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What will happen if (perhaps when) humanity makes contact with another civilisation on a different planet?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 small cadre of researchers have been on a quest to find out, as part of SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. So far, SETI has found no evidence of extraterrestrial life, but with more than a hundred billion stars in our Galaxy alone to search, the odds of quick success are stacked against us.
The silence from the stars is prompting some researchers to transmit more messages into space, in an effort to provoke a response from any civilisations out there that might otherwise be staying quiet. However, the act of transmitting raises troubling questions about the process of contact.
In
The Contact Paradox, author Keith Cooper looks at how far SETI has come since its modest beginnings, and where it is going, by speaking to the leading names in the field and beyond. SETI forces us to confront our nature in a way that we seldom have before - where did we come from, where are we going, and who are we in the cosmic context of things? This book considers the assumptions that we make in our search for extraterrestrial life, and explores how those assumptions can teach us about ourselves.
List of contents
Foreword by Stephen BaxterIntroduction: Little Green Men
1. The Altruism Assumption
2. Intelligence
3. Homeworld
4. Interstellar Twitter
5. Galactic Empire
6. Two Clocks
7. Messages from Earth
8. 21st Century SETI
GlossaryFurther ReadingAcknowledgementsIndex
About the author
Keith Cooper is a freelance science journalist and editor. Since 2006 Keith has been the Editor of
Astronomy Now, and he is also the Editor of
Astrobiology Magazine. In addition he has written on numerous space- and physics-related topics, from exploding stars to quantum computers, for
Centauri Dreams,
New Scientist,
Physics World, physicsworld.com and
Sky and
Telescope. He holds a BSc in Physics with Astrophysics from the University of Manchester.
@21stcenturySETI
Summary
What will happen if (perhaps when) humanity makes contact with another civilisation on a different planet?
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 small cadre of researchers have been on a quest to find out, as part of SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. So far, SETI has found no evidence of extraterrestrial life, but with more than a hundred billion stars in our Galaxy alone to search, the odds of quick success are stacked against us.
The silence from the stars is prompting some researchers to transmit more messages into space, in an effort to provoke a response from any civilisations out there that might otherwise be staying quiet. However, the act of transmitting raises troubling questions about the process of contact.
In The Contact Paradox, author Keith Cooper looks at how far SETI has come since its modest beginnings, and where it is going, by speaking to the leading names in the field and beyond. SETI forces us to confront our nature in a way that we seldom have before - where did we come from, where are we going, and who are we in the cosmic context of things? This book considers the assumptions that we make in our search for extraterrestrial life, and explores how those assumptions can teach us about ourselves.
Foreword
Addresses the important and difficult questions raised by humanity's search for extraterrestrial intelligence
Additional text
With concise and approachable writing, Cooper crafts a worthwhile popular science work about questions that, as scientists continually improve the human capacity for gathering information about the rest of the universe, are becoming increasingly important.
