Chris Impey

Dreams of Other Worlds

Abstract

Humans have dreamed of other worlds for thousands of years. At the dawn of science, over two thousand years ago, some Greek philosophers thought that the Earth might not be unique, but a geocentric cosmology squashed this speculation until the time of Galileo. Gradually, telescopic observations revealed planets and moons to be worlds in space, and robotic space probes in the past fifty years sharpened this awareness. In 1995, the first exoplanet was discovered. In twenty years, the inventory has grown to over 3500, of which hundreds are Earth-like and dozens may be habitable.

Astronomers project roughly a hundred million habitable "Earths" in the Milky Way and the search for life on those worlds is one of the most compelling projects in science. Meanwhile, cosmologists paint a picture of an expanding universe where space-time we can see holds 10^23 stars and their likely attendant planets. If inflation occurred, then other space-times are likely to exist, with properties that may or may not be hospitable to life. Artists and scientists have seized on these discoveries to visualize other worlds. The potential of a boundless, biological universe recasts what it means to be human.

Biography

Chris Impey is a University Distinguished Professor and Deputy Head of the Department of Astronomy at the University of Arizona. He has over 170 refereed publications on observational cosmology, galaxies, and quasars, and his research has been supported by $20 million in grants from NASA and the NSF. He has won eleven teaching awards, and he is currently teaching an online class with over 13,000 enrolled. Impey is a past Vice President of the American Astronomical Society and he has been an NSF Distinguished Teaching Scholar and the Carnegie Council's Arizona Professor of the Year. He has written over 40 popular articles on cosmology and astrobiology, two introductory textbooks, a novel, and five popular science books: The Living Cosmos (2007, Random House), How It Ends (2010, Norton), How It Began (2012, Norton), Dreams of Other Worlds (2013, Princeton), and Humble Before the Void (2014, Templeton).