Alien Earths

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

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. The question should have an obvious answer: yes or no. But once you try to find 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 built a team of tenacious scientists from many disciplines to create a uniquely 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.

We live in an incredible new epoch of exploration. As our witty and knowledgeable tour guide, Professor 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?

©2024 Lisa Kaltenegger (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Critics Review

In Kaltenegger’s exhilarating exploration of the state of the Earth-hunting art, she welcomes us into the latest strategies for finding life at interstellar distances. Kaltenegger is that precious rarity, a leading scientist with an infectious passion for her subject and the talent to connect. Read this book and then gaze up at the night sky to find the stars sparkling even brighter with possibility.

Ann Druyan, co-creator of Contact, co-writer COSMOS

In the grand tradition of Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson, we now have a new tour guide to the cosmos. Professor Lisa Kaltenegger takes us along on the quest to solve one of the greatest mysteries of existence: are we alone in the universe? In Alien Earths, Kaltenegger – one of the pioneers leading the way – reveals what we’ve already discovered, and even more breathtakingly, what we might find.

Steven Strogatz, author of Infinite Powers

The odds are overwhelming that something’s alive out there. But will we ever see a sign of life on a planet circling a distant star? And, if we do, will we recognize it? This fascinating and tantalizing book points the way to YES.

Alan Alda

Do you want to prepare yourself for the next ‘Copernican revolution’? Then read Lisa Kaltenegger’s book! Fascinating.

Michel Mayor, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics

Effervescent with ideas and edge-of-your-seat discoveries, Alien Earths provides a front-row seat to the astonishing era we live.

Caleb Scharf, Director of Astrobiology, Columbia University, author of "The Zoomable Universe"

Lisa Kaltenegger is an international leader in the discovery and analysis of exoplanets…Moreover, she is a brilliant expositor. I eagerly await what will surely be a riveting book.

Lord Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal

Lisa Kaltenegger is in the best possible position to offer this timely and accessible overview of the rapidly evolving and exciting field of exoplanets, expertly illuminating the questions we have begun to answer, and the many that we can expect to be resolved in the years and decades to come. Linking our understanding of alien worlds (and the possibility of life) to the grand story of Earth’s own past, this is an engaging and personal book that couldn’t be more up to date. Read ALIEN EARTHs, and feel your cosmic perspective shift just a little on its axis.

Alastair Reynolds, science fiction writer and former ESA scientist

An erudite and highly readable inside view of the science and emerging discoveries of this remarkable new era.

Charles Cockell, author of "Taxis from Another Planet"

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