Customer Reviews

Cosmic Company: The Search for Life in the Universe

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The search for life in the universe must be a complex subject, involving nearly every scientific discipline: physics, astronomy, mathematics, etc; so, where can the average reader, who has an above average interest in SETI, go to learn the latest? "Cosmic Company" is a great place to start.

A moderate amount of insightful, conversational text complemented by colorful and sharp, sometimes stunning photographs, illustrations and artwork describes this book.

The authors will take you on a 'cook's tour' of the search for cosmic company: habitats where life might exist; what aliens might look like; whether they might read, or simply feed on, the pages of the text; the liklihood of alien contact; communication tools, passive and active; an elegant way to estimate the number of civilizations in our galaxy that have sent signals reaching earth; and a look into the future of SETI including the technology humans will have at their disposal to find evidence of life in the universe.

I liked the book because it clearly explains the intricate world of SETI.

+++++

"This book is about a truly exciting adventure: the serious [or scientific] attempt to learn if we are alone in the Cosmos. For thousands of years, humans have explored the world in search of new places and other cultures. Now, finally we are exploring the realm of the stars."

The above is found in the last paragraph of this book's introduction. This book was written by Dr. Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute in California and Alex Barnett, CEO of the Chabot Space Center also in California. (SETI stands for Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence.)

This book is an incredibly easy-to-read, well-laid-out, concise, enjoyable, and sometimes humorous overview of the science & technology behind the search for life in the universe and discusses the real possibility of finding life elsewhere.

The book's index is mainly made up of main headings or topics with sub-topics that elaborate on the main heading. For example, under the main heading "Mars" are four sub-topics: face on, life on, water on, and Martian meteorite.

To give you an idea of the material covered, I will state the fourteen main headings and beside these, I will give their number of sub-topics:

(1) aliens (15)
(2) Drake equation* (4)
(3) intelligence (7)
(4) Jupiter (2)
(5) life (10)
(6) Mars (4)
(7) Moon (2)
(8) planets around other stars (3)
(9) radio telescopes (2)
(10) Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, SETI (13)
(11) space travel (2)
(12) Solar System (2)
(13) stars (5)
(14) UFOs (5)

*The Drake equation is an equation for estimating the number of communicative civilizations in our Galaxy. Named after Dr. Frank Drake, co-founder of the SETI Institute.

Of course, there are a few single-topic entries in the index such as Big Bang, crop circles, and dinosaurs.

A feature of this book is that it has "blue boxes," that is topics that are discussed in more depth separate from the main narrative. For these separate discussions, the words are printed on a light blue background. I found these extremely interesting. Two of my favorite blue boxes are entitled "Looking for Earth-size worlds" and "What if we don't get a [alien] signal?"

This book has beautiful, stunning, mainly color images (illustrations and pictures) throughout that enhance the reading.

I recommend two other books besides this one: "Is Anyone Out There?" (1992) by Frank Drake & D. Sobel and "Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe" (2000) by Ward & Brownlee.

Finally, I was surprised that the mission of the SETI Institute was not mentioned. Its mission is to "explore, understand, and explain the origin, nature, and prevalence of life in the universe."

In conclusion, this is a fantastic, easy-to-read overview of the science and technology behind the search for life in the universe!!!

(first published 2003; acknowledgements; introduction; 7 chapters; main narrative 155 pages; further reading; image credits; index)

+++++

I got this title from the SETI website, and was quite pleased (so much so that I bought another one they recommended). This is a great book. I finished it in two days - it is hard to put down. It is fairly light on the science. If you're looking for a detailed description of the science behind life (necessary conditions for a planet, etc.), this is not it. However, it gives a great description of the search for alien signals. The discussion of how human intelligence has maxed out is by itself worth the purchase price. This one is a fun read that won't strain your brain. Buy it!

COSMIC COMPANY is a good basic introduction which modernizes Sagan's INTELLIGENT LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE. That work is over thirty years old. In those intervening 30 plus years, the equipment being used in SETI has improved both in performanence capability, signal to noise improvement, increased frequencies or bandwidths, etc.. This can only increase the probability of the reception of an extraterrestrial orginating signal, which is what SETI is all about. This book describes the basic reasoning for such searches, and introduces the new technologies being used. It also re-visits the Drake equation, but with actual numbers for the factor of planets in the Galaxy, a factor simply a guess in the older books.

I highly recommend this book both as an introduction and as an update to Sagan's earlier work.

I read this book hoping that the glib one-liners and poor in-jokes would give way to something substantial but they never did. It's written in such a trivial and superficial style that makes one think all the time whilst reading it "where's the beef?" It's full of cliches and what the authors obviously thinks is funny but it really is an unsatisfactory read.

The publishers should have worked on the text more as it is obvious that the author cannot write in other than soundbytes in what I would call a type of division four Saganesque. The author obviously thinks he is an authority on the subject of life in space but only displays a superficial and incomplete grasp of the field.

My advice is to get anything by Sagan instead. It's obvious that Shostak regards himself as a kind of successor to Sagan however I have news for him....