Every kid
loves to play make believe. Some play cops and robbers. Others play house. And
some dress up in their parents' clothes, pretending they have their parents'
jobs and dreaming about what they'll be when they grow up.
When I was
a kid, I dreamed about being an alien hunter. As a third grader peering into a
microscope at single celled organisms, I imagined a universe full of tiny,
hardy life. Why not? Microbes can live comfortably in the most absurdly
unfriendly reaches of the planet. If these little creatures can survive in
volcanoes, at the bottom of the ocean, embedded in glacial ice, and even in
countless human guts, then they must be able to exist on other planets! Life
must be absolutely everywhere!
I didn't
know then that there was an entire community of scientists who felt exactly the
same way. I certainly didn't expect that before I'd even graduated from
college, I'd be working with them.
This
summer, for the second year in a row, the SETI
Institute in Mountain View, CA hosted a group of undergraduates from all
over the world to work one-on-one with research mentors, funded in part by the
National Science Foundation and NASA's Astrobiology Institute. We were a motley
bunch of 16 students, from big universities and small liberal arts colleges,
coming from as nearby as California and as far away as England and Hawaii, and studying physics, astronomy, geology, chemistry, and biology. But this
summer, we were all alien hunters.
For many of
us, the experience was nothing short of fantasy fulfillment.
No two
students did the same thing. One student spent her summer searching for
extrasolar planets and doing radio astronomy using the Allen Telescope Array (ATA),
located at UC Berkeley's Hat Creek Radio Observatory in northern California. She's already left her mark on the SETI community, in a literal sense: while
operating the telescopes at the ATA, she inadvertently crashed one antenna into
another. She says the other scientists were more intrigued than annoyed. The
telescopes are supposed to be programmed to avoid each other, so her mentor was
impressed that she'd managed to cause a collision. She even got to sign her
name near the dent it made. Fortunately, the actual damage was minimal, and won't
affect future operations or observing.
Another
student spent her days studying the geology of Europa, one of Jupiter's moons. Scientists
believe that it has a vast liquid water ocean beneath a layer of ice at the
surface. She analyzed images of Europa from the Galileo mission, looking for
areas of the surface whose appearance changed over time and trying to determine
if those changes are what you would expect if there were a liquid ocean. She
thinks the possibilities for life on Europa are especially exciting. "As
soon as I heard about Europa, I thought, 'Oh, awesome. Let's look for lobsters!'"
she said. So far, she hasn't discovered any Europan crustaceans, but she's
enjoyed learning more about geology and approaching biology and chemistry from
an astronomy perspective.
Or imagine
instead working with an instrument that will be on Mars within a year. One
student spent the summer testing the limitations of a soil composition analysis
instrument – a replica of the one that was launched toward Mars on the Phoenix
lander on August 4. "It's like sending a little piece of me to Mars,"
she said. The experience gave her ideas for future research prospects, too. Phoenix is expected to land on May 25, 2008, a week after she graduates from college. She's
already thinking ahead: "My mentor was saying he'd like to have some
people in the lab to, say, throw a certain clay into the instrument and see
what kind of data we get so we can compare it to the data we get back from Phoenix.
I'd really like to come back and work here again," she said. "This
summer is the first time that I've found a location, a career type and a set of
people that I could see myself getting along with for the long term."
Several
students hit the summer research jackpot. Imagine a summer job that involves
watching a meteor
shower from an airplane, high above the atmosphere, wearing a NASA jumpsuit
with a mission patch that you helped design. Or a project that takes you to Hawaii for an observing run at the Keck Telescope at the summit of Mauna Kea to watch the
chaotic orbits of Uranus' moons and the rare ring-plane crossing. Or an
opportunity to attend the week-long Seventh International Conference on Mars,
and hear the world's leading Mars experts discuss their research and plans for
the future of Mars exploration. These are just a sampling of the many real
projects that students at the SETI Institute were involved in.
All of us
got to take a week-long field trip to the Hat Creek Radio Observatory, home of the Allen Telescope Array, where Jill Tarter,
SETI's director of research and the inspiration for Carl Sagan's novel Contact,
explained how the telescopes work and what research they'll be used for. Several
of us even camped overnight in tents under the array. It wasn't very
scientifically useful, but it was definitely something to write home about. Later
that week, we spent two days hiking in Lassen Volcanic National Park with a
Park Service Ranger and the SETI Institute's Rocco
Mancinelli, a microbiologist. We visited "Bumpass Hell" and "Devil's
Kitchen," two hydrothermal sites of remnant volcanic activity where the
water is acidic and boiling hot, yet teeming with microbial life.
In a week
or two we'll all take off our astrobiologist costumes and return to our normal
college lives. Nevertheless, whether we continue on in astrobiology or not, this
summer of playing alien hunters will stay with us.
If you
think this sounds like a great way for students to spend a summer, you're
right. And if you know any scientifically-inclined undergraduates who might
want to experience it for themselves, spread the word. Next summer the SETI
Institute will host a new cohort of students who can try their hands at alien
hunting. Watch the Institute's REU
website in the coming months for more information on the results of this
summer's program, as well as applications for next summer's opportunity. It
could be the start of the research career you always dreamed about.
The SETI
Institute's Astrobiology Research Experience for Undergraduates is funded by
the National Science Foundation AST-0552751, NASA's Astrobiology Institute
NNA04CC05A, and private donations.
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