Extraterrestrials: Where Are They?

by Ben Zuckerman and Ben Zuckerman & Michael Hart (eds)

Book Overview

Is it possible that extraterrestrial life forms exist within our Galaxy, the Milky Way? This book offers a critical analysis by leading experts in a range of sciences, of the plausibility that other... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0521443350
• ISBN13: 9780521443357
• Release Date: October 1995
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 251 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.2" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Very good

Many interesting topics. It reachs the same conclusion as others serious books I have read: We are probably alone! Unfortunately.

Out the main road

Certainly, this book is different. Unlike a large fraction of the books published about extra-terrestrial, it jumps above the Drake equation and other classic idea and bring new reflexions and concepts. Very few books does that: Inteligente life in the Universe Shlovsky and Sagan, Cosmic Connection Sagan, Extraterrestrial Asimov and After Contact from Alan Harrison. If you are already familiar with the main ideas of the field, this book will add a new dimension to your reflexion. Beyond that approach you are in the realm of astrobiology, which is really a different thing.

The classical and largely skeptical SETI volume, revised

They aren't here, that's for sure-are is it? Nothing is sure inthis wide-ranging collection of essays. Opinion seems fairly evenlydivided: about half say we are probably alone in the galaxy, and theother half say we probably have intelligent neighbors. Clear to me isthat extraterrestrial life is very, very likely, since life itself isprobably-as several of the writers in this volume assert-anemergent property of matter and energy. "Intelligent" orcommunicating extraterrestrial life is another matter. The guess hereis that it is much less common.Jared Diamond, who writes one of theessays, makes the point that intelligence, as we define it, hasevolved here on earth only once, and so the argument from convergentevolution, sometimes advanced to support there being intelligent lifeelsewhere in the galaxy, is not convincing. Diamond gives the exampleof the woodpecker which did not evolve in Australian, nor did anyother bird converge sufficiently to assume the woodpecker's nichethere.The damnable thing about the arguments both for and againstintelligent extraterrestrial life is they are all based onassumptions: if your assumptions differ, your conclusions almostcertainly will.Another problem is defining "intelligent"life, or even life itself, for that matter. One of the writersdefines life in terms of matter that goes through a Darwinianevolution, which I guess is the way life is defined these days: seemsstrangely narrow, but maybe not. The amazing truth about intelligentlife is we may be looking right at it and not recognize it! Thisis an excellent (although uneven) book that I read at varying degreesof attention: some of it is highly technical, and some is popular.It's revision of the 1982 edition. The title refers to the quote fromFermi, whose famous opinion about extraterrestrial intelligent lifewas summed up in the skeptical phrase: "Where are they?" What he meantwas, if they existed they'd be here by now. This book addresses thatargument, mostly in agreement with Fermi. One authority estimatesthat humanoid-like beings would have explored the entire galaxy in 60million years. My question (and the question of others) is WHY wouldthey? Further I suspect that ETI may not share our psychology, andhave no desire to explore at all. Or may have no need to explore, ormay have explored so long ago there is no trace...etc. One authorcomes close to the old idea that the stars themselves are"alive" by postulating life forms that live within the starsas "plasmobes." He even sees possible life on neutronstars.My bottom line belief is that intelligent life evolves intosomething that we can't recognize as being alive (and, paradoxically,maybe it isn't). It may be that life is just a primitive step on theway to Becoming; that our consciousness is just a trick of theevolutionary mechanism, and that it is information itself that isalive, and that "real" "intelligence" in theuniverse is something beyond our kin and beyond our ability tocomprehend in t