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An eye out for life in outer space

RPI announces a new center to look for clues to extraterrestrial life

By MARC PARRY

Albany Times Union (New York)

November 25, 2008

TROY -- They are profound questions that have engrossed great thinkers for centuries: Are we alone? What does it mean to be living? How did it happen?

Aristotle, Copernicus and Plato pondered them. But they had no chance of knowing. This age, some scientists believe, we will.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute on Monday announced a new center, funded by a $7.5 million NASA grant, dedicated to the search for life in the universe.

RPI President Shirley Ann Jackson said scientists from RPI and partner schools such as University at Albany "will help piece together the fragmented clues that could lead to the discovery of the first extraterrestrial life and the origins of the first life to appear here on Earth."

"We are on the brink, because of our technology and our knowledge, of not only asking the questions that have been asked by others for thousands of years, but now being able to answer them," said John Delano of UAlbany, the new center's associate director.

Monday marked the second time in a week that a Capital Region college announced a collaboration with NASA.

Students and a physics professor at Siena College are working on a new project to build a so-called CubeSat satellite that is roughly the size of a loaf of bread. The new satellite mission, called Firefly, will explore the link between lightning and sudden bursts of high-energy radiation in the Earth's upper atmosphere.

The National Science Foundation awarded Siena and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center a $1 million grant to lead the mission. Physics professor Allan Weatherwax described it as one of the most important science grants his undergraduate liberal arts college has ever received. It brought national attention from the Discovery Channel, among other places to a small Loudonville school whose name is more typically in the news for polling and basketball.

And most of the satellite will be built on campus.

"This is about teaching the next generation of students how to go through this process of building instruments, how to design and develop a satellite program," Weatherwax said.

RPI's new center is called the New York Center for Astrobiology, after the scientific field that deals with the origin, evolution and distribution of life in the universe.

RPI officials described the announcement as a milestone for the institute, and two of the key scientists were in such good spirits at the announcement that they hugged.

Researchers will investigate whether the processes that prepared the Earth for life could be replicated on Mars and other bodies in our solar system, and on planets orbiting other stars. Part of their work will be helping NASA plan to bring samples back from Mars for analysis.

Scientists will determine which materials are most likely to answer the question of whether there is life on Mars, said Doug Whittet, an RPI physics professor who directs the new center. Whittet guesses there is a good chance there was life on Mars, but considers the prospect that there still is a long shot.

He stressed that researchers are talking about primitive microbial life, not intelligent life. Even to discover a primitive form of life on another planet would be a huge breakthrough for science, he said.

"It's important to understand that we're not really talking about E.T., in the sense of little green men," he said.