The Pale Blue Data Point: An Earth-Based Perspective on the Search for Alien Life - Hardcover

Willis, Jon

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226822400 ISBN 13: 9780226822402

Verlag: University of Chicago Press, 2025

Inhaltsangabe

A thrilling tour of Earth that shows the search for extraterrestrial life starts in our own backyard.
 
Is there life off Earth? Bound by the limitations of spaceflight, a growing number of astrobiologists investigate the question by studying life on our planet. Astronomer and author Jon Willis shows us how it’s done, allowing readers to envision extraterrestrial landscapes by exploring their closest Earth analogs. With Willis, we dive into the Pacific Ocean from the submersible-equipped E/V Nautilus to ponder the uncharted seas of Saturn’s and Jupiter’s moons; search the Australian desert for some of Earth’s oldest fossils and consider the prospects for a Martian fossil hunt; visit mountaintop observatories in Chile to search for the telltale twinkle of extrasolar planets; and eavesdrop on dolphins in the Bahamas to imagine alien minds.
 
With investigations ranging from meteorite hunting to exoplanet detection, Willis conjures up alien worlds and unthought-of biological possibilities, speculating what life might look like on other planets by extrapolating from what we can see on Earth, our single “pale blue dot”—as Carl Sagan famously called it—or, in Willis’s reframing, scientists’ “pale blue data point.”

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jon Willis is professor of astronomy at the University of Victoria in British Columbia where he studies both the properties of the universe we live in and the formation of life within it. He is the author of All These Worlds Are Yours: The Scientific Search for Alien Life.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: University of Chicago Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2025
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0226822400
• ISBN 13: 9780226822402
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 256
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: preigu GmbH & Co. KG; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; Niedersachsen; 49078; Deutschland