Light of the Stars: Alien Worlds and the Fate of the Earth

by Adam Frank

Overview

Winner of the 2019 Phi Beta Kappa Award for Science

"A valuable perspective on the most important problem of our time." —Adam Becker, NPR

Light of the Stars tells the story of humanity’s coming of age as we realize we might not be alone in this universe. Astrophysicist Adam Frank traces the question of alien life from the ancient Greeks to modern thinkers, and he demonstrates that recognizing the possibility of its existence might be the key to save us from climate change. With clarity and conviction, Light of the Stars asks the consequential question: What can the likely presence of life on other planets tell us about our own fate?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393357066
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	08/20/2019
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	497,286
Product dimensions:	8.10(w) x 5.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Adam Frank is a professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester. He is a co-founder of NPR’s 13.7: Cosmos and Culture blog and an on-air commentator for All Things Considered. He also served as the science consultant for Marvel Studio’s Dr. Strange. He lives in Rochester, New York.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Project and the Planet 1

Chapter 1 The Alien Equation 19

Chapter 2 What the Robot Ambassadors Say 59

Chapter 3 The Masks of Earth 97

Chapter 4 Worlds Beyond Measure 131

Chapter 5 The Final Factor 167

Chapter 6 The Awakened Worlds 203

Acknowledgments 227

Notes 231

Illustration Credits 251

Index 253

Editorial Reviews

"[An] engaging and accessible book.… Frank enlivens the text with his passion, opinions and even some of his own projections of our possible fates."

Alan Lightman

"This enthralling book by a leading astrophysicist places our human drama in its proper cosmic context, showing why civilizations must use their technology to safeguard rather than sabotage their planet's climate."

Max Tegmark

"Adam Frank relies on elegant prose and conversational writing to make modern science comprehensible and illuminating for the nonspecialist.… [A] profoundly important book."

Forbes

…engaging and accessible…Frank's interesting new idea is to combine a history of climate change on Earth with recent astronomical data indicating the likelihood of a vast number of habitable planets in the universe, to suggest that we can strengthen our resolve to kick our bad environmental habits by viewing our terrestrial civilization from a cosmic perspective…Light of the Stars traverses a wide terrain of geological, biological and astronomical science, with emphasis on the history of terrestrial climate change and the factors causing those changes, and includes portraits of such scientists as Carl Sagan, Frank Drake, Lynn Margulis and others. Frank enlivens the text with his passion, opinions and even some of his own projections of our possible fates. He is also a good storyteller.

The New York Times Book Review - Alan Lightman

04/09/2018
Astrophysicist and NPR commentator Frank (The End of the Beginning) explores “the astrobiology of the Anthropocene” in this skillfully written volume. With an evenhanded approach to issues like the possibility of extraterrestrial life and the threat posed by climate change, Frank’s simple, effective narrative interlaces biology, astrophysics, population science, and more to lend a cosmic perspective on the fate of life and earth. “Earth has worn the masks of many worlds” throughout its history of sweeping transformations, he observes, and studying other planets can cast new light on this one’s challenges, such as how Venus reveals the dangers of a runaway greenhouse effect. Big-picture summaries of Fermi’s paradox and philosophical inquiries into “exo-civilizations” lay out how humans have historically grappled with the question of alien life. The Easter Island civilization’s collapse demonstrates “what is true for an isolated island, its ecosystems, and its inhabitants should also be true for planets in the isolation of space.” Coupling a bevy of exoplanet data with his own research, Frank approximates the odds of humanity being the only civilization to ever exist as “one in ten billion trillion.” Engrossing readers start to finish with persuasive, smooth prose, Frank offers a new take on humanity’s place in this “vast and ancient metropolis of stars.” (June)

Publishers Weekly

"A valuable perspective on the most important problem of our time."

NPR - Adam Becker

"Adam Frank deserves our gratitude for condensing so much fascinating material into this highly readable book."

Martin Rees

"[Frank is] knowledgeable, witty, irreverent, provocative, and very entertaining. . . . [Light of the Stars] offers solid science and lots of fun."

Booklist (starred review)

"Frank’s book serves as a kind of cosmic GPS, giving us an orientation that will help us to succeed. As such it really deserves the phrase ‘everyone should read this,’ and happily it’s not just important but also very clear, succinct, and entertaining."

Kim Stanley Robinson

"Light of the Stars provides a marvelous perspective on how astronomy could make us all better Earthlings."

Scientific American - Lee Billings

"This momentous and bracing story is one that Adam Frank, an accomplished astrophysicist and a gifted writer, is uniquely qualified to tell."

Robert Wright

★ 2018-04-11
An engaging effort "to tell a different story about ourselves and our fate among the stars and their many worlds."With the 21st-century discovery that planets circle most stars in our galaxy, books on alien life are pouring off the presses. In his latest, Frank (Astrophysics/Univ. of Rochester; About Time: Cosmology and Culture at the Twilight of the Big Bang, 2011), co-founder of NPR's 13.7: Cosmos and Culture blog, focuses on its implication for earthly life, crafting one of the best introductions to the genre. Since ancient times, writers have speculated about alien civilizations, but a famous scientist once asked a disturbing question: Where are they? On billions of planets over billions of years, surely advanced societies exist. High school math proves that any civilization capable of building ships that travel at 10 percent the speed of light will colonize our galaxy in 650,000 years. With the odds that humans are unique approaching zero, Frank introduces an unsettling idea: Perhaps advanced societies develop routinely and then quickly self-destruct. All life extracts energy from the environment, which changes that environment, often for the worst. But nonhuman life works slowly. Primitive bacteria extracted energy and produced oxygen as a waste product. This eventually killed them, but it took a few billion years. Our technically advanced society became possible when we developed spectacularly great sources of energy. Fifty years ago, researchers worried about nuclear Armageddon, but worries about human-induced climate change and environmental destruction have taken priority. Plenty of species and human cultures—Easter Island, Maya, Norsemen on Greenland—have crashed after exhausting their resources. As Frank writes, we must "stop seeing civilizations like our own as standing apart from the world that gave them birth. All civilizations, including those that might occur on other worlds, are expressions of their planet's evolutionary history."An intriguing account of the ongoing search for alien civilizations whose failure to appear may be a warning for humans to get their act together.

Kirkus Reviews