Taxi from Another Planet : : Conversations with Drivers about Life in the Universe / / Charles S. Cockell.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter EBOOK PACKAGE COMPLETE 2022 English
• VerfasserIn: Cockell, Charles S.,
• Place / Publishing House: Cambridge, MA : : Harvard University Press, , [2022]; ©2022
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (304 p.)

Insightful, good-humored essays on the possibilities of alien life and the uses of space exploration, based on an astrobiologist’s everyday conversations with his fellow humans—taxi drivers, to be precise.If you’ve ever sat in the back seat of a taxi, you know that cabbies like to talk. Sports or politics, your job or theirs, taxi drivers are fine conversationalists on just about any topic. And when the passenger is astrobiologist Charles Cockell, that topic is usually space and what, if anything, lives out there.Inspired by conversations with drivers all over the world, Taxi from Another Planet tackles the questions that everyday people have about the cosmos and our place in it. Will we understand aliens? What if there isn’t life out in the universe? Is Mars our Plan B? And why is the government spending tax dollars on space programs anyway? Each essay in this genial collection takes questions like these as a starting point on the way to a range of insightful, even poignant, observations. Cockell delves into debates over the inevitability of life and looks to both human history and scientific knowledge to consider what first contact will be like and what we can expect from spacefaring societies. He also offers a forceful argument for the sympathies between space exploration and environmentalism.A shrewd and entertaining foray into the most fundamental mysteries, Taxi from Another Planet brings together the wisdom of scientific experts and their fellow citizens of Earth, the better to understand how life might unfold elsewhere.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- 1 Are There Alien Taxi Drivers? -- 2 Would Alien Contact Change Us All? -- 3 Should I Be Worried about a Martian Invasion? -- 4 Should We Solve Problems on Earth before Exploring Space? -- 5 Will I Go on a Trip to Mars? -- 6 Is There Still Glory in Exploration? -- 7 Is Mars Our Planet B? -- 8 Do Ghosts Exist? -- 9 Are We Exhibits in an Alien Zoo? -- 10 Will We Understand the Aliens? -- 11 Might the Universe Be Devoid of Aliens? -- 12 Is Mars an Awful Place to Live? -- 13 Will Space Be Full of Tyrannies or Free Societies? -- 14 Do Microbes Deserve Our Protection? -- 15 How Did Life Begin? -- 16 Why Do We Need Oxygen to Breathe? -- 17 What Is the Meaning of Life? -- 18 Are We Exceptional? -- Further Reading -- Acknowledgments -- Image Credits -- Index