Book Club Edition: Planetary Society Chief Scientist Bruce Betts’ latest for kids

Are we alone? And just how big is space? Planetary Society Chief Scientist Bruce Betts joins us with the answers on this month's Planetary Radio Book Club Edition. Hello again, Planetary Radio listeners and lovers of books about our solar system and beyond. I'm Matt Kaplan, Senior Communications Advisor for the Planetary Society, the former host of Planetary Radio. Bruce Betts has completed his series of space books for young people. The size of space collects many of Bruce's successful and very entertaining attempts to reduce the vastness of the cosmos to human scale. The other book, Are We Alone?, borrows that greatest of questions that drives so much of science and is at the core of the Planetary Society's mission. Bruce is still the only human being who has been heard on every episode of the weekly Planetary Radio series, with me for the first 20 years, and now with host Sarah Ahmed. But he has done so very much more for us across his many years at the Society, including his brilliant management of the LightSail SolarSail project. He's a planetary scientist whose Ph.D. studies at Caltech were overseen by our co-founder, Dr. Bruce Murray. Bruce Betts spent three years at NASA HQ and has crossed the globe in his work for us and others, including the Planetary Science Institute, where he is an alumnus senior scientist. You're about to hear much more about my good friend in this recording of the live stream conversation we had in the Society's member community as 2026 got underway. We are here to talk about Bruce's latest books. You see a shelf full of them behind him there. Here are the two latest and, as I understand it, last books in the series. Am I correct? Yes, you are correct. It is a 15-book series, if you count all of them, going back to the eclipse book and one for each planet and a few for other objects besides planets in our solar system. And then we finish off with a couple different topics, measuring the size of space. Basically, it's, for those who may be aware, it's basically random space fact with a little introduction to talk about scale models and things like that. And I pulled out some of the coolest random space facts, had the art department do some things, found some images, and made a groovy book. And this was part of a Planetary Society partnership with Lerner Books, who is particularly active in school libraries. So feel free to tell your school library to check these out. Or you can order them for yourselves at Amazon, or if they seem to have inventory weirdness sometimes. So first, go to the Lerner Books and check out all the books there. We'll talk about the books, but I also want to talk to Bruce about his job and how he ended up in this work and about the Planetary Society and our mission and how he contributes to it and how he has done that for many, many, many, many years. I think roughly as long, almost as long as I've been around TPS. but we started beginning with the books which is a great place to start how did this come about how many of them are there why did the society decide that we should make you the author of this whole series that lists the planetary society right up there at the at the top of the book i don't really know the answer other than they had a made a mistake i can mention that i had as you can see on the shelves six books before I started writing these separately with different publishers and so there was a basis of I've been writing children's space books at all levels from my first book of planets up to teens and and adults but yet to actually be willing to get a book that says it was for children but I've had many adults enjoy them particularly the high All the levels. Anyway, our partner group and leadership team, including Ridge Chute and also Jennifer Vaughn and the gang, made contact with Lerner and worked out this deal where basically we would contribute a series with using our solar system planetary knowledge, and they would publish and distribute it. So you will see that most of these are nicely branded with planetary society. And it's a way we're trying to work more with educating children, kids, getting them excited about space, getting them involved and showing them all the beginning of all the neat stuff with space. So that's kind of where it's genesis. And then we worked out, been working over multiple years, working on coming up with what's included and how it's structured and the whole nine yards. I heard now and then from you and others how much work this was because it was this long stream of books. And, you know, anybody who thinks that putting together a book like this, which is, you know, it's fairly thin, it's fairly typical for what you do for kids, that this would be an easy task. You put a lot of work into these. I did. Hopefully it shows in the product and wasn't just a foolish waste of time. No, every time one of these comes out, I feel a great sense of accomplishment. And then I pick it up and I realize it's fairly thin and I'm not really sure how I spent that much time. But trying to get the language appropriate for the age group, trying to figure out what you have to do a lot of squeezing things down, figuring out what you throw out. So, you know, I love space. I've been studying it my whole life. So there's all sorts of things I want to put in there. But you need to fit fairly tight constraints in the process. And then I am obsessed with images. And so finding images that are real images when possible and art when not. And finding the best representative ones where, again, you only have room for a few. And trying to have a caption that, although short, gives you an idea of what you're looking at. And whether, for example, you're looking at something your eyes could see or something in the infrared otherwise. So anyway, I found a way to spend a lot of time on them. So hopefully people enjoy them. I mean, some people do. I know that my grandson is going to. My grandson is going to. I haven't even shown them to him yet. I know, especially the size of space. I think he's going to love because he already knows everything about astrobiology. But this is. How old is he now? He's nine, nine and a half. Yeah, good enough. Two PhDs so far. But, you know, he's a slow learner. He's published astrobiology papers? Yeah, yeah, all the time. You haven't seen them? You've been too busy writing books. They're perfect. What is the age? What age are they targeting? Targeting second to fourth grade, talking Americans, kind of four to seven, eight. So it's kind of in that range. But hopefully you target that here. interested. Even younger kids like it at some level, and then older kids can digest it. It's full of your wonderful random space fact analogies and demonstrations of scale. Let me bring up some of your examples, some of your random space facts, beginning with mouse earth and elephant sun. Yeah, I like that one. The way it's expressed here is that it's the earth or the size of a mouse then the sun would be the size of an elephant and i took out all the part about what kind of elephant and what gender but it's really an expression of mass to be perfectly honest but it roughly conveys to the size of the animals and indeed and there's a lovely elephant picture that we found in there and a mouse and that's about the difference because we're really tiny and and the sun's really big and that's what i tried to convey matt did you know that mouse elephant small big i didn't until i saw that example of course oh good i'll tell you one that that honestly did kind of surprise me even though i have known oh good many many years that olympus mons mount olympus on mars is that much huger than mount everest it was actually seeing them in the book laid out against each other, Everest in front of this behemoth. That is so impressive. And I'd be showing more of these pictures, but people are going to be listening to this on planetary radio, so I decided not to. But get the book, folks, and you'll see it. It's a mother. It's a monster. It is enormous, both in height, it dwarfs Mount Everest, and in breadth, because it's It's a very broad shield volcano, more like a Mauna Kea or Mauna Loa with the very shallow angles. I've heard the phrase that it's the size of Arizona. Also, I went ahead and went international, and it's the size of Poland. Poland is the size of Arizona? That would be by the transitive property of geographical silliness, yes. Yes, A equals B, B equals C, therefore A equals C. I remember the transitive. It's about as far as I got in math. If the sun was at New York City and not huge, you were burning it up. Take it from there. And you put Neptune in L.A., so sun, New York, Neptune, L.A., then the Earth would be orbiting roughly at the distance of Philadelphia. So graphically, the point is the Earth is much closer to the sun than Neptune is. It's Neptune about 30 times farther away from the sun than the earth is. And it's a way to really see it, at least for those familiar with the United States contiguous geography, that really did it. For me, I was pleased when I came up with a city comparison that was pretty accurate. Did you recognize my son in any of these pictures? No, not your S-U-N, but your S-O-N. I know you dedicated the book to your sons, both of whom I know, fine fellows, and to the members of the Planetary Society. I have a picture of Kevin, the younger, Daniel, the older. They're both fine men now in their 20s. But at this time, Kevin was somewhere in the teen preteen. And there he is, kicking the Earth. Getting ready to kick the Earth. Where the random space fact with some manipulation of the photo is if Earth were the size of a soccer ball, professional soccer ball, then Jupiter would be about pretty darn close to the height of a soccer goal. So this reminds me of the brilliant stuff that you did for a long time with our brilliant video guy, Merck Boyan, the Random Space Fact series, which are still on our website. If you check them out under the video, they're so entertaining. And my grandson, I already know, loves those. Even when he was like four years old, he just loved lining those up on our website. and got it. Yeah, if you're not familiar, we did working with Merck Boyan, our video guy a few years ago, we did a number of random space fight videos where they're a minute or two long and have real science fact, gee whiz, and then usually I get hurt and it's funny, at least for kids. Yeah, either you get hurt or you get embarrassed somehow or you, you know, break your car somehow. There's one I think. Oh, my poor car. Although, my car suffered a fate very similar to, well, not really, kind of similar to, it de-orbited, it came in through the atmosphere representing a car-sized asteroid entering the atmosphere and burned up. This case is just burned up in the Eden fires that were about one year ago, just melted most of it. And that's not important right now. word of explanation Bruce lived in the center of the Altadena fire more or less and that neighborhood is pretty much gone but you're doing okay right we're doing good we're we got ourselves and the dogs out and plenty of time and thought we were just evacuating to be cautious and everything no wasn't caution everything us and everything around it was uh wiped out i'm sorry it was caution uh i get a little distracted when i start talking about it um understand but that's not important right now either that's my theme for this is what's not important right now that was very important in my life but uh but uh but random space fact videos there's there there's a uh playlist i don't remember if that's linked easily from there or not but on youtube you can find all of but there's about 50 and we have fun and a couple of those made it into the book as well ones they similar to our solar system out to Neptune where there size of a quarter Then the galaxy Milky Way galaxy would be the size of North America Yeah, that's another one of the ones that I made note of. But here are two at least that got my LOL. One of them I was completely unfamiliar with. Yeah, I was surprised that everyone went along with me, including the ones at the back. One in particular, I bet was the one that was in question. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, here's the first one. Fingernail growth. Oh, yeah. With illustrations. Yeah, that was that. Yeah, the learner got the illustration made with my description. And so, yes, if the moon gets farther from the Earth in its orbit in one year, it's about the same distance as your fingernails grow in one year. There's a lot of variability in fingernail growth, but at least kind of an average fingernail growth, that's how. It turns out, and one of the amazing things, I didn't say, there's actually a third coincidence, which is that's also the approximate rate that the mid-ocean ridges are expanding outwards from the rift. Tectonics. in it. And what did I say? Do you have it? It's a few centimeters. I have to hold it up. Let me see here. I'll see if I can. Yeah, it's okay. I'm supposed to remember the number, but I just have those cool analogies and everyone knows how fast their fingernails grow. I can't see the camera to be able to do this properly, but there you go. There are the fingernails. Oh, and the cheeseburger looks good enough to eat. Yeah, it does actually. This also has Rover the dog and Luna the robotic cat and dog that participate in our kids membership program planary academy and the content from that is somewhat is tied to the content in these books at some level and we in this particular one the publisher wanted to use those creations of our designer and they're super funny and cool fun and cool fun fun and cool so here's the other one and you probably can guess which one it was that I cracked up over. It's right at the end of the book. A couple of facts about Uranus. You would have to unroll more than 47 billion rolls of toilet paper to reach Uranus, pardon me, Uranus, from Earth. Yes, you would. And then this cute little illustration that says if the sun were the top of your head and Pluto were the bottom of your feet, then Uranus would be right where you'd expect it to be. Really? Yes, that is the most popular random space fact I've ever come up with. How did you come up with this? Sometimes, for every successful calculation, there are a bunch that aren't successful. So I kind of hunt around, and now when I was like, well, it'd be neat to do like a human body type thing, and let's say, well, why don't we put the... And then I just calculate, and it's like, wait a second. And I'm standing up with measuring tapes and going, well, that's funny. That's very funny. I'd like to have seen that little proof. Great moments in random space fact history. Yeah, it does seem kind of cosmic that it works out so well, actually. At least to me. You do have to use Pluto instead of Neptune. Although, you know, bodies vary. It's kind of like fingernail growth. Before we go on to the next book here in the book club, let me look over what we've got here. I said that Timothy had a question quite a while ago, and I hadn't been scrolling down. I see a whole bunch of you have now. Timothy said, how many Earth-crossing asteroids could there be? And he says, explain the blind spot a little more. so there is an estimate isn't there for the number of near-earth asteroids which is another thing that bruce is quite expert on and represents us at such things as the planetary defense conference when it happens every other year it's true i was gonna say i i don't use random space facts but frankly i have um because we did talk about how to convey public to public education and outreach about the asteroid threat. And so to be very specific, I don't have a number in my head for current Earth crossing asteroids, by which I assume you mean crossing its orbit. But what the so-called planetary defense community usually uses are a couple of defined things. One of them is near-Earth asteroids or NEOS or near-Earth objects, NEOS, which includes a small handful of comets. and the NEOs come within 1.3 AU of the sun, AU being astronomical unit, the distance from the average distance Earth to the sun. So they get close enough to the Earth that even if they aren't crossing our orbit now, the concept is they're that close, a perturbation from Jupiter to gravity or something else within, I believe the modelers are like a thousand year time frame. It's not unreasonable that they might be thrown into an earth crossing orbit so that's the kind of the the ones we want to pay attention to and find we found about for approaching for around 40 000 of those currently and the estimate for the estimate gets really big if you if you talk about neos that are big enough to do damage damage affecting people so kind of the the chelubinsk and above so the 20 meter diameter asteroid type thing that's going to come down doesn't hit the surface it's doing it so there's an air blast that can cause damage and they're about the estimate is there about a million of those neos of which we found 40 000 and we're doing great compared to where we were which was almost none uh 20 you know it's the turn of the century and so those numbers are going up and up and and you find the most dangerous the biggest ones the easiest because they're the biggest and reflect more light easier to see so that's the good news and we so we found almost we're probably over 95 percent estimate of the one kilometer and above the real uh global disaster but the numbers get worse as you get smaller objects so we're still still the most important thing in planetary defense is find them but until you find them track them and get some basic characterization and most importantly whether their orbit is targeting earth at the time you can't do the next nifty parts like slamming something into them to change their orbit anyway that's my little pitch for let's do it and uh we're doing better and better with the ground-based work and we've got NEOSurveyor, which we keep pushing to make sure it doesn't drop out of the budget at some point. And that will be a space-based telescope that the community has been really wanting since the Planetary Defense Conference started 25 years ago. This has been the big goal because, oh, coming back, because the blind spot, and I'm not exactly sure what you're referring to, but not surprisingly, it's very hard to find objects like, you know, on Earth coming out of the sun. And so some of these go inwards of the Earth, and then the sun is in the way. It's more complicated if you're on the surface of the Earth. And so NeoSurveyor, even though it won't be that far from Earth, it will pick up a much broader swath of sky that it can look at at any given time being towards the sun. It's designed, I believe, they're still on the putting an Earth-Sun Lagrange Point 1, which is about a million and a half kilometers towards the sun. And that will enable it to see a lot more of the sky without that pesky sun interfering. It's also infrared-based, which it turns out is more, you can do a lot better often with that than with visible. It depends. You want both, really. So that's the blind spot I think of, which is anything where it's inwards, it really is an Earth crosser and it's inwards towards the sun. It's extremely hard to pick up. So Chelly Vince came out of the sun in 2013 and was not picked up, not seen. Of course, they orbit farther out, so you're going to pick them up or have the option to pick them up later as long as they're not on their impact dive at the time. That was my guess as well about what he was probably referring to. Sure was, man. We got a useful note here, once again, from Rich Chute, who's really proving himself helpful tonight. He says, RSFs, Random Space Facts, are also available in schools on the EPIC platform where they get hundreds of thousands of views every year. I did not know that. Apparently you did. That is so cool. I did. Rich has been great about passing that information along, and I have not publicized it enough to you, Matt. It's really cool and very gratifying. And there even, or at least there were, I haven't checked recently, hospitals that use them, a couple of them at least, as kind of running on a channel on their internal system, especially for kids. But yeah, the school thing is very gratifying on the epic service that there are that many views and people checking them out. So it makes us feel good. I got to go back into it and see if my grandson is still as excited and entertained by them as he used to be. Well, if he's not, don't tell me. Okay. Let's see. Dave said, wait, the Earth's orbit is growing in size and then was answered by Diana. Now, the moon is moving away from the earth, which is what you were talking about with the fingernail thing, right? Tidal effect. It's a tie to the earth. The earth's rotation, in other words, the length of our day is getting slower. That's what happens to the earth with this tidal effect, and the moon is getting farther away. And they're both very small from a human standpoint, but significant over geologic time, to say the least. and Timothy just posted don't worry the moon isn't escaping anytime soon it's actually moving away very slowly which is what you were just talking about right right no we're good for a long time it's not pulling the moonfall thing and crashing almost crashing into the earth either I don't think I mean no I'm not worried we're good do you remember the name it was a short lived Steven Spielberg TV series which I think most of them have been sadly where they go in a time machine back into the past and they did a cool thing when they look up at the night sky the moon is huge because the moon is substantially closer to earth but terra nova thank you william william william wow that was quick feedback no i do not remember it and i didn't know they did that and uh could have just been because they had the glasses on and metal bigger i don't think so but they had a time machine which is much better than glasses. And we will talk about Are We Alone? the other of Bruce Bett's great new books for young space fans when Planetary Radio's Book Club edition continues in moments. Hi y'all, LeVar Burton here. Through my roles on Star Trek and Reading Rainbow, I have seen generations of curious minds inspired by the strange new worlds explored in books and on television. I know how important it is to encourage that curiosity in a young explorer's life. That's why I'm excited to share with you a new program from my friends at the Planetary Society. It's called the Planetary Academy, and anyone can join. Designed for ages 5 through 9 by Bill Nye and the curriculum experts at the Planetary Society, the Planetary Academy is a special membership subscription for kids and families who love space. Members get quarterly mail packages that take them on learning adventures through the many worlds of our solar system and beyond. Each package includes images and factoids, hands-on activities, experiments and games, and special surprises. A lifelong passion for space, science, and discovery starts when we're young. Give the gift of the cosmos to the explorer in your life. Let's talk about this one. Are We Alone? Searching for Life Beyond Earth with the Planetary Society. Bruce Beth. That was a great quote. I'm sorry. They had a time machine. That's better than glasses. Yeah, yeah. Again, fun book and a great introduction to the search for life elsewhere, to astrobiology. You cover a lot here, like what's happening in our solar system and looking at extrasolar worlds and also eventually SETI, which is all stuff that the Planetary Society has been deeply involved with, right? Yes yes yes we have We started funding SETI within the first year or two the organization started in 1980 And we funding efforts We worked with Steven Spielberg or at least he made contributions to our program when he was making alien movies and he helped throw this the pretend switch to fire up one of the searches it was run by harvard university and paul horowitz there ran several going from radio astronomy even to optical looking for laser signals uh the the answer to skip ahead is no we didn't find anything but the other part of the answer that i feel like people haven't been given enough information to appreciate it's a really big haystack that we're looking through the needle so i don't find that surprising at all uh even if there's a lot of life out there The distances involved, the powers involved, the fact that you have to be looking in the right place at the right time, see it multiple times to believe it, be looking at the right wavelength, be able to interpret the signal, able to sort it out from other forms of human radio interference. Which, by the way, one of our recent STEP grant winners at UCLA has developed a program that we help sponsor, which is using citizen scientists to go through and help them categorize the Earth interference noise in the radio signal. Because one of the hardest things about SETI is sorting out all those pesky human signals and figuring out what might be an actual intelligent alien signal. But as you say, in the book, I start more basic, which is life on Earth and the three things life requires. Well, four things we count Matt's sonorous voice. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Energy source, liquid water. Liquid, liquid water, which guides a lot of our searches. And then the right kind of atoms, molecules, spilling blocks to fiddle with in a nutshell. is at least what Earth life requires. And so then we kind of start there in the book and move into places in our solar system where we're most intrigued by the possibility of past or present life from Mars and the obvious lots of liquid water there in the past to Europa with its liquid water ocean, crazy Enceladus was spewing out geysers. And then we go out and at least touch on the subjects of looking elsewhere and looking at exoplanets and the concept of the Goldilocks zone of the way where it's just right temperature to keep your liquid water oceans on the surface or the expanded Goldilocks where you have things like subsurface oceans. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It was fun. That one was a challenge to write, I got to say, because taking the field of astrobiology and making it digestible, hopefully I succeeded. But obviously, it's like anything else. You do a book on Mars, you're only scratching the surface. You do a book on astrobiology, you're only scratching the surface. We're trying to do it in a way that gets kids excited and gets them the basic gist so that hopefully later on or even after they read that, they go look for more information and dig deeper. Yeah, it's all about whetting their appetites. And by the way, you mentioned STEP grants, science and technology empowered by the public, right? Nailed it. Nailed it this time. and also a program that Bruce is in charge of where we fund this great research by people all over the place. So we've got four great projects in the few year histories so far. And so we're looking for probably a couple more. More to come. We'll see. And it's open to pretty much anyone. But obviously you have to convince us that you're going to do a project and have the skill and the equipment and whatever. and it's a realistic budget and things like that. You know, the usual for tech proposals. So far, so good. Some really, really good stuff. In addition to our Shoemaker Neo grant program for finding those rocks that are headed our way, which we won't go into today because we don't really have time, but check those out on the website as well. I'm going to give another gratuitous mention to Steven Spielberg. If you're watching, Steven, call Rich. We got a sponsorship that I missed. Rich, do we get money every time you mention Steven Spielberg? There is the picture of a much younger Steven Spielberg throwing that fake switch that Bruce mentioned. If you're ever lucky enough to get a tour of the Planetary Society office, which we don't do much anymore, not since the pandemic. But if you do, directly opposite that photo of him throwing that switch to figuratively start a SETI search, but is another great example of our involvement with both the search for life, but also life's ability to, well, as Jeff Goldblum put it, life finds a way, is the life experiment, right? Say at least a couple of words about that. And the little tartar words. Life experiment. Right. Right. That's two words. Living interplanetary flight experiment where we developed a bio module, basically like kind of half a hockey puck, but made of titanium with all sorts of internal features to survive the anticipated 4000 g impact when it came back to Earth on the Russian Phobos sample return mission, which ended up going to space. orbiting the earth a few times and then exploring the ocean of earth so the concept was to test the ability of life to survive life had been tested in space and life had been tested outside the magnetosphere a couple times on the moon but to actually do that for a few years was the goal and And so various, everything from spores, bacterial spores to archaea to the seeds at the other end. And your favorite, tardigrades, otherwise known as water bears, that tend to be very rugged and can survive vacuum of space, at least when other people fly them. So I'm guessing that this book, you had it all locked up before the announcement of what happened on Mars. perseverance is finding in jezero crater chayavah so those leopard spots am i am i right about that i mean it that is correct it just kind of says that we're still learning stuff pretty quickly doesn't it oh yeah and i think i mean this is it's a strange field not in a bad way necessarily set is the ultimate example of a strange field because you go uh you you can spend decades doing really legitimate science and not ever find what you aren't even sure is there but it's one of those things that if we if we don't look how do we know uh where broader astrobiology they do everything from considering the origins of life and what's required and how it happens on on earth at to figuring out what might non-earth other permutations of life look like and most importantly how do we look for it in, for example, we go to the surface of Mars and we drive a rover around, let's say we call it perseverance, and we look for things that might be evidence of past life. And then in a theoretical hopeful world, we return the samples to Earth to use the big laboratory on. And so, yes, indeed, the book was finished before they found that particular sample and the interesting leopard spots, which, by the way, not caused by leopards, just a similar similarity, threw me for a while. There's amazingly a lot of great work going on in astrobiology, and the planetary side even hosted a small workshop with some of the leaders in the field trying to look at what's next and where we could fulfill roles in helping to advance the search for life, which is one of our, along with planetary defense and planetary exploration, one of our core enterprises of what we both do. And that Search for Life workshop, I was my honor to be involved with that. It was an amazing collection of folks. And I'm sure that kind of work will continue. Doesn't it just kill you? It's killing my dog downstairs, apparently. Doesn't it just kill you? Don't. No, no, no. He's very concerned. He's concerned that we've left all those wonderful sample tubes on Mars and inside Perseverance, and we can't get the damn things back home uh it's just kills me i don't know if it kills you apparently you you swore sort of kind of that's about as far as i'll go i know i know but you don't go that far very often so wait till you hear me when if the dog keeps barking he's an example of life life on earth well are you i bet are you any more optimistic about the search for life than you were 10 or 20 years ago? In what way that there are? Yeah, that something's out there waiting to be discovered. I'm more optimistic now than 10 or 20 years ago. Certainly if you went like 25 or 30. Okay, 25 or 30. Do you recall? Yeah, I am, but generally no, because my assumption has been for, there's so much stuff out there that it's just hard to imagine life not evolving elsewhere it gets much harder when you start saying how about on mars well we we have one laboratory right now that has where we study life and it's called earth and we kind of know what happened there we know really pretty darn well but you know it gets a little fuzzy when you go back four billion years although they do an amazing job and so studying one laboratory we see life life pops up fairly early on a geologic planet's time scale in Earth's history and it's pretty rugged and it finds a way but we don't have any other laboratory, we have no other place so we've done the experiment thoroughly enough to know whether that's generally true or not true so was there life on Mars? no idea neither does anyone else and life on Europa in the subsurface ocean, that's a really exotic one. No idea. Life on a star within 10 light years? Probably not. Maybe. Proxima Centauri. Life around M-class red dwarf stars that are friendly and cool, but really hostile with spitting out nasty ultraviolet and particles? We don't know. That's part of what makes it interesting. but it's one of those things where people are learning a lot all the time but since we don't know what we're what we're looking for at some level but we certainly don't know how prevalent it is so even though within space in general i'd say you must have had life lots of times especially now that we've found i mean there's on average one planet or more per star in our galaxy there are two to four hundred billion stars so therefore that many planets in our galaxy Not just our galaxy. Then you get to the ridiculous. There are another 200 to 400 billion galaxies. So the statistics, if life is anything other than just a miracle, then it's out there. But whether it's out there close enough and we know how to look for it, I don't know. That's why it's cool. That and the fact that it's rather profound. We are going to get to some more of your questions and comments here. As I turn with Bruce away from his books, which I do highly recommend, it is a terrific introduction to the search for life, I think, and one that the kids, particularly in that age group, are going to get a lot out of. I did as well. A lot of the stuff he's just talked about, like that world circling Proxima Centauri, it's in the book. I don't know how he got this much stuff into it. Let me ask a quick answer to those people. If you get the books, consider doing a review on Amazon. Oh, yeah, sure. Especially this series. It wasn't as actively encouraged and pushed, and that's what helps get them out there more. Learners are doing a great job of getting it out in libraries all over, and that's wonderful. And as they point out, that means you get, for every book, you get 10, 20 people, kids interacting with that one book or whatever the multiplicative factor is that I've forgotten. But reviews would be helpful, especially because if one person comes in and they think I look like a bad person and so they say it's terrible. You need a couple people to say, well, he looks like a bad person, but it's a good book, if that's what you think. He's a good person. we're almost into bonus time here as we frequently book club series. And so we're going to do that. I know Bruce is able to stick around for a few minutes because I got more that I want to talk to him about. But first, how long before we are no longer able to enjoy a full solar eclipse? That is. So right now we have this amazingly wonderful. Coincidence. It a coincidence that the moon and the sun subtend roughly the same angle in the sky And so you get total solar eclipses and also annular because of the elliptical nature of the orbits but as it moves away eventually you will not get that and i don remember the exact estimate but none of us have to worry about it uh for our next few gazillion generations because it's millions of years off and i'm sorry i stopped being really attentive when it passed you know 100 years, but it's millions, and I don't remember whether that's 1 or 10 or 100, but it's off a ways longer than you might expect. Got a great question from Diana. I'll get to Dave in a moment. Wouldn't putting SETI searches on the far side of the moon make for less or fewer interference problems? Well, there's been a lot of talk, right, about putting radio telescopes on the far side? Yes. okay next question but let me quickly mention obviously you have some serious challenges to deal with uh you're never well i won't say never you're not in the near future even if you can manage that and manage the setup the pointing the communications which by the way uh it can't see earth so you're you have to communicate with an orbiter to get back to earth even when you get those things done, you're not going to end up with a big, giant, 100-meter telescope like the UCLA group is using the West Virginia Green Bank Telescope. So you're not going to get as much coming in. But yes, the really good news is that you take care of the interference, the radio interference. So it's a very good idea, but the implementation is hard and expensive and has other issues. But someday, it's a good point. Here's that question from Dave, and it's a good one. Do you have any advice for someone thinking about writing a children's science picture book other than don't do it? That's just when I'm pushing the deadline and it's one in the morning. Then it's like, oh, don't do this, don't do it. Never again. No, but on the flip side, when I'm not sleep deprived, And when I look at the books and I hear cute stories of kids who want the books read at night, it's very, very rewarding. I lose track of that when I'm on a deadline, but then I remember again. Advice, I'm a big fan of real images. And so if you can use real images, use real images, because in the space business, it's been a lot of effort and amazing technology that gets us what these things actually look like, whereas you often end up with cartoony versions of that. And that's just, you know, that's my pet peeve. And sometimes, like, if you're wondering what exoplanets look like, you have to use art because you put the pictures in, but it's like a dot. and it's not very exciting when you see a planet as a dot or don't see the planet at all which is what's true of most exoplanet hunting that we do so that's that's kind of a side one specific thing writing and and then rewriting to or to try to get to the right age range and keep it limited and focus on what are the kids getting the most out of what's the fundamental concept what you only have this many words what do you need to convey and what can they get later on and even though you want to tell them that now it's not part of the core that's my thought but thank you for asking no one's ever asked before so i didn't have a good answer dave thanks for asking and good luck go for it timothy is keeping us busy here's a statement this abundance diversity and sheer density of life form sets Earth apart within our known solar system. The presence of such a vast array of complex ecosystems and species would represent a unique finding in the search for extraterrestrial life. Damn shame if we humans mess things up with these wars and pollution. We must find the balance. I'm with you, Timothy. There was another one here I want to catch. Where did that go ah william said there are those who believe that life here began out there tell us about panspermia okay that's the second time you've sworn sweared no i'm not really um it's just the expression for life what you just described life gone originating elsewhere well that was actually part of what was being explored in a way with the Phobos Life capsule, if it had worked, which was the concept of, it would have only addressed one piece, but one tiny piece of can you have something kicked off Mars? Well, yes, you can. Can you have something survive as it makes it in space? Valid question, but we did nothing, would have done nothing to answer that. Can you have it survive on the shortest trips that are orbitally possible? And that we were a test for. Basically, the bio module was a simulated asteroid. And so they weren't sitting on the outside. They're simulating organisms, spores, microorganisms that are hanging out inside a rock. And then suddenly they feel a big shock. And then they're cruising through space, chilling hard, figuratively and literally. And then will they survive? And obviously you have the reentry and stuff. So there are thoughts that, for example, Mars was, we think, was warmer, much warmer and much wetter and a better place for life back four billion years ago-ish. and so what if life evolved then and then you had a big impact that threw rocks off that actually kept the organisms hibernating whatever inside the rock re-entered were big enough that they didn't melt and die and so in that respect you start life on on earth you started on mars but then it came to earth and so to quote in a totally different context then you end up with we're we're the martians not the earthlings so do we know if that happened could have happened we think it's plausible but challenging and it's one of those uh i don't know but it's an intriguing possibility that a lot of people have pondered um and and think about well maybe not a lot of people but a few people like you good job so enough of this uh speculation and wonder about the possibility of life across. Somebody say wonder? Let's talk about us. Let me show everybody something that is one of my happiest and most prized possessions. It's right here. It's hanging inside this room where I'm speaking. And yes, it made Bruce smile warmly as I hoped it would. You see this collage? This was presented to me by the chief scientist who assembled it and took most of these photos, I think, when I backed off from hosting Planetary Radio, turned it over to our colleague Sarah. And there's so much fun stuff here. I just love this. I got stuff all over my walls. Most of it I totally ignore. This one makes me happy every time I look at it. It makes me happy. I haven't looked at it in a while or looked at those pictures in a while. Did a lot of goofy, fun stuff over the 20 years. You Planetary Radio guy, you. Yeah, and that's why you think I'm wearing the sweater just because it's a cute sweater. I'm wearing it because I could lift it up and show off the first generation Planetary Radio t-shirt. Give us 30 minutes, we'll give you the universe. I'm going to claim that I came up with that. Did you? Maybe you did. I think I did. I have no idea. It wasn't me. I mean, obviously I stole it from a radio station saying, give us 30 minutes, we'll give you the world. But I figure we go beyond that. Well, one of the greatest pleasures for me of, you know, being a part of the Planetary Society, other than supporting our wonderful mission in all of its facets, has been all the fun stuff that we've been able to do together. I mean, for 20 years, I can't say it anymore. You are the only person who has been heard on every single episode of Planetary Radio. It's a lot of pressure. Because of your segment of the show. What's up? Yeah, yeah. And I think people actually listen to it. I think so. I enjoy doing it. I enjoy doing it with you. I enjoy doing it with Sarah. And we do different modified version, but still hopefully fun stuff. And then there are all those crazy things we did back in our youth when we were getting run over by rovers. Crazy, crazy, crazy. Fun stuff. So you're a scientist. Well, supposedly. You did a bunch of stuff for NASA and other agencies. What was that group that you were part of for years? NASA. Satwan Institute, PSI, planetary scientists. Yeah. Research scientists. Spent some time in D.C. learning about that stuff. Went to Moscow, right? Did stuff with the Russians or the Soviets? Three times. I participated in six failed Soviet or Russian missions. So what is it about your job here and the mission of this organization that has kept you around all these years, kept you being creative and fun? uh partly the ability to at least occasionally be creative and fun which uh when you're buried deep in a scientific paper trying to figure out every single detail that someone will call you on you have more of those moments where you wonder what like the one i talked about for writing these books where you know you kind of go oh my gosh i'm so deep in the details what what mars isn't important what's important is this little channel here that's got something going on in the thermal interesse anyway that's not important what is important is uh i get a lot uh so much out of working for an organization where i get to do different things like this science related things technology management but we're working with a lot of people who are very excited about space and the ability to reach out with things like this, with you, Matt, with Planetary Radio, with the books we produce, with just every project we do inside tech, as well as other aspects of the organization. We're communicating it out to the world, particularly with the help of our members and to our members. So it's fun for me. Whereas, and I enjoyed science and I still do some science once in a while. I certainly review a lot of science, but it's different. And there's a fun aspect that I've been able to cultivate that was more than I probably could have otherwise. And you know what's really made it, Matt? The people. Mostly you. Yeah. The people. I do agree with you broadly there that it is a great group of people. It is such a wonderful staff. You know, you and I have worked with a whole lot of people who've come and gone at the Society, and they've all contributed in their way, many of them brilliantly. We have, I think, right now the best group we've ever had, and they are great fun to work with. They are. They are. And don't tell them I said that. We're going to make that a little clip. We'll post it across all of us. No, no, they have to know I disapprove of all of them. So that's it, folks. I think we're pretty much at the end here. Bruce, I'll probably say it more than once, but thank you for many, many years of being my colleague and friend and for all the great stuff that you have done for us and our members and also for these terrific books, which have closed out this long era in your life of turning out these books for Lerner and the Planet of the Society. Something I never thought I'd end up doing, but I've gotten a lot out of it. And mostly I've gotten a background for my web calls. Thank you, everybody, for joining us this evening. It has been a great pleasure to have you. And stick with us in the member community and in the book club As you can tell, lots more still to come. Once again, Bruce Betts, Chief Scientist of the Planetary Society. Thank you so much, my friend. Thank you, Sir Matt Kaplan. Are We Alone and the Size of Space, published by Lerner and authored on behalf of the Planetary Society by our chief scientist, Bruce Betts. I'll be back with the next PlanRad Book Club edition on March 14 with astronomer and astrobiologist Caleb Scharf, author of The Giant Leap. Planetary Radio is a production of the Planetary Society. Our associate producers are Ray Paletta and Mark Hilverda. Post-production is by Andy Lucas. The Society's member community is led by Amber Trujillo, The producer and host of Planetary Radio is Sarah Al-Akhmad. I'm Matt Kaplan at Astra.