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Looking for answers at Café Scientifique

By Cody Kraatz

Where do we come from? Are we alone? Where are we going? "Those three simple questions have three very complex answers," says G. Scott Hubbard, once known as the Mars czar for his leadership in NASA's Mars program. He tried his best to boil it down in layman's terms for a crowd of about 200 at Café Scientifique Silicon Valley on June 12.

"The limits of life here on Earth are much broader that we thought 15 years ago. Life exists in some very, very inhospitable environments," says Hubbard, showing the audience video and images of deep-sea worms that feed off volcanic gases and astrobiologists researching the forms of life that exist in near-boiling, highly toxic hot springs on the Kamchatka peninsula in Russia. The discovery of so many forms of life in hellish conditions makes scientists such as Hubbard optimistic.

"That tells us that if we can find a niche on Mars, maybe under the surface...we may find a place where life can exist."

The cafe is part of an international trend in which science geeks and people with no background in science all gather in pubs, coffee shops and restaurants around the world to learn about cutting-edge science directly from experts.

And Hubbard fills the bill. As he puts it, "Nobody works for NASA to get rich. They work there because they love it."

The cafes started in the United Kingdom, but were imported to Silicon Valley several years ago. Roger Whiting, co-founder of this cafe, was first introduced to it in Edinburgh, Scotland. He came away thrilled.

"This would go down in the Bay Area really well," he said to himself at the time. "When we started this out, we looked for a cafe that would take 40 or 50 people. It's just grown like anything."

Earlier this year the organizers moved to the think tank SRI International's headquarters in Menlo Park, where Hubbard coincidentally worked as a research physicist earlier in his career. Hubbard was director of the NASA Ames Research Center and now holds the Carl Sagan chair for the study of life in the universe at the SETI Institute in Mountain View.

Whiting notes that about half of the people at any given cafe presentation are there for the first time. People came from as far away as Tiburon and Newark to hear Hubbard talk about Mars.

"I've been coming to Café Scientifique since the very first one. It's so exciting," says Wendy Levine, a Sunnyvale resident who works for a biomedical company in Santa Clara. She appreciates the speakers' enthusiasm and ability to make their field accessible to anyone, even the children in the audience.

She also likes to be exposed to the seminar environment on a variety of topics, something that is common in academia but not in the corporate world. A favorite presentation for her was from a Stanford researcher who used X-rays and other technology to uncover Aristotle's writings on a piece of parchment that had been scraped, bleached, turned 90 degrees and reprinted as a prayer book.

"We have a science background, but that doesn't apply to all sciences," says Imelda Omana, who came with Levine and works at a Sunnyvale biomedical company.

Hubbard spent much of his presentation talking about the various Mars missions after his appointment to lead the program in 2000. He made dramatic changes to the culture and organization of the program, including throwing out the "better, faster, cheaper" policy that he says was pushed to its limits, causing failed Mars missions in 1998.

The biggest discoveries of those missions, including orbiting satellites and the two famous Mars rovers, were several clues that suggest there may be water on Mars.

"Water is the common denominator for life," Hubbard says, suggesting that the question should be not so much if, but where.

To learn more about Café Scientifique Silicon Valley, visit www.cafescipa.org. The next cafe presentation will be on July 10, with James Sweeney, Ph.D., a Stanford professor and expert on the intersection of economics and energy policy.