On Research…

A Jovian chance . . .

Let’s hope that Arthur C. Clarke was wrong.

“All these worlds are yours – except Europa. Attempt no landings there.”

That was the warning sent back to Earth. Arthur C. Clarke's 2010: Odyssey Two In the second book of his Space Odyssey series, Clarke, one of the world’s most prolific science fiction authors, in effect, declared Jupiter’s moon Europa as off-limits to mankind. He envisioned it as younger incubator of life than was Earth.

It was a place that humans should simply avoid.

While obviously fiction, Clarke’s message rebounded again into memory last week when NASA announced its plans to send a spacecraft to the Jovian moon sometime around the year 2020, a decade later than the fictional encounter humans had with Europa in Clarke’s book 2010: Odyssey Two.

The NASA mission, in conjunction with the European Space Agency, would send a pair of spacecraft toward the solar system’s largest planet to survey both Jupiter and its biggest moons at a level of detail unmatched to date.

While Io, Callisto and Ganymede all present their own potentially enticing mysteries, it is Europa that drives human curiosity more. Covered with what we believe is a thick surface of ice, scientists hope that there are oceans of liquid water beneath that shell which might harbor some form of life.

Jovian moon Europa, Courtesy NASA. Many believe that if life was is to be found outside Earth in our solar system, then Europa is the most likely host.

It’s not as wild a prediction as some might have thought. Just this month, scientists proclaimed that life abounds prolifically in both the Arctic and Antarctic Oceans on Earth. Identical species by the hundreds thrive in these frigid environments, often capped by thick layers of ice.

If the intensely cold Ross, Barents and Beaufort seas are teeming with life, then why not the vast Europan Ocean, assuming it is actually as we predict it to be.

In Clarke’s novel, whatever power ignited Jupiter, transforming it into a second sun, and sent that cryptic warning back toward Earth, clearly wasn’t bluffing. Humans would disobey at their own peril. But that was fiction, unlike NASA’s plans.

What is troubling, however, is that humans do have a history of mucking things up, leaping headlong into situations without adequate planning. A future mission bent on landing on Europa’s surface and even, perhaps, tapping into that moon’s oceans, raises the risk of contamination.

On Earth, 13,000 feet under a Russian research station in Antarctica, there is a freshwater lake the size of Lake Ontario. Plans to sample the lake’s water for life that might date back millions of years, thankfully, are on hold. We simply do not know how to insure that no contamination will be transferred from the surface.

Radar image of Lake Vostok beneath the Antarctic ice. So if we can’t guarantee the safeguarding of Lake Vostok’s waters, how can we protect Europan oceans, and the life that might exist there?

The good news is, however, that we have time to solve such problems. The launch of the probes to Europa and its neighbors are a decade away and the trip alone will add another half-dozen years. Any planned lander mission would be even later, so apparently, there is time.

That is, of course, unless a giant monolith appears. In that case, all bets are off.__Earle Holland

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Tags: Researchers, Science policy, Space by earleholland
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Holdren’s wish . . .

A friend and colleague, Matt Nisbet, made an interesting point last week in his blog “Framing Science,” pointing to statements by John Holdren, President Obama’s new science advisor.

Presidential Science Advisor John Holdren Holdren, a past chair of the board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, has been widely lauded as a great choice to provide counsel on science and technology.

Nisbet reminded readers of Holdren’s recurring plea to scientists to get more involved in explaining science to both the public and to policy makers. Among his suggestions is one that researchers should “tithe” their time to this cause, that is, spending 10 percent of their professional time communicating about science.

No doubt, it’s an admirable goal, but one that’s hardly realistic for today’s scientists.

First off, researchers today spend upwards of 40 percent of their available time just managing their projects, writing proposals for new studies, completing reports on existing ones, tracking budgets and such. That leaves barely three-fifths of their time for doing the actual science.

Moreover, there are the academic demands – university researchers are also teachers with students to instruct and mentor, and committees on which to serve. These requirements alone are enough to bring groans from most researchers.

Then there is their own need to stay current, to scour the literature in their discipline for the progress of peers, and attend conferences and meetings where new knowledge is shared, and where new ideas are born.

That alone would leave scant time for Holdren’s 10 percent tithing for communication.

But that’s not the real problem with his recommendation.

Holdren’s wish requires that researchers be able to successfully communicate about their work. And the ugly truth is that many researchers aren’t automatically good communicators. Formal communications within the scientific community requires an audience knowledgeable about the field and willing to work at learning new information. There’s a conscious effort made by scientists when trading information.

It doesn’t work that way with the public, much less policy makers. Collectively, the general public has a phobia about science, as well as an innate interest in it. Most people don’t have the grounding necessary to understand the latest science advances. Nor do they have the attention span to invest in poor presentations of that information.

Scientist at work And scientists, generally, often misunderstand that informing the public and educating them are not the same, and the approach to succeed in one may differ from the other.

People are actually interested in science. They simply don’t want to work at it. And they shouldn’t have to. The wonder that can drive a researcher’s efforts for decades differs little from that which excites us all. The difference is in the story-telling.

All too many of us believe that communications is simply telling people things we want them to know. We think that if we pelt the public with information that way that it will soak into the marrow of their minds. But in truth, when drenched from a downpour, we dry off, change clothes and quickly forget the discomfort.

All communicators, scientists included, need to understand who they are trying to reach, and not simply assume that since they value their own information, that others will as well. The key, some believe, is in building the bridge between what people are actually interested in and what communicators have to say. That requires work and, most importantly, attending more to what the listeners want to hear than what I might want to tell them.

In recent weeks, I’ve given talks to young reporters, to PhD science candidates and to student journalists, all about the challenges of science writing. In each case, actual communications occurred only when the listeners’ interests guided the dialogue. People will expend near limitless effort to feed their curiosity and soak up knowledge.

If scientists remember that, and explain accordingly, they won’t have to worry about tithing their time.__Earle Holland

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