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A provocative and mind-expanding look at the search for alien intelligence by a leading physicist and astrobiologist.
- Sales Rank: #422466 in Books
- Brand: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
- Published on: 2010-04-13
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: .86" h x 6.58" w x 9.26" l, 1.00 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 241 pages
- Great product!
Amazon.com Review
Are we alone in the universe? This is surely one of the biggest questions of human existence, yet it remains frustratingly unanswered. In this provocative book, one of the world's leading scientists explains why the search for intelligent life beyond Earth should be expanded, and how it can be done.
A Q&A with Paul Davies, Author of The Eerie Silence
(Photo © Dave Tevis/Tevis Photographic)
From Publishers Weekly
In what has become known as Fermi's Paradox, the great nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi once asked, if there are aliens out there, where is everybody? After 50 years of looking, the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) project has likewise failed to find anybody. Cosmologist Davies (The Mind of God), winner of the 1995 Templeton Prize, believes that SETI's search for narrow-band radio signals from planets around other stars needs to be broadened to look for other possible signs of life. Aliens may be using far more advanced technology than radio to signal the cosmos, such as manipulating pulsars to act as beacons or even neutrino signaling. Davies also puts forth the possibility that alien probes may be silently trolling the solar system. The author surveys popular topics in science fiction such as Dyson spheres, time travel, and wormholes, and decides that they're not feasible under physics as we understand it. He concludes with a far-ranging look at what might happen here on Earth when we make first contact. Highly recommended for both science fiction and astronomy buffs. Illus. (Apr. 13)
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Review
"Highly recommended for both science fiction and astronomy buffs."—Publisher's Weekly
"All readers interested in astrobiology, SETI, and extraterrestrial life will benefit from this book."
—Library Journal
"After half a century of fruitless searching, SETI needs a summing up. This book does the job—you need no other. Davies ranks among our very best science writers, and this book should prompt deep rethinking among the entire SETI community."—Gregory Benford, author of Timescape
"Paul Davies has written a most delightful book, perhaps the most thoughtful, thorough, and comprehensive book ever published on the key question: are we alone in the universe? Davies addresses one of the most pivotal questions facing humanity, and does it with wit, style, and rigor. The Eerie Silence will satisfy the curiosity of anyone interested in big cosmic questions about intelligence in the universe." —Michio Kaku, professor of theoretical physics and author of Physics of the Impossible, Hyperspace, and Parallel Worlds
"Paul Davies gives us a panoramic view of the quickening search for cosmic company—a fascinating tale stuffed with novel ideas about the nature of intelligence far beyond our own."—Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer, SETI Institute
"Are we looking for life in all the wrong places? This is the deep scientific question that inspires Paul Davies’ The Eerie Silence. With clarity and passion, Davies not only brings you up to speed on the cutting-edge perspective, he also presents his own preferred strategies for making contact. Within may be found some scenarios that even the sci-fi writers haven’t tumbled on yet. A feast for thought about the most fascinating mystery of all." —Ann Druyan, creative director, NASA’s Voyager Interstellar Message, and co-creator, with Carl Sagan, of Contact
"Paul Davies imagines the unimaginable. After fifty years in which radio astronomers have listened in vain for voices from a silent sky, with clarity and authority Davies sets out a stunning new prospectus for the continuing search for intelligence beyond the Earth. A must-read for anybody fascinated by the most profound of questions: are we alone?"—Stephen Baxter, author of Manifold: Time and Flood
Most helpful customer reviews
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Thought provoking book, easy to read.
By readsalot
The author knows his stuff, the book has the potential to bog down but never does. This should be a subject of interest to most people. Science to me is more about exploring the path than arriving at some end point. The author rides the fence quite well, whether life and intelligence is common or rare. I believe it's possible that shadow life (and intelligence) may out shine life as we know it, we need to closely look near at hand (why is desert varnish so little studied?), a wealth of thought and depth is possible. Not covered: life escaping planets to become more successful in space, life as we know it originating outside our solar system, life as we don't know it being possible on gas giants or stars.
58 of 64 people found the following review helpful.
Book Review: The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence
By Dr. Timothy Jones
The search for extra-terrestrial intelligence, or SETI, is in a rut. That is Paul Davies's message in `The Eerie Silence - Are we alone in the Universe' - a thorough taking stock of the programme started by Frank Drake in 1959 to search for alien radio messages from outer space.
Davies wants a rethink from scratch, where we shake off the blinkers of anthropocentric thinking and question exactly what we should be looking for. Listening out for a direct radio message is fine, but lets extend the search to include more subtle evidence of alien legacy and the very origin of life.
ET has indeed been strangely quiet, and for Davies two rather extreme explanations for that are providing signposts to a `New SETI'.
Under the first option, we have to accept that life on Earth was born of a series of events so incredibly flukey they will never be repeated. Under the second, we face the chilling prospect that intelligent life pops up quite frequently, only to develop a propensity for technology fueled self-destruction.
Holding out hope for a middle way, and putting speculation over self-destructing aliens aside, Davies argues there is a raft of solid science we could be getting on with to better understand the scarcity of life. Those up for the task (and skilled enough to secure funding) will enter a field of polarised opinions and a paucity of hard evidence. The prize? - possibly the final word on the question of whether life is ubiquitous in the universe - a `cosmic imperative' - or that you and I here on Earth are a one-off, somewhat lonesome, rarity.
We should still listen for radio messages, says Davies, enthusing over SETI's groundbreaking Allen Telescope Array (ATA) of radio telescopes; but the emphasis should be on searching for new types of evidence of intelligence, both in space and closer to home - on Earth in fact.
If we can show life on Earth started independently more than once - a second genesis if you like - the fluke theory is destroyed and the prospect of life existing on the billion or so Earth-like planets in our galaxy increases immensely. Once life has started, there is pretty much universal agreement among scientists that Darwinian style evolution will, environmental factors willing, take over to produce complex life forms and probably intelligence and consciousness. Second (and third and fourth..) genesis life forms could be living alongside us today, unrecognised as a microbial 'shadow biosphere' - the holy grail for researchers now culturing candidate samples from Mono Lake in California. Or we might find tell-tale markers of an extinct second genesis in geological records that we have seen but incorrectly interpreted. With so many work areas highlighted as candidates for inclusion in New SETI, a problem for potential researchers could be deciding where to focus their application. Presumably Davies is taking calls.
Moving from Petri dish to telescope dish, Davies believes our pre-conceptions of ET in space are causing us to define too narrow a target there also. Any intelligent biological life, he says, will quickly transition to an intellectually superior machine form having nothing in common with Homo sapiens and little to gain from interstellar chit-chat.
Or the aliens may have launched beacons that ping data packets only once a year. Or they may have sent probes - monolith fashion - to lurk around our solar system, programmed to spring to life when we learn to think up to their level. The point is we will only detect this kind of activity if we specifically look for it.
In his most futuristic speculation, Davies envisions life evolving into a quantum computer - an extended network of energy floating through space, amusing itself solving complex mathematical doodles. The implication of course, if such `beings' exist, is that we are headed in the exact same direction. How do you fancy being a node in a pan-galactic thought matrix?
Among other thought-provoking revelations, we learn the Earth has for billions of years been happily swapping rocks, possibly with primitive life aboard, with other planets in the solar system - including Mars. That makes the potential discovery of life on that planet important, but not necessarily a game-changer for SETI, as Martian and Earth life could share the same unique origin.
Davies puts SETI into historical context on a quirkier note, recounting how the mathematician Karl Gauss, as early as the turn of the 19th century, planned to signal the Martians using huge shapes cut out of trees in the Siberian forest.
There is an implicit appeal in The Eerie Silence for scientists from different disciplines to work together on SETI and astrobiology - maybe a guiding principle for New SETI? Astronomers, biologists, geologists, engineers, astro-physicists and cosmologists all have a role in the search - as do non-scientists.
That also holds true for the post-detection task-group Davies leads, set up to advise an appropriate response in the event ET finally calls. In a chapter devoted to the implications of `first contact', he asks how various groups: from the media, through politicians, the military, and religious believers might react. If we receive a targeted message, we should certainly think carefully about the reply. But that we already send the occasional burst of blindly targeted radio messages into space is a positive in Davies's book; at least it makes people think about science, humanity, and what in our culture we value. Religion, and particularly Christianity, Davies believes, will struggle to reconcile dogma with the existence of intelligent aliens.
In his wind-up, Davies keeps all options open as to the chances of a positive outcome for SETI. But on balance, hardcore enthusiasts of radio SETI in particular may well find the The Eerie Silence a bit of a downer. Likewise, those looking for evidence to support more philosophical ideas around nature favouring life, or the existence of a life principle buried in the physics and chemistry of the universe - themes Davies has arguably been more sympathetic to in previous works - will be disappointed as he rejects each in turn.
To its credit, The Eerie Silence is as much about human motivations and psychology as it is about research and radio antennae. A chatty narrative with frequent episodes of self-examination strikes chords with thoughts and feelings most of us will have had: like the need for a sense of self, and a yearning for meaning. The search for ET is very much the search for what we are, what we may become, and what `it' all means. A cliched theme maybe, but well supported here with relevant facts and reasoned speculation. Davies's talent for projecting rock-solid scientific rationalism while not (entirely) closing the door on other perspectives has produced an absorbing read.
22 of 24 people found the following review helpful.
Alone at last??
By wogan
This is such an excellent book that delves into explanations of what SETI is (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) and the scientific philosophies and methods used to reveal the mystery of the question... is there other life in the universe?
Is it possible they would use something other than radio signals? How does SETI decide the frequency to search for and what about lasers as communication. He includes discussions on the effect that the first alien message would have on religion and the SETI Post Detection Task group and how it will deal with the first contact.
Points are made; who knows what focus technology and life will be on earth in 2090 when return messages would even be received.
If nothing else there are an abundance of quotes such as; regarding the idea that life could have arisen spontaneously "it is easier to believe that a whirlwind passing through a junkyard would assemble a 747" or "sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us".
Davies does a commendable job on simplifying for those of us that are not scientists, but he never `talks down`. He fills his chapters with fascinating points and ideas that are understandable. Questions that you might have had, if you have ever pondered life and the universe are answered in simple enough language that most anyone can comprehend.
The question is still out there...Is anybody there?; but the best summing up is that of Arthur Clarke; "Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case the idea is quite staggering".
Read this book to understand both sides of this query, it's an imponderable mystery that Paul Davies does a marvelous job in illuminating.
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