Where Is Everybody?
A new book gives intriguing answers to the question of extraterrestrials
During a Los Alamos lunchtime conversation that took place more than 50 years
ago, four world-class scientists agreed, given the size and age of the Universe,
that advanced extraterrestrial civilizations simply had to exist. The sheer
numbers demanded it. But one of the four, the renowned physicist and
back-of-the-envelope calculator Enrico Fermi, asked the telling question: If the
extraterrestrial life proposition is true, he wondered, "Where IS
everybody?"
In If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens...Where Is Everybody? physicist
Stephen Webb presents a discussion of the 50 most cogent and intriguing answers
to Fermi's famous question, divided into three distinct groups:
- Aliens are already here among us.
- Aliens exist, but have not yet communicated.
- Aliens do not exist.
In this lively and thought-provoking book, the proposed solutions run the gamut
from the crackpot to the highly serious, all deserving our consideration. The
varieties of arguments -- from first-rate scientists, philosophers, historians,
and science fiction authors -- turn out to be astonishing, entertaining, and
vigorous intellectual exercises for any reader interested in science and the
pleasure of speculative thinking.
Stephen Webb is a physicist working at the Open University in England and the
author of Measuring the Universe.
Detailed information and order possibility:
Stephen Webb
If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens...Where Is Everybody?
2002. Hardcover, 299 pp.
Euro 24.95 (net price); £17.50; $27.50; sFr 43.00
ISBN 0-387-95501-1
Contact and review copies:
Joan Robinson
Springer-Verlag Press and Public Relations
Tel.: +49- (0) 6221-487-8130,
Fax: +49- (0) 6221-487-8141,
E-mail: robinson@springer.de
website: www.springer.de
|
