Michael Chorost

If you want a field where august authorities come to completely different conclusions, try astrobiology. Some people are certain that there is life off the earth (and some even think that we have already found it), while others insist that life is rare and intelligent life even more so.

I’ve been reading a slew of books in this field, including Ward & Brownlee’s “Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe,” Paul Davies’s “The Eerie Silence: Renewing our Search for Alien Intelligence,” and Marc Kaufman’s “First Contact: Scientific Breakthroughs in the Hunt for Life Beyond Earth.” Read on for my take on these books…