The Search for Extraterrestrial Life: Are We Alone? (The Space Science Series)

For most of human history, the question was unanswerable. Today, for the first time, it is not.Are we alone in the universe? It is the oldest question humanity has ever asked — and we are closer to answering it than at any previous moment in our history. We have discovered thousands of planets orbiting other stars. We have found liquid oceans beneath the ice of moons in our own solar system. We have built telescopes capable of reading the chemical signatures of alien atmospheres from light-years away.This book tells the story of the search — from Fermi's famous lunchtime question to the Wow! signal, from the exoplanet revolution to the plumes of Enceladus, from the birth of SETI to the James Webb Space Telescope scanning distant worlds for signs of life. It asks what life actually is, where it might exist, what we would do if we found it, and what it would mean if we never do.Authoritative, scientifically rigorous, and compulsively readable, The Search for Extraterrestrial Life is the essential guide to the greatest scientific adventure of our time.Book Five of The Space Science Series. Read more