The Aliens Are Coming!
The Exciting and Extraordinary Science Behind Our Search for Life in the Universe
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4.0 • 4 Ratings
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- £3.99
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- £3.99
Publisher Description
Discover the fascinating and cutting-edge science behind the greatest question of all: is there life beyond Earth?
For millennia, we have looked up at the stars and wondered whether we are alone in the universe. In the last few years, scientists have made huge strides towards answering that question. In The Aliens are Coming!, comedian and bestselling science writer Ben Miller takes us on a fantastic voyage of discovery, from the beginnings of life on earth to the very latest search for alien intelligence.
What soon becomes clear is that the hunt for extra-terrestrials is also an exploration of what we actually mean by life. What do you need to kickstart life? How did the teeming energy of the Big Bang end up as frogs, trees and quantity surveyors? How can evolution provide clues about alien life? What might it look like? (Probably not green and sexy, sadly.)
As our probes and manned missions venture out into the solar system, and our telescopes image Earth-like planets with ever-increasing accuracy, our search for alien life has never been more exciting - or better funded.
The Aliens are Coming! is a comprehensive, accessible and hugely entertaining guide to that search, and our quest to understand the very nature of life itself.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Miller (It's Not Rocket Science), an English comedian and science writer, celebrates the human fascination with the search for extraterrestrial life and grounds it with equally fascinating science. The place to start studying aliens, Miller assures readers, is right here on Earth. Extremophiles microorganisms that live in seemingly inimical environments such as inside rocks around deep-sea volcanic vents or frigid Antarctic lakes show that life is "tenacious, commonplace, and infinitely adaptable." Such strange life forms might even be as nearby as the icy oceans of Jupiter's moon Europa or the methane slush on Saturn's moon Titan. Miller covers a lot of ground with humor and insight, addressing how scientists define life and how it evolved on Earth, and offering a short history of UFO sightings and scientists' continued search for life-bearing exoplanets and signals from alien civilizations. Miller's book is a lively and accessible blend of pop culture and science in which a Dire Straits encore explains the Drake Equation, the platypus introduces evolution, the second law of thermodynamics gets a workout, and readers meet Mazlan Othman, the UN's official ambassador for Earth. Pop science readers will have fun with this energetic look at the hunt for alien life.
