The Eerie Silence · Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence

Are we alone in the cosmos? This is one of the big questions, yet it remains unanswered. This book explains why the search for intelligent life beyond Earth ought be expanded & how it can be done. 50 years ago, astronomer Frank Drake 1st pointed a radio telescope at nearby stars, hoping for a signal from an alien civilization. Thus began one of the boldest scientific projects, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. After a half-century of scanning astronomers have little to report but an eerie silence-eerie because many believe the cosmos teems with life. Could it be, wonders physicist & astrobiologist Davies, that we're looking in the wrong place, at the wrong time, in the wrong way? Davies has been closely involved with SETI for three decades & 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 has fallen into an anthropocentric trap-assuming alien species will look, think & behave like us. His book refocuses the search, challenging existing ideas of what forms alien intelligence might take, how it might try to communicate & how we ought respond if it does.

List of Illustrations

Preface

Is anybody out there?

Life: freak side-show or cosmic imperative?

Shadow biosphere

How much intelligence is out there?

New SETI: widening the search

Evidence for a galactic diaspora

Alien magic

Post-biological intelligence

First contact

Who speaks for Earth?

Appendix: Brief history of SETI

Bibliography

Notes

Index