Alien Earths
The New Science of Planet Hunting in the Cosmos
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4.8 • 13 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
"Kaltenegger's breezy narrative style invites you to experience with her the challenges and joys of being a scientist on the frontier of discovery." —Neil deGrasse Tyson, Astrophysicist, American Museum of Natural History
"Horizon-expanding... [Kaltenegger] has something of Sagan’s knack for eliciting wonder." —The Times
"A superb testament to the scientific virtue of curious wonder." —Wall Street Journal
For thousands of years, humans have wondered whether we're alone in the cosmos. Now, for the first time, we have the technology to investigate. But once you look for life elsewhere, you realize it is not so simple. How do you find it over cosmic distances? What actually is life?
As founding director of Cornell University's Carl Sagan Institute, astrophysicist Lisa Kaltenegger has built a team of tenacious scientists from many disciplines to create a specialized toolkit to find life on faraway worlds. In Alien Earths, she demonstrates how we can use our homeworld as a Rosetta Stone, creatively analyzing Earth's history and its astonishing biosphere to inform this search. With infectious enthusiasm, she takes us on an eye-opening journey to the most unusual exoplanets that have shaken our worldview - planets covered in oceans of lava, lonely wanderers lost in space, and others with more than one sun in their sky! And the best contenders for Alien Earths. We also see the imagined worlds of science fiction and how close they come to reality.
With the James Webb Space Telescope and Dr. Kaltenegger’s pioneering work, she shows that we live in an incredible new epoch of exploration. As our witty and knowledgeable tour guide, Dr. Kaltenegger shows how we discover not merely new continents, like the explorers of old, but whole new worlds circling other stars and how we could spot life there. Worlds from where aliens may even be gazing back at us. What if we're not alone?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Kaltenegger, director of the Carl Sagan Institute to Search for Life in the Cosmos at Cornell University, debuts with a stellar exploration of how she and other astronomers are searching for extraterrestrial life. "Signs of life are written in a planet's light—if you know how to read it," Kaltenegger writes, explaining that because "the electrons of different atoms absorb specific colors of light," scientists can discern the chemical composition of the air light has passed through by examining what wavelengths have or haven't been absorbed. These interactions create a "barcode" or "light fingerprint," Kaltenegger notes, recounting how she's made lava strips and grown microorganisms in her lab so she can study their light signatures and be able to recognize them if scientists spot similar ones in space. Highlighting discoveries that changed astronomers' understanding of alien life, Kaltenegger points out that in 2020 a space telescope found a gas giant orbiting a dead star, raising the possibility that planets, and any life-forms they contain, may be able to "survive the demise of their stars." The breezy prose makes the sophisticated science accessible, and armchair astronomers will be entranced by the descriptions of remarkable exoplanets, including one "so hot that rocks melt, evaporate, then rain down again." Readers will be riveted.
