Alien Earths

Are we alone in space? People have been wondering this question for millennia, and we finally have the technology to answer it. It seems like it should be a simple yes or no. But once we start looking, it becomes much more complicated. How do we detect life in the cosmos? And what is life anyway?

Founder of the Carl Sagan Institute at Cornell University, astrophysicist Lisa Kaltenegger has assembled a team of scientists from various fields to develop a universal toolkit for searching for habitable worlds beyond our solar system. In her book, she shows how our own Earth can be used as a Rosetta Stone, making the search more objective. With infectious enthusiasm, Kaltenegger describes the most amazing of the recently discovered exoplanets - planets covered in oceans of lava, lonely wanderers lost in space, water giants with multiple suns in their skies. The probability that one of these worlds is teeming with life is considerable. Right now, their inhabitants may be looking our way, wondering the same question: what if we are not alone? And Lisa Kaltenegger shows us the way to find these worlds.