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The High Probability Of Finding 'Life Beyond Earth'

TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

It's no longer fringy to think that there's life on other planets. Our
guest, science writer Marc Kaufman, says that since the mid-1990s,
interest in extraterrestrial life among credible scientists has
blossomed.

The field of astrobiology includes researchers from a wide variety of
disciplines: microbiologists studying bacteria, which survive in the
most extreme conditions on Earth; astronomers, who believe there may be
billions of planets with conditions hospitable to life; chemists looking
to how amino acids and living organisms first appeared on Earth; and
scientists who study rocks from Mars and see convincing evidence that
microbial life existed on the Red Planet.

Marc Kaufman is the author of the new book "First Contact: Scientific
Breakthroughs in the Hunt for Life Beyond Earth." In addition to writing
about science, he's national editor of the Washington Post. He spoke
with FRESH AIR contributor Dave Davies.

DAVIES: Well, Marc Kaufman, welcome to FRESH AIR.

Mr. MARC KAUFMAN (National Editor, Washington Post; Author, "First
Contact: Scientific Breakthroughs in the Hunt for Life Beyond Earth"):
Thank you very much for having me.

DAVIES: Before we talk about Mars rocks, and I want to talk about them a
good bit, let's talk about life that is growing in extreme environments
on Earth, extremeophiles, you call them, like two miles into a South
African mineshaft, where you descended. What's growing there?

Mr. KAUFMAN: These are little microbes that have not had any
relationship with the surface for tens of millions of years. And by that
I mean they don't feed on anything that receives sunshine and created
organic material as a result. They live in a world of utter darkness
that has no relation to the surface.

And the way that - the energy source that they have is the radioactive
decay of some of the rocks nearby. And using that energy, they break
apart some molecules, and that is their food. It is something that no
one imagined possible not too many years ago, and now there's good
reason to believe that this kind of life exists just about everywhere,
very deep down. It's just that they find it in South Africa, because
that's where the deepest mines on Earth are, and the mine owners have
allowed these researchers to go down there.

DAVIES: So you said these are microbes. That means, what, they're
single-celled organisms?

Mr. KAUFMAN: Yes, they're single-celled organisms, although when I was
down in South Africa, I was with a group that included a Belgian
nematodologist. Nematodes are these little roundworms that are multi-
celled, that have nervous systems, that have digestive systems, and he
is convinced that he has discovered them down there, as well. They feed
on the other little bacteria and microbes that would be there.

So it is primarily a single-cell world, but that may be just because
that's what they've looked for and found so far.

DAVIES: Okay, now can they move? Can they reproduce?

Mr. KAUFMAN: Oh, yes. And they - they may not reproduce a whole lot, but
yes, they can move. They believe that the one that is most famous,
audaxviator, has a leg, as it were, that allows it to reach out and move
and then get whatever it is that it's looking for.

So, yes. And they live in cracks in the rocks or sometimes deep under
the ground. There would be a lake, a pond, whatever. They would live in
those. And the way that they are - that they come out or they are found
is - there are boreholes that are put into the mine wall by the miners,
and water comes out of that, and they collect the water, and they take
the samples back to the lab, and then they look for them.

DAVIES: So we have these microbes growing miles beneath the surface of
the Earth, been there millions of years, live in total darkness, grow
slowly, do reproduce. Why is the existence of these microbes relevant to
the subject of extraterrestrial life?

Mr. KAUFMAN: This is kind of the beauty of it all. On Mars, it is pretty
clear that the surface of the planet gets too much radiation. It is too
cold. It's too inhospitable for life. But there is a strong feeling that
there once were conditions on Mars that would've been conducive to life.

And so the logic is: Well, gee, maybe there are - these is microbial
life deep down below the surface of Mars, just as there is in South
Africa and, no doubt, elsewhere on Earth.

And so it's kind of a proof of concept, if you will, that an organism
does not have to have any kind of connection with the sun in order to
exist.

DAVIES: And what are some other extreme environments in which you find
these microbes on Earth?

Mr. KAUFMAN: Perhaps the most remarkable, from my perspective is - and
who knew this? But in a glacier, in a deep, thick glacier in Antarctica,
there will be, locked in the ice, there will be microbial life. The ice
forms little crystals, and around the crystals is kind of a little river
of water, if you will. And everything that isn't H2O goes in there, and
that includes microbes that have been found, again several miles down,
in Antarctica, in the ice.

They've also found them - and this was where the world of extremeophiles
first was explored, at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, in something
called black smokers, which are these huge vents that come from the
bowels of the Earth. They're upwards of 750 degrees.

And they're spewing out all kinds of material. And in the water
surrounding it, not right near, not right at the point but nearby, would
be life forms that are living deep down and in this extreme environment.

Further, they now know that there's microbial life floating in the
atmosphere and surviving and reproducing. There's microbial life in
extremely acidic and extremely alkaline environments like Mono Lake or a
place called Rio Tinto in Spain.

So essentially what they have found is anywhere that there could be
life, there is. And that is an important piece of this whole logic that
says the likelihood of there being extraterrestrial life is extremely
high.

DAVIES: These microbes that exist deep below the surface of the Earth,
or in ice in Antarctica, or in the atmosphere, or at the mouth of
volcanoes, are they all descended from microbes in other parts of the
globe? And are they all descended from the single-celled organisms that
we came from, if you go back a few billion years?

Mr. KAUFMAN: Absolutely. I mean, that is the remarkable logic of it,
that somewhere, somehow, and this part of astrobiology, too, it's not
just life beyond Earth but how did life begin on Earth. As the building
blocks of life came together, they formed the original single-cell
organisms, and those, over the eons, evolved into you, me, cats,
ragweed, everything.

And that again is - when you look at it in the context of other planets
is why scientists think that there probably is life and that there's
every reason to think that it would evolve.

If it evolved on Earth from single-cell microbes, which basically -
which were the only things on Earth for the first three billion out of
the 3.8 billion years of life on Earth, but then they evolved and most
likely would do the same thing on other planets.

DAVIES: You know, an interesting question arises here. I mean, we've
been talking about microbial life and complex organisms. What do we mean
by life? Do scientists have a common definition?

Mr. KAUFMAN: This was one of the things that really surprised me as I
dug into the subject, that there is no consensus whatsoever. There is
something like 350 different - or more different definitions that have
been put forward.

NASA has a definition that it uses in an informal sense, and it has to
do with being a chemical mechanism that can metabolize and evolve in a
Darwinian fashion. But that definition would leave out things like
viruses and prions, which is what mad cow disease comes from or is
created by, and a variety of other things.

As I was kind of making my way through that, that conundrum, I came
across a woman named Carol Cleland out at the University of Colorado in
Boulder who had been part of a number of astrobiology projects that were
sponsored by NASA.

And she had posited that there really - it was impossible to define
life, that we had no more an ability to define life today than people
back in the Middle Ages had to define water.

They would look at the aspects of water, the characteristics - it was a
solvent, it was clear, it didn't smell, so on and so forth - and that's
how they defined it. And there were some things that were not water at
all that got classified as water simply because they met those same
criteria.

And her view is that today, we also don't know enough about life to be
able to say what it is. And her view, which was put forward about 10
years ago, was kind of revolutionary and not a lot of people liked it.
And I describe a meeting where she first brought it up, and people were
yelling and screaming at her.

But now it's pretty much accepted as being the truth. And I was talking
to the head of the Mars program for NASA and asked him the question
about what is life, and he said that at this point, they would almost
use the same definition that the Supreme Court would for pornography:
You know it when you see it. But you can't go past that.

It's a remarkable thing. There are a lot of different characteristics
that people would agree on, but there's nothing that everyone would
agree on.

DAVIES: Okay, well, if I find something that moves and reproduces, I'm
going to call that life, I think.

Mr. KAUFMAN: Okay, there you go.

DAVIES: But let's ask a more basic question: Do we understand how life
began on this planet? And how close have scientists come to creating
life out of non-living chemicals?

Mr. KAUFMAN: We do not know how life started. We're getting closer and
closer to some kind of a sense, but it actually will never be determined
because the traces are gone.

It may be that some time in the future, they will be able - scientists,
synthetic biologists - will be able to create an organism that can
reproduce itself because that can replicate an organism that was not
living before, but they could make it live in the sense of replicating
its DNA.

But no one will ever know - we will never know how that began, oh,
probably four billion years ago, or so, on Earth because the evidence is
gone.

But remarkably, looking for life beyond Earth is probably our best
window into learning how it started here.

DAVIES: Well, I mean, there had been experiments that offer some insight
into what might have happened, right? I mean, there was this fascinating
experiment in 1952, which was new to me, I'm sure not to scientists in
the field. Tell us about that, the Stanley Miller experiment.

Mr. KAUFMAN: Yes, the famous Miller-Urey Experiment. Prior to this,
prior to 1952 or so, there wasn't really an understanding, a scientific
basis for understanding how it was that non-life became anything close
to life or how even the components for life were put together.

There were some scientists who had made a stab at it, but it hadn't gone
very far. What he did - Stanley Miller was a graduate student then,
although he was working with Harold Urey, who was a Nobel Prize-winner.
And what he did was he, in this jury-rigged set of tubes and vials, he
put in a variety of different kinds of gases that were believed to be -
to exist at the time of early Earth, like carbon dioxide, hydrogen, so
on.

He put in some water, and then he sparked it. And this, over a period of
time, created or formed, as a residue, amino acids, which are themselves
not living, but they are the building blocks for life. That's what
proteins and DNA comes from. You need them, and they don't necessarily
exist in the environment unless they somehow get formed.

And that is what he did in a kind of a revolutionary sense was to say:
We didn't have to have creation to start things. We didn't have to have
some kind of spontaneous, accidental event. There are processes in
nature that, with the right combinations of material and energy, could
create some of the building blocks of life. And the extension to that
was: And perhaps all of the building blocks of life so that they could
then come together.

DAVIES: We're speaking with Marc Kaufman. He is a science writer and
national editor for the Washington Post. His new book is called "First
Contact." We'll talk more after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

DAVIES: If you're just joining us, our guest is science writer and
national editor for the Washington Post Marc Kaufman. He's written a new
book called "First Contact: Scientific Breakthroughs in the Hunt for
Life Beyond Earth."

Let's talk about Mars. One of the things that scientists know about Mars
is that there is methane, and why is that significant?

Mr. KAUFMAN: Ninety percent of the methane that is produced on Earth
comes from biological sources, from bogs, from cows, from you and me.
And it's a gas that they not known until two or three years ago, they
had known for sure was even in the Martian atmosphere because there are
other materials there that destroy it fairly quickly.

But a remarkable researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Center, named Mike
Mumma, has, over a period of 20 years, done the work to determine that
there was, in fact, methane that was being released at specific places
at specific times on the Martian surface. And it tended to be what were
considered old spots, where there was still a remnant of the magnetic
field where volcanoes and other things had not changed the environment.

So in other words, those are the areas that go back to the time, four
billion years ago, when Mars was probably a lot more hospitable to life
than Earth was, a fact that makes some people think that we are - that
it is logical to think that initially, there was life on Mars, and it
came, in some microbial form, to Earth, meaning that we are all
Martians.

But in any case, the methane that has been discovered, they're still in
the process of determining what its origin is, but going back to what we
were discussing earlier with the extremeophiles, it is quite possible
that these are called methanogens, microbial life that produces or lives
in methane.

And so now you have, coming from beneath the surface of Mars, you have
methane at particular times in particular places, and we know that life
on Earth can exist that deep. So it's again putting one and one
together, and we're starting to come up with some bigger numbers.

DAVIES: Now, is there an alternate explanation for finding methane
there, one that doesn't involve, you know, life and biology?

Mr. KAUFMAN: Yes. There are - there's a mineral called olivine on Earth,
and as it degrades or interacts with water in various ways, it produces
methane. There are some other minerals that are like that, as well. And
so there are explanations that are not biological.

DAVIES: But the likelihood that they might explain it on Mars is what?

Mr. KAUFMAN: We don't really know that yet. But we do know that on
Earth, 90 percent of the methane comes from biological sources. And so
it's at least a serious contender that it's biology that's producing
methane on Mars.

DAVIES: Is it a scientific consensus that Mars once had water and may
still have?

Mr. KAUFMAN: Yes, it's now I think broadly accepted that there was
water. And when the - NASA's most recent lander was on Mars, the
Phoenix, they found water ice just below the surface. And through other
satellites going around Mars, they have found a lot of hydrogen just
below the surface, and they believe that that is, most likely, hydrogen,
frozen H2O. And that comports with the other understandings that suggest
that Mars was, as they say now, wet and warm back four billion years
ago.

DAVIES: So we know there was water on Mars. We now find methane there,
which might have come from a biological source. And the other
interesting thing about mars, which you write, which again I didn't
know, it used to have magnetic poles but not anymore. Where did they go,
and why do we care?

Mr. KAUFMAN: Okay, let me start with why do we care? The magnetic
fields, the magnetic poles, serve the function of keeping an atmosphere
in place. If we did not have magnetic fields around Earth, there would
be - we would not be here.

And the atmosphere that is held in place then serves as a protector
against really dangerous, deadly kinds of radiation. It also keeps in
place the gases and the chemicals, the molecules that are needed on a
planet in order to have: One, a temperate climate; and then two, to have
other kinds of activity both chemical and biological.

So absent a magnetic field, you're not going to have an atmosphere. And
absent an atmosphere, you're not going to have anything that's living.

GROSS: FRESH AIR contributor Dave Davies will continue his conversation
with science writer Marc Kaufman in the second half of the show. Kaufman
is the author of the new book "First Contact: Scientific Breakthroughs
in the Hunt for Life Beyond Earth." I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH
AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I’m Terry Gross.

Let's get back to the interview that FRESH AIR contributor Dave Davies
recorded with science writer Marc Kaufman about why an increasing number
of scientists believe there is life on other planets.

Kaufman is the author of “First Contact: Scientific Breakthroughs in the
Hunt for Life Beyond Earth.” He's a science writer and national editor
for The Washington Post.

DAVIES: Now there've been several spacecrafts sent from Earth to Mars
and I guess the earliest were the Viking missions in 1976, right?

Mr. KAUFMAN: That’s correct.

DAVIES: Right. And, you know, a lot of people don't know this but these
things orbited, they landed and they were able to scoop up soil samples
and analyze them, perform some tests and that led to an initial
conclusion that there might be living beings in that soil. Explain what
led scientists to believe that?

Mr. KAUFMAN: Okay. Let me backtrack just a sec, just a bit before. Prior
to the Viking trips, journeys, there was a pretty strong consensus that
life on Mars was likely to have existed and perhaps still did. When they
arrived in Mars and landed, they could see that it was very parched but
they began their experiments.

And the first one, or one of the early ones was called Label Release.
The principal investigator was a gentleman named Gil Levin. And what
they found was that they got a reaction that NASA had determined before
the journey would have been consistent with life. It's a fairly simple
experiment but we'll just leave it at that. It was, the finding was
consistent with there's something living here that is creates as
metabolizing.

DAVIES: Right. Didn’t they actually heat a soil sample and then discover
there was what, carbon dioxide release?

Mr. KAUFMAN: Carbon dioxide. Yes. That has a same radioactive signature
that they had in the material that they put in, the liquid. So in other
words, there is a food source and then ostensibly something ate it and
then gave off this radioactive CO2.

This was such a remarkable discovery that it was, as it should be, it
was early on very rigorously tested. There was a great deal of
skepticism within the Viking team, and then additional tests were done
on Mars by Viking that showed ostensibly, that there was no organic
material on the planet. Organic material being carbon, hydrocarbons,
carbon and hydrogen and oxygen. And if there was nothing, if there were
no hydrocarbons, then how could there have been life and how could there
have been this metabolism that was detected?

So that experiment, the one that showed no organic material, ultimately
trumped the other one that said that there had been life and that there
had been a response that was living.

And again, interesting to look back on it. As a result of those tests;
first, the great enthusiasm to say that they had found life and then the
counter-argument the result was that the consensus evolved that there
was no life. And that really is what held pretty firm for two, three
decades. They said, you know, we did the tests, it came up negative, no
life.

DAVIES: But it’s changed. Why did it change?

Mr. KAUFMAN: It changed because they have found increasingly the
evidence that there was water. They have found that there was the
evidence of materials of minerals on the Martian surface that can be
created only in the presence of water. They now know that there is this
liquid, that there is ice underneath the surface and now they also know
that there's this methane. Putting all that together plus a number of
other discoveries that they’ve made, they are beginning to piece
together something that says well, yeah, Mars may be a, you know, a
pretty hard neighborhood to live in right now but it's possible that
there's life below the surface and it's possible that there was life
sometime in the past.

DAVIES: Right. And as if I recall, a closer look at the test which
concluded there was no organic matter discovered; in fact, that with the
testing equipment they might not have gotten it in the concentrations
that existed, right?

Mr. KAUFMAN: Absolutely. And this is one of the things that's so both
interesting and frustrating about science. It moves forward and then it
moves back. It moves forward, it the moves back. Tests that are done and
are believed to be determinative turn out to not be, and that is part of
the process and I came as someone who was not trained in science.

I came to really greatly respect that process that everything is
challenged, that is absolutely what is expected for every major
discovery - and minor discovery - and the challenge goes on for years
and years. And for something to really be accepted as consensus
scientific knowledge, you need a lot of tests to have gone through. So
when it reaches that point that it's probably true.

DAVIES: Okay. Now some of the really fascinating stuff involved evidence
of Martian critters on rocks, meteors that have made their way to Earth.
Maybe you want to tell the story of David McKay.

Mr. KAUFMAN: Absolutely. He was or is a researcher down at the Johnson
Space Center at NASA and in Houston. And he was not if I remember
correctly, was not a meteor specialist to begin with. But a sample was
brought him at some - I guess this was in the early mid-90s - a sample
of a meteor that clearly had, a meteorite that clearly had come from
Mars. And there were a number of very interesting aspects to it in terms
of potentially showing some kind of faint biosignatures.

He put together a team. This was done very hush-hush for a period of
time. And they ultimately concluded that there were six biosignatures
that together - each one in and of itself did not mean that there was
life - that there had been life in that meteorite, but rather altogether
they said it made a very strong case for their having been life on Mars.
Again, this was in the period I believe about four billion years before.
And that story just broke extraordinarily, went around the world.

David McKay publishes this extraordinary data. There is a huge reaction
and then gradually over time it is pecked apart. The consensus is that
it is not accurate. I had long conversations with David. He is 100
percent convinced that it is accurate. He's done a lot more work on
better samples and is convinced that he is seeing microfossils using an
electron microscope. So in other words, he is seeing the remnants of
what was once bacterial life on rocks that clearly came from Mars. The
issue is whether or not it's somehow it's earthly contamination that
he’s seeing, but he is convinced that it is not. So this is a story that
had this huge moment, it's faded, and I have to think it's going to come
back again.

DAVIES: We're speaking with Marc Kaufman. He is a science writer and
national editor of The Washington Post. His new book is “First Contact.”

We'll be back after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

DAVIES: If you’re just joining us, our guest us Marc Kaufman. He's a
national editor and science writer at The Washington Post. His new book
is “First Contact: Scientific Breakthroughs in the Hunt for Life Beyond
Earth.”

So if there is or was primitive life on Mars why should that lead
anybody to conclude that there is highly involved intelligent life out
there? I mean that's a big leap. What's the logical link?

Mr. KAUFMAN: The logical link goes like this: if there was just one
genesis of life and it was on Earth then, you know, you could try to
figure out how and why that was but it's a significant limitation. If it
turns out that there is more than one genesis of life even in our little
solar system, our, as we are now finding, very typical kind of solar
system, if it turned out that life that’s different than Earth initiated
on Mars and perhaps evolved to some extent, then the people in this
field say that that cannot be coincidence, that means that life is a
commonplace. So even if you find one little microbe that clearly is
different than microbes on Earth, then the logic says that life is not
only common but almost inevitable because of the various large forces in
the universe.

DAVIES: And a single-celled organism might reasonably evolve because of
natural selection into something much more sophisticated.

Mr. KAUFMAN: Absolutely. I mean that's again, what happened here. We
were three billion years of single-celled organisms and then things
changed and then it was us. No reason to think that that wouldn’t have
happened somewhere else where there was a single microbe.

DAVIES: Now I guess it makes a big difference whether there are a
handful of potentially habitable planets around the universe or a few
dozen or thousands or millions, and that's one of the other interesting
areas here. People are discovering new planets. Tell us about what
they're finding and how they look.

Mr. KAUFMAN: Okay. This is another of the main legs of the stool, as it
were. You have the logic of why there is almost certainly life beyond
Earth; is you have extremophiles that show how life can exist in really
harsh conditions. You have Mars being most likely habitable at one
point. Now what they're finding is that planets like Earth, like
potentially Mars, are themselves a commonplace. And this is new. This is
over the last, it began in the mid-'90s but it really is the last five
years that things have picked up enormously. Most recently, just a few
months ago, the results of the Kepler Mission, which is a NASA mission,
came back with preliminary findings of a solar system with six planets
orbiting a star and with - I think it was 1,200 new candidate planets.

You have some of the top people in the field saying that there are
undoubtedly billions of or trillions of planets out there and that there
are most likely billions in the Milky Way itself, just one of billions
of galaxies, that there are billions of planets in habitable zones in
relation to their star that would allow for water to be liquid and for
other kinds of important conditions for life. So this is again entirely
new information over the last 10 years that says what people surmised
but never knew but now they do that XO planets are common, that XO
planets in habitable zones are common, and that's a phenomenal change.

DAVIES: If there are these, you know, billions of planets out there,
which might be somewhat like ours or might have at some point been
somewhat like ours, how are scientists going to know what's there? It
means they’re so far away.

Mr. KAUFMAN: That is one of the major issues in astrobiology and also in
terms of how that relates to resources and NASA. There are methods of
determining what is in an atmosphere of a planet hundreds of light-years
away. They know for instance that there is carbon dioxide in some and
methane in others. They use spectrometers in order to do this. But, in
terms of whether or not there is life there we’re not sure yet that we
have the capability. There have been plans, NASA plans, to send out
satellites that would be able to determine these kinds of things but
they're very expensive and they've been kind of put on the back shelf.

But the kind of result that they're looking for is if you find an
atmosphere that has a lot of oxygen or ozone in it, oxygen is something
that bonds very quickly with other element and if there is an excess of
it, if there is tons of it like there is on our planet, then that means
that there is biology that's creating it, because otherwise it would
have disappeared quickly. So that is kind of the Holy Grail of XO
planets is to find a way to determine whether or not there is a lot of
oxygen or ozone or something like that in an atmosphere.

DAVIES: One other fascinating little aspect of this is scientists who
are peering into the universe, listening for radio signals from
intelligent life from distant worlds. Now how do they do this and what
might be hear?

Mr. KAUFMAN: This is a whole world of SETI, Search for Extraterrestrial
Intelligence, which started about 50 years ago. This is, for a long
time, this was at the kind of borderline between science and we’re not
exactly sure what. And very famously in the early 90s, Congress took
away any money that might ever go to SETI because they thought that this
was a ridiculous thing. They've subsequently, not Congress, but the Bush
administration restored the ability for SETI to receive money. But what
there is now, is in Northern California an array – probably, I think,
the largest radio telescope array in the world - that is listening for
signals coming from other planets. It’s a joint venture with the
University of California, Berkeley, which does other radio astronomy.
But the logic of this is that they are tuning into different parts of
the sky and now to parts of the sky where we know there are stars with
XO planets to listen to see if there's any signal that's coming from
them that would be identifiable as intelligence. There's a big
controversy in this field, now, that's fascinating, as to whether or not
they should also send out signals.

DAVIES: And it was fascinating to read that some people believe you
should send out messages hoping for a response, others are strongly
against that. Why?

Mr. KAUFMAN: Yeah. Well, Stephen Hawking is perhaps the most famous
person, right now, who is against that. He said, you know, the history
of powerful beings is that when they find others who perhaps aren't as
powerful, they come and exterminate them and they liken it to when
Europeans came to North America and elsewhere. But his view is let's let
well enough alone and not send out messages, because the chances that
some – that A, that entities that are somehow malign is too great - that
chance, and so we should just listen.

DAVIES: Yeah. Well, it was fascinating that, you know, you note at some
point how long the odds are. I mean if life has existed on Earth for 3.8
billion years and human beings have been able to send these signals out
only about the last 50, you know, that the chances that we would be
sending our signal out at the right time that an evolved being from
someplace else was shooting something back, yeah, kind of remote.

Mr. KAUFMAN: Absolutely. And this was one of the, to me, one of the
really fascinating joys of writing and researching and writing the book,
which was to get a better understanding of where we are in the big
picture of things, in terms of the time that the universe has been here,
the distances, just the shear number of stars and planets and so on. We
are so infinitesimally small. The amount of time that we have been here
on Earth is just, you know, a less than a blink of the eye. And when you
step back and look at that and kind of take it in, then suddenly a lot
of the other forces, dynamics, possibilities that seemed unlikely,
somehow seem more likely.

DAVIES: Well, Marc Kaufman, it’s been really interesting. Thanks so
much.

Mr. KAUFMAN: You’re quite welcome.

GROSS: FRESH AIR contributor Dave Davies spoke with Marc Kaufman who’s
the science writer and national editor for The Washington Post.
Kaufman’s new book is called "First Contact: Scientific Breakthroughs in
the Hunt for Life Beyond Earth."

You can read an excerpt on our website, freshair.npr.org.

Coming up, Ken Tucker reviews Paul Simon's new album.

This is FRESH AIR.

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Paul Simon: Back In 'Graceland' With 'So Beautiful'

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TERRY GROSS, host:

For his new album "So Beautiful or So What," Paul Simon has put together
10 songs he said he hopes will reintroduce the album as an art form to a
generation that now gets most of its music as single song downloads.

Rock critic Ken Tucker also hears a strong spiritual theme running
through the album. Here's Ken's review.

(Soundbite of song, "Love Is Eternal Sacred Light")

Mr. PAUL SIMON (Singer-songwriter, musician): (Singing) Love is eternal,
sacred light. Free from the shackles of time. Evil is darkness, sight
without sight. A demon that feeds on the mind.

How'd it all begin? Started with a bang. Couple of light years later,
stars and planets sang. Fire warmed the cold, waves of colors flew.
Moonlight into gold, earth to green and blue.

Love is eternal...

KEN TUCKER: Paul Simon will probably never again achieve the combination
of artistic and mass-audience success that he did with "Graceland" in
1986. That album's blend of singer-songwriter mannerliness and African
adventurism was, at the time, novel, warm and welcoming.

Simon has characterized "Graceland" as rhythm-based, and he continued to
make solo albums in this style, in part because it was a way of
acknowledging the emphasis on beats brought about by hip-hop without
humiliating himself by trying to mimic mostly black musicians decades
younger than himself. That was admirable, but it could only go on for so
long.

Thus, Simon has proclaimed "So Beautiful or So What" a return to singer-
songwriter mode, with an emphasis on story-songs and his earnest, chalky
vocals. Still, he's not about to give up a good rhythm when he comes up
with one, as in the album's catchy opening tune, "Getting Ready for
Christmas Day."

(Soundbite of song, "Getting Ready for Christmas Day")

Mr. SIMON: (Singing) From early in November to the last week of December
I got money matters weighing me down. Oh the music may be merry, but
it’s only temporary, I know Santa Claus is coming to town.

In the days I work my day job, in the nights I work my night. But it all
comes down to working man’s pay. Getting ready, I'm getting ready, ready
for Christmas Day. Getting ready. Yes, sir.

TUCKER: There's always been an aspect to Simon's talent that could be
called the Assiduous English Major. His unremarkable thoughts about life
and love, argued with impeccable meter, have long characterized his solo
recordings, and they find a new self-consciousness in "Rewrite," a song
that uses his labor over lyrics, tossing out first drafts as a metaphor
for rewriting one's life. This one is so immaculately crafted it was
printed as a poem in The New Yorker, where it worked as a kind of Billy
Collins/Frank O'Hara-wannabe piece of verse. As music, it ambles along,
trying and failing to disguise the truth that rewriting one's life is a
cliche best left inside self-help books.

(Soundbite of song, "Rewrite")

Mr. SIMON: (Singing) I'm been working on my rewrite, that's right. I'm
gonna change the ending. Gonna throw away my title and toss it in the
trash. Every minute after midnight, all the time I'm spending, is just
for working on my rewrite, that’s right. I'm gonna turn it into cash.

I been working at the car wash. I consider it my day job ‘cause it's
really not a pay job. But that's where I am. Everybody says the old guy
working at the car wash. Hasn't got a brain cell left since Vietnam.

But I say help me, help me, help me...

TUCKER: One element that jumps out at you as you listen to this album is
its unifying theme of spirituality. That's both an aesthetic choice -
it's what he means when he says he wants people to listen to this
project as an album, not just a collection of downloadable singles - and
an odd, strategic one.

There was probably more spiritual nourishment in "Bridge Over Troubled
Water" than in the whole of this album, but evoking God and Buddha in
song called "The Afterlife"; having God and quote, "his only son" pay "a
courtesy call on Earth" in the piano-based, Randy Newman-ish "Love and
Hard Times"; positing love as, in another song title, "Eternal Sacred
Light," and pondering in yet, another composition, "Questions for the
Angels" - well, what is this?

Is it sincerity that dovetails with those in his generation who are
seeking a contemplative life in current hard times? Or is it a
convenient way to puff up his songs with an exalted importance when this
crafty old pro knows that nonsense syllables like Be-bop-a-lula or Bop-
bop-a-whoa can really serve the same function?

(Soundbite of song, "Love & Blessing")

Mr. SIMON: (Singing) Love and blessing, simple kindness fell like rain
on thirsty land. Fields and gardens, long abandoned came to life in dust
and sand.

Lover's lips sweet as honey. Touched as if old love was new. Banker's
pockets overflowing with gold and money. Prophesies of wealth come true.

Bop-bop-a-whoa...

TUCKER: Whatever the reason, Paul Simon has made an album that succeeds
in blending the two best strands of his solo career: the articulate
navel-gazing of his 1972 solo debut and "Graceland's" rhymin' Simon in
rhythm. And only a few songs here could use the heavy hand of a rewrite.

GROSS: Ken Tucker is editor-at-large at Entertainment Weekly. Paul
Simon’s album "So Beautiful or So What" will be released April 12th.
Until then, you can hear the full album streaming on the website
nprmusic.org.

I'm Terry Gross.

(Soundbite of song, "So Beautiful or So What")

Mr. SIMON: (Singing) I'm gonna make a chicken gumbo. Toss some sausage
in the pot. I'm gonna flavor it with okra, Cheyenne pepper to make it
hot. You know life is what we make of it. So beautiful or so what?

I'm gonna tell my kids a bedtime story, a play without a plot. Will it
have a happy ending? Maybe yeah, Maybe not. I tell them life is what you
make of it. So beautiful or so what?

So beautiful, so beautiful, so what.

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