Skip to main content

Life Beyond Earth - Luigi Vacca ****

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 about life in the biological sense at all. They mean technology, in the form of space vehicles, radio communication and such like. These are things we might actually be expected to detect, so the question posed in the book’s subtitle – ‘Why Are We Still Waiting to Meet Aliens?’ – is a sensible one to ask.

This is referred to as the Fermi Paradox – a name that’s strikingly memorable but not particularly accurate, because it’s not really a paradox at all. That would only be the case if we were absolutely certain the galaxy is filled with lifeforms that we ought to be able to detect easily. This may have been the view of Enrico Fermi, the Italian physicist who gave his name to the paradox after famously asking the question ‘Where are they?’ in 1950, but with our current understanding of the relevant areas –  astronomy, biology, technology and so on – it seems far less clear cut. That’s the point that Vacca makes in the first half of this book.

The second half then summarises some of the many solutions to the Fermi Paradox that have been put forward. Perhaps the most obvious of these is the idea that technological civilisations are virtually non-existent, or at least extremely short-lived before they destroy themselves (or ‘regress’ to the arguably more stable and civilised level of Aristotle, Shakespeare et al). Another possibility is that, for one reason or another, technologically advanced civilisations deliberately hide their presence, or (and this is my personal favourite) prefer an introverted virtual reality existence because it’s cheaper, safer and more interesting than living in the the real world.

When it comes to science books, there’s often a choice between serious and authoritative on the one hand, or thought-provoking and entertaining on the other. If you’re looking for the first kind, the best you could do is probably The Great Silence by Milan Cirkovic, a professional philosopher who specialises in this field. Luigi Vacca’s book, on the other hand, is definitely in the second category. He’s a computer scientist by profession, writing here about a subject that fascinates him – which helps bring it to life for a general audience without going into too much technical detail (although there are fifteen pages of bibliographical notes at the end, for anyone who’s interested in delving deeper). His English is also wonderfully clear and easy to read, which isn’t always the case with non-native speakers. So if you’re new to the whole subject of the Fermi Paradox, this is a great introduction.

Hardback:   
Kindle:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
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:
Review by Andrew May - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mathematics with Love – Mary Stopes-Roe *****

Admittedly it’s early days (this review is written in January), but this, for me, is the surprise hit of the year so far! I approached this book with trepidation, but found it absolutely delightful. It is described on the cover as the “courtship correspondence of Barnes Wallis, inventor of the bouncing bomb”, and contains a series of letters between Wallis and his cousin and eventual wife Molly Bloxham, along with some useful annotation by their daughter, Mary. The courtship itself is not without difficulties, as Wallis was 18 years older than the 17-year-old Molly at the start of the correspondence, and her father, not surprisingly, wasn’t too pleased about the interest of such an elderly suitor, but that isn’t the only reason the letters are interesting – it’s also because of maths, and Wallis’s position in the UK as the engineering hero of the Second World War. (Incidentally, it seemed very strange to see letters addressed to “Barnes” – I had always assumed Barnes Wallis was a ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Why Nobody Understands Quantum Physics - Frank Verstraete and Céline Broeckaert **

It's with a heavy heart that I have to say that I could not get on with this book. The structure is all over the place, while the content veers from childish remarks to unexplained jargon. Frank Versraete is a highly regarded physicist and knows what he’s talking about - but unfortunately, physics professors are not always the best people to explain physics to a general audience and, possibly contributed to by this being a translation, I thought this book simply doesn’t work. A small issue is that there are few historical inaccuracies, but that’s often the case when scientists write history of science, and that’s not the main part of the book so I would have overlooked it. As an example, we are told that Newton's apple story originated with Voltaire. Yet Newton himself mentioned the apple story to William Stukeley in 1726. He may have made it up - but he certainly originated it, not Voltaire. We are also told that ‘Galileo discovered the counterintuitive law behind a swinging o...
Post a Comment
Read more

On Time - Jim Al-Khalili *****

By a small margin Jim Al-Khalili's The World According to Physics is my favourite of his books, both because the 'three pillars' concept at its heart works so well - but also because it's short. On Time is somewhat heavier, but thankfully not a wrist-buster. It might seem at first sight odd that a book on a subset of physics is considerably longer than one covering the whole thing, but time is one of those subjects that inevitably involves considerable complexities and needs depth. As Al-Khalili establishes, it's hard to think of any other scientific concept where our perception of it - what he refers to as manifest time or psychological time - is so different from the view from physics. Some physicists go so far as to suggest that time doesn't exist at all. In the book, Al-Khalili sets out (to my mind quite successfully) both to explain why they think this is the case, but also why it's not the best interpretation of time. I'd certainly note that I...
Post a Comment
Read more