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

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Autobiography – Charles Darwin ****

I have to confess to putting off reading this book until the last moment, as I expected it to be a typical piece of Victorian sentimental unreadable stodge. I was wrong. Darwin’s little book (only 150 small pages with appendices) was originally written for his own children, and displays a very personal style of writing – though, as son Francis comments, his style was always more populist than was common then: “In writing he sometimes showed the same strong tendency to strong expressions that he did in conversation. Thus in the Origin, p440, there is a description of a larvel [sic] cirripede ‘with six pairs of beautifully constructed natatory legs, a pair of magnificent compound eyes and extremely complex antennae’. We used to laugh at him for this sentence, which we compared to an advertisement.” The main book is delightful because it demonstrates Darwin’s self-depreciating modesty, and the fascinating path he took from enthusiastic shooter of game, to amateur geologist (still his...
Post a Comment
Read more

Zero Degrees of Empathy [The Science of Evil] – Simon Baron-Cohen ***

I’ve been a real fan of previous books by Simon Baron-Cohen like  The Essential Difference , so opening this was one was a pleasant prospect. What I found was a book that wasn’t  bad … but that could have been a lot better. I got the impression of a book that had been rushed out without a lot of work going into it. The thesis at the heart of the book – that one of the important ‘circuits’ of the brain is the one dealing with empathy, and that individuals sit on an empathy spectrum, with some residing at zero degrees of empathy – is an interesting one. Baron-Cohen introduces us to three key personality types he defines as ‘zero-negative’ including psychopaths, plus types that are ‘zero-positive’ like those with Asperger’s. In a way both of these definitions are odd, in that his zero-negatives can actually have a lot of the kind of empathy that involves being able to read another person’s emotional state, and his zero-negatives can have a lot of the kind of empathy i...
Post a Comment
Read more