{"id":616,"date":"2019-09-21T15:51:42","date_gmt":"2019-09-21T15:51:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/?p=616"},"modified":"2019-09-21T15:51:42","modified_gmt":"2019-09-21T15:51:42","slug":"out-now-astrobiology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/2019\/09\/out-now-astrobiology\/","title":{"rendered":"Out now: Astrobiology"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Astrobiology<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

This is my third contribution to the Hot Science series from Icon Books, after Destination Mars<\/a> and Cosmic Impact<\/a>. The publishers decided on the book\u2019s title (and even advertised it online) before I was assigned to the project, which was a new experience for me. And it was more than a little daunting that the title contains \u201cbiology\u201d \u2013 a subject I know next to nothing about. When I took the book on, I planned to focus mainly on the \u201castro\u201d part \u2013 my comfort zone \u2013 but in writing it I got more enthusiastic about the biology side, which ended up filling a fair chunk of the book after all.<\/p>\n

Astrobiology: The Search for Life Elsewhere in the Universe<\/em> is available from all the usual places \u2013 for example Amazon.com<\/a> or Amazon UK<\/a> \u2013 both as a paperback and an ebook. Here is the back-cover blurb:<\/p>\n

\n

Extraterrestrial life is a common theme in science fiction, but is it a serious prospect in the real world? Astrobiology is the emerging field of science that seeks to answer this question.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

The possibility of life elsewhere in the cosmos is one of the most profound subjects that human beings can ponder. Astrophysicist Andrew May gives an expert overview of our current state of knowledge, looking at how life started on Earth, the tell-tale \u2018signatures\u2019 it produces, and how such signatures might be detected elsewhere in the Solar System or on the many exoplanets now being discovered by the Kepler and TESS missions.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Along the way the book addresses key questions such as the riddle of Fermi\u2019s paradox (\u2018Where is everybody?\u2019) and the crucial role of DNA and water \u2013 they\u2019re essential to \u2018life as we know it\u2019, but is the same true of alien life? And the really big question: when we eventually find extraterrestrials, will they be friendly or hostile?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is my third contribution to the Hot Science series from Icon Books, after Destination Mars and Cosmic Impact. The publishers decided on the book\u2019s title (and even advertised it online) before I was assigned to the project, which was a new experience for me. And it was more than a little daunting that the … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Out now: Astrobiology”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[64,9,21,39],"class_list":["post-616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-astrobiology","tag-astronomy","tag-my-books","tag-popular-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=616"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":628,"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616\/revisions\/628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}