The Aliens Are Coming!

Starred review from June 27, 2016
Miller (It’s Not Rocket Science), an English comedian and science writer, celebrates the human fascination with the search for extraterrestrial life and grounds it with equally fascinating science. The place to start studying aliens, Miller assures readers, is right here on Earth. Extremophiles—microorganisms that live in seemingly inimical environments such as inside rocks around deep-sea volcanic vents or frigid Antarctic lakes—show that life is “tenacious, commonplace, and infinitely adaptable.” Such strange life forms might even be as nearby as the icy oceans of Jupiter’s moon Europa or the methane slush on Saturn’s moon Titan. Miller covers a lot of ground with humor and insight, addressing how scientists define life and how it evolved on Earth, and offering a short history of UFO sightings and scientists’ continued search for life-bearing exoplanets and signals from alien civilizations. Miller’s book is a lively and accessible blend of pop culture and science in which a Dire Straits encore explains the Drake Equation, the platypus introduces evolution, the second law of thermodynamics gets a workout, and readers meet Mazlan Othman, the UN’s official ambassador for Earth. Pop science readers will have fun with this energetic look at the hunt for alien life. Agent: Heather Holden-Brown, HHB (U.K.).

August 15, 2016
Why the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is no longer just the province of science fiction but rather the emergent belief of a generation of physicists, biologists and chemists that we are not alone.Quantum physicist Miller (Its Not Rocket Science, 2014) dates the sea change from fiction to serious science to the discovery by NASA's recent Kepler mission that planets like ours are common throughout the galaxy. This raises the possibility that our first encounter with alien life is rapidly approaching. The author makes the provocative assumption that the discovery of microbial life in such extreme conditions tells us that biology is as universal as chemistry. If life can exist in such extreme conditions on Earth as the hot springs formed by geysers in Yellowstone Park, then why not on Mars or on Jupiter's moons? More to the point, writes the author, the recent discovery of Earth-like planets by the Kepler Space Telescope raises the possibility that they, too, might harbor intelligent life. Miller concisely and entertainingly reviews the evidence substantiating his contention that the preconditions necessary for life to exist and evolve, from microbes to intelligent beings like humans, are not necessarily unique to Earth. These include a gravitational field large enough to sustain an atmosphere and the existence of sufficient water and volcanoes to provide the chemical basis for life. However, the leap from microorganisms to intelligent life here on Earth is still not fully understood. The emergence of humans still appears to be a remarkable evolutionary event. Miller concludes with a big question. Assuming that there are other intelligent civilizations out there, how can we communicate with them? First, he wisely suggests, we must learn how to communicate with each other and the other beings that inhabit our planet. A lively, thoughtful look at a scientific frontier that captures our imagination while posing a serious moral question about our responsibilities as citizens of the universe.

COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Why the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is no longer just the province of science fiction but rather "the emergent belief of a generation of physicists, biologists and chemists that we are not alone."Quantum physicist Miller (It's Not Rocket Science, 2014) dates the "sea change" from fiction to serious science to the discovery by NASA's recent Kepler mission that "planets like ours are common throughout the galaxy." This raises the possibility that "our first encounter with alien life is rapidly approaching." The author makes the provocative assumption that the discovery of microbial life in such extreme conditions tells us that "biology is as universal as chemistry." If life can exist in such extreme conditions on Earth as the hot springs formed by geysers in Yellowstone Park, then why not on Mars or on Jupiter's moons? More to the point, writes the author, the "recent discovery of Earth-like planets by the Kepler Space Telescope" raises the possibility that they, too, might harbor intelligent life. Miller concisely and entertainingly reviews the evidence substantiating his contention that the preconditions necessary for life to exist and evolve, from microbes to intelligent beings like humans, are not necessarily unique to Earth. These include a gravitational field large enough to sustain an atmosphere and the existence of sufficient water and volcanoes to provide the chemical basis for life. However, the leap from microorganisms to intelligent life here on Earth is still not fully understood. The emergence of humans still appears to be a remarkable evolutionary event. Miller concludes with a big question. Assuming that there are other intelligent civilizations out there, how can we communicate with them? First, he wisely suggests, we must learn how to communicate with each other and the other beings that inhabit our planet. A lively, thoughtful look at a scientific frontier that captures our imagination while posing a serious moral question about our responsibilities as citizens of the universe. COPYRIGHT(1) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

September 15, 2016
This rousing history of the search for extraterrestrial life takes us from the origins of the twentieth-century fixation on UFOs right up to present-day scientific research. It's a very entertaining book (its author is a noted British comedian), but it's also rigorously researched and intelligently presented. The story of humanity's search for extraterrestrial life is a deeply fascinating one, jump-starting in the late 1940s, when a pilot reported seeing objects in the sky, and when a UFO was alleged to have crash-landed in Roswell, New Mexico. After decades of unverifiable reports of UFO visitations, real scientists started doing real investigation. Early space exploration was depressingVenus and Mercury proved to be barrenbut exploration of Earth itself became breathtakingly encouraging. Miller reports, for example, that we now know that life exists on our planet in the most inhospitable environmentsenvironments that could easily exist elsewhere. Researchers across multiple scientific disciplines, we learn, are developing new ways to look for extraterrestrial life, and a new consensus is slowly becoming clear: life on other worlds exists. That is a tremendously exciting possibility, and reading about it has its own kind of excitement, too.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)