The Long Hello

My friend Jane Allen is visiting this week, and we've been reminiscing about our part -- her part, really -- in the first intentional radio message broadcast into space, on 16 November 1974, from the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico to whatever extraterrestrial intelligence might lie in the direction of the constellation Hercules. Both of us worked then at Cornell University, which operated the Arecibo Observatory for the National Science Foundation. The big telescope had just come through years-long, major renovations that made it a much more powerful instrument, and Jane wanted to celebrate its re-opening with a grand gesture.

"Can this telescope send radio waves as well as receive them?" she asked her boss, Frank Drake, a pioneer in the effort to discover life elsewhere in the universe. When he answered in the affirmative, she encouraged him and his colleagues, including the late Carl Sagan, to conceive a message to mark the re-dedication ceremony.

Drake and Sagan had developed a previous pictogram message, etched onto plaques that adorned the twin Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft, both launched in the 1970s. Those plaques were intended as messages to the citizens of Earth as well as from them. While neither Drake nor Sagan expected any alien being ever to retrieve the spacecraft, let alone decipher the information on the plaques, the intellectual exercise of conceptualizing such communications fostered an extraterrestrial perspective: How do humans see themselves in the context of the wider galaxy? How will we account for our stewardship of our planet? Consideration of the large questions, however, blew up in a fracas over the fact that the Pioneer plaques depicted a nude man and woman, standing amidst schematic illustrations of the spacecraft, the Solar System, and various bits of technical data. The Arecibo message would not be accused of indecency.

I still remember the bright, hot day of the 1974 Arecibo ceremony, and the way the sound of the message -- which was transposed into eerie alternating tones for those present at its transmission -- filled up the air over the site. I remember seeing women in sleeveless dresses rub chills from their arms as we all looked at the telescope and thought about the conversation it might be initiating at that moment, across a distance of 25,000 lightyears.

"It's all about relationships," Jane said when I asked what had given her the idea. Others oppose her optimistic confidence in reaching out. Scientist Stephen Hawking recently warned that announcing our whereabouts could invite a hostile invasion. But the Drake Equation, which Frank devised in 1961 to estimate the number of technologically advanced civilizations in the Milky Way, reminds us that our greatest enemies are still likely found among our fellow Earthlings.

Peer Review

I'm writing a review now of a new work of nonfiction for a British monthly. It's a good book, which is a good thing, because I forgot to stipulate my usual conditions when I took this assignment: If I don't enjoy the read, I'll return the book with the suggestion that it not be reviewed. Better to devote my time and the periodical's column-inches to some more deserving title among the many vying for reviewers' attention. Better to say nothing than to savage a fellow author with a bad review. "Why are writers expected to critique our own kind in public?" laments my friend M. G. Lord, author of Forever Barbie and AstroTurf, along with numerous contributions to the New York Times Book Review. "We're like some species that eats its young."

Even favorable reviews can work against an author--sometimes by saying too much. If an appreciative assessment carries on for five or six three-column pages in my favorite magazine, I might decide by the end of it that I've absorbed as much of that book as I care to.

As for reviewers who divulge the plots of novels, well, they should find another line of work.

The book I have at hand is a hardcover, jacketed, published volume--a true anomaly, given that reviewers usually receive a paperbound "advance reading copy" printed on poor quality paper, full of typos and other errors. In fact, such error-ridden "uncorrected proofs" come with a warning: "Do not quote for review without comparing text to finished book."

The warnings no doubt address the editors of reviews, since reviewers tend not to see finished books--unless they buy their own copies later.

Reviewers' galleys also advertise they are "Not for sale," though they do show up at library fund-raisers and used-books stores. Unsaleable and inferior, with blurred illustrations the size of postage stamps, they presume the cachet of "banned" or contraband.

The hefty stock and attractive cover of the book I'm reviewing do not--must not--stop me from scribbling in it (in pencil), underlining this or that, marking whole paragraphs "Q" for "quotable," drawing big question marks in the margins next to claims that jar me, and creating my own index, on the flyleaf, of pages to return to and write about. The actual index--an item missing from any advance reading copy--is of course included here, and stands as a paragon of the genre.

The problem with reviewing the finished book is that I have found a few mistakes in it. If this were a galley, I would send a note to the author, who could then make the small corrections before the book went to press. Instead, I'll have to point out the errors in my review, to demonstrate I've done my job and know something of the subject, as well as to sound a balanced note of criticism in an otherwise enthusiastic endorsement.

On the Index

Recently I had a chance to review the professional index that Walker/Bloomsbury commissioned for my new book about Copernicus. The index arrived by e-mail on a Thursday afternoon, with instructions to look it over and return it with any suggestions for additions or subtractions by Monday morning.

Friends and family members were surprised to hear how I was spending the weekend.

“I thought it was done electronically,” one said. I wonder how many people think that? I mean, think about it. What would an electronically produced index look like, assuming a computer program could create such a thing? I’m picturing the name Copernicus followed by a long string of page numbers. And now I’m picturing a reader with a specific question in mind being thrown off the scent in frustration.

“I’ve always wondered who’s responsible for it,” my neighbor mused, “and how it’s put together, since there are so many different ways to look up things.”

Exactly.

Whenever I evaluate a work of nonfiction I look at the index to see how detailed it is. Indices speak to me.

Imagine my delight, then, at opening the document to find the entry for “Copernicus, Nicolaus” divided into more than thirty sub-categories, such as “birthplace of” and “death of,” plus a note to “See also On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres.” There was even a cross-reference for: “Koppernigk, Niklas. See Copernicus, Nicolaus.”

Indexing struck some of my family members as “the most tedious job” they could conceive. I countered that an indexer doesn’t merely compile a list of topics, but rises to an understanding of a book that must rival the author’s own. I didn’t think I could categorize the material nearly as well. Given a template, however, I tampered with it.

The draft index ran to 19 pages, double-spaced. My additions stretched it to 21, with at least one major judgment call for each letter of the alphabet. Starting with “A” for “astronomy,” I feared the indexer and I had already come to a philosophical divide. How could she offer only a handful of page references for this subject, when it pervaded the entire text? I was tempted to delete “astronomy,” until I noticed she’d allotted separate listings to “astrology,” “astronomical instruments,” “astronomical tables,” as well as a “Copernicus” sub-head labeled “observation of the sky by,” and I softened.

The first index entry under “I” naturally went to the Index—the Index of Prohibited Books, that is, where On the Revolutions held a place for two hundred years. That Index did not exist when Copernicus wrote his masterpiece, which he dedicated to the reigning religious authority of his time, “Paul III (pope), 179, 180, 181, 192, 216-17.”

Dark Night in the Big City

It appears I gave up too quickly on the idea of re-introducing stars as night-lights in New York City. My neighbor Susan Harder, founder of Long Island's Dark Sky Society, informs me that establishing an enlightened lighting code and upgrading all the poorly designed, inefficient street lights in the metropolis would restore some measure of the heavens to the skyline.

Most street lamps in midtown, she says, emit the bulk of their glare sideways and straight up. In order to also shed sufficient light on the ground for pedestrians, these fixtures waste great quantities of wattage--drawing as much as 800 watts each, as opposed to the 150 required by properly shielded luminaires. "Any good lighting that you see in New York City," she laments, "is almost accidental."

Susan also alerted me to a new film, The City Dark, which offers "a search for night on a planet that never sleeps." Watching the trailer on-line, I recognized several of the interview subjects, including Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of New York's Hayden Planetarium.

Inside the glass house of the Planetarium, model planets and digital stars are visible any time on demand, but the night's true luminaries still make city appearances to those who know where to look. The Amateur Astronomers Association of New York (yes, there really is one) hosts frequent observing nights at various sites in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Staten Island. Amateur astronomers count among the most enthusiastic, generous individuals I know, standing ever-ready to share the views through their telescopes with just about anyone who happens by. Many professional astronomers, too, display those same positive traits, though they are less likely to drop in at a public star party: Only about 10,000 astronomers worldwide find employment in their field as teachers and researchers.

Galileo, the original amateur telescope maker (or ATM, as his latter-day confreres now call themselves), achieved major discoveries from backyards and balconies on city streets in Padua and Florence. He lived in a bygone astronomer's paradise, described by author William Manchester as A World Lit Only by Fire. But the dark nights of those times sometimes saw an original thinker consumed by fire.

Conserving the Dark Sky

Neighbors of mine here on the eastern end of Long Island are making a film about local efforts to defend yet another threatened element of our ecosystem—the great vanishing wilderness of the night sky. This image of the Earth from space (once an Astronomy Picture of the Day) captures the global scope of the problem.  

Zooming in on the continental United States, Long Island appears as a bright tongue of flame extending from the nexus of nocturnal illumination that is Washington-Philadelphia-New York-Boston.

As a card-carrying, lifetime member of  the International Dark Sky Association, I am on record (and soon voice-over in the new film by the Accabonac Protection Committee) for complaining to anyone who will listen: The blight of urban sky glow stops children from wishing on stars, and lovers from counting them. Light pollution—meaning house lights and street lights that spill their illumination up to the sky, instead of directing it down on the ground where needed for safety—can sever our human connection to the beautiful celestial creatures of the night.

Whenever I talk to school groups, I ask the students , “How many of you have seen the Milky Way?” The number of hands varies from city to country setting, naturally, but the numbers get smaller all the time as we relinquish our live view of the universe.

Professional astronomers flee light pollution by decamping to observatories in remote mountain settings, as well as by sending telescopes into space. But people in other walks of life, not to mention other forms of life that share the planet, suffer from the disappearance of darkness at night.

Having grown up in New York City, I can hardly advocate dimming the lights on the late-night metropolitan habitat. Where I live now, however—and perhaps where you live?—it is still possible to reduce energy costs, protect animal habitats, and possibly even reap health benefits by adjusting outdoor lighting according to measures recommended by regional and state dark sky societies.

Revisiting Galileo

Recently I’ve been revisiting Galileo—in Italy. The American Academy in Rome invited me to participate in its 400^th anniversary celebration of the night, April 14, 1611, when he demonstrated his telescope to important patrons atop the Roman hill called the Gianicolo, on an estate now belonging to the Academy. Most of the 2011 event took place outdoors, in imitation of the original banquet, although the weather proved not as cooperative. I hadn’t spoken two words into the microphone before a fine drizzle began falling, and several of the late-night activities—including, alas, the star-gazing—were heavily rained out. You can see highlights of the evening here.  

My brother Steve, who had never before been to Italy, accompanied me. Naturally I wanted to show him as many Galileo sights as possible. As we stood before Galileo’s tomb in the Basilica of Santa Croce, in Florence, it occurred to me that I’d visited this grave site more often than the one where our own parents are buried. But then, I don’t need to go any particular place to feel connected to them.

Steve and I spent a day at Galileo’s other Florentine shrine, the newly renovated and re-named Museo Galileo (formerly the Institute and Museum of the History of Science) near the Uffizi Gallery. Two early telescopes and related representations of his handiwork are on display there, along with several new-found relics: A tooth, thumb, and forefinger now stand beside the more famous bone fragments from the middle finger of his right hand.

From Florence we took a train to Padua, where Galileo claimed to have spent the happiest years of his life, and where more bones awaited us. While visiting the university, “Il Bo,” we learned how a bit of a genuine Galilean vertebra, owned by the School of Medicine, almost gained passage aboard the Juno spacecraft, bound for Jupiter from Cape Canaveral this August. The mission will study the giant planet’s four largest moons, first discovered by Galileo in 1610 and now called the Galilean satellites.

The request from Juno’s principal investigator led to a thorough analysis of the bone, to make certain a tiny piece could be excised without damage to the rest. Although medical examiners approved the operation, astronomers ultimately shied away from the prospect of sending any part of the real Galileo into space. A plaque honoring his name will likely board Juno in his stead, and perhaps also a toy-sized replica of his person.