Book Club Edition: Alien Oceans by Kevin Hand

Mat Kaplan (0:04)

What could be waiting for us in the warm, inviting seas of Europa and other ocean worlds? That's our topic this month on Planetary Radio Book Club Edition.

Hello again, everyone. I'm Matt Kaplan of The Planetary Society, with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond.

The July 2026 selection for The Planetary Society member book club is one of my all-time favorite books about space science and the search for life. In fact, it's one of my all-time favorite books of any genre. Alien Oceans, The Search for Life in the Depths of Space, is still very much available from Princeton University Press and is very much recommended. Its author is our guest for the captivating conversation you're about to hear. Planetary scientist Kevin Hand directs the Ocean Worlds Lab at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory just outside Pasadena, California. His research focuses on the origin, evolution and distribution of life in the solar system with an emphasis on the icy worlds that hide those warm salty seas. From 2011 to 2016, he served as Jeopardy Chief Scientist for Solar System Exploration at JPL. He is the principal investigator of the Sherlock Spectrometer on the Mars Perseverance Rover. Sherlock, that's the scanning habitable environments with rayman and luminescence for organics and chemicals. And it's all about finding signs of habitability and possible past life on Mars. He's also a co-investigator on the Europa Clipper mission that you'll hear us mention a couple of times today. Same status for the Dragonfly mission to Saturn's moon Titan. His work has brought him to the dry valleys of Antarctica, the sea ice near the North Pole, the deepest depths of the Earth's oceans and the glaciers of Kilimanjaro. He was selected as a National Geographic Explorer in 2011

Ladies and gentlemen, here is Dr. Kevin Hand, Ace Astrobiologist, longtime researcher in this field, who has been a part of many, many missions, including many that are still underway. And so, Kevin, it is a great pleasure to welcome you once again, because we've talked several times before.

Kevin Hand (2:42)

Good to see you again, Matt, and thanks for the invite. And thanks to all the members, not just for taking an interest in my book, Alien Oceans, The Search for Life in the Depths of Space, but also for all the work that you all do, whether it's on the Hill or around your communities or so on and so forth. Obviously, anything we can do to advance critical thinking these days is much needed.

Mat Kaplan (3:09)

And we should add to that, that you are speaking only for yourself today.

George Takei (3:14)

That's right. I was just about to add that.

Kevin Hand (3:16)

I'll describe more of what I do and everything. But this evening, I am representing myself, only myself and the brain on top of this head. Nobody else, no other organizations.

Mat Kaplan (3:29)

Kevin, as I told you, a whole lot of people have already told us how much they enjoyed the book. I read it when it came out because we talked on Planetary Radio when it happened.

I know I had a good reaction to it then. I am pretty sure I enjoyed it even more this time, five years later. It's not just full of terrific information about our search for life across the Solar System and beyond. It's simply really well-written and it really is just a pleasure to read.

Kevin Hand (3:59)

Well, I appreciate that.

As you and folks out there listening, we'll no doubt recall, so my book came out in April of 2020, which was not a great time for a book to come out. I wasn't even excited about my book coming out because everybody was petrified about COVID, and we had so many things going on in the country and the world. It was sad because on a small scale, something that I had worked so hard on came out at such a challenging time. Thankfully, it has persisted and folks have seemed to really enjoy it. So it's music to my ears that you read it not just once, but a second time and it held up.

Mat Kaplan (4:44)

Yeah, it definitely does. Of course, one of the reasons I wanted to bring you in to the book club is to follow up, because a lot happens in planetary science and the search for life. Hopefully, that's some of what we will bring out over the next hour. I'm going to start with a quote from very close to the front of the book. And here it is, it's a good example of the good writing that you'll experience if you're one of those who has not quite gotten to the book yet. Here we go. Our brains have no way of processing the reality of the situation. Several thousand pounds of pressure per square inch.