The Search for Extraterrestrial Life and Our Future Beyond Earth

Loeb, Avi | Paperback / softback | 13-09-2023 | 9781399807920

‘LOEB IS AN ASTRONOMICAL SHERLOCK HOLMES’ Washington Post
‘A JOY IN CONJECTURE AND AN OMNIVOROUS SPIRIT OF INQUIRY. . . CARL SAGAN WOULD HAVE LIKED THIS BOOK’ The Times

In 2017, Avi Loeb, Chair of Harvard’s Astronomy Department, went public with a theory that shook the scientific community – our solar system has been visited by advanced alien technology. His provocative and persuasive argument (and internationally bestselling book Extraterrestrial) has opened thousands of minds to the existence of intelligent life beyond Earth. This book tackles the huge question of what happens next?

Long the stuff of science-fiction, here at last is the science fact. From advances in deep space probes to ongoing searches for extraterrestrial technology in our night sky, through the latest heated debates over the existence of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, Interstellar offers a thrilling, front-row view of the technology and the ideas currently preparing us for contact with alien civilizations. Providing the first realistic and practical blueprint for how that might actually occur, Professor Loeb lays out the profound implications of our becoming – or not becoming – an interstellar species. In an urgent, eloquent appeal for more proactive engagement with the outer universe, he powerfully contends why we must seek out other life forms, and in the process, choose who and what we are within the universe.

Combining cutting-edge science, physics, and philosophy, Loeb takes us on a mind-bending journey through the furthest reaches of science, space-time, and the human imagination. Interstellar is an eye-opening, necessary look at our future that proves, once again, that scientific curiosity offers the key to our survival.

‘Loeb is surely correct. . . scientists studying the vastness of the cosmos should entertain risky ideas more often, for the universe is undoubtedly more wild and unexpected than any extremes conjured by the human imagination’ Economist
‘A COMPELLING ARGUMENT FOR A MORE OPEN-MINDED APPROACH TO SCIENCE – A COMBINATION OF HUMILITY AND WONDER’ New Statesman