ARE WE ALONE?

Basic introductions to exoplanets and indications to whether they harbor life.

Betts kicks off with the big question: “Are we alone in the universe?” Rather than taking on the Fermi paradox, however (“If the universe is so old and big, where is everybody?”), he follows an easier, less troublesome path. He explains that scientists are actually looking for signs of water, and for the six building blocks of earthly life, both on our near neighbors in our solar system and on planets orbiting within the just-the-right-temperature “Goldilocks zone” of other stars. For younger readers who want to pursue the topic, a brief but audience-appropriate resource list at the end offers a good starting point. Big, bright photos and digital images of space probes, currently active telescopes, and distant moons and planetscapes light up the simply phrased narrative. If the one speculative representation of what aliens might look like is a stereotypical image of a little green man and his dog, at least it’s not a Predator or a chest-bursting Xenomorph.

A tantalizing peek at a scientific enterprise with truly revolutionary potential.