplanets and approximately predict their real distribution-and then it turns out that the most just we need objects. Namely: according to the results of joint research of Kepler and the observatory of the KEK of the planet of earthly sizes, in the coarse approximation suitable for the emergence and existence of life, there are somewhere in every fifth star of the Milky Way that looks like our sun.

That is, looking at a dark night in a clear field at the starry sky (if you are so lucky that you have where to escape from city light pollution), you almost certainly see the nearest such sun-2. Naked eye. Now.

Kepler, scientists emphasize, in fact, barely lifted the curtain. If everything works out, then the next generation’s instruments will already look for it, first of all, the orbital “James Webb” and its “gunner”, which will replace his “Kepler”, Tess ( Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite ) , as well as terrestrial telescopes, for example, in Chile and Hawaii. The main thing in the bright future that these tools promise us is information about the composition of the atmosphere of exoplanets suitable for life.

And here we return to the same "convincing evidence of the existence of life outside the Earth." If the so-called Biosignature is confident in the atmosphere of any planet. Gases - gases, which, according to our ideas, can be there only because of life that we know her - the dream of Edmon Perry, Gabriel Adrianovich Tikhov, Karl Sagan and hundreds of millions will declare a realization. A new pale blue point will appear in our universe.

I don’t know what Perser or Tikhov would say to this, but I admit, either because of journalistic cynicism, or because of a chronic short sky without urban light, this point is under a question mark. Not even like that: in question signs - in the plural. When we talk about the search for lives, zones of inhabitability and atmospheric signals, are we not similar, in our prohibitive chauvinism - carbon, oxygen, water, which you want - on rational ants from the XKCD comic book , which will unsuccessfully examine the floor tiles for the most common anti -fryers and with sad Universe? If we did not particularly agree on what life is, can I look for it - I don’t know what? What gives us even by the reinforced concrete fact of the existence of extraterrestrial life, if this life is also reinforced to us is also unattainable? What will we do with all this knowledge that we are waiting for - well, we will update the article on Wikipedia, and what else?

And, of course, there is Anriko Fermi, the creator of the world's first artificial nuclear reactor, the “father” of the atomic bomb and the author of the famous paradoxical response to the equation of his colleague, astronomer Frank Drake. Drake proposed a way to at least somehow formalize the task of finding N , the number of extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way, which there is a chance to contact. Already in the first approximation in the 1960s it turned out that N was quite large, to which Fermi just answered: if there are a lot of these civilizations, then where are they?

For that matter, hundreds of billions of planets only in our galaxy and their crazy diversity, including by age, poorly affect the solidity of the equation (there are such exotic components as the time of the existence of civilization), but only increase the paradox. If there are so many opportunities for life where this whole life, why not calls, does not write?

Let's start from the end, because I directly asked this question to the conference during the general discussion - and the answer to it is short. None of the interlocutors about this, I must say, is worried: the universe is huge, the distances between the stars are also; Strictly speaking, only a hundred years ago we invented the radio - count, only woke up and sit, which means that we are waiting for calls from a very specific place in a very specific range, we are worried.

Earthly planets, in the coarse approximation suitable for the emergence and existence of life, are somewhere in every fifth star of the Milky Way.

Finally, Seti , our main experiment on the search for a reasonable life, that is, in theory, capable of calling and writing, strictly speaking, is generally not an experiment. There is no control experiment to interpret the negative result from Seti , there is nothing to compare with anything - that is, the radio monitoring does not mean anything. So the Equation of the Drake and the return paradox of Fermi should still be put aside, especially since no one has been promising a reasonable life in the next 20 years. The time of exotic factors in the equation has not yet come.

Now about earthly “extraterrestrial chauvinism” - this is the name of all kinds of allegations that every life in the universe is obliged to be similar to ours in one sense or another. It happens, for example, “carbon chauvinism”: if you are a brother in mind - be kind to consist of carbon compounds. On the topic of what kind of human features no life can do with, you can argue to pale blue points in front of the eyes. NASA astrobiologist Lynn Rothschild notes: of course, to believe that we know what life is, how it is arranged and works - this is about how, after reading one book, to assume that I realized what literature is. The plus is that she continues that for less rhetorical goals, all these disputes can still be stopped: to look for “then-I don’t know what” is really pointless, so we are looking for what we can recognize. We know for sure that such a life as ours happens, and therefore we are looking for it. If Persival Lowell , such a Tony Stark from astronomy of the late 19th century, was right that life in favorable conditions is purely chemically inevitable, this search is not devoid of meaning, although it is not easy.

Another thing is really important: from the news on this topic, an erroneous impression may be made that humanity has rested with a horn in search of a “second earth”, a planet that is most similar to ours.

Although this is a reasonable priority (look above that we know, then we sing, plus, as we recall, “lands”, apparently, is just the most), the need for wider networks is understandable. Sarah Seger in an article on the inhabitability of exoplanets for Science writes that since the universal inhabited zone does not exist, the inevitable “water chauvinism” (the idea that life happens only where the water) a priori does not very much narrow the circle of suspects. For example, in the same article, the researcher in passing notes that under certain conditions (in particular, under the appropriate size of the planet and in the atmosphere of molecular hydrogen, the most powerful greenhouse gas), liquid water can exist much further from the star - but even on “homeless” planets thrown from native star systems. Sieger compares the assessment of the potential of the planets in terms of inhabitability and the choice of goals for a detailed study with the triage , the method of sorting patients in disaster medicine.

Okay, suppose, with “how” something is clear; How about "why"? Howard Smith, an astrophysicist from Harvard and the former main astronomer of the National Museum of Aviation and Cosmonautics of the United States, in 2011 played at the session of the AAAS American Scientific Society, just about this. Smith believes that even taking into account all the new information about the prevalence of exoplanets from a purely practical point of view, mankind is almost certainly lonely in the Universe. In the sense that even if Sarah Sarah is right with the comrades-with this obvious-notorious extraterrestrial life, similar or not like us, we will never meet, the naked (and armed) eye in the cage will not look at her, especially about life, the universe and we will not talk at all. Some, completely alone.

(Regarding this complete practical inaccessibility of exoplanets and their inhabitants, by the way, there are still some excitement in the masses. On the fields of the conference in Cornell, graduate students showed the surfaces of some well-known Kepler exoplanets. When Lisa Kaltenegger, director of the institute, Karl Sagan, announcing this exposure, made a rang that this was a chance to approach that this was a chance The exoplanet is as close as possible, the laughter in the hall was noticeably nervous.)

Of course, astronomers - they are astronomers. For them, only knowledge gained from the fact of life is somewhere else, with all the many restrictions in the interpretation of this fact (are there two, three, ten books from the point of view of knowledge of literature differ from one?) It is already enough to stop worrying and starting to make new telescopes. Гуманитарии же понаписали о последствиях любого исхода многие тома, пересказать которые невозможно.

Вместо этого на секунду вернемся к Гавриилу Адриановичу. Один из отцов-основателей астробиологии с 1909 года изучал «планету цветов и бабочек» и, не найдя характерных следов хлорофилла в спектре Марса, сделал нетривиальный ход: отправился на поиски растений без хлорофилла, живущих в как бы марсианских условиях на Земле. Короче говоря, сделал то, что астробиологи делают и сто лет спустя, — стал искать подходящих экстремофилов.

Принципиальная разница между астробиологом Тиховым из Алма-Атинской обсерватории и астробиологом Ротшильд из центра Эймса в том, что последней не обязательно ходить в экспедиции в Казахстан: она, если что, сможет нужных экстремофилов разработать. Линн Ротшильд — не только астробиолог, она еще и синтетический биолог и, помимо прочего, готовит команды школьников и студентов к международному соревнованию по синтетической биологии iGEM . Тамошняя популярность проектов по созданию «адской клетки», организма, способного выжить в заранее заданных экстремальных условиях, по ее мнению, означает только одно: рано или поздно, найдя ту самую планету с признаками жизни, ученые смогут посмотреть, на что может быть похожа эта жизнь, заглянув не в телескоп, а в чашку Петри.

(Постоянные читатели рубрики «Наука» поймут, как безмерно это все радует лично меня .)

Побывав на конференции в Корнелле, я поняла еще одну, как мне кажется, важную вещь. На самом деле мысль о земной посредственности у Карла Сагана имеет продолжение: как он писал в 1980 году, если человечество хочет, чтобы его планета была важной, надо активно добиваться этого «смелостью наших вопросов и глубиной ответов». До квантовой крайности эту мысль доводит, например, американский физик-теоретик Джон Уилер: если коллапс волновой функции происходит при измерении, производимом наблюдателем, то Вселенная, весь мир, состоящий из таких вероятностных функций, остро нуждается в том, чтобы ее наблюдали — для того, чтобы существовать. Тогда разумная жизнь не просто случается — она необходима, и мы, возможно, делим (или не делим) с кем-то очень далеким огромную ответственность.

Айзек Азимов в 1965 году любовно назвал астробиологию «наукой в поисках объекта исследования». Похоже, что это еще и наука в поисках субъекта. Человечество — с его тягой к быстрым результатам, короткой продолжительностью жизни, плохими навыками работы с многопоколенческими задачами и проектами, паршивой устойчивостью внимания, клиповым мышлением — не очень-то на роль субъекта годится.

Но других писателей нет, наблюдать Вселенную больше некому, так что надо бы, как говорят, подняться в ответ на этот вызов: задавать смелые вопросы и искать глубокие ответы.

Как заметила в ходе финальной дискуссии вдова Карла Сагана Энн Друян, может быть, хотя бы обнаружение внеземной жизни заставит людей измениться: опомниться, оторваться от совершенствования способов убивать друг друга и потратить освободившиеся миллиарды на новые научные исследования.

Потому что одно известно наверняка: «где-то что-то невероятное ждет своего открытия».