Astrobiology

e-books in Astrobiology category

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, SETI
by Philip Morrison, John Billingham, John Wolfe - NASA , 1979
In the late twentieth century, scientists converged upon the basic idea of scanning the sky and 'listening' for non-random patterns of electromagnetic emissions in order to detect another possible civilization somewhere else in the universe.
(5347 views)

Searching for Life Across Space and Time
- The National Academies Press , 2017
The search for life is one of the most active fields in space science and involves a wide variety of disciplines. This book explores the possibility of habitable environments in the solar system and in exoplanets, and techniques for detecting life.
(7195 views)

From Chaos to Consciousness: A Brief History of the Universe
by Mike Corwin - Bookboon , 2015
A textbook intended for a one-semester course in Astronomy. After introductory chapters on the history of astronomy, it is narrowly focused on material directly and chronologically related to the eventual rise of conscious beings in the universe.
(8325 views)

Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication
by Douglas A. Vakoch - NASA , 2014
Addressing a field that has been dominated by astronomers, physicists, and computer scientists, the contributors to this collection raise questions about the ease of establishing meaningful communication with an extraterrestrial intelligence.
(7976 views)

The Beginning and the End: The Meaning of Life in a Cosmological Perspective
by Clement Vidal - arXiv , 2013
Where does it all come from? Where are we going? Are we alone in the universe? What is good and what is evil? The scientific narrative of cosmic evolution demands that we tackle such big questions with a cosmological perspective.
(10569 views)

Man's Place in the Universe
by Alfred R. Wallace - Chapman and Hall , 1904
Contents: early ideas; modern ideas; the new astronomy; the distribution of the stars; distances of stars - the sun's motion; unity and the evolution of the star-system; are the stars infinite?; our relation to the Milky Way; and more.
(10575 views)

The Fine-Tuning of the Universe for Intelligent Life
by Luke A. Barnes - arXiv , 2011
We will touch on such issues as the logical necessity of the laws of nature; objectivity, invariance and symmetry; theoretical physics and possible universes; entropy in cosmology; cosmic inflation and initial conditions; galaxy formation; etc.
(10120 views)

When Biospheres Collide: A History of NASA's Planetary Protection Programs
by Michael Meltzer - NASA , 2011
This book presents the history of planetary protection by tracing the responses to the microbiological contamination concerns on NASA's missions to the Moon, Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, and many smaller bodies of our solar system.
(10806 views)

Cosmos and Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context
by Steven J. Dick, Mark L. Lupisella - NASA , 2010
Integrating concepts from philosophical, anthropological, and astrobiological disciplines, the book begins to explore the interdisciplinary questions of cosmic evolution. Authors have diverse backgrounds in science, history, anthropology, and more.
(12050 views)

Are We Alone?
by Gregg Easterbrook - The Atlantic Monthly , 1988
Scanning the universe to see if we have company has fallen out of favor among many scientists, but the true believers who continue to search raise diverting questions -- why planets form where they do, and how life began, and where we might end up.
(12256 views)

The Galactic Habitable Zone I. Galactic Chemical Evolution
by G. Gonzalez, D. Brownlee, P. Ward - arXiv , 2001
The GHZ is that region in the Milky Way where an Earth-like planet can retain liquid water on its surface and provide a long-term habitat for animal-like aerobic life. In this paper we examine the dependence of the GHZ on Galactic chemical evolution.
(11847 views)

The Astrobiology Primer: An Outline of General Knowledge
by Lucas J. Mix, at al. - arXiv , 2006
Astrobiology aims to understand the fundamental nature of life on earth and the possibility of life elsewhere. This text has been created as a reference tool for those who are interested in this interdisciplinary field of astrobiology.
(13538 views)

Habitable Planets for Man
by Stephen H. Dole - RAND Corporation , 1964
The book examines and estimates the probabilities of finding planets habitable to man and where they might be found. The author presents in detail the characteristics of a planet that can provide an acceptable environment for humankind.
(11886 views)