Mirror Earth (31 page)

This book was supported in part by a generous grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Chapter 1:
THE MAN WHO LOOKED FOR BLINKING STARS

13
“Astronomers have cracked the Milky Way like a piñata”: Dennis Overbye, “Kepler Planet Hunter Finds 1,200 Possibilities,”
New York Times
, February 2, 2011.

16
“Seth says 50 billion planets”: Knight Science Journalism Tracker, February 20, 2011,
http://ksjtracker.mit.edu/2011/02/20/aaas-science-advisers-alert-keplers-new-worlds-bilingual-brain-saving-solar-flare-batty-radar-whos-covering-this-stuff/
.

25
“Based on the stated assumptions”: Borucki, W. J., and Summers, A. L., “The Photometric Method of Detecting Other Planetary Systems,”
Icarus
58, no. 1 (1984): 121–134.

Chapter 2:
THE MAN WHO LOOKED FOR WOBBLING STARS

32
“Marcy dragged himself out of bed”: Michael D. Lemonick,
Other Worlds
, p. 63.

Chapter 3:
HOT JUPITERS: WHO ORDERED THOSE?

51
“The companion is probably a brown dwarf”: Latham, D., and Mazeh, T., et al., “The Unseen Companion of HD114762: A Probable Brown Dwarf,”
Nature
339 (1989): 38–40.

54
“We know that
stellar
companions”: Struve, O., “Proposal for a Project of High-Precision Stellar Radial Velocity Work,”
The Observatory
72 (1952): 199–200.

Chapter 4:
AN ANCIENT QUESTION

63
“there are infinite worlds”: quoted in Steven J. Dick,
Plurality of Worlds
, p. 10.

64
“the worlds come into being as follows”: quoted in Dick,
Plurality of Worlds
, p. 9.

68
“Rather than think that so many stars”: quoted in Dick,
Plurality of Worlds
, p. 41.

69
He sneaked onto everyone's: I owe this insight, along with much of the information in this chapter, to the scholarly but highly readable histories written by Steven J. Dick, whose books are listed in the bibliography.

70
“There are countless suns and countless earths”: quoted in Dick,
Plurality of Worlds
, p. 64.

72
“My Dear Kepler, what do you have to say about the principal philosophers”: quoted in Dick,
Plurality of Worlds
, p. 118.

72
“the Moon is … inhabited”: quoted in Dick,
Plurality of Worlds
, p. 19.

74
“Our Sun enlightens the Planets” quoted in Dick,
Plurality of Worlds
, p. 126.

75
“All the vast extent of the continents”: quoted in Steven J. Dick,
The Biological Universe
, p. 69.

76
“Their singular aspect”: quoted in Dick,
Biological Universe
, p. 70.

76
“Mr. Lowell went direct”: Campbell, W. W., “Mars,”
Science
4, no. 86 (1896): 231–238.

78
“The probability of success”: Cocconi, G., and Morrison, P., “Searching for Interstellar Communications,”
Nature
184, no. 4690 (1959): 844–846.

Chapter 9:
WAITING FOR LAUNCH

149
“When I attended a conference”: Jayawardhana,
Strange New Worlds
, p. 111.

151
“Sometime ago, R. W. Mandl”: Einstein, A., “Lens-Like Action of a Star by the Deviation of Light in the Gravitational Field,”
Science
84, no. 2188 (1936): 506–507.

Chapter 10:
KEPLER SCOOPED

176
“It is likely that this new world”: Marcy, G., “Extrasolar Planets: Water World Larger than Earth,”
Nature
462, no. 17 (2009): 853–854.

Chapter 12:
THE KEPLER ERA BEGINS

199
Fabrycky titled his creation the Kepler Orrery: The Kepler Orrery can be seen at
www.ucolick.org/~fabrycky/kepler/
.

Chapter 13:
BEYOND KEPLER

208
“This is NASA's Hurricane Katrina”: Kenneth Chang, “Telescope Is Behind Schedule and Over Budget, Panel Says,”
New York Times
, November 10, 2010.

Chapter 14:
HOW MANY EARTHS?

223
“Discussions of extrasolar planets”: Kuchner, M., “Volatile-Rich Earth-Mass Planets in the Habitable Zone,”
Astrophysical Journal
596, no. 1 (2003): L105–108.

223
“A new family of planets”: Léger, A., et al., “A New Family of Planets? ‘Ocean-Planets,'”
Icarus
169, no. 2 (2004): 499–504.

224
“What other possible kinds of planets”: Kuchner, M., and Seager, S., “Extrasolar Carbon Planets,”
Astrophysical Journal
(2005),
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0504214
.

Chapter 17:
ASTRONOMERS IN PARADISE

262
“When two elephants are waltzing”: Michael D. Lemonick, “Scientists Find a
Star Wars
World: One Planet, Two Suns,”
Time
, September 16, 2011.

Crowe, Michael J.,
The Extraterrestrial Life Debate
, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

Drake, Frank, and Sobel, Dava,
Is Anyone Out There? The Scientific Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
, New York: Delacorte Press, 1992.

Dick, Steven J.,
The Biological Universe: The Twentieth Century Extraterrestrial Life Debate and the Limits of Science
, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

———,
Plurality of Worlds: The Origins of the Extraterrestrial Life Debate from Democritus to Kant
, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1984

———, editor,
Many Worlds: The New Universe, Extraterrestrial Life & the Theological Implications
, Radnor, Penn.: Templeton Foundation Press, 2000.

Dick, Steven J., and Strick, James,
The Living Universe: NASA and the Development of Astrobiology
, New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2004.

Hoskin, Michael,
Discoverers of the Universe: William and Caroline Herschel
, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2011.

Impey, Chris, editor,
Talking About Life: Conversations on Astrobiology
, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Jayawardhana, Ray,
Strange New Worlds: The Search for Alien Planets and Life Beyond Our Solar System
, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2011.

Kasting, James,
How to Find a Habitable Planet
, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2010.

Lemonick, Michael D.,
Other Worlds: The Search for Life in the Universe
, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998.

Shostak, Seth,
Confessions of an Alien Hunter: A Scientist's Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
, Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Books, 2009.

MICHAEL D. LEMONICK spent nearly twenty-one years as a writer at
Time
, where he wrote more than fifty cover stories about science, medicine, and the environment. Since 2008, he has been senior writer at Climate Central, a nonprofit, non-partisan science and communications organization. He continues to write about space and astronomy as a freelancer, mostly for
Time
, but also for
National Geographic
,
Discover
, and other publications. Lemonick is the author of four previous popular books on astronomy. His second,
Other Worlds: The Search for Life in the Universe
, won the American Institute of Physics Science Communication Award in 1999. He has also won the American Association for the Advancement of Science Westinghouse Science Journalism Award twice, along with the Overseas Press Club's award for international environmental reporting. He has taught about science and writing at Princeton since 1998, and has also taught at New York University, Johns Hopkins, and Columbia.

The Georgian Star
Echo of the Big Bang
Other Worlds
The Light at the Edge of the Universe

Copyright © 2012 by Michael D. Lemonick

Electronic edition published in October 2012

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Lemonick, Michael D., 1953–
Mirror Earth : the search for our planet's twin /
Michael D. Lemonick.—1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Extrasolar planets. 2. Earth. 3. Planetology. I. Title.
QB820.L46 2012
523.2′4—dc23
2012009787

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First U.S. edition 2012

ISBN: 978-0-8027-7902-1 (e-book)