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Where to Search For Life: Evidence from narrative sources with established predictive efficacy

Elizabeth R Stanway

Abstract

The search for habitable planets, and even for ``Earth 2.0'', is a major driver in contemporary astronomy. However selecting target fields to prioritise for such searches presents a challenge. Here we establish a statistical analysis of the appearance of constellation names in science fiction magazines of the pulp era, evaluating the most commonly mentioned constellations and thus those which the science fiction community collectively identify as the most likely locations to find life. Given that the predictive power of science fiction is well established, we suggest that these locations might be prioritised by searches for extrasolar biospheres.

Where to Search For Life: Evidence from narrative sources with established predictive efficacy

Abstract

The search for habitable planets, and even for ``Earth 2.0'', is a major driver in contemporary astronomy. However selecting target fields to prioritise for such searches presents a challenge. Here we establish a statistical analysis of the appearance of constellation names in science fiction magazines of the pulp era, evaluating the most commonly mentioned constellations and thus those which the science fiction community collectively identify as the most likely locations to find life. Given that the predictive power of science fiction is well established, we suggest that these locations might be prioritised by searches for extrasolar biospheres.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 10 sections, 7 figures.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Methodology
  3. Literature Sources
  4. Identification of Astronomical Targets
  5. Results
  6. Discussion
  7. Considerations for Exoplanet and Astrobiology Searches
  8. Dark Forests
  9. Caveats and Uncertainties
  10. Conclusions

Figures (7)

  • Figure S1: Pulp magazine covers, showing the evolution from sensationalism towards more carefully considered illustrations of astronomical scenes. (Left) Cover of Astounding Stories of Super-Science, volume 1, issue 1 (1930). Illustration by H W Wessolowski, accompanying The Beetle Horde by Victor Rousseau. (Right) Cover of Galaxy Science Fiction magazine, volume 1, issue 1 (1950). Illustration by David Stone, accompanying serialised novel Time Quarry by Clifford D Simak. Image source: archive.org. Images out of copyright.
  • Figure S2: References to northern constellations by name, mapped onto equatorial coordinates. The magazine source is given in the top right hand corner of each panel. The celestial equator is marked with a dashed line. More frequently mentioned constellations are indicated by darker shades. Constellations are labelled by acronym as given in Table B1. Data for Crater, Hercules, Cancer and Leo are omitted.
  • Figure S3: References to constellations by genitive form, as in Figure \ref{['fig:byname']}.
  • Figure S4: Total references to constellations by name. References have been summed across all magazines considered. The four constellations shown in grey have been omitted from searches.
  • Figure S5: Total references to constellation names by genitive form.
  • ...and 2 more figures