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No, no and no. He cannot see us. To him, the sun is just a pinprick of light, and the Earth and its eight fellow planets are too dim and too close to our star to resolve. The kind of vision needed to see us would be equivalent to us being able to see someone on Neptune drop a quarter; our green friend Marvin would need a telescope the size of his solar system to actually see the Earth.

So the fact that Berkeley, Calif., astronomer Geoffrey Marcy has been able to detect planets around other stars is, simply, amazing -- both as a technological feat for modern earthlings and as a cosmological double take. Scientists once assumed Earth was a unique locus for life in the universe, but the more planets Marcy finds, the more likely it seems that there are real extraterrestrials out there sitting on them. Forget the science fiction; they may soon be fact.

Marcy isn't the only astronomer finding "extrasolar" planets -- as planets orbiting other stars are called -- nor did he announce the first discovery. A Swiss team scooped him on the first one in 1995. But since then, he's been racking up planets like Mark McGwire racks up homers -- except there's no Sammy Sosa to threaten his lead. His gangbusters team has the credit for two-thirds of the planets found (19 of 29 at last count) and the only known system of planets -- the three giants orbiting Upsilon Andromedae, which they announced last April.

With his boyish eyes and ruler-straight nose, Marcy needs a goatee to help him look older than his graduate students. He is only 45 -- young for a scientist at the top of his game. He talks about extrasolar planets with an energy and clarity not unlike Carl Sagan's. Astronomers don't appreciate that comparison; they think Sagan sold out the field with overwrought predictions and reflexive self-aggrandizing. Marcy is more humble -- always making sure the team gets credit. He is also contributing more to astronomical knowledge than Sagan did with his suppositions. And Marcy isn't a missionary for the cosmos the way Sagan was; he simply has a passion for planets. So he's in the right job; he's the study of a man well fulfilled.

And of a man well vindicated. There are two hot pursuits in astronomy these days. One is figuring out the fate of the universe -- a hand-waving mix of supernovae, equations and guesswork pronouncements. Will it expand or collapse? Where is the dark matter, or is it dark energy? The other is the question of life beyond our planet.

The fate-of-the-universe question is as old as human consciousness, or, for modern scientists, as old as Einstein. The question of life, though, is brand-new for science. After all, there can't be an E.T. without a planet for him to come from. Now that we know there are extrasolar planets -- more and more are discovered every year, thanks to Marcy -- you can get a Ph.D. in astrobiology and go to work for NASA looking for life on these planets. Twenty years ago that wasn't the case, which Marcy learned personally when he became the object of scientific scorn.

In 1982, Marcy left the University of California at Santa Cruz with a Ph.D. in astrophysics and took a postdoctorate position studying the magnetic properties of stars. Mindful of the need for advancement in academia, he published papers such as "The Magnetic Field on the Late-Type Dwarf Xi Bootis A," in respectable if dry scientific journals. But he wasn't happy. The work was good for the career, but bad for the soul.

He had fallen in love with the universe as a 14-year-old boy when his parents bought a telescope. "It vanished into his room immediately," Marcy's mother says, "and the only sign we had that he was alive was that his alarm would go off at 2 in the morning, and he would go outside and look up at Saturn or something." Marcy recalls these nights, too. He loved Saturn and its rings and its moon Titan; he spent months charting Titan's orbit around the planet.

Star magnetism had no such draw for him, and he found himself moping through his postdoc years in chronic depression. "I was wondering whether I could continue as a research astronomer," he recalls. "I had to find some work in astrophysics that appealed to me on a gut human level. I asked myself, What would appeal to me even if I wasn't an astronomer?"

One morning, he stood in the shower for 45 minutes, wondering if he should quit, when the answer came to him in the form of a question: Is there life elsewhere in the universe? Are there other worlds out there, sites for biochemistry and biology? He decided to go find some planets.

Next page | Life beyond our solar system was great entertainment, but it was lousy science