Sara Seager: Searching for Alien Life

My job is to search for alien life. Not little green humanoids, but rather for signs of life by way of gases in a planet atmosphere that “do not belong”, gases that might be produced by life. Every star is a sun and we call planets orbiting stars other than the Sun exoplanets. There are thousands of exoplanets and some of them are small rocky worlds whose atmospheres we will be able to study for signs of life with upcoming new telescopes.

I’m actually cleaning out my small home library and reading old favorites before giving them away. At the moment I am reading All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot.

The book Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery immediately comes to mind. This fictional story of the struggles, adventures, and joy of an orphaned girl who finds a forever home has been a classic children’s novel for over a century. I still vividly remember receiving the book at age 9, as a holiday gift, with its bright yellow hardcover and the new book smell, and the promise of many hours of (challenging for me) reading ahead. The book was striking, not just because of the compelling story, but also because it was the first book that showed me all a book could be.

I did not have any specific ideas or plans, until I turned 16 and found out, to my surprise, that “astronomer” was an actual job.

For anyone who has ever wanted to learn more about the night sky and possibly invest in binoculars or a telescope of any kind, I recommend The Backyard Astronomer’s Guide by Terence Dickinson and Alan Dyer.

One of the best books I have ever read is The Giver by Lois Lowry. This book describes a futuristic utopian society through the eyes of a boy, who, coming of age, discovers his world might be the opposite of what it appears. The Giver reminds us in an eye-opening way to take a good look beyond our cultural blinkers. While designated a young adult novel, this is a book everyone should read; I would make sure the adult me had a chance to read this book because the book did not yet exist when I was younger.

The most exciting thing is just the sheer number and variety of exoplanets being continually discovered is mind-boggling.

There is not a single book that comes to mind but if I had to choose one it is a beautifully, artfully written textbook that is both highly technical and clear, Stellar Atmospheres by Dimitri Mihalas. The words “artful” and “technical textbook” do not usually go together but because they did in this case, the book enabled me to learn the foundations of my research speciality.

As young children, my sister and I had a favorite book, The Second Margaret Mahy Story Book by Margaret Mahy. Each night we spent at our Dad’s house, we were allowed to choose one precious bedtime story and he would read to us while we fell asleep. I tear up when I think of his tenderness during that storytime.

My proudest achievements are my brand-new creations that influenced the direction of my research field. One such achievement was the formulation of the “transit transmission spectra method” a technical term that summarizes the method astronomers have used to observe the atmospheres of dozens of exoplanets today.

Fiction.

Living the life of a young widow and mother was full of surprises, some astonishingly adventurous and others ironically joyful, all amidst near paralyzing grief. I was initially inspired to capture and share that journey, and then the book grew into much more.

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens.

While attending the Wilderness Canoe Association Symposium in Toronto for the first time while in my early 20s, an acquaintance took me aside at the book sale table and said “these two books will change your life”. One of the books did just that, Sleeping Island: A Journey to the Edge of the Barrens by P.G. Downes. The book describes the author’s 1939 journey to a remote and unmapped part of northern Canada, where he travelled by canoe and portage from the boreal forest up past the tree line into the so-called Barren Lands. The author movingly captures what was to be a vanishing way of life by the native Canadians and Inuit he befriended along the way. This book struck a deep chord, inspiring me to follow part of the same route called The Old North Trail, which started me on many years of serious canoe adventure travel and a life-long love of the deep wilderness.

I love fiction that involves time travel, no matter how illogical the plotline has to be. I am hoping to discover a new book or a book series in this genre.

I’ve written a memoir, which is similar to an autobiography, and the title is, The Smallest Lights in the Universe: A Memoir.