The Search for Aliens: A Rough Guide to Life on Other Worlds

The Search for Aliens: The Rough Guide to Life on Other Worlds is a scientific journey that reaches into our profoundest philosophical and religious desire for answers-and perhaps, also into our deepest dreads. Exobiology, a subject that once seemed nothing more than the realm of science fiction fantasies, is now a thriving professional branch of science, driven by new and startling discoveries on earth as well as by a mass of new data from space probes. This Rough Guide provides the first vivid and completely accessible guide to the most exciting field of modern science: the search for aliens. All the latest research projects are identified, located, and described: everything from radio dishes seeking out intelligent alien signals, to deep oceanic research seeking links between terrestrial organisms and the broader cosmos. It also explores the idea of Panspermia, the notion that asteroids and comets brought biological building blocks to the early earth, which is now firmly on the agenda. Is there any living thing out there? We still don't know, but this book explains why we may be closer than ever to finding out.