Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. — 262 p. Integrating both scientific and philosophical perspectives, this book provides an informed analysis of the challenges of formulating a universal theory of life. Among the issues discussed are crucial differences between definitions and scientific theories and, in the context of examples from the history of science, how...
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. — 283 p. One day, astrobiologists could make the most fantastic discovery of all time: the detection of complex extraterrestrial life. As space agencies continue to search for life in our Universe, fundamental questions are raised: are we awake to the revolutionary effects on human science, society and culture that alien contact will...
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc., 2019. — 336 p. — (Bloomsbury Sigma series). — ISBN: 978-1-4729-6042-9. In 1974 a message was beamed towards the stars by the giant Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico, a brief blast of radio waves designed to alert extraterrestrial civilisations to our existence. Of course, we don't know if such civilisations really exist. For the past six decades a...
Boca Raton: CRC Press, 2019. — 147 p. This book provides an introduction, from the astronomical point of view of the author, to the exciting search for extra-terrestrial life, and an overview of the current status of research into 'alien' life in the Solar System and beyond. It also explores the potential future human exploration of the Moon and Mars. Up-to-date with the latest...
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. — 336 p. Approaches from the sciences, philosophy and theology, including the emerging field of astrobiology, can provide fresh perspectives to the age-old question 'what is life?'. Has the secret of life been unveiled and is it nothing more than physical chemistry? Modern philosophers will ask if we can even define life at all, as...
Springer, 2013. — 187 p. — (Astrophysics and Space Science Proceedings 35). — ISBN ISBN 978-1-4614-5190-7. “The Early Evolution of the Atmospheres of Terrestrial Planets” presents the main processes participating in the atmospheric evolution of terrestrial planets. A group of experts in the different fields provide an update of our current knowledge on this topic. Several...
CRC Press; Taylor & Francis Group, 2019. — 287 p. — ISBN: 9780367147938. This detailed exposition gives background and context to how modern biogeography has got to where it is now. For biogeographers and other researchers interested in biodiversity and the evolution of life on islands, Biogeology: Evolution in a Changing Landscape provides an overview of a large swathe of the...
Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019. — 287 p. — ISBN13: 978-1-5275-2301-2. The fertilization of the universe and the subsequent existence of the living cosmos are essential aspects of research into the cosmic evolution. Sustainability, a universal phenomenon and a footprint of evolution, is also a cosmic endeavour, and continues to consolidate along with the advancement of...
Boston: The MIT Press, 2019. — 265 p. The endlessly fascinating question of whether we are alone in the universe has always been accompanied by another, more complicated one: if there is extraterrestrial life, how would we communicate with it? In this book, Daniel Oberhaus leads readers on a quest for extraterrestrial communication. Exploring Earthlings' various attempts to...
Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018. — 160 p. Astrobiology is a rapidly emerging field of intense scientific and technological activity, evident from the numerous recent space probes attempting to look for the possible existence of alien primeval life. This book explores the possibility of life on other planets and moons and exoplanets, either in their parent stars...
2nd Edition. — Springer, 2019. – 582 p. – ISBN: 978-3-030-17920-5. The Evolving Universe and the Origin of Life describes, complete with fascinating biographical details of the thinkers involved, a history of the universe as interpreted by the expanding body of knowledge of humankind. From subatomic particles to the protein chains that form life, and expanding in scale to the...
Reviews of Modern Physics. — 2019. — Vol. 91. — Art. No. 021002 (pp. 1-21). Recently, many Earth-sized planets have been discovered around stars other than the Sun that might possess appropriate conditions for life. The development of theoretical methods for assessing the putative habitability of these worlds is of paramount importance, since it serves the dual purpose of...
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. — 439 p. The search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI) has for sixty years attempted to solve Fermi's paradox: if intelligent life is relatively common in the universe, where is everybody? Examining SETI through this lens, this volume summarises current thinking on the prevalence of intelligent life in the universe, and...
Wiley-VCH, 2012. — 264 p. — ISBN: 3527409866. Authored by an experienced writer and a well-known researcher of stellar evolution, interstellar matter and spectroscopy, this unique treatise on the formation and observation of organic compounds in space includes a spectroscopy refresher, as well as links to geological findings and finishes with the outlook for future astronomical...
Kluwer, 2000. - 361 p. Living material contains about twenty different sorts of atom combined into a set of relatively simple molecules. Astrobiologists tend to believe that abiotic mater ial will give rise to life in any place where these molecules exist in appreciable abundances and where physical conditions approximate to those occurring here on Earth. We think this popular...
Springer, 2019. — 362 p. This book aims at providing a brief but broad overview of biosignatures. The topics addressed range from prebiotic signatures in extraterrestrial materials to the signatures characterising extant life as well as fossilised life, biosignatures related to space, and space flight instrumentation to detect biosignatures either in situ or from orbit. The...