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Interstellar : the search for extraterrestrial life and our future in the stars / Avi Loeb.

by Loeb, Abraham.

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Mariner Books, 2023.

Life on other planets.

Extraterrestrial beings.

Human-alien encounters.

Interstellar travel.

9780063250871 (hc.)

246 p. ; 24 cm.

Abraham (Avi) Loeb is the Frank B. Baird, Jr., Professor of Science at Harvard University, the longest-serving chair of Harvard’s Department of Astronomy, the founding director of Harvard’s Black Hole Initiative, and the current director of the Institute for Theory and Computation (ITC) within the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He also heads the Galileo Project, chairs the Advisory Committee for the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative, and is former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. Author of eight books and more than a thousand scientific papers, Loeb is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Physical Society, and the International Academy of Astronautics. In 2012, Time selected Loeb as one of the twenty-five most influential people in space. He lives near Boston, Massachusetts.

Includes bibliographical references (page 229-237) and index.

"Intelligent life is out there, according to this implausible treatise. Harvard astronomer Loeb (Extraterrestrial) urges humanity to take a greater initiative in seeking out extraterrestrial civilizations ("ETCs") because they "may only wish to be discovered by a civilization capable of doing so" and may have already left "artifacts" on Earth waiting to be discovered. He argues that an interstellar object detected passing through our solar system in 2017 was likely manufactured by aliens, given its unusually flat shape and slow velocity, and laments that scientists didn't have more sophisticated instruments to study it. To better prepare for potential brushes with ETCs, Loeb stresses the need for observatories dedicated to examining "small near-Earth objects" and more government funding for such projects as the 2023 expedition he's leading to retrieve fragments of an interstellar meteor -- the toughness of which, he suggests, indicates it might be an alien artifact -- that landed in the Pacific Ocean in 2014. Loeb makes some questionable assumptions ("The fastest way to ascend the ladder of civilizations is to" receive a hand from more advanced aliens), and his "anything's possible" attitude will do little to sway skeptics, as when he likens the search for aliens to looking for lost car keys: "The more concerted the effort to find them the more likely, and quickly, you will." This doesn't quite convince."--Publishers Weekly.

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