The Eerie Silence. Searching for Ourselves in the Universe

Paul Davies' The Eerie Silence: Searching For Ourselves in the Universe is an engaging and lucid guide to the 'Fermi Paradox' - why isn't the universe teeming with alien life? If aliens ever contact us, it will be the single most significant event in human history. And Paul Davies will be responsible for saying something back. For fifty years the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence has been scanning the skies. Now Davies, head of SETI's Post-Detection Task Group, with 'a rare talent for making physics mind-bogglingly vivid and exciting' (Times Higher Education), explores what the mysterious silence it has encountered could mean. Here he looks at exciting new ways to make contact with extra-terrestrial life. He considers what form advanced alien intelligence is likely to take if it exists. And more importantly, what exactly it would mean if it didn't - how extraordinary it would be if we were alone, to be human and here in this staggering, eerie silence...