Astrobiology is an unusual science in that there’s no clear, undisputed evidence that its subject of study – extraterrestrial life – even exists. It’s still an active field of research, though, with observational astronomers scouring the skies for telltale signs of life, and theoreticians tying themselves in knots trying to explain why we haven’t seen any of those signs yet. This book deals almost exclusively with the second of those topics. Before going any further, it’s worth defining exactly what we mean by ‘life’ in this context. If you’d asked Aristotle or Shakespeare or Charles Darwin to define life, they’d give pretty much the same answer, relating to biological processes. If we can’t detect such processes at a distance of many light years, that’s not really a great surprise: the latest generation of telescopes has only just got to the point where it might be possible even in principle. But many popular discussions of extraterrestrial life, this book included, aren’t talking abo...

Mark Gomes is a writer and tech executive who uses fiction to ask the questions our systems won’t. His latest novel, Age of Extinction, explores AI as a man-made extinction event—rooted not in rogue machines, but in profit-driven logic. At its core is The Equation—a simple but urgent framework for understanding what it takes for humanity to survive.  He’s also the author of The Heavy Butterfly , a work of mystical realism that uses quantum theory and surreal imagery to explore consciousness, identity, and what might lie beyond death. Mark studied the philosophy of science with a focus on Bayesian reasoning but believes deeply that logic means nothing without moral clarity.  He lives in Munich, thinks in story, and writes to provoke.  His latest is a novel, Age of Extinction looking at the potential impact of AI on society. Why this book?  I wrote Age of Extinction because the AI conversation felt like pantomime. Doomers shouting 'Skynet,' TechBros promising utopia—a...

In his introduction, James Kimmel tells an attention-grabbing story that surely could only have originated in America. After years of bullying, when he was 17 the local kids thought it would be funny to come over in their pickup one night and shoot his dog. A couple of weeks later, they blew up his mailbox. In Kimmel's words 'I grabbed a loaded revolver from my father's nightstand, jumped in my mother's car and tore off [after them] into the night.' He corners the evil kids, grabs the gun and is about to get out of the car to kill them when the realisation of what he's about to do and its implications hit him. He might have suppressed his immediate urge for revenge, but he claims it then grew in a general driving force of his life, the reason he became a lawyer. 'Within a decade, my revenge addiction had nearly destroyed me and my family.' It wasn't just his work but 'I threatened retribution against just about anyone for the slightest offense - ...

This is by no means a jolly read - with vivid stories, Liz Kalaugher takes us into the world of zoonotic diseases, both where humans are infected by largely wild animal diseases and where we spread disease among other species. The book voyages around the world and into the prehistoric past (entertainingly in a chapter that begins at Bristol bus station, the way all prehistory stories probably should), suggesting that perhaps the Neanderthals were wiped out by a lack of disease resistance. Kalaugher takes us on a genuinely engaging voyage of discovery, taking in a diverse range of fauna from honeycreepers and Tasmanian devils to ferrets, frogs and foxes. If, like me, you are distinctly averse to reading about anything medical, the thought of encountering avian pox, plague, West Nile virus and more can be a little unnerving, but on the whole the stories are more about the animals and their environment than too much medical detail. Probably the weakest part of the book, as is often the ca...

Summer is the ideal time to take a dive into popular science - until 18 August 2025 there is 50% off all Brian Clegg signed books, as long as the total price of the book(s) before discount is over £5.  Just head over to www.brianclegg.net - on the pages for most of the books you will find an option to buy a signed copy.  Simply add one or more to the bag, then click the pop-up shopping bag, click Redeem your coupon and use the code sale2025 . Enjoy! These articles will always be free - but if you'd like to support my online work, consider buying a virtual coffee or taking out a membership: Offer by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here

If we are to believe the media we are bombarded with misinformation and disinformation - there's certainly a lot of it out there and Alex Edmans sets out to give a guide to the many ways that information can be badly or misleadingly presented, and how we can defend ourselves from it. At the heart of his argument are two biases. I'm so glad he limits it to two - I get totally lost trying to keep on top of all the biases that psychologists introduce, so sticking to confirmation bias plus black and white thinking as the key errors to look out for, both in how we receive information ourselves and how others present it, is very helpful. At the heart of the book is a ladder of levels of something like quality of information. These are statement, fact, data, evidence and proof. Edmans goes into plenty of detail on each rung - how we get, for example, from statement to fact, or data to evidence. Most of all, he demonstrates brilliantly how both those undertaking studies and those inter...

Niayesh Afshordi (left) is professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Waterloo and associate faculty at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Ontario, Canada. He was a consultant to PBS’s NOVA, and outlets including Scientific American, Science, the Guardian, and the New York Times have featured his work. Phil Halper is a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and the creator of the popular YouTube series Before the Big Bang. His astronomy images have been featured in the Washington Post, the BBC, and the Guardian. Their book is Battle of the Big Bang . Why cosmology? Cosmology is the study of the universe, its distribution, its fate and origins. As a species we are fascinated by origins, we trace out family trees, treasure photos of the past and religious creation stories are ubiquitous across cultures. But with the dawn of twentieth century, it’s finally been possible to scientifically model the evolution of the cosmos and probe these dee...

I've a huge amount of time for Peter Forbes as a writer. Both his The Gecko's Foot on the science behind some of nature's most remarkable abilities and Dazzled and Deceived on mimicry and camouflage in nature and human endeavour were brilliant. But I'm afraid I found it harder to engage with Thinking Small and Large . There's plenty of good stuff in it, but it didn't grab me in the same way. The topic here is the fundamental importance of microbes to life on Earth. By microbes, he is referring to single-celled organisms including bacteria, archaea, algae, fungi, protists and viruses, though Forbes does also point how much even in multi-celled organisms (like us) the important stuff happens on a microscopic scale. We start off by looking how we naturally incline to what we can see and directly experience - and how the common cultural idea that humans are in control of life on Earth (a concept that was originally down to divine intent, but now is more technologic...

It may be a cliché that many scientists are bad communicators - but that doesn't make it untrue. All too often, scientists either don't want to communicate outside their own circle, or are very bad at it - but the reality is, both from a funding viewpoint and to make sure science has a positive impact (a keyword in Anne Helen Toomey's assessment of how scientists should look at their communication) we need scientists to be better at engagement. The opening of the book leans quite heavily on Star Trek, which might divide audiences a bit - one danger in communication is thinking that everyone else shares your enthusiasms, though as it happens, it works for me. (Incidentally, I don't know how a self-designated Trekker, apparently a 'more distinguished term' than Trekkie, could refer to the 'USS Starship Enterprise', a bit like referring to Dr Doctor Toomey.) There's an element here that's similar to books like How to Talk to a Science Denier , looki...

I'm giving this dive into a dystopian AI-dominated future four stars despite some significant flaws because I enjoyed it. Mark Gomes likens the impact of AI on humanity over the next few years to one of the palaeological mass extinctions, though in this case potentially destroying a single species - us. Set in the present and near future, we see the AI-driven technology of billionaire Nolan Scent (a musky scent, I suspect) beginning to take away the majority of jobs that aren't manual labour, service industry or working on new technology. This is bad enough in itself and certainly has potential parallels in the real world (though Gomes' timescales are wildly over-exaggerated, as you can't, for instance, set up AI-automated factories to do all manufacturing in a couple of years). But Scent also has a chip that, when implanted in the brain, leaves workers contented with their lot - so, for example, people previously doing skilled jobs are happy becoming cleaners. The prot...

Joe Tidy is the BBC’s first Cyber Correspondent and the author of Ctrl+ Alt+ Chaos: How Teenage Hackers Hijack the Internet . Joe has built a reputation for investigating the darker sides of the internet and how technology affects the way people live. He is known for tracking down and speaking directly to hackers and criminals who are responsible for some of the biggest cyber incidents of recent times. His top six BBC News documentaries, including The Teenage Millionaire Hacker and The Russian Hackers, have garnered more than 7 million views. Before joining the BBC, he was a correspondent at Sky News where he regularly reported on technology and began his decade-long obsession with cybercrime after reporting on the infamous 2014 Christmas day Lizard Squad attack. Why this book? This book charts the life of crime of, what I think is, the most hated hacker in history. I interviewed Julius Kivimaki back in 2014 when he was the figurehead for Lizard Squad - a notorious attention-seeking te...

It's popular science Jim, but not as we know it. There have been plenty of popular science books about the big bang and the origins of the universe (including my own Before the Big Bang ) but this is unique. In part this is because it's bang up to date (so to speak), but more so because rather than present the theories in an approachable fashion, the book dives into the (sometimes extremely heated) disputed debates between theoreticians. It's still popular science as there's no maths, but it gives a real insight into the alternative viewpoints and depth of feeling. We begin with a rapid dash through the history of cosmological ideas, passing rapidly through the steady state/big bang debate (though not covering Hoyle's modified steady state that dealt with the 'early universe' issues), then slow down as we get into the various possibilities that would emerge once inflation arrived on the scene (including, of course, the theories that do away with inflation). ...