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In many respects this book is excellent. It has a lot of interesting information about the discovery and composition of exoplanets. The discovery techniques are gone into in commendable detail, especially the transit method. There is also a fair bit of historical background as well. The composition relies more on computer models but the breadth of possible planets (sort of like a planetary "main sequence") is also gone into in some detail. The astronomy end of the book is great.
The biology part is a very different matter. Things start off well enough as the details of the origins of terrestrial life are reviewed. Then the author makes the plausible enough claim that a certain amount of geological activity is necessary for the development of life and earth's is just barely adequate. Super-earths, he asserts, with their greater geological activity would be more hospitable to the development of life.
By this point we have arrived at the last chapter. The book has built up to and has been pointing to the climax promised in the the book's title, "The Life of Super-Earths". I was expecting the author to tie up the biology and astronomy and show how life on super-earths would differ from life on earth. Naturally this would be somewhat speculative but that doesn't matter.
What we receive instead is a rather lame chapter on synthetic biology. Super-earths disappear from the narrative and we get a description of what biologists are hoping to do in the laboratory. All in all, I felt cheated. The promised punch line never came.
The book can be recommended nonetheless as a relative recent recapitulation of events surrounding exoplanets, both discovery and theory.
The Kindle edition was quite serviceable with a few flaws. There was an amusing glitch where exponents were linked to chapter notes. The print index was printed without the page numbers and was unlinked making it completely useless except as suggestions of terms to search for. Finally, the book was organized into two parts of six chapters each but only the parts are marked on the progress bar. Sparse progress bars are a particular annoyance as it doesn't give the reader enough indication about how much further he has to read before reaching a convenient stopping point.
- Hardcover: 240 pages
- Publisher: Basic Books; 1 edition (January 24, 2012)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 046502193X
- ISBN-13: 978-0465021932
- Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 0.9 x 8.5 inches
- Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
- Average Customer Review: 20 customer reviews
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Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#1,358,275 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2177 in Astrophysics & Space Science (Books)
- #1205 in Astronomy & Astrophysics
- #2345 in AI & Machine Learning
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