THE PALE BLUE DATA POINT An Earth-Based Perspective on the Search for Alien Life
Language: English
Published by University of Chicago Press, 2025. 9780226822402, 2025
- First Edition
- Hardcover
- Used
Seller: Rothwell & Dunworth (ABA, ILAB), Dulverton, United KingdomRothwell & Dunworth (ABA, ILAB)
AbeBooks seller since August 13, 1999
Condition: Used
£ 15.00
Quantity: 1 available
Add to basketItem description from seller
1st edn 1st printing. 8vo. Original silver lettered blue cloth (Fine), dustwrapper (Fine). Pp. viii + 253, with coloured and b&w illus (no inscriptions).
Seller Inventory # 197621
- Title
- THE PALE BLUE DATA POINT An Earth-Based Perspective on the Search for Alien Life
- Author
- WILLIS Jon
- Publisher
- University of Chicago Press, 2025. 9780226822402
- Publication year
- 2025
- Dust jacket
- Dust Jacket Included
- Binding
- Hardcover
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 0226822400
- ISBN 13
- 9780226822402
- Edition
- 1st Edition
- Seller catalogs
- Astronomy
“Here is Willis’s fundamental argument: The more we learn about Earth―our one ‘pale blue data point’ for a planet on which life has definitively arisen―the more qualified we will be to recognize signs of life elsewhere. . . . [A] joyful account.”―Steven Poole, The Wall Street Journal
A thrilling tour of Earth that shows the search for extraterrestrial life starts in our own backyard.
Is there life off Earth? Bound by the limitations of spaceflight, a growing number of astrobiologists investigate the question by studying life on our planet. Astronomer and author Jon Willis shows us how it’s done, allowing readers to envision extraterrestrial landscapes by exploring their closest Earth analogs. With Willis, we dive into the Pacific Ocean from the submersible-equipped E/V Nautilus to ponder the uncharted seas of Saturn’s and Jupiter’s moons; search the Australian desert for some of Earth’s oldest fossils and consider the prospects for a Martian fossil hunt; visit mountaintop observatories in Chile to search for the telltale twinkle of extrasolar planets; and eavesdrop on dolphins in the Bahamas to imagine alien minds.
With investigations ranging from meteorite hunting to exoplanet detection, Willis conjures up alien worlds and unthought-of biological possibilities, speculating what life might look like on other planets by extrapolating from what we can see on Earth, our single “pale blue dot”―as Carl Sagan famously called it―or, in Willis’s reframing, scientists’ “pale blue data point.”
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Rothwell & Dunworth (ABA, ILAB)
Dulverton, United Kingdom
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Rothwell & Dunworth (ABA, ILAB)
2 Bridge Street
Dulverton, United Kingdom TA22 9HJ
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