“Selling the Search for Habitable Planets” – Lee Billings of Scientific American

In the more than twenty years since the first discoveries of worlds orbiting other stars, the detection and characterization of exoplanets has become one of the most active and exciting subfields in all of astronomy and planetary science. Much of this activity and excitement has been and continues to be fueled by the strong public appeal of someday finding other potentially habitable, potentially Earth-like worlds. However, there are many justifications for pursuing this goal, many paths to follow towards it, and many definitions for its eventual satisfactory fulfillment. Is it mere curiosity that should justify our search, or something more? What constitutes an “Earth-like” world? What should our observational criteria be for anointing any particular planet as such? At present, the interested layperson is unaware that these are questions without easy answers, and many exoplanet experts have demonstrated they are ill-prepared to address and navigate this deficit in a way that minimizes risks and maximizes rewards. In this talk, Billings will discuss the value of cohesive public communications strategies for exoplanet studies, identifying potential lessons to be learned from the past and likely challenges for the future.