The Eerie Silence: Are We Alone in the Universe? - Hardcover

Davies, Paul

3.97

1,562 ratings by Goodreads

9781846141423: The Eerie Silence: Are We Alone in the Universe?

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1846141427 ISBN 13: 9781846141423

Publisher: Allen Lane, 2010

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On April 8, 1960, a young American astronomer, Frank Drake, turned a radio telescope toward the star Tau Ceti and listened for several hours to see if he could detect any artificial radio signals. With this modest start began a worldwide project of potentially momentous significance. Known as SETI - Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence - it is an amalgam of science, technology, adventure, curiosity and a bold vision of humanity's destiny. Drake has said that SETI is really a search for ourselves - who we are and what our place might be in the grand cosmic scheme of things.

Yet with one tantalizing exception, SETI has produced only negative results. After millions of hours spent eavesdropping on the cosmos astronomers have detected only the eerie sound of silence. What does that mean? Are we in fact alone in the vastness of the universe? Is ET out there, but not sending any messages our way? Might we be surrounded by messages we simply don't recognize? Is SETI a waste of time and money, or should we press ahead with new and more sensitive antennas? Or look somewhere else? And if a signal were to be received, what then? How would we - or even should we - respond

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Review:

A magnificent cosmic tour d'horizon of what we know, and what we might yet encounter out there, in the apparent emptiness of deep space (Christoper Hart Sunday Times)

An immensely readable investigation of the SETI enterprise (Michael Hanlon New Scientist)

Davies is the most engaging of writers (Clive Cookson FT)

In an area more given to fabulation than fact, [Paul Davies'] level-headedness is positively refreshing. If you ever start worrying about why no one is talking to us, this is the book to calm you down (David Papineau Observer)

From the Back Cover:

Refreshing . . . A penetrating analysis of the assumptions that underlie SETI and the entire enterprise of searching for life beyond Earth. Chris McKay, Nature

Fifty years ago, Frank Drake pointed a radio telescope at nearby stars in the hope of picking up a signal from an alien civilization. Thus began one of the boldest scientific projects in history, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). However, astronomers have little to report but an eerie silence eerie because many scientists are convinced that the universe is teeming with life. Could it be, wonders the physicist and astrobiologist Paul Davies, that we ve been looking in the wrong place, at the wrong time, in the wrong way?

Closely involved with SETI for three decades, Davies now chairs the SETI Post-Detection Taskgroup, charged with deciding what to do if we re confronted with evidence of alien intelligence. He believes the search so far has fallen into an anthropocentric trap assuming an alien species will look, think, and behave like us. In this mind-expanding and provocative book, he refocuses the search, challenging existing ideas of what form an alien intelligence might take, how it might try to communicate with us, and how we should respond if it does.

An immensely readable investigation of the SETI enterprise . . . [A] wonderful book. New Scientist

PAUL DAVIES is an internationally acclaimed physicist, cosmologist, and astrobiologist at Arizona State University. He is the author of more than twenty books, including The Mind of God, About Time, How to Build a Time Machine, and The Goldilocks Enigma."

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