The eerie silence
by Paul Davies · first published 2010
9mentions
6recommended by
6HN commenters
2013–2020first – last mentioned
100% recommend
Why HN recommends it
Broad, detailed survey of how to search for alien intelligence, from radio signals to probes and biological traces; reviewers praise its wide coverage and clear sense of SETI's middle ground for newcomers.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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Paul Davies (head of SETI) has a fantastic book called "The Eerie Silence". It was the first time in years that I had read a good science book written for the layman that taught me not only a lot of new scientific ideas, history I didn't know about, and made me think about…
on “You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook” ↗If you're interested in the topic of ET life, I'd recommend Paul Davies book "The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence".
on “No, Diatoms Have Not Been Found in a Meteorite” ↗I re-read eerie silence every couple of years. Paul Davies is a phenomenal writer. I never even knew about chirality playing a role in looking for life on Mars (basically all Earth DNA from anything has always shown the helix…
on “TRAPPIST-1 Is Older Than Our Solar System” ↗You'll want to read "The Eerie Silence" by SETI lead Paul Davies who's job is to think of this stuff. The book covers many many possibilities for how a civilization might try to communicate or get the word out from Von Neumann probes to leaving…
on “SETI spots dozens of new mysterious signals emanating from distant galaxy” ↗…dealing with SETI. I love the subject and have seen numerous documentaries on it over the years that cover what they're doing from 50,000 feet. Paul Davies is the lead at SETI and I read his book "The Eerie Silence" and it was really awesome. It perfectly found the middle ground between a documentary which has to be ok for children and a textbook on the subject. Paul Davies is kind of to SETI what Alan Kay is to…
on “Classic Mathematics Books for Lifelong Learners” ↗The Eerie Silence by Paul Davies. It does cover a history of SETI, but goes into a lot of the theory that is generally beyond a bit of what I've seen discussed before in popsci. I thought I knew the subject very well,…
on “Science Books of 2019” ↗My apologies on the very late response, but if you haven't read it, I recommend the book The Eerie Silence. Covers a lot of this general idea. https://smile.amazon.com/Eerie-Silence-Renewing-Search-Intel...
on “A New Recipe for Hunting Alien Life” ↗His book on SETI "The Eerie Silence" is fantastic btw. I don't agree with every assertion, but it covers the subject in amazing detail. I learned a lot.
on “In Memoriam: John D. Barrow” ↗Having recently read Eerie Silence, findings like this do underscore the question of just how likely life is. More, given life, is intelligence a given? And if there is intelligence, is scientific expansion style intelligence a given?…
on “TRAPPIST-1 Is Older Than Our Solar System” ↗