"The rise of computers and rocket science in the last half of the 20th century allowed scientists to make two amazing discoveries that indicated life may be widespread throughout our universe. In the 1970s, life scientists started finding small bacterial-like creatures living on…
"Written in an informal manner, this account tells the incredible story of the birth of an entirely new field of science called Astrobiology - a field that is now investigating whether life might exist on other worlds. From the discovery that other stars in our galaxy are circle…
Specialist scientific fields are developing at incredibly swift speeds, but what can they really tell us about how the universe began and how we as humans evolved to play such a dominant role on Earth? In the clearest possible prose it differentiates the firmly established from …
Exoplanet, extrasolar planet, exoEarth, exojupiter: neologisms still absent from many dictionaries. These terms are, however, current among astronomers, and are heard in their answers to a question already two millennia old: are there planets like ours elsewhere in the Universe?…
An in-depth view of the panspermia hypothesis examined against the latest knowledge of planetary formation and related processes. Panspermia is the concept that life can be passively transported through space on various bodies and seed, habitable planets and moons, which we are …
"The Living Universe is a comprehensive, historically nuanced study of the formation of the new scientific discipline of exobiology and its transformation into astrobiology. Among many other themes, the authors analyze how research on the origin of life became wedded to the sear…
Three great scientific revolutions have shaped our understanding of the cosmos and our relationship to it. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries witnessed the Copernican Revolution, which bodychecked the Earth as the pivot point of creation and joined us with the rest of the c…
"In 1957, as Americans obsessed over the launch of the Soviet Sputnik satellite, another less noticed space age was taking off. That year, astrophysicist Fred Hoyle and colleagues solved a centuries-old quest for the origin of the elements, from carbon to uranium. The answer the…
"Are we alone in the universe?" This tantalizing question has captivated humanity over millennia, but seldom has it been approached rigorously. Today the search for signatures of extraterrestrial life and intelligence has become a rapidly advancing scientific endeavor. Missions …
"Are we alone in the universe? It is a captivating question, but one that historically eluded proper scientific investigation. The new discipline of astrobiology changes the game, introducing rigor to the quest for extraterrestrial life. Life in the Cosmos surveys the field, sho…