Space probe transforms sci-fi wonders into reality

A small probe stranded on a far-away and hostile world operates for two precious hours at a temperature of 300 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, desperately transmitting information to its mother ship before that spacecraft disappears below the horizon, leaving the small explorer alone on the spongy ground of its new alien home, slowly losing power and slated to eternally rest on a frozen moon 750 million miles from Earth.

I could be accused of anthropomorphizing, but the plight of the small Cassini-Huygens probe resting near a hydrocarbon-coated ice and methane plain on Saturn's largest moon, Titan, captured my imagination far more than anything the astronauts in the International Space Station might be doing now.

What really did it for me was the orange sky. It showed with striking clarity that the science fiction wonders that I dreamed of as a child are being revealed by our unmanned space probes in a way that is both more enthralling and informative than anything likely to come from spending all of NASA's funds on a few more astronauts on the moon, or, eventually, Mars.

I admit to having already been hooked on Internet images like those from Martian Rovers on a planet that that looks suspiciously like a smoggy sunset seen from Los Angeles. But until now, the worlds that were stunningly brought to my desktop were closer to what I might see exploring an earthly desert than to those exotic places that had so captured my imagination as a child reading science fiction stories, or looking at artists' renderings of imaginary planetary surfaces.

But there, as I clicked on the Cassini-Huygens probe Web site, the dark pebbles of dirty hydrocarbon-coated ice on the surface of Titan jumped out through an orange glow of an atmosphere unlike anything I had ever seen.

I was instead reminded of old science fiction stories. On the Web I found a recent example of the kind of thing I used to savor. This was an award-winning short story, "Slow Life" by Michael Swanwick, about human explorers seeking life on Titan.

"People talked a lot about the 'murky orange atmosphere' of Titan, but your eyes adjusted. Turn up the gain on your helmet, and the white mountains of ice were dazzling! The methane streams carved cryptic runes into the heights. Then, at the tholin-line, white turned to a rich palette of oranges, reds and yellows."

So the water-ice is dirtier and the surface darker. But the landscape of Titan is eerily similar to the one Swanwick imagined so vividly. Except that the truth is even stranger and more entrancing than his fiction.

I learned from a news conference held on Friday by the Cassini- Huygens probe science team that there is evidence of active volcanoes on Titan's surface based on argon 40 in the atmosphere. But these do not spew molten lava. Instead, like the ones I concocted with my childhood chemistry set, these release plumes of water and ammonia.

There are indeed clouds and methane and hydrocarbon rainstorms, but the reality of a turbulent atmosphere of methane winds was brought home to me in a way that no writing could. With brilliant foresight, the Huygens includes a microphone on the probe. As it fell through the clouds, beginning about 100 miles above the surface, I could listen as well as see the approaching surface as the craft sent out a stream of photos during its descent. Sitting at my computer in the middle of the night, listening to gusts of alien winds on a remote moon of Saturn was both eerie and moving.

I consider myself fortunate to be living at a time when humans are as close as they may ever come to seeing such a truly alien world with methane slush and new colors in the sky. That is probably what drew me to science in the first place. While literature has the power to lift us from the tedium of everyday existence, science at its best has the power to transport us to totally different worlds, both literal and metaphorical, to take us where our imaginations may never have otherwise traveled.

In two short hours, one small unmanned probe changed my direct experience of our solar system in ways that I never imagined. Now I am craving more such highs. Perhaps I will witness further probes that may dive into distant alien seas underneath frozen moons. Perhaps one will send home clear evidence of alien life existing or extinct.

Realistically, however, the future is likely to be one of cutbacks and shortfalls, with billions of dollars headed to protect populations that we put in jeopardy, or build costly missile defenses against nonexistent threats. One can only hope that there is enough imagination left in government to allow us to keep supporting the missions that do the science that can really change the way we think about our place in the universe.

To boldly go where no one has gone before in ways that only unmanned spacecraft can do will cost so little in comparison that such an effort shouldn't interfere with the current priority of allowing astronauts to have new adventures on the moon.

It is significant in this regard that the Huygens probe was a product of the European Space Agency, working in concert with NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. This not only demonstrates that Europe is now a leading player in space exploration, but it shows that for grand human projects, like the exploration of our universe or the exploration of space and time on fundamental scales, we can and need to work together on a global scale.

This is one of the side benefits of the scientific enterprise. But even more than this, the universe continues to surprise us. Ultimately it is far more interesting than anything that science fiction writers or artists may imagine.

Life may imitate art, but ultimately it transcends it. Which is why we sometimes need to turn to the universe itself for inspiration.

Dr. Lawrence M. Krauss is the director of the Center for Education and Research in Cosmology and Astrophysics at Case Western Reserve University. His most recent book was "Atom."

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