Here Be Dragons

I have been looking for something along this line for some time - a summation of the current thinking in the scientific world on the subject of extraterrestrial life. The authors approach the problem two ways. First is a description of the various sciences involved, then an examination of conflicting viewpoints by leading scientists. As the authors state, when one speaks of Extraterrestrial Life the underlying meaning is INTELLIGENT life - not microbes, bacteria or even insects. But since all current life evolved from microbes the authors correcly examine the most basic issues - what is life and how did it arise on Earth? They then asked if Earth's example was unique or common. Along the way we discover new schools of thought challenging traditional views of evolution, organic matter in space, carbon-based life and the wonder of water. In a more philosophical vein, the authors tackle subjectivity in science, the deeper meaning of quantum theory and finally, our own future. The discussions on the factors that made life necessary on Earth (large moon, large outer planets, right distance from the right kind of star, etc) are not new but were integrated with the rest of the story. The one disappointment - and perhaps this is not the province of this book - was lack of discussion on consciousness. When we speak of intelligence, consciousness is implied. Yes, it would be nice to find a planet rich with microbes, better yet animal life. But unless true intelligence existed, our quest would not be considered complete. I have serious doubts about SETI (due to the increasingly rapid changes of our own techology)and even the existence of intelligent life elsewhere because of the uniqueness of conciousness which is not a result of "getting smarter" but something much more profound, something...human. A wonderful, sobering text.

The book presents, chapter after chapter, the points of view of differents scientists (and a few pseudo-scientists) on the subject of life: its nature, definition, origin, rules, etc. The underlying subject is extraterrestrial life, but, in order to discuss it properly, the text does not focus on SETI only, for example, but asks renowed biologists, mathematicians, roboticists and Artificial Life experts what their work about life is all about.You end up with a very well written text, that gives some speech-time to everyone, including (regrettably, IMHO) creationnists and ufologists. Funny thing: in the end, you probably still won't know what life is!

Science at its best reads like a detective story. Authors David Koerner and Simon LeVay certainly convey this feeling in their wide-ranging overview of the search for ETs in the universe. Even in our solar system life might exist outside Earth. Europa, one of the moons of Jupitor, might possess an icecovered ocean. With all the right ingredients for life down in a dark ocean. Another likely candidate is the Saturn moon Titan. Even though it seems a pretty cold place at minus 178 degress Celcius. In its atmosphere one is likely to find amino acids, nucleotide bases and many other building blocks of life. All of which is thoroughly described by Koerner and Levay in an easy and engaging way. And surely a lot of the other stars must have planets. In a little treat of a chapter authors Koerner and Levay makes the case for stars with planets. Some of them with life on them. That is life as we know it. Still a number of other possibilities (infinite ?) exists. Without goning into the details of the examples in the book - one possibility in particular excites me. And I think they should have dwelled more on it than they actually do: Take life on an neutron star. A neutron star is the superdense remnant of a supernova explosion. The original star collapses to a state were gravity overcomes repulsion between electrons and protons. They then fuses forming a sea of neutrons. Life there could exists as patterns of bounded neutrons. With a breakneck speed of metabolism. Where organism live and die within 10e-15 seconds. Entire civilisations might be formed within a fraction of second. Advanced civilisation might create such neutron stars in order to use them as computers. Some 10e30 time more powerful than the human brain. The authors regrettablely stops here - I think it could be relevant to speculate further on installing computers in spacetime itself, just taking the neutron star example one step further to a black hole, that explodes into a new universe (big bang) with the order (computer) installed in its very fabric of space time. Still the book "Here be dragons" is highly recomended as it takes on all the interesting questions: Who are we ? Where do we come from ? Are we alone ? and let you in on the detective story of finding some answers. -Simon

In the confusions of the Darwin debate it can be useful to change key and consider the perspective of the exobiologists. Suddenly the certainties of the Neo-Darwinian synthesis become questions all over again as we ask what is the relation of terrestrial evolution to a greater cosmological context. Suddenly we can realize that, so far, it all doesn't add up. Is life universal, is it a cosmological process, what is the origin of life, and is it 'inevitable', and so on. We are suddenly confronted with the question as to whether evolution could really be the spectacle of pure randomness that we are led to believe. Surveying the whole field with interviews of Stuart Kauffman and Stephen J. Gould, this book is a cogent introduction to the subject of evolution from a broader perspective than the usual, this quite beyond its excellent presentation of many other topics and issues, from life on Mars to the Seti project. Cf. also, Rare Earth, by Peter Ward;

What I especially liked about Here Be Dragons was how every chapter was interesting. Beginning with "Origins," about possible habitats for life from scum ponds to interstellar dust clouds to deep sea ocean vents in Chapter 2 to the evolution of solar systems in Chapter 4 to the search for life beyond the sun, the SETI experience, the UFO phenomena (in a chapter entitled "Dreamland") to the possibility of non carbon-based life in Chapter 9: "Exotica: Life as We Don't Know It," the text is lively. (Chapter 3 is about "The Incredible Shrinking Martians" who have, alas, lost their canals and greenery.)Koerner and LeVay achieve this engaging readability by presenting contrasting viewpoints from state of the art scientists, often in disagreement. Thus we have paleontologists Stephen Jay Gould and Simon Conway Morris disagreeing on how big a factor chance is in evolution, and how that might affect the prospects for the development of extraterrestrial intelligence. Frank Drake and the late Carl Sagan, who are optimistic about the possibility of contacting ETI, are paired off against people like Jared Diamond, Ben Zuckerman, Ernst Mayr, and Martin Ryle, who are not. Other books about science try to be interesting by presenting the personalities of science, but what they miss is the conflicts. Koerner and LeVay do not. They even begin the book with a visit to the Museum of Creation and Earth History in Santee, California with its Six Days of Creation exhibits (the Darwinian fish on their vehicle hopefully not noticed). They immediately contrast this with a visit to the nearby NASA Specialized Center of Research and Training in Exobiology at La Jolla. Additionally, they sprinkle the narrative with some interesting, sometimes irreverent, observations. For example on pages 162-163 they toss in a witty jab at Stephen Gould, a brilliant man who sometimes takes himself a little too seriously. At issue is the famous (and beloved) Drake equation. The authors write: " & #8219;It's not an equation,' Stephen Gould tells us baldly, adding his trademark chuckle to let us know that he has finally put the thing out of its misery." At another point they tell us that Frank Drake's license plate reads, "N EQLS L," which is Drake's emphatic way of asserting his belief that we are not alone.Truthfully, though, some of this was a little over my head, in particular the material about planet-finding techniques, including the photometric method, the radial-velocity method and interferometry. I don't think that's a shortcoming of the book, but rather a shortcoming on my part. However it didn't help that the color plates are misnumbered. (Perhaps in the paperback edition that is fixed.) Also difficult, but interesting, was the material about Stuart Kauffman's "autocatalytic sets" of replicating molecules as precursors of RNA and DNA.I want to say one thing about the anthropic principle addressed in Chapter 9. We have a sam