On his book Life on Mars: What to Know Before We Go
Cover Interview of May 06, 2018
The wide angle
Life on Mars is a history book that is about the
future. Mars is in our future, probably the very near future. What we already
know and what we likely will learn in the coming decades about life on Mars should
determine how we proceed in our attempts to launch rockets and send astronauts
to Mars. In real terms, we may invest hundreds of billions of dollars in the
next century in our attempts to colonize Mars. Therefore, understanding Mars is
important.
Like so many others, I have always been fascinated by the
idea that life could exist in the universe beyond the Earth. Does it? That’s a
big question. As a child of the space age, my young mind was stimulated by our
exploration of the Moon and then the nearest planets in the solar system. From
Mercury to Gemini to Apollo, from Ranger to Pioneer to Mariner to Viking to
Voyager, I travelled the solar system with astronauts and unmanned explorers.
My teenage mind was drawn into deep space by Arthur C. Clarke (The Star),
Ray Bradbury (The Martian Chronicles), Isaac Asimov (The Foundation
Trilogy) and Frank Herbert (Dune). Then I discovered the world of
professional astronomy, in which I have immersed myself and made my own
discoveries about the processes through which planets form around other stars. Finally,
I came full circle: in teaching, my students helped me rediscover the deep
passion for knowledge about the universe that lies beneath the big questions
they ask in my classes. One of the biggest of these, repeated to me year after
year for the better part of three decades, has been ‘Does life exist on Mars?’ This
book is my attempt to make myself whole by writing my own chronicle of Mars, by
telling a story about Mars and about those who study Mars in the search for
Martian life.
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
The wide angle
Life on Mars is a history book that is about the future. Mars is in our future, probably the very near future. What we already know and what we likely will learn in the coming decades about life on Mars should determine how we proceed in our attempts to launch rockets and send astronauts to Mars. In real terms, we may invest hundreds of billions of dollars in the next century in our attempts to colonize Mars. Therefore, understanding Mars is important.
Like so many others, I have always been fascinated by the idea that life could exist in the universe beyond the Earth. Does it? That’s a big question. As a child of the space age, my young mind was stimulated by our exploration of the Moon and then the nearest planets in the solar system. From Mercury to Gemini to Apollo, from Ranger to Pioneer to Mariner to Viking to Voyager, I travelled the solar system with astronauts and unmanned explorers. My teenage mind was drawn into deep space by Arthur C. Clarke (The Star), Ray Bradbury (The Martian Chronicles), Isaac Asimov (The Foundation Trilogy) and Frank Herbert (Dune). Then I discovered the world of professional astronomy, in which I have immersed myself and made my own discoveries about the processes through which planets form around other stars. Finally, I came full circle: in teaching, my students helped me rediscover the deep passion for knowledge about the universe that lies beneath the big questions they ask in my classes. One of the biggest of these, repeated to me year after year for the better part of three decades, has been ‘Does life exist on Mars?’ This book is my attempt to make myself whole by writing my own chronicle of Mars, by telling a story about Mars and about those who study Mars in the search for Martian life.