BNC selects a Berkeley cultural treasure to feature in each eNEWS issue. As we have worked on this section over the past ten or so months, we have come to realize that Berkeley’s treasures include not only some of its businesses, activities, architecture and events, but also its people. So, just as we’ve expanded our Neighborhood Food Prowl section, we have decided to expand this section to include the people that make the City of Berkeley such a special place. Whatever or whoever is nominated for this section must be located in or reside in Berkeley, and nominated by a Berkeley resident who has no connection, other than that of an ordinary patron of, or a participant in whatever is being nominated, or does not have a special relationship to whomever he/she is nominating. If whatever or whoever is nominated is advised of the nomination prior to publication, it must be made clear to the nominee that nomination does not automatically mean selection. The Newsletter Committee determines selections and in the majority of cases, the descriptions/comments about the selection will be published anonymously. Submissions may be sent to newsletter@berkeleyneighborhoodscouncil.com. BNC will notify the selected treasure.
We are going to start this month’s post by asking who among us has never thought about life in outer space and will we be able to communicate with that life? We bet that you guessed that our nomination for this month is a person — Berkeley resident, Dr. Geoffrey W. Marcy, the person who very well may be able someday to answer that question!
So, what do we know about this extraordinary Berkeley resident? Well, for starters he was born in Michigan, grew up in Southern California and earned his BA in Physics and Astronomy at UCLA where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1976. Four years later he earned his Ph.D from UC Santa Cruz in Astronomy and Physics and did a fellowship at the Mount Wilson Observatory in Pasadena, and then taught for awhile at San Francisco State University. Today, he is Professor of Astronomy at UC Berkeley, holds the Watson and Marilyn Alberts Chair in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), is Director of Berkeley’s Center for Integrative Planetary Science, an Adjunct Professor of Physics and Astronomy, San Francisco State University, member of the Astronomy and Astrophysics Committee, Office of Science Technology of the United States, and some predict that he’s in line for a future Nobel Prize.
As you might correctly deduce from the above, Dr. Marcy’s work, intelligence and persistence has resulted in him being showered with recognition: recipient of the Cozzarelli Prize from the National Academy of Sciences in 2013 for his work on the Prevalence of Earth-Sized Planets Orbiting Sun-Like Stars; awarded the NASA Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement in 2003; named Space Scientist of the Year by Discover Magazine also in 2003; co-awarded the prestigious Shaw Prize; and elected to the National Academy of Sciences — to name a few.
But that’s not the whole story. He actually teaches undergraduates on the Berkeley campus, Astronomy 7A and 7B, Introduction to Astrophysics and Astro C12 where he earned student comments in 2013 that he is enthusiastic, willing to talk with students, conducts “cool experiments” and has the attention of co-eds who sit in the front row and “swoon” over him.
Most importantly to our nomination, he brings the wonders of science and the prestige of the University of California, Berkeley campus, to a wide range of non-scientist type people from his appearances on the Letterman Late Night TV show, McNeil-Lehrer News, ABC Nightline, PBS Nova, Time Magazine, New York Times — see their May 12, 2014 feature on his life and work, Finder of New Worlds, Commonwealth Club, National Geographic, the History Channel, and a page on Facebook with pictures of family and friends.
Our City is made a more special place by his living and working here. We are fortunate indeed. However, it wasn’t easy for Dr. Marcy to become as the New York Times put it:
Outside a certain robot spacecraft named Kepler, the most prolific American discoverer of alien worlds, so-called exoplanets circling stars beyond the sun.
Today, Marcy and his group have discovered over 250 extrasolar planets, discovered the first multiple planet system (Upsilon Andromedae), the first Saturn-sized planet, and the first Neptune-sized planet. He was a co-investigator with the NASA Kepler mission that recently announced discovery of 1,230 exoplanents, most being smaller than twice the size of Earth. He is currently focused on finding other Earth-sized planets and solar systems similar to our own. His on-going work is designed to study the sizes, occurrence frequency, chemical composition and orbit of Earth-sized planets.
Consider all of this within the context of just 20 years ago, when reputable scientists the world over labeled the idea of alien worlds and life in outer space as “science fiction.” It is remarkable how his work has been a game-changer in the world of astronomy, and now we know there are indeed planets like ours out there, and we wonder about what life might be in outer space and if and when we might communicate in some way with that life.
Back when Dr. Marcy was working at Mount Wilson, using the same telescope that Edwin Hubble used to discover the expansion of the universe in 1929, his work came under sharp criticism. So much so, that he deeply questioned his own abilities and whether his budding career in astronomy was at an end. For him, it was an emotionally troubling time. The New York Times tells the story that he was taking a shower, thinking about his troubles, when he decided that if he went down, he would do so for something that he believed in — hunting for life in outer space and that meant hunting for planets. That vow ignited his will to persist.
He took a job teaching at San Francisco State University that had no research program. There, he worked repairing the telescope on campus and working with students one of whom was none other than Mario Savio, well known here in Berkeley as the central figure in the Free Speech Movement on Berkeley’s campus. To this day, Dr. Marcy is said to keep a picture of Mr. Savio in his office.
Another of his students in 1986 was R. Paul Butler, who had just received his undergraduate degree in chemistry. Together they went to work on making a spectrograph sensitive enough to detect extremely small changes in the light they were trying to measure. Based on Dr. Marcy’s knowledge, Butler built a cell to hold iodine and together they installed it on the University’s telescope at the Lick Observatory, near San Jose. It took the pair 8 long years of adjustments to find a planet. Their quest went largely unnoticed and those that did notice it were inclined to laugh. Then, another group, using the same technique as Marcy-Butler found a planet roughly half the mass of Jupiter circling a star. Shortly thereafter, Marcy-Butler scored and then they found 10 more planets. Even then, some prominent astronomers just wouldn’t believe them and take their work seriously. It took another 3 to 4 years for the work of Marcy and Butler along with that of another group to convince people that what they saw were planets.
It then became a race between teams of astronomers to see who could discover the most planets.
After the Marcy discoveries and those of others, along came Kepler, the NASA spacecraft launched in 2009 into an Earth-trailing orbit around the sun. Its mission was to find planets and it found more than 1000 possibilities in the first year. But then, sooner than expected, Kepler broke down so that it was no longer able to focus accurately. Scientists are working to put it all right but the big plans for a Terrestrial Planet Finder died. Under Dr. Marcy’s direction, a student of his, analyzing Kepler data, had predicted that about a fifth of the 100 billion sun-like stars in the galaxy had potentially habitable Earth-sized planets.
Apparently, while we can measure the size of planets we cannot measure their density or tell their characteristics and as noted above, this is now the work of Dr. Marcy and his group — measuring the properties of planets that are roughly one and a half the size of Earth. To do this, no one has to run off to a lonely life on a distant mountain. Times have changed. Dr. Marcy can sit in the familiar comfort of his basement office on the Berkeley campus and click on an icon on one of his computer screens. Three thousand miles away, 14,000 ft high in the sky a glass tuna-can sized container slides into place in the beam of Keck I telescope, “interposing a calibrating layer of iodine gas between it and the stars” so says the New York Times article, Finder of New Worlds.
If BNC readers ever go to the Big Island in the State of Hawaii, do not fail to visit Mauna Kea. Sitting about 14,000 feet high, the Mauna Kea Observatory has no nearby mountains to generate turbulence in the air, few city lights to obscure the view and a mostly clear, calm and dry atmosphere. Its 13 telescopes are operated by teams of scientists from 11 countries. This is the world’s largest observatory where the combined light-gathering power of the telescopes is 60 times greater than that of the Hubble Space Telescope.
There is frequently snow on its slopes at least part of the year, and visitors to the Observatory’s upper reaches can see skiers (there are no lifts) and pickups which people fill with snow, slip in some beer and drive rapidly down the mountain to the beach and party time! It’s an old Hawaiian tradition originally done as a foot race from the summit to the beach. Ski and swim in tropical waters on the same day is a rare treat indeed.
The Visitor’s Center is below the summit at about 9,000 feet and most people stop there where videos and docents fill people in on the work done above. Visitors to the summit are required to remain at the Visitor’s Center a minimum of one hour before proceeding up the mountain. The hardy souls who want to go further, can access the summit if they drive a certain type of 4 wheel drive vehicle that lines up in a guided convoy to the top where they can actually go inside one of the telescopes. It is said that $50,000 is spent monthly for Keck I and Keck II, not to stay warm, but to keep the telescopes at a cool and constant temperature.
In this writer’s opinion, Keck I and II are the stars of the Observatory show with their 10 meter diameter primary mirrors, each composed of 36 hexagonal segments that work in concert as a single piece of reflective glass, the world’s largest optical and infrared telescopes. Keck I and II each stand about 8 stories high and are operated by a private, non-profit organization and a scientific partnership of the California Institute of Technology, the University of California and NASA. When visiting this awesome installation, think of Dr. Geoff Marcy sitting in his basement office deep in the bowels of the Berkeley campus, clicking on an icon on his computer and sliding that little tuna can sized device into the beam of those mirrors so that we can all know more about what’s out there in the stars. GO BEARS!
A BNC Announcement
The BrasArte World Dance Center was nominated in BNC’s September 2013 eNEWS. BrasArte’s Brazilian Day Festival will be held August 31, 2014 in collaboration with the Capoeira Arts Foundation which is housed at the Casa de Cultura, 1901 San Pablo Avenue, Berkeley.