Life on Other Worlds: The 20th-Century Extraterrestrial Life De .9780521620123

Life on Other WorldsThe 20th-Century Extraterrestrial Life Debate\nAuthor(s): Steven J. Dick\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom\nImprint: Cambridge University Press\nISBN-13: 9780521620123, 978-0521620123\nSynopsis\nThe recent discoveries of extrasolar planets and possible microfossils in Martian meteorite ALH 84001 are only the latest developments in a debate that spans millennia, and that has been especially heated in the twentieth century. From the furore over Percival Lowell's claim of canals on Mars at the beginning of the century to the biological experiments of the Viking spacecraft, the controversial 'Mars rock', and the sophisticated Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) at its end, otherworldly life has often titillated and occasionally consumed science and the public. So too have crucially related areas such as the search for planetary systems, the quest for an explanation of UFOs, and inquiries into the origin of life. The t.