There has been a flurry of books published to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the start of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), but James Kasting’s offering stands out from the pack. He is not so much concerned with the prospects for communicating with ET, but with assessing the likelihood that ET exists. His approach is to consider the way in which a habitable planet is ‘built’, using the Earth, the only example of a habitable planet that we have, as a case study.

Literary Review

Jul 2010

Categories

John Gribbin

It All Began in Africa

Of Coal & Calculus

Mad as a Hatter

Climb Every Mountain

Top of the Atomic Pile

Life on Mars?

Ominous Auras

Half-Life Stories

Tyrannosaurus, Ex

Lunar Tics

Unstable Particle

Stars In Their Eyes

Small Is Beautiful

Is There Anybody Out There?

Whizz! Bang! Wallop!

The Shakespeare of Physics

Destination Moon

Playing With Fire

Fly Me to the Moon

Quantum Leaps

Matters of Gravity

OK Computer

Science for Sale