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Where Are All the Aliens Hiding?
Possible answers from one of THE best books about space I’ve ever read
I’ll tell you what I think, right upfront.
Yes, there are almost certainly aliens inhabiting distant planets. But…I sincerely doubt that they’ve ever been here, or that some farmer’s wife in Iowa has ever seen one.
(No offense if you’re a farmer’s wife in Iowa!)
Tonight’s book, though, is an invitation to dream and to wonder what they might look like and be like, should we ever happen to run into them.
It’s so much more than that, though — The Possibility of Life is easily one of my favorite science books ever, and it’s probably won more awards than there are moons in our solar system (okay, I just looked it up, and there are 421 of them, so maybe not).
But it’s good.
While we’re on the subject, some of the most profound reading experiences of my life have occurred while reading books about space: Cosmos, by Carl Sagan, for example, first helped me to understand — truly understand — that distant planets are literally places we can go to!
Like, think about how fucking awesome that is (sorry for swearing haha).
If you could get there, you’d step out onto an alien world billions of light-years away, and be able to…
