Product Description

If extraterrestrial intelligence exists, then positive detection would be the greatest scientific discovery of all time. By what criteria should we judge whether we are alone in the cosmos, and how should we set about detecting extraterrestrials? Jean Heidmann answers these questions in this engaging discussion of extraterrestrial intelligence. Through a clear explanation of the many issues involved, including new and updated information, the entire subject of extraterrestrial intelligence is explained: the expansion of searches in space, the habitable zones in our universe, and what might happen if actual contact takes place.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2667082 in Books
• Published on: 1997-03-27
• Released on: 2008-08-21
• Original language: French
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 268 pages

Review
‘Aimed at the general public, it succinctly covers all the important aspects of the field … Heidmann writes in a lucid, agreeable personal style.’ Nature

Customer Reviews

An opportunity wasted.
This book hails from the normally excellent "Canto" imprint of the Cambridge University Press and so comes of a very good stable, but this is not a characteristic Canto product by any means. This could easily have been a worthwhile and interesting project - the possibility of extra-terrestrial intelligence is a topic it's difficult to be indifferent about and it may yet prove to be of the utmost importance. Whether or not we are alone in the universe is a question which unites concerns about physics, explanation, evolution, ethics and even theology in a unique combination. However, this topic does not get anything like the treatment it deserves here - instead, this book just offers a number of rambling and ill-connected snippets gleaned haphazardly from bits of astronomy and physics, with no real conclusions, methodology or insight to join all the pieces together. Maybe commenting at length on the style of a translated text isn't really fair but neither the author nor the translator seem to have any flair for expressing themselves in a way that can command lasting reader attention or respect. Popular science-writing calls for a fair measure of art as well as science, and the style throughout this volume is rather flat, worn and repetitious. (Please note that a much more useful volume on a similar theme is Steven J. Dick's "The Biological Universe", which does do justice to its subject-matter.)