By Khalida Sarwari
When you’re a scientist, astronomer Jill Tarter told a room full of students and parents, you never have to stop growing up; you never have to stop asking why.
“Think of the privilege of going to work every day and working on questions that you posed,” Tarter said to the crowd of about 200 gathered at the Saratoga High School library on Jan. 15. “That is what a scientist gets to do. It’s mystery. It’s puzzling. It’s a huge struggle, but it’s a lot better than punching a time clock and doing what your boss tells you to do.”
Tarter, who holds the Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI Research at the SETI Institute and has been named one of the most influential people in the world by Time magazine, was invited to speak as part of the school’s media arts program, which brings in speakers from various industries throughout the school year.
During her 90-minute talk, Tarter gave a presentation about life on other planets and discussed her work on a number of major scientific projects, most of which are related to the search for extraterrestrial life.
Standing in front of a photo of Mars projected on a screen, Tarter spent some time talking about the climate and the possibilities for exploration on the red planet.
“This is your career path,” she said. “You guys are going to be building the instruments that go and bring back samples from Mars.”
This struck a note with Laira Bhurji, a 14-year-old freshman, who walked away feeling inspired about the idea that there is still so much left to discover.
“As high school students we can choose careers to still help and develop this technology because it’s still relatively new,” she said.
Tarter talked also about the moons of Jupiter and liquid lakes on Saturn, telling students that exploration of those planets would also occur over their lifetimes.
“It’s just unpredictable what we’ll find,” she said. “I expect to be surprised in the future. I expect you to be surprised.”
Tarter talked about the Rosetta mission, which in November performed the first soft landing on a comet and returned data from the surface, and of the Kepler spacecraft launched by NASA in 2009 to discover Earth-like planets orbiting other stars. Data from this mission revealed that just about every star in the galaxy has planets.
“We think liquid water is the key to life, or at least all life as we know it,” she said.
Leilee Naderi, 14, said the talk left her wanting to learn more about astronomy.
“Up until now I was not aware of the concept of multiverse, and it left me astounded,” the freshman said. “I had a narrow-minded vision of where we live. There could be more of us. There could be other life in different universes.”
Tarter touched upon the challenges she faced in obtaining funding for projects as a postgraduate student, before closing her talk with a quote by Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison: “The probability of success is difficult to estimate, but if we never search the chance of success is zero.”
“So we’re going to keep searching,” she said, prompting applause from her rapt audience.
Afterward, Tarter fielded questions about how she became involved in her career, to which she responded that she knew she wanted to be an engineer since the age of 8, because “it was the most male thing I could think of.” One of her first jobs required her to program the first desktop computer ever built, she said.
She also talked about her role in Carl Sagan’s movie “Contact,” the challenges in funding space exploration, how she reconciles science with religion and the importance of not just science but mathematics.
“It’s just a basic tool, not just in physics but all kinds of sciences and all kinds of arts,” she said. “I would say math … is worth knowing.”
Samir Ramakrishnan, 17, who moderated the program, quipped, “I wish I knew math.”
Afterward, he said the event was MAP’s best attended this school year. “I think this shows the quality of the MAP program,” the senior said. “I think the MAP program provides an innovative way to experience high school curriculum.”
The next MAP event is scheduled for this spring and will feature Comcast SportsNet Bay Area’s Ahmed Fareed.
