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Hunting for Earth-like Alien Planets: Q & A with Astronomer Geoff Marcy

Since astronomers discovered the first planet beyond our own solar system back in 1992, they've been on somewhat of a roll — the tally now tops 500.

And the finds are about to ramp up dramatically. Today (Feb. 1), NASA's planet-hunting Kepler mission will make much of its data public. A press conference will follow tomorrow, during which researchers are expected to announce intriguing new information about many more possible alien planets.

Humanity thus appears poised to enter a productive new era in the study of alien worlds. One man leading the charge is Geoff Marcy, an astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Kepler co-investigator.

Marcy has had a hand in finding more alien planets than anyone else. He helped spot 70 of the first 100. He also found the first multi-planet system around a sun-like star, and he discovered the first planet that transits — or passes in front of — its star from our perspective on Earth.

SPACE.com caught up with Marcy last month in Seattle, at the winter meeting of the American Astronomical Society, to chat about the accelerating pace of planet discovery, what we still don't know about alien worlds and whether there might be intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.

SPACE.com: What has led to the recent explosion in alien planet discoveries? Is it primarily better instrumentation, or better techniques?

Marcy: Well, let me give you a different vantage point. There is a bunch of astronomers who've been working really hard, and they're really innovative, pushing on the frontier technically, pushing on the frontier in terms of the science. And basically burning the midnight oil, essentially literally. I'm giving you the human component of all of this, because sometimes you don't get to see it.

What sometimes gets lost in the shuffle when a nice result shows up on all of the Web pages and the newspapers around the world — what you don't realize is to get that result meant that five or 10 people were burning that midnight oil, trimming the errors down to the point that the Earth-size planets are detectable.

It's easy to dismiss the discoveries as, "Oh, it's new computers, or it's new optics." These things happen because amazing people dream and then put their dreams into perspiration-dripping action.

SPACE.com: So if we were to have this conversation in 20 years, where do you think the total exoplanet count would stand?

Marcy: Honestly, Kepler's so good that it's hard to beat it. It gets the numbers. Kepler's going to find thousands. There's going to be another follow-up to Kepler, either from Europe or the U.S. or both. They'll find thousands.

I bet by 2020, there'll be 10,000 planets, and by 2030 there might be another 20,000 or 30,000 more planets. [Gallery: The Strangest Alien Planets]

SPACE.com: Will this discovery arc we're on now continue to go up exponentially, or will it plateau?

Marcy:It'll plateau, because you can't do much better than Kepler. But let's be fair here. It's not the number of planets we care about; it's the quality. We want the Earth-size. We want planets in the habitable zone, and ultimately planets that are sending little radio signals to us for some reason or another.

SPACE.com: You've said that, with exoplanets, theory has really struck out. What are some of the things that we thought we knew, but it turns out were totally wrong about?

Marcy: Well, the first thing — I go back to 1996. No one wants to talk about this, because it's so embarrassing. The reason that as a community we struggled to find the first hot Jupiters isn't because we didn't have the technology. It's because the theorists led us astray. I'm speaking slightly jokingly, but not really.

There were theorists who said, "Look at our solar system. Of course the small, rocky planets are close in. The host star burned off the gases, so you're left with rocky planets. And look at the giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn — they had to form farther out, because it's colder, and the gases can gravitationally stick to the planets. Therefore, all planetary systems will have the following architecture: There will be an inner planet. The second planet out will be named Venus. The third planet out will have great lattes." I mean, it was just silly.

SPACE.com: And that's based on a sample size of one.

Marcy: It would be like trying to characterize human psychology by going to one distant Indonesian island and interviewing one person, and thinking that that gave you the full range of human psychology. And in 1996, there were papers where they said, Jupiter-sized planets, Saturn-sized planets, will all orbit far from their host star. Well, that of course tells you what to look for. If you write a proposal to try to find anything else, you're flying in the face of wisdom.

And we know now, of course, how near-sighted that was, how parochial that was.

SPACE.com: So do you think we are starting to get a handle on exoplanets now?

Marcy: I think so. We're always a little too confident, so I would hate to say, "Go home, we're all done." We do have these planets we're finding with Doppler work, and now with Kepler, that are five times the size of Earth, three times the size of Earth, 1.4 times the size of the Earth. And I don't think we really know how they formed.

Even the one we announced [the rocky, nearly Earth-size Kepler-10b], there are two main ways it might've formed. It might've formed like the Earth, or it might have formed like Uranus but it got so close to the host star that the gases and the water got evaporated away and left a bare, rocky core remnant.

SPACE.com: What are some of the biggest mysteries that are left?

Marcy: There's one huge one that nobody really wants to talk about. It's the age-old question: Are Earth-like planets common? We know they're out there for sure. I mean, there's too many stars. But there's two parts to the question. What do you mean by "Earth-like?" And then, how common are they?

Basically, we know what we want for Earth-like, so we shouldn't beat around the bush: We would love to know whether there are planets suitable for life as we know it.

And those Earth-like properties are a little bit mysterious, but we have some ideas. You want water in liquid form, you want stable temperatures over the course of millions, preferably billions, of years so that Darwinian evolution can get a good toehold.

You probably want a moon to stabilize the spin axis. You probably want a Jupiter to sweep up the debris. You probably want a stable ocean for a long enough time that it can serve as the solvent for biochemistry.

So that's probably what we mean by "Earth-like." But how common they are, we just don't know.

SPACE.com: Your research suggests that smaller planets may be pretty common — that nearly one in four nearby sun-like stars could host a roughly Earth-size planet.

Marcy: Yeah. But here's the sleeper idea that no one wants to talk about: Because Earth-size planets are so much smaller than the Jupiters, Saturns, Uranuses and Neptunes, and we now know that planets often get thrust into eccentric and misaligned orbits, the Earths are like the Volkswagens on a highway full of 18-wheelers.

The vulnerable planets are the small ones. And so to the extent that planetary systems undergo a billiards era — the Earth would be like putting a small marble on a pool table of 15 billiard balls. As you break, the little planets are going to be the ones slingshot right out of the solar system pool table.

SPACE.com: It's one thing to say they can form. But to say that they'll actually stick around long enough — that's a totally different question.

Marcy: Yeah. And I think they'll form. It's hard to imagine they wouldn't. If you make Jupiters, why wouldn't you make Earth-size planets? But the Earths — and maybe the Volkswagen is giving it too much credit. It's an 18-wheeler and a tricycle. Earth is a tricycle on Highway 5 running up and down the Pacific Coast.

And you don't even have to hit the tricycle. You just have to come close enough that gravity slingshots the poor tricycle right out of the system. So it's possible that Earth-like planets form, they get thrown out into the cold darkness of the galaxy and they have no chance of starting — never mind sustaining — life, because it's too cold out there.

And that's possible. We might be rare.

And by the way: Where are the SETI [search for extraterrestrial intelligence] signals? There is a non-detection that's like the elephant in the room. Forty years of Frank Drake and Carl Sagan looking for SETI signals, and we have precisely zero to show for it. So there's an indication — not definitive — that maybe the Earth is more precious than we had thought.

SPACE.com: Our solar system is so young, compared to the universe. And the universe is so big. So there's been lots of time and opportunity for advanced civilizations to get started, and to try to contact us. Some people think that the fact that we seemingly haven't been contacted means that we may well be alone in the universe.

Marcy: Well, you have to fold it in. The absence of an intelligent radio or television wave from any advanced civilization represents one indication, not a proof, that maybe habitable planets that sustain Darwinian evolution for a billion years —maybe they're rare. Maybe.

SPACE.com: What do you reckon? Do you have a gut feeling about this?

Marcy: I do. If I had to bet — and this is now beyond science — I would say that intelligent, technological critters are rare in the Milky Way galaxy. The evidence mounts. We Homo sapiens didn't arise until some quirk of environment on the East African savannah — so quirky that the hominid paleontologists still can't tell us why the australopithecines somehow evolved big brains and had dexterity that could play piano concertos, and things that make no real honest sense in terms of Darwinian evolution.

Why the high chaparral on the East African savannah would've led to a Tchaikovsky piano concerto, never mind the ability to build rocket ships — there's no evolutionary driver that the australopithecines suffered from that leads to rocket ships. And so that — and the fact that we had to wait four billion years without humans. Four billion years?

SPACE.com: Yes, it took four billion years to get there.

Marcy: Since the Cambrian explosion, we had hundreds of millions of years of multi-cellular, advanced life in which, guess what happened with brain size? Nothing.

You know the greatest species ever to roam the Earth? The dinosaurs — every kid knows this. And why? Well, because for 100 million years, the dinosaurs roamed the Earth. There were big ones, there were small ones. Every generation of baby dinosaurs had to outcompete all of the other dinosaurs. And you would think after 100 million years, each generation of baby dinosaur that was a little smarter would have out-survived the others and thereby slowly but surely increased dinosaur cranial size.

The reality from the paleontological record? Dinosaurs had the brains of chickens, and never got bigger. It shows that braininess is not a primary driver in evolution. We humans came across braininess because of something weird that happened on the East African savannah. And we can't imagine whether that's a common or rare thing.

SPACE.com: People assume evolution is directed, and it's always leading toward higher complexity and greater intelligence, but it's not.

Marcy: It's not. Dinosaurs show this in spades.

SPACE.com: You've said that we're about to enter a golden age of direct exoplanet imaging. Is that what the future holds — getting good, direct looks at alien planets to try to gauge their potential to support life?

Marcy: It is. There's two great things that we should be doing. One is that we should, as a species — and this means ESA [the European Space Agency], Japan, China, India, the United States, Canada — work together internationally to fund a space-borne telescope, probably interferometric, that can take pictures of Earth-size and Earth-like planets. We know how to do it.

Yes, it'll be expensive, but we do expensive things in science, and this is a great quest for humanity: Are there Earth-like and, indeed, habitable planets out there?

But the other thing to do — we should say it right away. We should have a full-fledged, Apollo-like SETI search. Why haven't we coherently gathered our resources and done SETI right?

SPACE.com: Finding alien intelligent life would be such a huge deal. It would change the way we think about ourselves and our place in the universe.

Marcy: Exactly. So why aren't we putting together our resources, nationally and internationally, and constructing a major radio telescope facility — and maybe, if there's money left over, an infrared facility — and sampling the universe for signals?

We know what to look for. That would be the rat-a-tat-tat of a radio signal. We don't know exactly what the code would be, but we'd be looking for pulses in the radio, in the infrared maybe, in the X-ray or UV. We'd have to think broadly. But this is a great quest for humanity.

It's the Armstrong, it's the Columbus of our time, essentially reaching out with radio waves and hunting for alien intelligent life. It would be a marvelous, inspirational effort. And right now we don't have enough going on, in my opinion.

Because it would mean — all 7 billion people on planet Earth would get up in the morning wondering, "Did they find the signal last night?"

SPACE.com: It makes you wonder why nations haven't joined together to do something like this. Economically, it would be a drop in the bucket.

Marcy: It's a drop in the bucket. Frankly, $1 billion would be good. It sounds like $1 billion is a lot of money. But not really. NASA's budget is $19 billion. Nineteen billion dollars every single year. So how about a billion of that for a SETI search? How about one year — 5 percent — to do SETI in a historic, Apollo-like way? I mean, Wow!

It puts Armstrong and the invention of fire sort of on a par. So it's worth one-nineteenth of one year's NASA budget. I think it's a great idea, and we know how to do it.

Yeah, it's a luxury. We need to feed the people on the planet Earth, we need to provide health care, we need to provide better education, we need to make sure that human beings are living. But we're doing that. And a billion is really a teeny fraction of many countries' annual budget.

Tablet-Aimed Android 3.0 Supports 3-D, Dual-Core Chips

Google's Android 3.0, code-named Honeycomb, will not only help developers adapt their applications for larger screen sizes, but also support multi-core processor architecture, 3-D graphics, and more.

The search giant announced on its Android developer blog Wednesday that the 3.0 software development kit with non-final application program interfaces and a system image is available for software designers to test their existing applications for the tablet form factor and familiarize themselves with the user interface.

Optimized for Tablets

New features of the 3.0 user interface include a system bar at the bottom of the screen for quick access to notifications, system status, and soft navigation; an action bar for application control; a redesigned touchscreen keyboard optimized for fast and accurate text entry; and improvements to the browser and camera.

An "incognito" mode allows anonymous browsing, while bookmarks and history are presented in a single view. The camera application allows better control of exposure, zoom and flash, while the gallery presents album views in full-screen mode.

Although some manufacturers, such as Dell and Samsung, created tablets running Android 2.1 or 2.2, which was intended for smartphones, Honeycomb is the first to be optimized for larger screens. Motorola pointedly said last September that it would not release a tablet until Android had a suitable operating system and, true to its word, released the Xoom tablet running Honeycomb at the recent Consumer Electronics Show. The Xoom will be available beginning Feb. 17 via Verizon Wireless.

The Xoom sports a dual-core processor, and Honeycomb is optimized to run on single- or dual-core processors, wrote Zavier Ducrohet, Google's Android SDK tech lead, on the developers blog. He also wrote, "A new property-based animation framework lets developers add great visual effects to their apps." To shift 2-D apps into 3D mode, "A built-in GL renderer lets developers request hardware acceleration of common 2-D apps, across the entire app or only in specific activities of views."

Renderscript, a new 3-D graphics engine, will help add rich 3-D scenes.

New Connectivity, Business Features

Honeycomb will also allow for new connectivity via Bluetooth A2DP and HSP for audio streaming and headset control. Enhancements for business users include new administrative policies for password expiration and encrypted storage.

Devices powered by Honeycomb will have to compete with the new version of Apple's popular iPad, which is likely to be announced in the next few weeks for spring release.

"Sounds like Google has a great eye for new features that should appeal to consumers and developers," said Charles King, principal analyst of Pund-IT. "If Apple doesn't provide similar capabilities, they could find themselves slipping further behind."

Google warned developers not to jump the gun by trying to publish apps developed through the platform preview on the Android Market before the final SDK is released in the coming weeks.

Corrected: P&G, Colgate hurt by slow developed markets

(Corrects Bob McDonald's title to CEO of P&G, paragraph 8)By Jessica Wohl

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Procter & Gamble Co (PG.N) and smaller rival Colgate-Palmolive Co (CL.N) posted lower quarterly net income, hurt by sluggish sales in developed markets like the United States.

Household products makers have been using promotional pricing and coupons to woo shoppers who shunned pricier brands during the recession. Now that consumer confidence is rising, the companies hope people will once again covet name-brand items.

P&G's sales growth came in at the low end of its forecast and below Wall Street's expectations. Still, the company said U.S. demand for its higher-end products exceeded its expectations and that it is gaining market share at home and abroad.

"I would call this a low-quality quarter," said Tim Hoyle, director of research at Haverford Investments, which has more than $6 billion in assets under management and owns P&G. "They're in a tough spot, really, to grow earnings anywhere close to what most investors would want to give them a premium valuation." He noted that a lower tax rate helped earnings.

While P&G and Colgate both topped Wall Street's earnings expectations, sales were sluggish.

P&G shares fell to $64.46 in premarket trading Thursday, down from Wednesday's New York Stock Exchange close of $66.11.

DEMAND STRONG AT THE TOP, P&G SAYS

Both P&G and Colgate have been bringing out new goods, with P&G offering a lower-priced versions of goods like Bounty paper towels as well as premium items such as Gillette Fusion ProGlide razors that offer smoother shaves. Colgate, meanwhile, has come out with a variety of new and updated toothpastes.

"We believe that we're in the midst of a recovery," P&G Chief Executive Bob McDonald told reporters about the United States.

Growth was pretty fast in the beginning of the quarter, then slowed in December as people spent their money on holiday-related items.

"We're seeing a good pace of recovery and a good pace in January," McDonald added.

P&G is confident that Americans are willing to pay for new products, despite continued pressure from high unemployment.

U.S. demand for premium innovations exceeded P&G's expectations, even straining the company's supply chain, said Chief Financial Officer Jon Moeller.

P&G, the maker of Gillette razors and Crest toothpaste, earned $3.33 billion, or !B1.11 per share, in the second quarter ended in December, down from $4.66 billion, or $1.49 per share, a year earlier. Much of the decline stemmed from a gain in the year-ago period from the sale of its pharmaceuticals business.

Excluding unusual items, earnings from continuing operations were $1.13 a share. Analysts' average forecast was $1.10, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

P&G's sales climbed 2 percent to $21.3 billion, while analysts were looking for $21.58 billion. The volume of goods sold rose 6 percent.

Organic sales, which strip out the impact of acquisitions, divestitures and foreign exchange fluctuations, rose 3 percent, at the low end of P&G's 3 to 5 percent forecast.

Colgate, best known for its namesake toothpaste, earned $624 million, or $1.24 per share, in the fourth quarter, compared with $631 million or $1.21 per share a year earlier.

Analysts had expected $1.23 per share.

Colgate, which competes directly with P&G in areas such as toothpaste and toothbrushes, said sales fell 2.5 percent to $3.98 billion. Analysts on average forecast $4.06 billion.

Colgate's organic sales rose 1 percent.

P&G stood by its fiscal 2011 forecasts, calling for earnings from continuing operations of $3.91 to $4.01 per share and organic sales growth of 4 percent to 6 percent.

Analysts on average expect a profit of $3.98 per share.

Colgate stood by its forecast for a mid-single-digit percentage rise in earnings per share for 2011.

(Reporting by Jessica Wohl and Brad Dorfman; editing by John Wallace and Matthew Lewis)

Eaton profit jumps 33 percent in fourth quarter

CLEVELAND – Eaton Corp.'s net income surged 33 percent on higher sales, and the diversified industrial manufacturer claimed strong momentum as it boosted its dividend and announced a 2-for-1 stock split Thursday.

Sales rose 17 percent over the fourth quarter of 2009 amid a rebounding global economy.

The company earned $280 million, or $1.63 per share, for the quarter ending Dec. 31 on sales of $3.7 billion, up 17 percent.

Excluding charges, the company earned $1.69 per share, beating analyst forecast of $1.67. Eaton says its now boosting its dividend by 17 percent to 68 cents per share.

In the fourth quarter of 2009, Eaton earned $211 million, or $1.25 per share, on sales of $3.1 billion.

For the year, Eaton earned $929 million, or $5.46 per share, on sales of $13.7 billion, up from 2009 net income of $383 million, or $2.27 per share, on sales of $11.9 billion.

In recent days Eaton shares have traded at the upper end of a 52-week range of $60.83 to $106.75. Shares fell in early trading but rebounded to close up $1.85, or 1.8 percent, at $106.46.

Eaton, which makes hydraulic and transmission systems for the auto and space industries and military, saw bookings rise 36 percent for the quarter.

"Our full year 2010 sales growth of 16 percent reflects a rebound from the depressed market levels of 2009 and our 30 percent growth in revenues from developing countries," said Alexander M. Cutler, Eaton chairman and chief executive officer.

"We are pleased with the momentum we see in our businesses and with the strong incremental earnings we have been able to generate from the additional sales volume."

In a conference call with analysts, Cutler said the company has wide-ranging momentum heading into 2011. "We did have higher end markets in the fourth quarter," he said.

"And the good news is we think that momentum is carrying into 2011 and it's virtually across the board in our businesses and our geographies."

Cutler forecast record operating earnings per share for 2011 between $7 and $7.60.

He estimated that Eaton markets will grow 8 percent in 2011, with increases in all six of its segment. That would be the first time since 2006 that markets in all segments grew.

Cutler said the split, which could make the price more attractive to individual investors, reflected the "handsome growth" of the stock price, up more than 60 percent since the start of 2010.

Cutler told The Associated Press in a telephone interview that he was encouraged by President Barack Obama's State of the Union discussion of taxes and making the U.S. more competitive globally.

"If the U.S. has an uncompetitive international tax regime, it means that U.S. companies can't compete advantageously in those areas, either setting up businesses there or exporting product there," Cutler said.

Eaton sells products in more than 150 nations.

Eaton increased its quarterly dividend from 58 cents per share to 68 cents and said the stock split would be effective at the close of business Feb. 28.

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Online:

Japan's credit rating downgraded on debt concerns

TOKYO (AFP) – Standard & Poor's on Thursday cut Japan's credit rating for the first time since 2002, accusing the government of lacking a "coherent strategy" to ease the highest debt of any industrialised nation.

The US credit risk appraiser cut its rating on Japan's long-term sovereign debt to "AA minus" from "AA", saying that it expected the country's groaning fiscal deficits to stay high in coming years.

It was the first downgrade of a G7 member since Italy in October 2006, and underlined mounting problems with national debts since the 2008 financial crisis. Four eurozone members including Spain suffered downgrades last year.

"The downgrade reflects our appraisal that Japan's government debt ratios -- already among the highest for rated sovereigns -- will continue to rise further than we envisaged before the global economic recession hit the country and will peak only in the mid-2020s," S&P said.

"The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ)-led government lacks a coherent strategy to address these negative aspects of the country's debt dynamics," it said.

The Japanese currency tumbled following the announcement, with the dollar gaining by a more than a yen to 83.20 yen from around 82.12 in earlier trade, before recovering to around 82.76 to the dollar.

The new rating, on a par with China's, is the fourth highest in terms of quality on a scale of 22, and the downgrade could drive up Japan's borrowing costs on international markets. However, most of Japan's debt is held domestically.

S&P cited Japan's high budget deficit, persistent deflation and an ageing society as factors pressuring the centre-left government's finances, but added Japan's outlook was stable given its "strong" external balance sheet.

Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda said the government would strive for fiscal discipline to win the confidence of markets.

"For the sake of winning market trust, it is important to send a message on suitable occasions that we will firmly keep fiscal discipline," Noda told reporters.

Analysts were more bleak. The downgrade "supports our fear that 2011 could be the year when Japan?s dire fiscal position finally impacts markets both at home and internationally", Capital Economics said in a research note.

Separately, the International Monetary Fund said Japan was one of a number of countries whose budget-tightening steps had fallen short of targets.

The IMF said the "already-modest" plan to narrow the deficit in 2011 has been further scaled back after the Diet approved spending increases.

Japan has the industrialised world's highest debt, at around 200 percent of GDP, after years of pump-priming measures by governments trying in vain to arrest the economy's long decline.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan has set a target of achieving a surplus in the government budget by fiscal 2020 amid calls for revenues to be boosted by tripling or even quadrupling the five-percent consumption tax.

However, S&P said: "We do not forecast the government achieving a primary balance before 2020 unless a significant fiscal consolidation programme is implemented beforehand."

The agency said it expected general government fiscal deficits to fall only modestly from an estimated 9.1 percent of GDP in the year ending March 31, 2011 to 8.0 percent in fiscal 2013.

Kan's government is working towards drafting a basic proposal by the end of June on overhauling the nation's tax and social security systems, but S&P said there was a "low chance" this would lead to improvement.

Analysts said Thursday's downgrade reflects a lack of confidence in a government whose ability to pass key legislation is hamstrung by its lack of a majority in parliament's upper house.

"Its fiscal management policy is not trusted," said Hiroshi Watanabe, economist at Daiwa Institute of Research. "The DPJ is arguing for fiscal discipline but many of its big, ambitious policies have not been implemented."

New fiscal policy minister Kaoru Yosano, who supports a consumption tax hike, last week warned that investor confidence in Japan would be lost without reform.

The government has been able to fund its growing fiscal gap by raising money in the domestic market, with around 95 percent of the country's huge debt held domestically via banks and pension schemes.

Japan's ability to finance its debt is therefore seen as sustainable for now, but analysts warn that this will change as the population ages and dips into savings to spend in retirement.