What is our cosmic address?

● Locating earth within a bigger solar system

False color images

○ Pictures of Venus having clouds - used to think “ooh tropical!”
■ Not tropical. It’s 900 degrees fahrenheit and hell.
○ We might “blame” Jupiter for life existing on earth
■ There may be water on earth because of something Jupiter did
○ Astronomer looking at saturn first thinks there are two moons, then no moons,
then “handles”
■ He was seeing saturn and its rings from different angles
○ Uranus
■ Tilted 90 degrees - we blame this on a collision
○ Neptune
■ We know its blue because of methane, and we know a little about its
clouds and weather
■ Not super interesting in terms of ~life~

How to we measure distances so vast?

The Astronomical Unit
● One Astronomical Unit (AU) is a unit of distance equal to the average distance from the
earth to the sun (about 93 million miles or 149 million km)
● Mars is 1.5 AU from sun
● Jupiter is 5 AU
The Inner Solar System
● Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars
● Asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter
○ Jupiter’s gravity does not allow for other planets to be very close to it
The Outer Solar System
● Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune
Scientific Notation
● As we measure larger and larger distances (or smaller ones), we’re going to have too
many zeroes to deal with
● Count the number of zeros and write the number in scientific notation:
○ 1 million = 1,000,000 (6 zeros) = 1x10^6
The Light Year (LY)
● A more universal measurement
● A light year is the distance light travels in 1 year. It is a measure of distance, not time.
● Light travels at a speed of 300,000,000 (3x10^8) meters per second
● 1 Year is 365 days = 8760 hours = 31,536,000 seconds
● 1 LY = 9.46x10^15
The Universal Speed Limit
● Information cannot travel faster than the speed of light
 ● It takes sunlight 8 minutes, 20 seconds to travel from the Sun to the Earth, and 4 hours
10 minutes to reach Neptune
● Ie. the sun blows up
○ We will find out the sun is blowing up 8 min, 20 seconds after it happens
○ Even if we have a warning system where we could warn Neptune, our
information could not travel faster than the speed of light
○ We would never be able to warn Neptune about the sun explosion before they
found out instead
● We are always seeing the sun as it was 8 min ago
Our Stellar Neighborhood
● Nearest star (aside from sun), Proxima Centauri, is 4.4 light years (ly) away
● The Milky Way
○ Milk spilt from Hera’s breast
○ Where does it fit into our cosmic address?
● The Andromeda Galaxy is 2.5 million ly from Earth
● The Milky Way and Andromeda are part of the Local Group of galaxies
○ 3 large galaxies and dozens of dwarf galaxies
● The Laniakea Supercluster
The Hubble eXtreme Deep Field
● Shows a field of view containing thousands of galaxies
○ A relatively small sample size - just barely a portion of the sky
Expansion of the Universe
● Means that there is more and more space between different objects in the universe, the
distance is expanding
Our Current Knowledge of the Universe
● The Milky Way is only one of the several trillion galaxies in the known universe
○ Is it justified to look for life elsewhere? Where do we start looking? What do we
look for?
■ Yes, there is justification based on numbers alone!
■ The other questions a little less clear

Looking for the Necessary Ingredients for Life (as we know it)
● It is very unlikely we will find life in the universe just by chance, short of aliens just
landing here
● Necessary ingredients:
○ Liquid Water
■ Many organisms can survive without water, but they will not develop,
reproduce, give life, etc.
○ Energy
○ Organic molecules
○ Nutrients
■ Hand in hand with energy
Looking for the Tools and Instruments
● Earth-based telescopes
 ● Unmanned missions to the planets
● Space-based telescopes
● Dedicated planet-finder missions
In our own solar system…
● It used to be widely believed that every planet would have its own civilization
● Mars
○ Percival Lowell thought he saw canals on Mars
■ Came up with the idea that Mars is home to a dying civilization
○ Is Mars the lifeless world we think it is?
● Venus
○ The clouds of Venus were thought to obscure a flourishing civilization
● Jupiter’s Moons
○ Icy crust on Europa is concealing an ocean of water
○ Ganymede and Callisto are also candidates
● Saturn’s Moons
○ Name I can’t remember
■ Thick atmosphere
■ Lakes and rivers of liquid hydrocarbons
■ Covered with organic molecules
○ Enceladus
■ Geysers of water ice erupt from the small (500km diameter) moon
■ Liquid water near surface
● The Habitable Zone
○ Earth, the Goldilocks Planet
■ Venus: Too close to the sun. Too hot for water to remain liquid.
■ Earth: Just right! Liquid water, Life!
■ Mars: Too far from the sun. Water ice only in polar regions.
● Some believe in the early days of the solar system when the sun
was hotter, there could have been life on mars
■ The only difference between Venus and Earth is the distance from the
sun
○ Should we only look in Habitable Zones?
■ Mars, Europa, Enceladus, and Titan are all beyond the habitable zone of
the sun…
● BUT thermophiles can live in very hot environments
● Deinococcus radiodurans: world’s toughest bacterium, can
withstand vacuum, acid, dehydration, and radiation
Beyond the Solar System…
● First extrasolar planet detected in 1992
● Most extrasolar planets found only by indirect means, mainly by the Radial Velocity
(Doppler) and Transit methods
● Space-based efforts
 ○ Kepler mission, launched 6 March 2009, end of mission October 30,
2018...Discovered more than 5000 planet candidates, 2500 of which have been
confirmed
● The Exoplanet Exploration Tally, Beginning of Fall 2017 Semester
○ Number of planets found each year hit a huge peak in 2016, nearly 1500
● How many exoplanets?
○ Caltech study: Based on the Kepler science data, it is expected that the Milky
Way galaxy contains as many planets as it does stars
The Planetary Science Context
● Vast numbers of stars should have habitable planets
○ Modern understanding of how planets form
○ Evidence that most stars have planets
○ Understanding the conditions that make a planet habitable
The Biological Context
● Biology may be common in the universe
○ Evidence that organic molecules form easily and naturally
○ Evidence that life appeared early in the history of the Earth
○ Evidence that Earth life can survive under a wide range of conditions
● Principle of mediocrity: Have to stop thinking of ourselves as special
Anyone looking for us?
● NASA’s Search of Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program fruitless…
● SETI is now a private institute
● One signal received from space
○ The “Wow Signal”
■ Believed ultimately to be a military satellite