Aliens: Science Asks: Is There Anyone Out There?: Science from the Other Side by Jim Al-Khalili

Aliens: Science Asks: Is There Anyone Out There?: Science from the Other Side Reviews

• 
  Michael || TheNeverendingTBR

  Some interesting theories discussed in this book it occasionally gets a little bit technical though.
  
  There's bits that have been repeated hundreds of times in similar books such as abduction stories, so there was nothing new for me there.
  
  I'm glad I read it though because there was still an interesting mix of essays and topics.
• 
  Tevfik

  Alanında uzman yazarlara yazdırılmış makalelerden oluşan muazzam bir derleme. En güncel tartışmalara kitap sayesinde hâkim olduğumu düşünüyorum. Öğrendiğim yeni kuramlardan memnunum.
  
  Tavsiye ederim.
• 
  Tyler Gray

  That was...kinda dull, and not what I expected. Different essays. Lots of science, some of which was interesting and some of which went over my head. At times it felt pessimistic about the search for extraterrestrial life. I don't know. It was ok.
• 
  Heather

  Like any collection written by several different authors, some of these essays are better than others. A few were simply over my head, but I thought most were fascinating.
  
  There are some very different opinions about the likelihood of alien life existing in the Universe, and this collection explores several of them well. Different scientists have studied the same evidence and come to different opinions. Most believe that alien life is nearly certain, following the logic of Stephen Hawking when he said, “To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational." Others think the development of life on earth was an incredibly lucky fluke. They all provide strong arguments to support their theories, which are interesting to think about no matter what conclusions you come to yourself.
  
  I enjoyed the philosophical debates in this collection as well as the scientific facts and hypotheses. As a Christian who considers science fully compatible with my faith, questions about the actual definition of life (believe it or not, there's not complete consensus on this among scientists) and what the implications would be if we detected alien life are very intriguing to me. No matter what you believe about God or your opinion about the existence of aliens, this is a very thought-provoking collection for those interested in the topic.
  
  I'll wrap this up with the two most mind-blowing things I learned: one, scientists have recently developed the technology to determine what's in the atmospheres of planets light-years away, particularly the signature gasses of life as we know it (oxygen, methane, and many others). NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, which should launch in 2018, will be able to perform atmospheric studies of the planets around nearly half a million nearby stars. Two, many scientists believe that alien intelligence, if we ever detect it, will be in the form of artificial intelligence, meaning that they'll have made the transition from decaying, mortal organic lifeforms to silicon-based machines. Alien robots!!! Don't panic; there's an entire essay about why aliens would be unlikely to want to cause us any harm, and fortunately it's very convincing.
• 
  Sarah B

  I had hoped to like this book more but I just found most of the articles in here a bit dull and not all that interesting. And they seemed to get a bit worse towards the second half of the book. And that's what the book is, a collection of science articles written on a variety of topics. Some include the intelligence of the octopus to single cell organisms. There's also questions about what exactly is life anyway? How would you describe it? Since actual aliens have not been discovered the author's in here can only speculate about them based on what we already know about the Earth, our solar system and the other planets. One of the most interesting article probably was the one that actually asked why would the aliens come here?? I thought it had brought up some good points.
  
  But my absolute favorite article was chapter 9: the one about science fiction. This one examined a wide variety of aliens from various novels. It will be fun to make a list and take the time to read the author's mentioned..and that's what I'm going to do.
• 
  Z. F.

  The obvious problem with a collection of scientific essays about aliens published in 2017 is that we do not, as of yet, have any concrete evidence of their existence. Since scientists as a rule tend to avoid making bold claims without any proof or means of testing their theories, there’s not a ton to be said about aliens from a scientific perspective until we have a bit more to go on.
  
  There’s certainly a lot of good information here about the origins of life on earth, the surprising difficulty of defining “life” in the first place, the probability that aliens exist at all (spoiler: there’s no consensus), and the methods by which scientists hope they might detect extraterrestrial life in the future, and I suppose that’s all the subtitle really promises; but readers looking - as I was - for a more speculative exploration of the sorts of life that may be out there and the ways in which we may someday interact with them will be left wanting. More often than not, these essays boil down to a big “We really don’t, and at the moment can’t, know.” Which is totally reasonable, but also not super compelling reading.
  
  Maybe my review is a little too lukewarm, though. It took me more than a month to read this, due both to other reading and my own scientific illiteracy, so some of my indifference is probably just fatigue. I did learn a lot, and I feel I have a better understanding of the search for extraterrestrial life as it stands now and may stand in the future than I did going in. Several of the essays (the ones about Hollywood aliens or the history and psychology of UFO sightings, for instance) were pure filler, and some felt as if they were re-hashing chapters I’d already read. But there were some genuinely enlightening ones, too. If you’re already interested in the subject and don’t know much about it, this collection is definitely worth at least perusing. If not, you’d probably be better off passing it by.
• 
  Scott Kardel

  I've recently read a lot of books on the search for extraterrestrial life and this one is one of the better ones. It is a collection of 19 essays by top minds in the field (such as Sir Martin Rees, Sara Seager, Paul Davies, Seth Shostak and more) that are mostly very informative and representative of the diverse scientific opinions in this field. I very much recommend it for those interested in the topic.
• 
  Boudewijn

  For those who have ever wondered, Is there anybody out there?
  
  In "Aliens: The World's Leading Scientists on the Search for Extraterrestrial Life", Jim Al-Khalili, a British Iraqi theoretical physicist, shines a light on some of the latest scientific theories supporting the existence of alien life. The book is a collection of essays covering some of the latest theories and shows why scientists are more optimistic than ever before that we’re not alone in the universe.
  
  The various contributors discuss some of the most basic question involving the search for alien life. The first (and most obvious) question is ofcourse where is everybody? What are we looking for? Where to look? But also more non-scientific questions, such as an overview how aliens have been depicted in popular culture.
  
  This is one of the strong points of this book: essays from a broad spectrum of the scientific community: cosmologists, astrophysicists, NASA planetary scientists, and geneticists, to name just a few, discussing the latest research and theories relating to alien life.
  
  So are we alone? This book allows you to find the latest theories and evidence that move us closer to answering that question.
• 
  Ailith Twinning

  It's fine, but not worth buying the audiobook/new.
  
  Basically, it's just kinda boring. Here, I'll sum up the whole thing for you.
  1: If we can find life that is not related to the known life tree on Earth, then life in the universe is more or less certain.
  2: If we can find life anywhere but here or Mars life, then in the universe is more or less certain.
  3: We should consider more types of life than we can comprehend: except that, by definition, we cannot.
  4: We might be looking for alien AI, not bio-life.
  5: The origins of life of Earth are pretty well understood, tho we have not nailed down a specific starting point.
  6: It is either the height of hubris to assume there is ETI, or the height of hubris to assume there is not.
  
  In other words: The very nature of the question is such that only positive confirmation could currently provide anything like knowledge of the question. Not just the answer, but the question itself. Which. . . . I cannot help but feel most people already know this.
  
  And my personal thoughts on the matter, or the thoughts of others I have adopted, are irrelevant to the above criticism of the book. It doesn't matter what you believe, the book provides no light. Not that I expected it to do so; I expected it to be entertaining, and it just wasn't good at that.
• 
  Devero

  Una raccolta di articoli di diversi autori, tutti scienziati o divulgatori scientifici, coordinati da Al-Khalili. Oltre all'introduzione il volume si divide in quattro sezioni: incontri ravvicinati, la prima, ha il merito tra l'altro di esplorare la psicosi dei contatti ET e dei cospirazionisti sull'argomento.
  La seconda tratta dell'origine della vita e della sua possibile diffusione. La terza esamina la vita come la conosciamo e i possibili scenari alieni di questa, anche in ottica di una ricerca. La quarta parte, Caccia Agli Alieni, ci spiega quante e quali possibilità ci siano.
  Non tutti gli autori sono concordi l'un con l'altro e questa diversità di vedute è uno dei punti di forza della lettura. Inoltre un paio di capitoli narrano degli alieni nella letteratura e nel cinema, un compendio non esaustivo ma comunque interessante.
  Tutti i capitoli sono relativamente brevi e ben suddivisi in sotto capitoli di lettura facile e veloce.
  4 stelle ben meritate.
• 
  Scottsdale Public Library

  This collection of scientific essays examines the myriad of possibilities about the existence of life beyond our planet. It examines questions such as: What is life? How does it form? Is life a cosmic imperative or a miraculous oddity on our planet alone? And just how accurate is Hollywood in depicting (probable) alien life?
  If you have ever looked up at the stars and wondered if there is anyone else out there, try this book. – Wendy M.
• 
  ⚫Matin(Immortal Persian)⚫

  Despite being a UFO enthusiastic person who craves to do research on these specific and unique unknown mysteries, This is literally my first ever book associated with extraterrestrials!
  As a matter of fact, the very main culprit that draw me to pick this book up in the bookstore was the fact that I have seen a UFO with my uncle back in the summer of 2020 in the northern part of Iran next to the Caspian lake. However, it is quite intrinsic to mention my grandfather used to be a fighter pilot before and after the 1979 Iran's revolution, what's more, is that I was told both he and his classmate encountered a UFO in a triangle shape with a tremendous red light beneath the flying saucer on the summer of 1972. Ever since my grandpa told me the story of the encounter, I have always been so eager, desperate, and most importantly, Gripped by the Aliens and little green spacemen lol
  Last but not least, it is over our heads to prove if such a thing exists.
  Nevertheless, I widely believe something sinister has been going around for the past 4000 years of human civilization; and the very fact that Pyramids were built before the Persian empire and Roman empire, is the galvanizing truth that WE ARE NOT ALONE!
  
  Feb 2022 IRAN/Tehran
  
• 
  Dimitris Gabriel

  Αν είχαν βρεθεί εξωγήινοι μικροοργανισμοί ή πόσο μάλλον πολιτισμοί το πιο πιθανό θα ήταν να τους καταστρέφαμε. Παρόλα αυτά, η αναζήτηση συνεχίζεται, κυρίως ψάχνοντας για έμμεσες αποδείξεις. Στις τόσο τεράστιες αποστάσεις και με τον περιορισμό της ταχύτητας, αυτή η απεραντοσύνη θα μπορούσε να συμπεριληφθεί σε ένα κεφάλαιο. Αν είμαστε μόνοι, ο δημιουργός έκανε εξαιρετική σπατάλη χώρου λέει κάπου μέσα στο βιβλίο, δυστυχώς και το βιβλίο έκανε αρκετή σπατάλη σελίδων. Δεν μάθαμε και τίποτα καινούριο. Διάφοροι επιστήμονες έγραψαν από ένα κεφάλαιο για τις συνθήκες ζωής. Και ο συγγραφέας τον πρόλογο, το πιο ωραίο από όλα τα κεφάλαια.
• 
  Myra

  This book is written by a bunch of different people, each author has one chapter. So, naturally, there were some chapters I enjoyed more than others. As an example, the chapter about Aliens and SciFi was my favourite in the entire book, while there were other chapters that I didn't care all that much for.
  
  Overall, I think this is a good book if you're at all interested in the science behind the search for and the idea of aliens, or just interested in aliens in general. It has a lot of information crammed into quite few pages and I found the majority of it to be very interesting.
  
  However, some of the chapters were almost overwhelming in the amount of info that was crammed into them. Of course, many of the chapters were written by scientists, so for someone with that kind of knowledge, the language and writing would be accessible. But I'm not a scientist, in the slightest, and I found some of the chapters too complicated. Call me stupid all you want, because frankly I probably am kinda stupid, but sometimes there was just too much information rapidly thrown at the reader, and I couldn't always keep up.
  I think that was why I gave it 3 stars in the end. It wasn't super special, but I did find it interesting. So if you're interested in the topic i would recommend it, but if you're not particularly interested in the topic, I'd say don't bother.
• 
  Marin

  I knew the answer before I bought it - we don't know yet, but the last book I read on the subject was 30 years ago and I trust the editor Jim Al-Khalili, a scientist who has the gift of presenting science to laymen in an incisive mode, full of fascinating details.
  I bought it in an airport and I have to confess the lure of the bogo 50% free offer increased my interest in, the excuse being this is my petty contribution to keeping the bookstores in business.
  
  There are several chapters, each wrote by a different scientist tackling the subject from a different angle. I found them intriguing, informative and very readable.
  
  We know only one type of a water/carbon based life and it is difficult to surmise how else the life can be, but hopefully our questions, research and a bit of luck will give us an answer.
  Among many questions, a basic one we did not have an answer to one is how the life started.
  The basic ingredients are everywhere in the universe, but even in a quiet pond, the chances of the first organisms to emerge from the primordial soup are so statistically slim that we might be the only ones around, at least for the time being.
  Another troubling thought is that, once started the life heats up and the civilisation will be self destructing or subjected to many possible external attacks/cosmic events to survive much more above the level we are at now.
  And even if our civilisation will survive, the future beings will more machine type than humans being, which cannot travel as the science fiction writers dreamt of.
  This was a downer but I am getting older and more pliable to disappointments.
  
  As was the case with all popular science books I enjoyed before, I will re-read some of the chapters of this very good essay collection.
  
• 
  Lachie

  Absolutely loved this book.
  I read it at the perfect time as I have been interested about this stuff lately, which always improves a book.
  It felt like it had a good flow despite being written by many different scientist/authors all contributing a roughly 10 page essay in their topic.
  Really thorough and thought provoking. I would definitely recommend.
  Oh and don't forget the cover. This is one of the best looking books I own. The eery cover and the green tipped page edges give it a true alien feel!
• 
  Muzaffer Gümüşsu

  Her şeyiyle mükemmeldi. Metin, konuya dair bilginiz çok derin olmadığı sürece her kafada insanı tatmin edebilecek kadar çok boyutlu ve anlaşılır seviyedeydi. Bu kadar farklı açı beklemiyordum. Kitapçıdan 15 liraya aldığınız bir kitapla yıldızların sırrına erebilmenin nefis bir duygu olduğunu da hatırlatıyor bir yandan.
  
  Not: Kitabın sonuna editör tarafından eklenen TED konuşmaları da kitabı pekiştiriyor. Es geçmeyin derim.
• 
  Benjamin Stahl

  In my intermittent reading on this subject, this is without a doubt the best book I have come across so far. When I purchased it, going mostly off the cover and the misleadingly green-tipped pages, I must not have believed the editor's emphasis on "science" over fantasy because when I finally started reading it, I was both surprised and delighted with how much more objective and fact-based it is. All the books about aliens that are claimed to be "non-fiction" are really anything but - stuff that is written by crackpots or earnest fools who sincerely believe even the events that have been thoroughly debunked. This book, however, is the antithesis of all those.
  
  It is written by a number of actually respected scientists (astronomers, astrobiologists etc.) who for the most part are open to, and fascinated by, the possibility of alien life-forms existing somewhere in the universe, but who take the much more realistic position that, possible as it may be, it is highly unlikely they will be intelligent and civilizational, within our present capacity to discover (let alone communicate with), or even necessarily biological. The book is such that it simultaneously shatters any fanciful notions one might have about aliens, but at the same time reinforces the possibility that we may very well not be alone in the universe.
  
  In short, this book finally gives the tantalizing question - Is anyone else out there? - the objective, and scientifically literate treatment it deserves. A number of subjects are covered: the current research into distant exoplanets and potentially habitable moons; the origins of life on our own planet, and how this might correspond with or differ from other planets; the ways in which false notions about aliens are perpetuated in popular culture; the biochemical conditions by which we may be able to locate habitable and perhaps inhabited worlds in space; how aliens may or may not actually respond if they encountered us (and why they probably would not bother eating, raping or pillaging the human race). Even the existential question of our own steady march towards creating technically superior entities and rendering ourselves expendable (artificial intelligence) is looked addressed, albeit with a depressingly nihilistic and ultimately anti-human view which is typical of many (probably atheist) scientists.
  
  On that note, while the book carefully avoids controversy (only very rarely does it refer to religion at all), it is secular to a tee. While I get that, I do think the book would have benefited from including just one article (in its self-professed desire to be balanced) that addresses the theological and philosophical significance of discovering extra-terrestrial life. For a book that is so focussed on what makes us human, to entirely neglect the religious sensitivity that has, to the despair of some, always accompanied and defined our species seems like an intentional snub.
  
  On another note, many of the heavier scientific sections (the stuff about quantum mechanics, for instance) are a bit harder to process. And much is often repeated - particularly in regards to the building blocks of our own world and its multitude of living organisms - but it all goes towards keeping this book firmly on the scientific, rather than the fantastic, side. And all in all, I had an excellent time reading it. Highly recommended for those who are interested in aliens but are too skeptical to allow themselves much serious consideration of the subject.
• 
  Lee

  Well this has changed my opinion on Aliens, I always subscribed to the theory that it was arrogant to assume that in a universe as large as the one we live in that we are the only planet that harbors life.
  
  Say there are 400 billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy, suppose life's origin needs a specific sequence of ten critical precise chemical reactions (an underestimate) and each one has a probability of occurring in the habitability window of, say, one in a hundred then the combined probability for all ten steps to occur is one in a hundred billion billion, that would leave the odds of life in the Milky Way pretty low.
  
  However that argument is countered by the zero one infinity theory where these are the only three numbers that have any importance, we are currently at the 'one' phase and are searching for number two which then unlocks the potential of infinity.
  
  This book consists of bight sized chapters/essays by experts in their fields and the subjects vary quite considerably.
  
  There are some fun chapters that take a look at aliens in written fiction and Hollywood (there is also a rather amusing rant on Prometheus, the writer of that particular chapter has a major problem with that film) and there is an interesting chapter that takes a look at Octopuses as a way to try to imagine just how vastly different to us alien life could potentially be.
  
  The only thing that stopped me from giving 5 stars was the fact that I was bogged down by the final third of the book, it begins to get a little repetitive and certain chapters seem to forget who their target audience was and I found that they got a little too complicated (maybe I was just burnt out by the book)
  
  When I re-read this I will take a lot more time with it and just read a chapter every now and again rather than finishing the whole book in 3 days, there was a hell of a lot of info to take in all in one go.
  
  I would definitely recommend this though.
• 
  Rachel (Kalanadi)

  There was an awful lot of repetition in this already slim collection of essays. A lot of the basics, for example, get repeated (e.g. "it's difficult to extrapolate alien life from Earth life because we only a sample of one" - multiple essays talk about this). However, each individual essay was pretty good.
  
  I didn't care for some of the organization, however. Some pop culture essays - like aliens in media (movies, science fiction) and ufology - got popped in. I think they should have been grouped together into an Aliens in Popular Media section, because the jump from scientific to fiction to scientific again was odd.
  
  The only essay that I thought was useless was the brief history of UFO events. What's the point of that? There was no interesting commentary or interpretation. I read all this stuff in more detail on Wikipedia when I was a child.
  
  Favorites were:
  
  "(Un)welcome Visitors: Why Aliens Might Visit Us" by Lewis Dartnell (which debunks a lot of ideas and nicely combines popular media with scientific answers)
  
  "Aliens on Earth: What Octopus Minds Can Tell Us about Alien Consciousness" by Anil Seth (I need to read more on this!)
  
  "Are They Out There? Technology, the Drake Equation, and Looking for Life on Other Worlds" by Sara Seager (which talks about updating the Drake equation and the TESS/James Webb Space Telescope)
• 
  Cornel Diaconu

  Poate as fi dat un 4.5 daca ar fi mers ...
  Cartea este o culegere de articole subsumate temei din titlu: ce ar insemna viata in afara planetei noastre, si cum ar putea arata (nu numai ca aspect fizic) extraterestrii, adica fiintele inteligente din afara sistemului nostru solar.
  Evident ca nici unul nu este, si nu poate fi, ceva cert (la urma urmei, nici macar viata insasi nu are o definitie unanim acceptata, pentru a putea spune ca stim exact ce anume caracteristici sa cautam), sunt numai supozitii, dar majoritatea bazate intradevar pe cunostintele stiintifice actuale, deci cu mari sanse sa aiba macar acel sambure de adevar.
  
• 
  Anna Kaling

  3* = I liked it
  
  Each chapter is written by a different scientist, so the book was a mixed bag. In a popular science book you need a certain zing to the writing and for most of the chapters it just wasn't there. Some of the chapters were great but most of them were just meh.
  
  There was also a lot of repetition and the copy editing was awful; I overlook a couple of typos per book because it happens, but Aliens was full of errors (mine was the Profile Books edition).
  
  Kind of disappointing overall but I did like some of it and I did learn some new things.
• 
  Laura

  Bien lourdingue pour un livre vulgarisation destiné au commun des mortels. Indigeste...
• 
  John

  Not on Libby
• 
  El-Jahiz

  In-depth discussion, thought-provoking.
• 
  AnnaG

  An interesting collection of essays on all things alien. This book jumps around somewhat from movie critiques to the chemistry of life and it is a shame that the essays are not unified with a narrative, but on the other hand it is a good structure for dipping in and out of.
  
  One interesting aspect of having lots of authors is that you can see the uncertainty and disputes between the scientists and the contradictions between their different viewpoints - e.g. chapter 14 & 17. One of the downsides is that there is a fair amount of repetition eg on the importance or otherwise of liquid water.
  
  FWIW - I've come out of reading this book with two conclusions. Firstly, it is only the result of mind-boggling levels of luck that I am here today (hypothesising a God to get round the improbability of eukaryogenesis & multicellularity really doesn't seem far-fetched). Secondly, scientists are dreadful at predicting the future (see the predictions of past scientists in the book that have not come true and the strong assertions of the authors that are, frankly, highly unlikely).
• 
  Jaclyn

  *I won this book in a Goodreads Giveaway in exchange for an honest opinion*
  
  Really interesting book. It consists of a series of essays from scientists about the search for extraterrestrial life. There were quite a few interesting questions and possible explanations about how life began, where life may be able to form and thrive, what other lifeforms may look like, etc. There was also a lot of discussion about possible techniques for finding life on other planets (checking the chemical compositions of planets, searching for radio signals, etc). Sometimes it felt a bit repetitive but it was always fascinating. I loved hearing about this topic from scientists as opposed to conspiracy theorists. It gave me a much better understanding about the search for extraterrestrial life. Great book.
• 
  Megan

  My favourite part was the rant about why Prometheus is the worst movie ever.
• 
  Rhys Thomas

  Is there life out there? At last a book that gives the real answer: we don't know. Is there a way of having a rough guess? Nope. The only planet we know of that harbours life is our own so that's a sample size of 1. But this book is still extremely fascinating. It details what we know, what we could look for and how. For example, the James Webb telescope going up next year will look at the chemical composition of exoplanets'atmospheres. It will be able to detect something like oxygen, which could be a strong indicator of life because for oxygen to existin high levels in an atmosphere it has to be pumped out constantly by organisms photosynthesising, as far as we know. If we also crack the problem of how life originated we might be able to look for planets where this process could have similarly taken place. It's all very interesting and each essay is pretty short so you go through it quickly. There's also a nice flick book cartoon in the margins. If you're looking for something about aliens beyond conspiracy theories and pseudoscience then this book is definitely it.
• 
  Peter

  This book is a collection of writings from various researchers speculating about issues related to extraterrestrial life and intelligence. Unsurprisingly some of the essays included in the book are better than others. For the most part, however, I didn't read anything here that offered any new insights beyond what I already knew about the subject. The book might be more useful to someone with less background in the subject than I had.