Talking about Life: Conversations on Astrobiology

"The views expressed here range from the cautious to the radical, and from those rooted in hard science to the more fanciful, and the views on extraterrestrial life.
Table of contents

And in that environment, astrobiology represents ground zero for what NASA and the scientific community could do in this arena. Research on extremophile life on Earth, at the bottom of the oceans around sea vents, within rocks, etc. As discussed at the time, and reemphasized by Chris McKay here, when the 4.

Wednesday’s Book Review: “Talking About Life: Conversations on Astrobiology” | Roger Launius's Blog

Then, about 15 million years ago, a large asteroid hit the red planet and jettisoned the rock into space, where it remained until it crashed into Antarctica around 11, BCE. The findings electrified the scientific world but excited the public just as fully, and added support for an aggressive set of missions to Mars to help discover the truth of these theories. While the theory has not been accepted by most of the scientific community, it helped to enthuse many at NASA and reorient much of space science toward answering this question about life beyond. Equally important, the discovery of extra-solar planets beginning in the s also energized the astrobiology initiatives.

Talking about life: Conversations on astrobiology

Several individuals interviewed in Talking About Life have been working directly in this broad-based effort to find these planets beyond our solar system. Although we have yet to find an Earth-like planet, all interviewed here believe it is only a question of time before we do so.

What that might mean for humanity is a subject of considerable speculation. All of those interviewed believe we are on the cusp of major discoveries in astrobiology. In any book of this type there are questions that must be asked about which individual interviews were included and why, and which were excluded.

Although a distinguished set of interviewees are presented, there are several that were inexplicably omitted. The exclusion of James Lovelock, the creator of the Gaia hypothesis, is puzzling. His place as a leader in of the emergence of astrobiology is unquestioned.


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Almost as unusual is the omission of Daniel S. Likewise, the omission of an interview with Baruch Blumberg is perplexing. His recent death means that the opportunity to add his voice to those captured here is gone forever. I could go on about omissions, but suffice it to say that there is more to be done in documenting the history of the quest to find if we are alone in the universe. As it is, Talking About Life is a very useful starting point in collecting the stories of astrobiology.

Talking about Life Conversations on Astrobiology

It is an important contribution and fully worth both its price and the space on your bookshelf for such works. You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account.

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Notify me of new comments via email. Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. A more concise summary of what each interviewee specialises in and the broad subject of their interview would have been a more informative introduction and would have made for a more enjoyable read.

In this vein, while the idea of a more or less unedited conversation is a laudable one, often a lack of context or clear direction for the interview resulted in rambling themes that were difficult to follow. In some cases however, it was not clear why a particular interviewee had been chosen until some considerable way into their conversation, if at all. Again, some context or more transparent rationale for the selections would have been more helpful. Who is this book for? Astrobiology is a highly interdisciplinary subject and necessarily many of the high-profile interviewees are academics, and much of their conversations tend to become very intellectually involved.

‘Talking about Life: Conversations on Astrobiology’ by Chris Impey (ed)

The average reader is unlikely to have encountered all of the concepts covered, and a suitable explanation was often lacking, leaving the initially uninformed still uninformed. It is clear, however, that extended explanations would have fundamentally changed the tone of the book away from a natural, academic conversation to a stilted pseudo-instructional lecture.

Clearly, some compromises must be made. He must be applauded for the evident effort in conducting and putting together nearly forty broad ranging interviews. In technicalities, however, the book falls down, and it is readability that suffers most. Perhaps it can be best utilised as a resource, capturing the opinions and ideas of major players in the field, at a critical time of the development of astrobiology, but it is certainly not light reading.

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