Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Book Club Edition: Planetary Society Chief Scientist Bruce Betts’ latest for kids

Episode Date: February 20, 2026

They informed and entertained together throughout the first 20 years of Planetary Radio. Listen in as the Society’s chief scientist and book club edition host Mat Kaplan share the mic once again for a delightful conversation about Dr. Betts’ two new space books for young people. “Are We Alone?” introduces the search for life across the Universe, while “The Size of Space” collects many of Bruce’s brilliant and hilarious ways to cut our Solar System down to human size. Discover more at: https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/book-club-bruce-bettsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Are we alone? And just how big is space? Planetary Society chief scientist Bruce Betz 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 Betz has completed his series of Space 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 Al-Hmed. But he has done so very much more for us across his many years at the Society, including his brilliant management of the Light Sail Solar Sail Project. He's a planetary scientist whose PhD 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-streamed conversation we had in the society's member community as 2026 gone 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,

at 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. The 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 learner 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 M. or if they seem to have inventory weirdness sometimes. So first, go to the learner 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. Yep.

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 top of the book? I don't really know the answer other than they had 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 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 the learner 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 in, well, the beginning of all the neat stuff with space. So that's kind of where it's genesis. And then we worked out, you know, work and I've 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. Now, 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, you know, fairly thin. And I am 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 in my whole life. So there's all sort 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 and 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 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. My relatives. My grandson is going to. I haven't even shown them to him yet. No, 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? nine, nine and a half. Yeah, good enough. Two PhDs so far, but you know, he's a slow lower. Wow. 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 it 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 if the Earth were 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, 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 the sun's really big. And that's why 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 honestly did kind of surprise me, even though I have known many, many years, that 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 of it. It's a very broad shield volcano, more like a monaque or monoloa with the very shallow angles. As I've heard it, 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, C, therefore A equals C. I remember the transitive. It's about as far as I gone in math. If the sun was at New York City and not huge, you're 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, we should have graphically, the point is the Earth is much closer to the sun than Neptune is. 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, who 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 Boyn, the Random Space FAC 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 to be. If you're not familiar with we did working with Merck boy and our video guy a few years ago, we did a number of Planet, random space fact videos where they're a minute or too long and have real science fact, gee whiz. And then usually I get hurt and it's funny. least for kids. Yeah, either you get hurt or you get embarrassed somehow or you, you know, break your car somehow. There was one I think.

Oh, my poor car. Although my car suffered a fate very similar to. Well, not really. Kind of similar to it, it deorbited. 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. 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 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 wiped out. I'm sorry, it was caution. I get a little distracted when I start talking about it. 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 random Spacefack videos, there's a playlist. I don't remember if that's linked easily from there or not.

but on YouTube, you can find all of them, but there's about 50. And we have fun. And a couple of those made it into the book as well, ones that are similar. If our solar system out to Neptune, where there's a 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

yeah I was surprised everyone went along with me including the ones at the back but one in particular I bet that was the one that was in question yeah go ahead yeah here's the first one uh figure nail growth

oh yeah with illustrations yeah that was that yeah the learner got the illustration made and uh 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... Turns out in 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... kidding. Rift. Tectonics. And what did I say, do you have it? It's a few centimeters.

I'd have to hold it up. Let me see here. I'll see if I can find it. 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 have to, 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 a Rover the Dunders. dog and Luna, the robotic cat and dog that participate in our kids' membership program, Plenary Academy, and the content from that 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 and cool. So here's the other one, and you probably can guess.

which one it was that I cracked 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, he 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? 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 would be neat to do like a human body type thing. And let's say, well, what do we put the?

And then I just calculate it. And it's like, wait a second. and, you know, I'm out standing up with measuring tapes and, you know, well, that's funny. That's very funny. I'd like to have seen that, that little proof. Great moments in random spaceback 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, 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 going to say, I don't use random space facts, but frankly, I have 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 I 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 NEAs 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 that close, say, 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.

So that's the kind of the ones we want to pay attention to and find. We found about approaching 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 affecting people. So kind of the Chelyabinsk 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 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've found 40,000 and we're doing great compared to where we were which was

almost none 20 you know it's the turn of the century and so those numbers are going up and up. 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 so we found almost, probably over 95% estimate of the one kilometer and above, the real

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. 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 we're doing better and better with the ground-based work, and we've got Neo-surveyor,

which we keep pushing to make sure it doesn't drop out of the budget at some point, And that will be the space-based telescope that the community has been really wanting since the Planet 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 Neo-surveyor, 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, there's still on the putting it at 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 turns out is more, you can do a lot better often with that than with visible. 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, it was. We got a useful note here. once again from Rich Chute, who's really proving himself helpful tonight. He says, RSF's 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. And Rich has been great about passing that information along. And I have not publicized enough to you, Matt. It's really cool and very gratifying. And 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 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. The moon is moving away from the Earth, which is what you were talking about with the fingernail thing, right? Right.

Tidal effect. It's a tie to the Earth. The Earth is 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, you know, geologic time, 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 moon. fall 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 that 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 close to Earthbat. Terra Nova. Thank you, Willem, William, William. Wow, that was quick feedback. No, I do not remember it. And I didn't know they did that. And could have just been because they had the glasses on and that old figure.

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 Betts, great new books for young space fans, when Planetary Radio's Book Club edition continues in moments. Hi, y'all. Lovar 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 mailed 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, 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 Planet Erases side. 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 life elsewhere to astrobiology. You cover a lot here, like what's happening in our solar system and looking at extra solar worlds,

and also eventually SETI, which is all stuff that the planetary society has been deeply involved with, right? Yes, yes, yes. Yes, we have. We've been we started funding SETI and within the

first year or two of the organization started in 1980. and we're funding efforts. We worked with Stephen Spielberg, or at least he made contributions to our program when he was making alien movies, and he helped throw this, to pretend switch to fire up one of the searches

that was run by Harvard University, and Paul Horowitz there ran several, going from radio, astronomy, even to optical, looking for laser signals. 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, even if there's a lot of life out there.

The distances involved, the power's involved, the fact 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 been using a 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 where 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 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 and Enceladus was spewing out geysers. So, and then we go out and then at least touch in 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 it's 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 there's a year you're it's like anything else you do a book on mars you're you're only scratching the surface you do a book on um astrobiology you're only scratching the surface but you'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 wetting their appetites. By the way, you mentioned step grants, science and technology empowered by the public, right? I got nailed in. 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 the four great projects in the few-year history. so far and so we're looking for probably a couple more more see and it's open to 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 Stephen Spielberg. If you're watching Stephen, call Rich. We got a sponsorship that I missed, Rich? Do we get money every time you mention Stephen Spielberg? There is the picture of a much younger Stephen 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 many more, 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? Talk, say at least a couple of words about that. And the little tartar. Life experiment. Right. That's two words. Living interplanetary flight experiments 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 4,000 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 so various, everything from spores, bacterial spores to archaea to the seeds and at the other end, and your favorite tardigrades, otherwise known as water bears that are, 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, Cheyava Ball. So those leopard spots? 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. SETI's the ultimate example of a strange field because 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 don't look, how do we know? Broader astrobiology, they do everything from considering the origins of life and what's required and how it happens on Earth to figuring out what might non-Earth, other permutations of life look like, and most importantly, how do we look for it? For example, we go to the surface of Mars and we drive a rover, around, let's say we call it perseverance and we looked for things that might be evidence of past life. And then in a theoretical, hopeful world, we return the sample 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 similarity, through me for a while, there's amazingly a lot of great work going on to 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 on the 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.

Don't just kill you? 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. It's just, kills me. I don't know if it kills you. Apparently, 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. Wait to you hear me 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.

go, certainly if you win 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, 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? 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 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 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 that 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 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 2 to 400 billion stars, so therefore that many planets in our galaxy. Not just our galaxy. Then you get to the ridiculous there, 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 whether 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 to 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, but that are going to get a lot out of, I did as well. A lot of the stuff he's just talked about like that, that world circling proxima centauri it's in the book i don't know how he got this this much stuff into it we also could those people if you get the books consider making uh doing a review on amazon oh yeah sure especially this series they haven't it wasn't as actively encouraged and pushed and

that's what helps get them out there more learners 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, you know, kids interacting with that one book, or whatever the multiplicative factor is that I've forgotten. But the reviews will be helpful, especially because if one person comes in and they, 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 in a bonus time here as we frequently are 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, Tuckwa says, 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. 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't remember the exact estimate, but none of us have to worry about it for our extra few gazillion generations because it's millions of years off and I'm sorry I stopped being really attentive when it passed you know a hundred years but it's millions and I don't remember whether that's one or 10 or 100 but it's awful ways longer than you might expect got a great question from diana I'll get to Dave in a moment wouldn't putting setty searches on the far side of the moon make for less or fewer interference problems well it's been a lot of

talk, right, about putting radio telescopes on the far side? Yes. Okay, next question. Let me quickly mention, obviously, you have some serious challenges to deal with. 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, it can't see Earth, so 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 it, cute stories of kids who want the books read at night. And, you know, 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 why pet peeve and sometimes like if you're wondering what exoplanets look like you have to use art because you put 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 uh that's kind of a one specific thing. Writing and then rewriting to try to get to

the right age range and keep it limited and focus on what are the kids getting to get the most out of? What's the fundamental concept? 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, 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 bow. 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 were sworn. Sweared? No, not really.

That's the expression for life, what you just described, life going 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, how can you have something kicked off Mars? Well, yes, you can. Can you have something survive as makes 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 biomodule 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 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 Earth. You started it on Mars, but then it came to Earth. And so to quote in a totally different context, then you end up with, we are 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 than 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 speculation and wonder about the possibility

of life across somebody say wonder uh let's talk about us uh let me show everybody something that is one of my happiest and most prize 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 to stuff all over my walls. Most of it I totally ignore. This one makes me

happy every time I look at it. That makes me happy. I haven't looked at it in a while or looked at those pictures in a while. I 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 have no idea. I wasn't me. I mean, obviously I stole it from the radio station. Yeah, right. 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 of 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 were all those crazy things we did back in our youth when we were getting run over by rovers and 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, PSI, planetary scientists. Yeah. Research scientist. 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? It kept you being creative and fun. Partly the ability to at least occasionally be creative and fun. which 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, like the one I talked about for writing these books, where you kind of go, oh my gosh, I'm so deep in the details.

Mars isn't important. What's important is this little channel here that's got something going on in the thermal interest. Anyway, that's not important. What is important is I get a lot, 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 UMAP, with Planeture 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 just, it's different. And there's a fun aspect that I've been able to cultivate that It 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 Learner and the Planet 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 Betz, 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 Sopliners, by our chief scientist, Bruce Fetz. 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 Palletta 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-Ahmad. I'm Matt Kaplan, at Astra.