THE SUN’S FAMILY

IMAGINE THE EARTH scrutinized by some very careful and extremely patient extraterrestrial observer: 4.6 billion years ago the planet is observed to complete its condensation out of interstellar gas and dust, the final planetesimals falling in to make the Earth produce enormous impact craters; the planet heats internally from the gravitational potential energy of accretion and from radioactive decay, differentiating the liquid iron core from the silicate mantle and crust; hydrogen-rich gases and condensible water are released from the interior of the planet to the surface; a rather humdrum cosmic organic chemistry yields complex molecules, which lead to extremely simple self-replicating molecular systems—the first terrestrial organisms; as the supply of impacting interplanetary boulders dwindles, running water, mountain building and other geological processes wipe out the scars attendant to the Earth’s origin; a vast planetary convection engine is established which carries mantle material up at the ocean floors and subducts it down at the continental margins, the collision of the moving plates producing the great folded mountain chains and the general configuration of land and ocean, glaciated and tropical terrain varies continuously. Meanwhile, natural selection extracts out from a wide range of alternatives those varieties of self-replicating molecular systems best suited to the changing environments; plants evolve that use visible light to break down water into hydrogen and oxygen, and the hydrogen escapes to space, changing the chemical composition of the atmosphere from reducing to oxidizing; organisms of fair complexity and middling intelligence eventually arise.

Yet in all the 4.6 billion years our hypothetical observer is struck by the isolation of the Earth. It receives sunlight and cosmic rays—both important for biology—and occasional impact of interplanetary debris. But nothing in all those eons of time leaves the planet. And then the planet suddenly begins to fire tiny dispersules throughout the inner solar system, first in orbit around the Earth, then to the planet’s blasted and lifeless natural satellite, the Moon. Six capsules—small, but larger than the rest—set down on the Moon, and from each, two tiny bipeds can be discerned, briefly exploring their surroundings and then hotfooting it back to the Earth, having extended tentatively a toe into the cosmic ocean. Eleven little spacecraft enter the atmosphere of Venus, a searing hellhole of a world, and six of them survive some tens of minutes on the surface before being fried. Eight spacecraft are sent to Mars. Three successfully orbit the planet for years; another flies past Venus to encounter Mercury, on a trajectory obviously chosen intentionally to pass by the innermost planet many times. Four others successfully traverse the asteroid belt, fly close to Jupiter and are there ejected by the gravity of the largest planet into interstellar space. It is clear that something interesting is happening lately on the planet Earth.

If the 4.6 billion years of the Earth history were compressed into a single year, this flurry of space exploration would have occupied the last tenth of a second, and the fundamental changes in attitude and knowledge responsible for this remarkable transformation would fill only the last few seconds. The seventeenth century saw the first widespread application of simple lenses and mirrors for astronomical purposes. With the first astronomical telescope Galileo was astounded and delighted to see Venus as a crescent, and the mountains and the craters of the Moon. Johannes Kepler thought that the craters were constructions of intelligent beings inhabiting that world. But the seventeenth-century Dutch physicist Christianus Huygens disagreed. He suggested that the effort involved in constructing the lunar craters would be unreasonably great, and also thought that he could see alternative explanations for these circular depressions.

Huygens exemplified the synthesis of advancing technology, experimental skills, a reasonable, hard-nosed and skeptical mind, and an openness to new ideas. He was the first to suggest that we are looking at atmosphere and clouds on Venus; the first to understand something of the true nature of the rings of Saturn (which had seemed to Galileo as two “ears” enveloping the planet); the first to draw a picture of a recognizable marking on the Martian surface (Syrtis Major); and the second, after Robert Hooke, to draw the Great Red Spot of Jupiter. These last two observations are still of scientific importance because they establish the permanence at least for three centuries of these features. Huygens was of course not a thoroughly modern astronomer. He could not entirely escape the fashions of belief of his time. For example, he presented a curious argument from which we could deduce the presence of hemp on Jupiter: Galileo had observed that Jupiter has four moons. Huygens asked a question few modern planetary astronomers would ask: Why does Jupiter have four moons? An insight into this question, he thought, could be garnered by asking the same question of the Earth’s single moon, whose function, apart from giving a little light at night and raising the tides, was to provide a navigational aid to mariners. If Jupiter has four moons, there must be many mariners on that planet. But mariners imply boats; boats imply sails; sails imply ropes; and, I suppose, ropes imply hemp. I wonder how many of our present highly prized scientific arguments will seem equally suspect from the vantage point of three centuries.

A useful index of our knowledge about a planet is the number of bits of information necessary to characterize our understanding of its surface. We can think of this as the number of black and white dots in the equivalent of a newspaper wirephoto which, held at arm’s length, would summarize all existing imagery. Back in Huygens’ day, about ten bits of information, all obtained by brief glimpses through telescopes, would have covered our knowledge of the surface of Mars. By the time of the close approach of Mars to Earth in the year 1877, this number had risen to perhaps a few thousand, if we exclude a large amount of erroneous information—for example, drawings of the “canals,” which we now know to be entirely illusory. With further visual observations and the development of ground-based astronomical photography, the amount of information grew slowly until a dramatic upturn in the curve occurred, corresponding to the advent of space-vehicle exploration of the planet.

The twenty photographs obtained in 1965 by the Mariner 4 fly-by comprised five million bits of information, roughly comparable to all previous photographic knowledge about the planet. The coverage was still only a tiny fraction of the planet. The dual fly-by mission, Mariner 6 and 7 in 1969, increased this number by a factor of 100, and the Mariner 9 orbiter in 1971 and 1972 increased it by another factor of 100. The Mariner 9 photographic results from Mars correspond roughly to 10,000 times the total previous photographic knowledge of Mars obtained over the history of mankind. Comparable improvements apply to the infrared and ultraviolet spectroscopic data obtained by Mariner 9, compared with the best previous ground-based data.

Going hand in hand with the improvement in the quantity of our information is the spectacular improvement in its quality. Prior to Mariner 4, the smallest feature reliably detected on the surface of Mars was several hundred kilometers across. After Mariner 9, several percent of the planet had been viewed at an effective resolution of 100 meters, an improvement in resolution of a factor of 1,000 in the last ten years, and a factor of 10,000 since Huygens’ time. Still further improvements were provided by Viking. It is only because of this improvement in resolution that we today know of vast volcanoes, polar laminae, sinuous tributaried channels, great rift valleys, dune fields, crater-associated dust streaks, and many other features, instructive and mysterious, of the Martian environment.

Both resolution and coverage are required to understand a newly explored planet. For example, even with their superior resolution, by an unlucky coincidence the Mariner 4, 6 and 7 spacecraft observed the old, cratered and relatively uninteresting part of Mars and gave no hint of the young and geologically active third of the planet revealed by Mariner 9.

LIFE ON EARTH is wholly undetectable by orbital photography until about 100-meter resolution is achieved, at which point the urban and agricultural geometrizing of our technological civilization becomes strikingly evident. Had there been a civilization on Mars of comparable extent and level of development, it would not have been detected photographically until the Mariner 9 and Viking missions. There is no reason to expect such civilizations on the nearby planets, but the comparison strikingly illustrates that we are just beginning an adequate reconnaissance of neighboring worlds.

THERE IS NO question that astonishments and delights await us as both resolution and coverage are dramatically improved in photography, and comparable improvements are secured in spectroscopic and other methods.

The largest professional organization of planetary scientists in the world is the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society. The vigor of this burgeoning science is apparent in the meetings of the society. In the 1975 annual meeting, for example, there were announcements of the discovery of water vapor in the atmosphere of Jupiter, ethane on Saturn, possible hydrocarbons on the asteroid Vesta, an atmospheric pressure approaching that of the Earth on the Saturnian moon Titan, decameter-wavelength radio bursts from Saturn, the radar detection of the Jovian moon Ganymede, the elaboration of the radio emission spectrum of the Jovian moon Callisto, to say nothing of the spectacular views of Mercury and Jupiter (and their magnetospheres) presented by the Mariner 10 and Pioneer 11 experiments. Comparable advances were reported in subsequent meetings.

In all the flurry and excitement of recent discoveries, no general view of the origin and evolution of the planets has yet emerged, but the subject is now very rich in provocative hints and clever surmises. It is becoming clear that the study of any planet illuminates our knowledge of the rest, and if we are to understand Earth thoroughly, we must have a comprehensive knowledge of the other planets. For example, one now fashionable suggestion, which I first proposed in 1960, is that the high temperatures on the surface of Venus are due to a runaway greenhouse effect in which water and carbon dioxide in a planetary atmosphere impede the emission of thermal infrared radiation from the surface to space; the surface temperature then rises to achieve equilibrium between the visible sunlight arriving at the surface and the infrared radiation leaving it; this higher surface temperature results in a higher vapor pressure of the greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide and water; and so on, until all the carbon dioxide and water vapor is in the vapor phase, producing a planet with high atmospheric pressure and high surface temperature.

Now, the reason that Venus has such an atmosphere and Earth does not seems to be a relatively small increment of sunlight. Were the Sun to grow brighter or Earth’s surface and clouds to grow darker, could Earth become a replica of the classical vision of Hell? Venus may be a cautionary tale for our technical civilization, which has the capability to alter profoundly the environment of Earth.

Despite the expectation of almost all planetary scientists, Mars turns out to be covered with thousands of sinuous tributaried channels probably several billion years old. Whether formed by running water or running CO₂, many such channels probably could not be carved under present atmospheric conditions; they require much higher pressures and probably higher polar temperatures. Thus the channels—as well as the polar laminated terrain on Mars—may bear witness to at least one, and perhaps many, previous epochs of much more clement conditions, implying major climatic variations during the history of the planet. We do not know if such variations are internally or externally caused. If internally, it will be of interest to see whether the Earth might, through the activities of man, experience a Martian degree of climatic excursions—something much greater than the Earth seems to have experienced at least recently. If the Martian climatic variations are externally produced—for example, by variations in solar luminosity—then a correlation of Martian and terrestrial paleoclimatology would appear extremely promising.

Mariner 9 arrived at Mars in the midst of a great global dust storm, and the Mariner 9 data permit an observational test of whether such storms heat or cool a planetary surface. Any theory with pretensions to predicting the climatic consequences of increased aerosols in the Earth’s atmosphere had better be able to provide the correct answer for the global dust storm observed by Mariner 9. Drawing upon our Mariner 9 experience, James Pollack of NASA Ames Research Center, Brian Toon of Cornell and I have calculated the effects of single and multiple volcanic explosions on the Earth’s climate and have been able to reproduce, within experimental error, the observed climatic effects after major explosions on our planet. The perspective of planetary astronomy, which permits us to view a planet as a whole, seems to be very good training for studies of the Earth. As another example of this feedback from planetary studies on terrestrial observations, one of the major groups studying the effect on the Earth’s ozonosphere of the use of halocarbon propellants from aerosol cans is headed by M. B. McElroy at Harvard University—a group that cut its teeth for this problem on the aeronomy of the atmosphere of Venus.

We now know from space-vehicle observations something of the surface density of impact craters of different sizes for Mercury, the Moon, Mars and its satellites; radar studies are beginning to provide such information for Venus, and although it is heavily eroded by running water and tectonic activity, we have some information about craters on the surface of the Earth. If the population of objects producing such impacts were the same for all these planets, it might then be possible to establish both an absolute and a relative chronology of cratered surfaces. But we do not yet know whether the populations of impacting objects are common—all derived from the asteroid belt, for example—or local; for example, the sweeping up of rings of debris involved in the final stages of planetary accretion.

The heavily cratered lunar highlands speak to us of an early epoch in the history of the solar system when cratering was much more common than it is today; the present population of interplanetary debris fails by a large factor to account for the abundance of the highland craters. On the other hand, the lunar maria have a much lower crater abundance, which can be explained by the present population of interplanetary debris, largely asteroids and possibly dead comets. It is possible to determine, for planetary surfaces that are not so heavily cratered, something of the absolute age, a great deal about the relative age, and in some cases, even something about the distribution of sizes in the population of objects that produced the craters. On Mars, for example, we find the flanks of the large volcanic mountains are almost free of impact craters, implying their comparative youth; they were not around long enough to accumulate very much in the way of impact scars. This is the basis for the contention that volcanoes on Mars are a comparatively recent phenomenon.

The ultimate objective of comparative planetology is, I suppose, something like a vast computer program into which we put a few input parameters—perhaps the initial mass, composition, angular momentum and population of neighboring impacting objects—and out comes the time evolution of the planet. We are very far from having such a deep understanding of planetary evolution at the present time, but we are much closer than would have been thought possible only a few decades ago.

Every new set of discoveries raises a host of questions which we were never before wise enough even to ask. I will mention just a few of them. It is now becoming possible to compare the compositions of asteroids with the compositions of meteorites on Earth (see Chapter 15). Asteroids seem to divide neatly into silicate-rich and organic-matter-rich objects. One immediate consequence appears to be that the asteroid Ceres is apparently undifferentiated, while the less massive asteroid Vesta is differentiated. But our present understanding is that planetary differentiation occurs above a certain critical mass. Could Vesta be the remnant of a much larger parent body now gone from the solar system? The initial radar glimpse of the craters of Venus shows them to be extremely shallow. Yet there is no liquid water to erode the Venus surface, and the lower atmosphere of Venus seems to be so slow-moving that dust may not be able to fill the craters. Could the source of the filling of the craters of Venus be a slow molasseslike collapse of a very slightly molten surface?

The most popular theory on the generation of planetary magnetic fields invokes rotation-driven convection currents in a conducting planetary core. Mercury, which rotates once every fifty-nine days, was expected in this scheme to have no detectable magnetic field. Yet such a field is manifestly there, and a serious reappraisal of theories of planetary magnetism is in order. Only Saturn and Uranus have rings. Why? There is on Mars an exquisite array of longitudinal sand dunes nestling against the interior ramparts of a large eroded crater. There is in the Great Sand Dunes National Monument near Alamosa, Colorado, a very similar set of sand dunes nestling in the curve of the Sangre de Cristo mountains. The Martian and the terrestrial sand dunes have the same total extent, the same dune-to-dune spacing and the same dune heights. Yet the Martian atmospheric pressure is 1/200 that on Earth, the winds necessary to initiate the saltation of sand grains are ten times that for Earth, and the particle-size distribution may be different on the two planets. How, then, can the dune fields produced by windblown sand be so similar? What are the sources of the decameter radio emission on Jupiter, each less than 100 kilometers across, fixed on the Jovian surface, which intermittently radiate to space?

Mariner 9 observations imply that the winds on Mars at least occasionally exceed half the local speed of sound. Are the winds ever much larger? What is the nature of a transonic meteorology? There are pyramids on Mars about 3 kilometers across at the base and 1 kilometer high. They are unlikely to have been constructed by Martian pharaohs. The rate of sandblasting by wind-transported grains on Mars is at least 10,000 times that on Earth because of the greater speeds necessary to move particles in the thinner Martian atmosphere. Could the facets of the Martian pyramids have been eroded by millions of years of such sandblasting from more than one prevailing wind direction?

The moons in the outer solar system are almost certainly not replicas of our own, rather dull satellite. Many of them have such low densities that they must be composed largely of methane, ammonia or water ices. What will their surfaces look like close up? How will impact craters erode on an icy surface? Might there be volcanoes of solid ammonia with a lava of liquid NH₃ trickling down the sides? Why is Io, the innermost large satellite of Jupiter, enveloped in a cloud of gaseous sodium? How does Io help to modulate the synchrotron emission from the Jovian radiation belt in which it lives? Why is one side of Iapetus, a moon of Saturn, six times brighter than the other? Because of a particlesize difference? A chemical difference? How did such differences become established? Why on Iapetus and nowhere else in the solar system in so symmetrical a way?

The gravity of the solar system’s largest moon, Titan, is so low and the temperature of its upper atmosphere sufficiently high that hydrogen should escape into space extremely rapidly in a process known as blow-off. But the spectroscopic evidence suggests that there is a substantial quantity of hydrogen on Titan. The atmosphere of Titan is a mystery. And if we go beyond the Saturnian system, we approach a region in the solar system about which we know almost nothing. Our feeble telescopes have not even reliably determined the periods of rotation of Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, much less the character of their clouds and atmospheres, and the nature of their satellite systems. The poet Diane Ackerman of Cornell University writes: “Neptune/is/elusive as a dappled horse in fog. Pulpy?/Belted? Vapory? Frost-bitten? What we know/wouldn’t/fill/a lemur’s fist.”

One of the most tantalizing issues that we are just beginning to approach seriously is the question of organic chemistry and biology elsewhere in the solar system. The Martian environment is by no means so hostile as to exclude life, nor do we know enough about the origin and evolution of life to guarantee its presence there or anywhere else. The question of organisms both large and small on Mars is entirely open, even after the Viking missions.

The hydrogen-rich atmospheres of places such as Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Titan are in significant respects similar to the atmosphere of the early Earth at the time of the origin of life. From laboratory simulation experiments we know that organic molecules are produced in high yield under such conditions. In the atmospheres of Jupiter and Saturn the molecules will be convected to pyrolytic depths. But even there the steady-state concentration of organic molecules can be significant. In all simulation experiments the application of energy to such atmospheres produces a brownish polymeric material, which in many significant respects resembles the brownish coloring material in their clouds. Titan may be completely covered with a brownish, organic material. It is possible that the next few years will witness major and unexpected discoveries in the infant science of exobiology.

The principal means for the continued exploration of the solar system over the next decade or two will surely be unmanned planetary missions. Scientific space vehicles have now been launched successfully to all the planets known to the ancients. There is a range of unapproved proposed missions that have been studied in some detail. (See Chapter 16.) If most of these missions are actually implemented, it is clear that the present age of planetary exploration will continue brilliantly. But it is by no means clear that these splendid voyages of discovery will be continued, at least by the United States. Only one major planetary mission, the Galileo project to Jupiter, has been approved in the last seven years—and even it is in jeopardy.

Even a preliminary reconnaissance of the entire solar system out to Pluto and a more detailed exploration of a few planets by, for example, Mars rovers and Jupiter entry probes will not solve the fundamental problem of solar system origins; what we need is the discovery of other solar systems. Advances in ground-based and spaceborne techniques in the next two decades might be capable of detecting dozens of planetary systems orbiting nearby single stars. Recent observational studies of multiple-star systems by Helmut Abt and Saul Levy, both of Kitt Peak National Observatory, suggest that as many as one-third of the stars in the sky may have planetary companions. We do not know whether such other planetary systems will be like ours or built on very different principles.

We have entered, almost without noticing, an age of exploration and discovery unparalleled since the Renaissance. It seems to me that the practical benefits of comparative planetology for Earthbound sciences; the sense of adventure imparted by the exploration of other worlds to a society that has almost lost the opportunity for adventure; the philosophical implications of the search for a cosmic perspective—these are what will in the long run mark our time. Centuries hence, when our very real political and social problems may be as remote as the very real problems of the War of the Austrian Succession seem to us, our time may be remembered chiefly for one fact: this was the age when the inhabitants of the Earth first made contact with the cosmos around them.