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Riccioli d'oro e gli orsetti d'acqua. Alla ricerca della vita nell'universo
Un cibo non troppo caldo e non troppo freddo, un letto non troppo morbido e non troppo duro: ecco cosa vuole la giovane protagonista della fiaba "Riccioli d'oro e i tre orsi", qualcosa di «proprio giusto». Sembra bizzarro, eppure l'astrobiologia usa lo stesso criterio nella ricerca di possibili forme di vita nello spazio. Tanto che si chiama «Fascia Riccioli d'oro» la zona abitabile di un sistema stellare, lo spazio in cui si trovano i pianeti che possiedono le caratteristiche necessarie allo sviluppo della vita: presenza di acqua, temperature non eccessivamente calde o fredde, una distanza «proprio giusta» dal loro sole. Louisa Preston accompagna il lettore in un affascinante viaggio alla ricerca di altre forme di vita nell'universo; e lo fa partendo dalla Terra, dai luoghi più inospitali del nostro pianeta, dove le condizioni ambientali si avvicinano a quelle degli altri mondi e dove solo i microorganismi più tenaci riescono a adattarsi e prosperare. Campioni indiscussi degli ambienti estremi sono gli orsetti d'acqua, ossia i tardigradi: simili a microscopici panda a otto zampe, vivono praticamente ovunque, dalla cima delle montagne agli abissi oceanici, e sono sopravvissuti indenni alle cinque estinzioni di massa della storia della Terra. In caso di catastrofi possono entrare in uno stato che li rende praticamente indistruttibili, a prova di temperature estreme, radiazioni, assenza di ossigeno e mancanza di cibo - non per niente sono gli unici organismi che abbiamo inviato con successo nello spazio senza protezioni. Louisa Preston, studiando i tardigradi e utilizzando i dati delle più recenti missioni spaziali, traccia una mappa dei luoghi più promettenti in cui cercare la vita al di fuori della Terra, dai pianeti del Sistema solare a quelli più distanti dell'universo. "Riccioli d'oro e gli orsetti d'acqua" racconta l'esplorazione di nuovi mondi, lune e galassie, il viaggio alla ricerca di altre forme di vita (e forse di nuove civiltà) e la nostra inesauribile volontà di spingerci dove nessun umano è mai giunto prima: all'ultima frontiera della nostra comprensione dello spazio.
260 pages, Hardcover
First published November 8, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews
June 17, 2016
Although it made me cringe, don't be put off by the title - this is a book about the equally strangely named astrobiology (the author says it combines biology and space - i.e. the biology and environmental considerations of potential alien life, but strictly the name means the biology of stars), which is potentially a very interesting subject.
The 'Goldilocks' part of the title, as most readers will recognise, refers to the Goldilocks zone - the region around a star where a planet would be not too hot, not too cold but just right for carbon-based, water-dependent life. As Louisa Preston makes clear, this is no longer given the significance it once was, as some of the best candidates for (low level) life in our solar system are the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, which appear to have liquid water oceans under a thick ice crust. Even so, the concept is useful.
As for the water bears, they were far and above my favourite part of the book - fascinating little 8-legged creatures that can go into a dehydrated state where they can be exposed to everything space can throw at them, from extreme low temperatures to radiation - and still come back to life when rehydrated at the right temperature. They are interesting in this context both as a type of life that could in principle support transport through space to seed a new planet and also as a model of some of the more extreme ways that life could survive in habitats that we might once have thought would never support it.
Apart from the water bears, the book is at its best in is its survey of possible places life could exist and its enthusiasm for the concept of astrobiology. But there are some problems. Large chunks of the book consist of what Rutherford referred to as 'stamp collecting' - little more than listing details of the various possibilities. This comes across particularly strongly in the section on extremophiles - organisms that can exist in extreme conditions - on Earth (as a model for life elsewhere). For page after page we get lists of bacteria and other organisms that can survive in various conditions. There is also heavy repetition. So, for example, there are three separate sections talking about the possibilities for life in the water beneath the ice on the moon Europa, with big overlaps in content. This reflects a distinct lack of narrative structure to the book, which is probably why one of the most interesting questions in the subject - if life came into existence easily, why does it appear to have only done so once on Earth? - isn't covered.
I'm sure Preston knows her stuff on astrobiology, but a science writer has to have a much wider knowledge and here she has the biggest problems. Every popular science book includes the odd error, but here there are so many, it's worrying. For instance, we are given the excellent movie The Martian as an example of a movie featuring aliens. Unless a martian pops up in the corner of a frame, or you count a potato grown on Mars as an alien, this could only be the result of simply looking at the title and assuming that it does without checking.
Things get worse when we look back into history. We are told that the Ancient Greek Democritus 'realised that the Sun was just as star... in his wisdom, he understood that the planets revolved around the Sun and that Earth itself is a planet. He even theorised about exoplanets...' But he didn't. Democritus didn't have a heliocentric model - I can only assume this is a confusion with the later Aristarchus - nor did he realise all that clever astronomical stuff. He did support (but not originate) the idea of the pluralism of worlds, but this was not an astronomical theory, more like the parallel universes beloved of pulp science fiction. Worse still, we are told that Aristotle with dates given as 460-370 BC had Plato (428-327 BC) as a mentor. Plato was, indeed, Aristotle's teacher, but you don't need anything but basic logic to suspect that Aristotle wasn't 32 years older than Plato.
Sadly, it's not just the history that is suspect - physics presents some issues too. We are told that 'deuterium is an isotope of hydrogen, but holds two neutrons rather than just one in the nucleus'. Unfortunately hydrogen has no neutrons, and deuterium has just one. We are told there was no light before stars formed, which is unfortunate for the Cosmic Microwave Background, and we are told that the nuclei of two hydrogen atoms combine to make helium, which would make it rather underweight. And, yes, inevitably, we get the myth that Giordano Bruno was martyred for his idea that there were many suns with their own solar systems.
The combination of this error rate and the lack of writing style means that overall things could have been a lot better. There is plenty of interesting material in here (though how it can be described as an 'expert romp' as it is on the cover, I don't know), but the book does not do the subject justice.
The 'Goldilocks' part of the title, as most readers will recognise, refers to the Goldilocks zone - the region around a star where a planet would be not too hot, not too cold but just right for carbon-based, water-dependent life. As Louisa Preston makes clear, this is no longer given the significance it once was, as some of the best candidates for (low level) life in our solar system are the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, which appear to have liquid water oceans under a thick ice crust. Even so, the concept is useful.
As for the water bears, they were far and above my favourite part of the book - fascinating little 8-legged creatures that can go into a dehydrated state where they can be exposed to everything space can throw at them, from extreme low temperatures to radiation - and still come back to life when rehydrated at the right temperature. They are interesting in this context both as a type of life that could in principle support transport through space to seed a new planet and also as a model of some of the more extreme ways that life could survive in habitats that we might once have thought would never support it.
Apart from the water bears, the book is at its best in is its survey of possible places life could exist and its enthusiasm for the concept of astrobiology. But there are some problems. Large chunks of the book consist of what Rutherford referred to as 'stamp collecting' - little more than listing details of the various possibilities. This comes across particularly strongly in the section on extremophiles - organisms that can exist in extreme conditions - on Earth (as a model for life elsewhere). For page after page we get lists of bacteria and other organisms that can survive in various conditions. There is also heavy repetition. So, for example, there are three separate sections talking about the possibilities for life in the water beneath the ice on the moon Europa, with big overlaps in content. This reflects a distinct lack of narrative structure to the book, which is probably why one of the most interesting questions in the subject - if life came into existence easily, why does it appear to have only done so once on Earth? - isn't covered.
I'm sure Preston knows her stuff on astrobiology, but a science writer has to have a much wider knowledge and here she has the biggest problems. Every popular science book includes the odd error, but here there are so many, it's worrying. For instance, we are given the excellent movie The Martian as an example of a movie featuring aliens. Unless a martian pops up in the corner of a frame, or you count a potato grown on Mars as an alien, this could only be the result of simply looking at the title and assuming that it does without checking.
Things get worse when we look back into history. We are told that the Ancient Greek Democritus 'realised that the Sun was just as star... in his wisdom, he understood that the planets revolved around the Sun and that Earth itself is a planet. He even theorised about exoplanets...' But he didn't. Democritus didn't have a heliocentric model - I can only assume this is a confusion with the later Aristarchus - nor did he realise all that clever astronomical stuff. He did support (but not originate) the idea of the pluralism of worlds, but this was not an astronomical theory, more like the parallel universes beloved of pulp science fiction. Worse still, we are told that Aristotle with dates given as 460-370 BC had Plato (428-327 BC) as a mentor. Plato was, indeed, Aristotle's teacher, but you don't need anything but basic logic to suspect that Aristotle wasn't 32 years older than Plato.
Sadly, it's not just the history that is suspect - physics presents some issues too. We are told that 'deuterium is an isotope of hydrogen, but holds two neutrons rather than just one in the nucleus'. Unfortunately hydrogen has no neutrons, and deuterium has just one. We are told there was no light before stars formed, which is unfortunate for the Cosmic Microwave Background, and we are told that the nuclei of two hydrogen atoms combine to make helium, which would make it rather underweight. And, yes, inevitably, we get the myth that Giordano Bruno was martyred for his idea that there were many suns with their own solar systems.
The combination of this error rate and the lack of writing style means that overall things could have been a lot better. There is plenty of interesting material in here (though how it can be described as an 'expert romp' as it is on the cover, I don't know), but the book does not do the subject justice.
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September 19, 2016No rating - Did not finish.
I got about halfway through this book and couldn't keep going. I got the impression the author thinks her readers are all living under a rock and are too stupid to understand anything that hasn't been written in overly simplistic language. She also doesn't care enough about her readers to be bothered to check the information she includes in her book. There were numerous errors including not knowing the correct atomic structure of deuterium and stating that Democritus developed the heliocentric model (that was Aristarchus, Democritus dealt with atomic theory). That left me wondering how much other information is wrong with the book. The author also does not include references so I have no idea where she is getting her information. I found the writing style to be rather tedious and somewhat repetitive, and didn't really learn anything new in the half of the book I read.
This might be an interesting book for a young teenager who doesn't know much about science in general.
I got about halfway through this book and couldn't keep going. I got the impression the author thinks her readers are all living under a rock and are too stupid to understand anything that hasn't been written in overly simplistic language. She also doesn't care enough about her readers to be bothered to check the information she includes in her book. There were numerous errors including not knowing the correct atomic structure of deuterium and stating that Democritus developed the heliocentric model (that was Aristarchus, Democritus dealt with atomic theory). That left me wondering how much other information is wrong with the book. The author also does not include references so I have no idea where she is getting her information. I found the writing style to be rather tedious and somewhat repetitive, and didn't really learn anything new in the half of the book I read.
This might be an interesting book for a young teenager who doesn't know much about science in general.
January 14, 2018
The best thing about the book is that title. It’s just inspired. Unfortunately, it’s also misleading; actual tardigrades are covered in about three pages, buried in the middle of the book. Most of it is about the search for other life in the universe, what it might look like, where we might find it, and how it might survive. Granted, the blurb does say that, calling it “a tale of the origins and evolution of life, and the quest to find it on other planets, on moons, in other galaxies, and throughout the universe.” But still, I’d hoped for tardigrades to be a little more central, or at least more relevant than just another example in a litany of living creatures which can tolerate extreme conditions (or rather, what would be extreme from our point of view). At the very least, I was hoping for a survey of where in our solar system tardigrades could happily live. You can extrapolate that, but… I just wanted more water bears, okay?!
In terms of the writing, there are two especially irritating habits: one is a constant grammar failing, where the start of the sentence doesn’t agree in number with the end, and the other is an unfortunate habit of italicising key words in a way which gives the sentences really weird emphases. Sometimes names are randomly italicised, sometimes not. It’s not consistent and at the same time, it’s so pervasive as to be distracting.
(E.g. in the sentence above, Preston would have written, “There is two especially irritating habits”. No! That’s not… No! I can’t remember if she ever actually did it while stating a number as in that sentence, admittedly, but she would use “is” when there were two or more things being stated. No!)
The actual content is fine, if you weren’t hoping too much for more info on tardigrades. It’s a pretty workmanlike exploration of the concept of the Goldilocks zone and how it might help us identify suitable planets that are not our own.
Reviewed for The Bibliophibian.
In terms of the writing, there are two especially irritating habits: one is a constant grammar failing, where the start of the sentence doesn’t agree in number with the end, and the other is an unfortunate habit of italicising key words in a way which gives the sentences really weird emphases. Sometimes names are randomly italicised, sometimes not. It’s not consistent and at the same time, it’s so pervasive as to be distracting.
(E.g. in the sentence above, Preston would have written, “There is two especially irritating habits”. No! That’s not… No! I can’t remember if she ever actually did it while stating a number as in that sentence, admittedly, but she would use “is” when there were two or more things being stated. No!)
The actual content is fine, if you weren’t hoping too much for more info on tardigrades. It’s a pretty workmanlike exploration of the concept of the Goldilocks zone and how it might help us identify suitable planets that are not our own.
Reviewed for The Bibliophibian.
October 7, 2016
Searching for habitable worlds
Earth has a unique spot in the solar system; it is just at the right distance from the Sun so that water stays in liquid form so that life could be born and evolve. A protective shielding of the atmosphere from harmful ionizing radiation from the parent star would be essential for sustained evolution. The planet must also have a stable atmosphere for life. The habitable worlds could be rocky planets or rocky moons as we have been learning from recent discoveries that Europa and Ganymede, two Jovian moons, and Enceladus, moon of Saturn have oceans of water beneath then surface and likely to have some primitive form of marine species. Plume of ice particles and liquid water are detected from Europa and Enceladus. NASA hopes catch the water from hundreds of miles long geysers and look for marine species.
Author Luisa Preston systematically explores various aspects of habitable worlds including the origin of life; the planets that can support and sustain life; looking for habitable worlds beyond solar system and how we can colonize Mars. Developments in technology, advanced telescopes, and new methods to identify and evaluate the habitable worlds have made significant strides in astrobiology. A number of habitable worlds have been reported since this book has been written.
A brief discussion of the current state of discoveries of exoplanets is as follows: It is progressively becoming evident that we have to treat life as a cosmic phenomenon whose emergence and driving forces should be viewed independently from the natural history of Earth. We are learning that life may be born and thrive in the harshest environments such as severe droughts, in presence of toxic compounds, extreme cold temperatures and even certain amount of ionizing radiation from the harshest environments. It has already been detected and identified as Tardigrades (water bears) on earth. They are microscopic animals that survive exposure to space and survives over sub-zero temperatures, unrelenting solar winds and an oxygen-deprived space vacuum.
Planets come in a huge variety of sizes and orbits. Some are gas giants hugging close to their parent star; others are icy, some rocky. NASA and other agencies are looking for a special kind of planet: one that’s the same size as Earth, orbiting a sun-like star in the habitable zone. As of now, according to NASA, there are 3394 confirmed exoplanets; 1250 are ice giants; 1006 gas giants; 777 super earths: 348 terrestrial and 13 exoplanets are of unknown nature. Among these, the most earth like planets are; Kepler 181f (1.11 times Earth radius); Kepler 442b (1.34 times Earth); Kepler 438b (1.1 times Earth); Kepler 62f (1.41 times Earth); GJ 66.7C c (1.5 times Earth) and Wolf 1061c (1.64 times Earth). In August 2016 a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri known as Proxima b, (1.3 times earth) was discovered. It is a rocky world, residing in the star's habitable zone, just 4.7 million miles from its host star (Earth is 93 million miles from Sun), and completes one orbit every 11.2 Earth-days. The exoplanet is tidally locked, which means it does not spin on its own axis like Earth. Moon is also tidally locked to Earth and shows only one face to Earth.
Mars exploration by three NASA rovers have yielded a wealth of information; Life forms existed on Mars billions of years ago. But when the planet lost its magnetic field, it had nothing to block the solar wind, which slowly bled off the planet's atmosphere. This complicated the evolution of a biosphere. The ionizing radiation broke up organic molecules. If life was on Mars in the past, when the planet was wetter with a thicker atmosphere. Then organisms could have gotten a foothold, life could have then adapted to a higher-radiation environment over time and retreated deeper underground for protection.
Another star that is currently drawing enormous interest in the news is the "Tabby's Star," also known as KIC 8462852 found by the NASA's planet-hunting Kepler space telescope. This shows dramatic dips in brightness, this brightness change has been attributed to orbiting comets around the star or alien mega structure built by an advanced civilization.
Earth has a unique spot in the solar system; it is just at the right distance from the Sun so that water stays in liquid form so that life could be born and evolve. A protective shielding of the atmosphere from harmful ionizing radiation from the parent star would be essential for sustained evolution. The planet must also have a stable atmosphere for life. The habitable worlds could be rocky planets or rocky moons as we have been learning from recent discoveries that Europa and Ganymede, two Jovian moons, and Enceladus, moon of Saturn have oceans of water beneath then surface and likely to have some primitive form of marine species. Plume of ice particles and liquid water are detected from Europa and Enceladus. NASA hopes catch the water from hundreds of miles long geysers and look for marine species.
Author Luisa Preston systematically explores various aspects of habitable worlds including the origin of life; the planets that can support and sustain life; looking for habitable worlds beyond solar system and how we can colonize Mars. Developments in technology, advanced telescopes, and new methods to identify and evaluate the habitable worlds have made significant strides in astrobiology. A number of habitable worlds have been reported since this book has been written.
A brief discussion of the current state of discoveries of exoplanets is as follows: It is progressively becoming evident that we have to treat life as a cosmic phenomenon whose emergence and driving forces should be viewed independently from the natural history of Earth. We are learning that life may be born and thrive in the harshest environments such as severe droughts, in presence of toxic compounds, extreme cold temperatures and even certain amount of ionizing radiation from the harshest environments. It has already been detected and identified as Tardigrades (water bears) on earth. They are microscopic animals that survive exposure to space and survives over sub-zero temperatures, unrelenting solar winds and an oxygen-deprived space vacuum.
Planets come in a huge variety of sizes and orbits. Some are gas giants hugging close to their parent star; others are icy, some rocky. NASA and other agencies are looking for a special kind of planet: one that’s the same size as Earth, orbiting a sun-like star in the habitable zone. As of now, according to NASA, there are 3394 confirmed exoplanets; 1250 are ice giants; 1006 gas giants; 777 super earths: 348 terrestrial and 13 exoplanets are of unknown nature. Among these, the most earth like planets are; Kepler 181f (1.11 times Earth radius); Kepler 442b (1.34 times Earth); Kepler 438b (1.1 times Earth); Kepler 62f (1.41 times Earth); GJ 66.7C c (1.5 times Earth) and Wolf 1061c (1.64 times Earth). In August 2016 a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri known as Proxima b, (1.3 times earth) was discovered. It is a rocky world, residing in the star's habitable zone, just 4.7 million miles from its host star (Earth is 93 million miles from Sun), and completes one orbit every 11.2 Earth-days. The exoplanet is tidally locked, which means it does not spin on its own axis like Earth. Moon is also tidally locked to Earth and shows only one face to Earth.
Mars exploration by three NASA rovers have yielded a wealth of information; Life forms existed on Mars billions of years ago. But when the planet lost its magnetic field, it had nothing to block the solar wind, which slowly bled off the planet's atmosphere. This complicated the evolution of a biosphere. The ionizing radiation broke up organic molecules. If life was on Mars in the past, when the planet was wetter with a thicker atmosphere. Then organisms could have gotten a foothold, life could have then adapted to a higher-radiation environment over time and retreated deeper underground for protection.
Another star that is currently drawing enormous interest in the news is the "Tabby's Star," also known as KIC 8462852 found by the NASA's planet-hunting Kepler space telescope. This shows dramatic dips in brightness, this brightness change has been attributed to orbiting comets around the star or alien mega structure built by an advanced civilization.
May 6, 2019
Really well written, a great example of how to write sci comm. Looking forward to finishing (had to return to library as I took too long to get to it) note to myself pick back up at page 124
March 3, 2017
Another book with a really interesting title and one that holds a promise of being a great read but unfortunately doesn't quite hit the mark. Dry in its presentation and quite repetitive it only seems to lead the reader on while also helping the reader to find other distractions to take their mind away from the contents of the book.
The author did have her moments though within the pages. There is the fact that she does acknowledge (and sadly enough quite repetitively) that the other life we are looking for within our universe may not be what we had hoped for. Although it captivates the mind that we may have similar beings out there could it really be replicated, especially with the variables of the chemistries that may have been used instead of ours? And I also enjoyed that fact that she found some humor in Pluto paybacking scientists for their demotion of the planet's status although she did the same in her writing for with the discussion of the other planets she called them by the nature of their divine names like Mars was god of war but with Pluto she just relegated it as the underdog.
The part that I was most interested in though was the waters bears but it took forever for the author to reach them and even then they had just the merest mention before she was off again. All in all I was quite disappointed with the book although I did learn some possible new things if the information was correct otherwise it could be possible food for thought in the sci-fi realm.
All in all decent but for those into science, especially for the universe and what may be hiding in it I would say keep on looking for better reading material.
The author did have her moments though within the pages. There is the fact that she does acknowledge (and sadly enough quite repetitively) that the other life we are looking for within our universe may not be what we had hoped for. Although it captivates the mind that we may have similar beings out there could it really be replicated, especially with the variables of the chemistries that may have been used instead of ours? And I also enjoyed that fact that she found some humor in Pluto paybacking scientists for their demotion of the planet's status although she did the same in her writing for with the discussion of the other planets she called them by the nature of their divine names like Mars was god of war but with Pluto she just relegated it as the underdog.
The part that I was most interested in though was the waters bears but it took forever for the author to reach them and even then they had just the merest mention before she was off again. All in all I was quite disappointed with the book although I did learn some possible new things if the information was correct otherwise it could be possible food for thought in the sci-fi realm.
All in all decent but for those into science, especially for the universe and what may be hiding in it I would say keep on looking for better reading material.
July 9, 2021
La cosa migliore del libro, a mio parere, è il titolo. Onestamente (e lo dico dopo molti saggi divulgativi letti, riguardanti le più svariate discipline - è una specie di passione) non l'ho trovato ben scritto.
Il contenuto è ricco di spunti interessanti, ma tutti lasciati a mezz'aria senza approfondimento o spirito critico. La ripetizione è onnipresente, tanto che non fatico a dire che si sarebbe potuto avere un libro lungo la metà senza perderne in concetti, oppure della stessa lunghezza ma il doppio efficace, soltanto facendo un revisione dell'esposizione.
Se a questo aggiungiamo che nella revisione (spero si tratti della revisione, e non di errori dell'autrice) sono scappati errori macroscopici, allora un'altra stella del mio voto se ne va (e non parlo di errorini, perché quando si afferma che la luna dista dalla terra 30.000 km invece che 300.000 km, allora la si fa giocare a biliardo con i satelliti geostazionari, tanto per dirne una).
Il contenuto è ricco di spunti interessanti, ma tutti lasciati a mezz'aria senza approfondimento o spirito critico. La ripetizione è onnipresente, tanto che non fatico a dire che si sarebbe potuto avere un libro lungo la metà senza perderne in concetti, oppure della stessa lunghezza ma il doppio efficace, soltanto facendo un revisione dell'esposizione.
Se a questo aggiungiamo che nella revisione (spero si tratti della revisione, e non di errori dell'autrice) sono scappati errori macroscopici, allora un'altra stella del mio voto se ne va (e non parlo di errorini, perché quando si afferma che la luna dista dalla terra 30.000 km invece che 300.000 km, allora la si fa giocare a biliardo con i satelliti geostazionari, tanto per dirne una).
March 21, 2021
Across a Universe of at least 100 billion habitable, earth-like worlds, life cannot be restricted solely to the Earth. Our species has gone from fantasising about life on other worlds to actively looking for it - this book provides great background on clues scientists are using, and what makes the chase so exciting...
Louisa Preston, an astrobiologist and planetary geologist, expertly communicates with great clarity the science behind the quest to find life elsewhere in the Universe. Goldilocks and the Water Bears is the fascinating story of how life began on Earth and the extreme environments to which life adapted and flourished. Preston goes on to show how such extremophiles could exist on other planets and even moons, asteroids and comets...Preston gives us so much more. Using the latest data, images and analyses from space probes, robotic extraterrestrial probes, radio-astronomical observations and mankind's trips into space, she investigates each planet and moon in our solar system to find zones likely involving life, and those possible for suitable for human settlement. ..The most interesting bit philosophically was the section on filters - eg which steps of the evolutionary process (from star creation to intelligent life formation) are most improbable - is it change from organic material into life, or is that likely to happen anyway given enough time The Is it the development of intelligence? Or is that developing intelligence happens fairly often but then usually leads to self destruction fast enough that intelligent beings don't have time to explore / make contact with the universe once they've developed the means to do so? The ultimate answer is of course completely unknown and likely to be so indefinitely,
informative and surprisingly entertaining, not to mention thought-provoking....
Louisa Preston, an astrobiologist and planetary geologist, expertly communicates with great clarity the science behind the quest to find life elsewhere in the Universe. Goldilocks and the Water Bears is the fascinating story of how life began on Earth and the extreme environments to which life adapted and flourished. Preston goes on to show how such extremophiles could exist on other planets and even moons, asteroids and comets...Preston gives us so much more. Using the latest data, images and analyses from space probes, robotic extraterrestrial probes, radio-astronomical observations and mankind's trips into space, she investigates each planet and moon in our solar system to find zones likely involving life, and those possible for suitable for human settlement. ..The most interesting bit philosophically was the section on filters - eg which steps of the evolutionary process (from star creation to intelligent life formation) are most improbable - is it change from organic material into life, or is that likely to happen anyway given enough time The Is it the development of intelligence? Or is that developing intelligence happens fairly often but then usually leads to self destruction fast enough that intelligent beings don't have time to explore / make contact with the universe once they've developed the means to do so? The ultimate answer is of course completely unknown and likely to be so indefinitely,
informative and surprisingly entertaining, not to mention thought-provoking....
March 14, 2021
Loved this! Accessibly written and organised very intuitively.
February 9, 2021
AHHHH, so refreshing.
If this book doesn't succeed in exiting you to the myriad possibilities of the future whilst educating you of the present, I don't know what will. Such a lovely read!
If this book doesn't succeed in exiting you to the myriad possibilities of the future whilst educating you of the present, I don't know what will. Such a lovely read!
March 10, 2017
An astrobiologist from the University of London provides an overview of life—what it is, what it requires, how it may have emerged on Earth, and how it could exist elsewhere. The focus is on the planets of the Solar system, but it makes some speculations for places beyond. The clever title and causal prose makes this a fine introduction to the subject for students and casual readers.
August 8, 2016
Fun pop science book about tardigrades, science, space, and other cool topics. A little more simplistic than I'd prefer, but enjoyable nonetheless. I got through the audiobook version and the narrator did a great job. Not sure what it is about British narrators that just make books sound amazing, but it's quite well done.
February 9, 2020
I took college astronomy and nearly failed it because all of the gas giants and their friends the dwarf suns were confusing to me plus all of the star colors that meant various things and we were promised there would be no math and there was, for me, a lot of math. Also my boyfriend decided to date someone shorter he met in the class and so I was left alone to try to make sense of it. I only didn't fail because I guess the professor took pity on me or had seen other students like me and had a policy of not failing them.
This book reviews all of that in great detail -- the origins of the universe and the variously colored and variously sized planets and stars and what all of that means. Then she reviews what we know about the origins of life. I learned a lot from all of this. I read some reviews that said she got some things wrong and I discovered in doing some research on the internets that she got something about tardigrades wrong -- they cannot in fact be boiled indefinitely and survive. But all of that said, I think the book was mostly scientific accurate.
It makes the best point you can make for seeking out other life in the universe. I am not completely sold on the value of spending billions on this or on hunting around for another liveable planet. Unbounded scientific curiosity about space is expensive and I'm not convinced we can't find better ways to use the money like trying to preserve the one planet we already know we can live on if we don't mistreat it beyond repair.
There was also a lot of teleological language that got on my nerves because it is a pet peeve of mine. The Earth did not choose to evolve this way or that way -- evolution is a scientific process that does not involve choice. I was kind of surprised at the number of ways she used the language of choice to describe evolutionary adaptions. But that's a quibble.
So if like me you nearly failed astronomy and would like a primer about the origins of the universe and the origins of us or if you are genuinely curious about the reasoning behind the space missions and projects your tax dollars are funding (and some private efforts) then this is the book for you. I got a little bored with the chapters with the science behind science fiction but as I said I'm not invested in finding alien life. But the final chapters where she discusses in detail what it would be like to try to live on various planets was interesting. She pulls apart what would be needed to fulfill stated missions like colonizing Mars or space or the moon and since these are stated missions, it is interesting and important to know what it would take and what it would cost. It's not so farfetched or science fictiony if your actual tax dollars are paying for the actual missions.
This book reviews all of that in great detail -- the origins of the universe and the variously colored and variously sized planets and stars and what all of that means. Then she reviews what we know about the origins of life. I learned a lot from all of this. I read some reviews that said she got some things wrong and I discovered in doing some research on the internets that she got something about tardigrades wrong -- they cannot in fact be boiled indefinitely and survive. But all of that said, I think the book was mostly scientific accurate.
It makes the best point you can make for seeking out other life in the universe. I am not completely sold on the value of spending billions on this or on hunting around for another liveable planet. Unbounded scientific curiosity about space is expensive and I'm not convinced we can't find better ways to use the money like trying to preserve the one planet we already know we can live on if we don't mistreat it beyond repair.
There was also a lot of teleological language that got on my nerves because it is a pet peeve of mine. The Earth did not choose to evolve this way or that way -- evolution is a scientific process that does not involve choice. I was kind of surprised at the number of ways she used the language of choice to describe evolutionary adaptions. But that's a quibble.
So if like me you nearly failed astronomy and would like a primer about the origins of the universe and the origins of us or if you are genuinely curious about the reasoning behind the space missions and projects your tax dollars are funding (and some private efforts) then this is the book for you. I got a little bored with the chapters with the science behind science fiction but as I said I'm not invested in finding alien life. But the final chapters where she discusses in detail what it would be like to try to live on various planets was interesting. She pulls apart what would be needed to fulfill stated missions like colonizing Mars or space or the moon and since these are stated missions, it is interesting and important to know what it would take and what it would cost. It's not so farfetched or science fictiony if your actual tax dollars are paying for the actual missions.
January 27, 2024
L’astrobiologia è la disciplina scientifica che studia le possibilità di sviluppo della vita extraterrestre e le condizioni ambientali esistenti al di fuori della Terra in cui questa potrebbe aver avuto un inizio e una evoluzione. Al momento questa branca della scienza - che “include una vasta gamma di materie come fisica, chimica, astronomia, biologia, biologia molecolare, ecologia, scienze planetarie, geografia e geologia” -, deve ancora dimostrare il suo stesso oggetto di studio. Louisa Preston, astrobiologa britannica, geologa planetaria, ricercatrice, divulgatrice, volto noto dei programmi scientifici della BBC, membro del team che sta mettendo a punto la strumentazione di bordo del rover della prossima missione su Marte “ExoMars 2022” e con alle spalle partecipazioni a progetti delle agenzie spaziali statunitense (NASA), canadese, europea (ESA) e britannica, prende spunto dalla fiaba di Riccioli d’oro e i tre orsi: la piccola Riccioli d’oro entra nella casa dei tre orsi, e trova tre ciotole, tre sedie e tre letti (che appartengono a Papà Orso, a Mamma Orsa e a loro figlio, l’Orsetto): solo la ciotola, la sedia e il letto dell’Orsetto sono “proprio giusti” per lei. Così è per la vita: ha bisogno che si verifichino esattamente determinate condizioni per potersi sviluppare…
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September 6, 2023
The best non fiction book I’ve read this year.
I’ve been thinking about space and the stars since I went to Iceland earlier this year, and this book dives into ideas about life in the Universe and what other planets might be like to experience.
I really enjoyed all the rabbit holes the book sent me down. I’ve been happily googling Curiosity, the Mariner missions, and space probes of all kinds.
There’s a great chapter on what life on other planets might, or might not, look like.
It seems to me we need to look after the planet we are on as much as looking out into space to find life. I liked this quotation from the book:
“Perhaps, and I like this idea best, any advanced civilisation will have become in tune with its natural environment, value nature's role in its survival and will be working in harmony with it. In this scenario, our supremely intelligent and compassionate aliens would not produce waste heat, light, nor electromagnetic signals from a repository of profligate technologies - so it will be less easy to find them until we use our intelligence to do the same.”
I’ve been thinking about space and the stars since I went to Iceland earlier this year, and this book dives into ideas about life in the Universe and what other planets might be like to experience.
I really enjoyed all the rabbit holes the book sent me down. I’ve been happily googling Curiosity, the Mariner missions, and space probes of all kinds.
There’s a great chapter on what life on other planets might, or might not, look like.
It seems to me we need to look after the planet we are on as much as looking out into space to find life. I liked this quotation from the book:
“Perhaps, and I like this idea best, any advanced civilisation will have become in tune with its natural environment, value nature's role in its survival and will be working in harmony with it. In this scenario, our supremely intelligent and compassionate aliens would not produce waste heat, light, nor electromagnetic signals from a repository of profligate technologies - so it will be less easy to find them until we use our intelligence to do the same.”
March 25, 2022
First few chapters were hard to read. But, it'll grab your attention, I'm glad I didn't abandon it. It wasn't too scientific detailed that you couldn't understand. The author gives a glimpse of "hope" to humanity preservation, in case one day, we have to abandon Earth. Are there any planets can be a contender to worth human colonization? If so, how could we harvest the planet's resources to sustain our fragility in space? In the meantime, the search for lives in other planets is ongoing, the micros that can live in the extreme environment like the water bears. Their DNA structure is so unique that they are one out of many micros still baffles scientists today. When there's liquid such as geysers, rocks, there will be life, whether we can see it or not.
February 26, 2018
This is a really good introductory book to the field of astrobiology and what it takes for a planet to be habitable. I read this as research for a scifi story I'm writing, an I'm really glad I did, it's really educational and touches on most of the same bits as the documentaries I watched (Like Richard Hammond's How to Build a Planet) did, but it covered those steps more in-depth and also went into some other requirements for a habitability. Like, before I read this book, I had no idea that plate tectonics were necessary for creating an atmosphere.
July 1, 2017
This took about 5 months for me to read. Because of that the rather extreme repetition wasn't so bad as I never had trouble picking up where I left off. After a hilarious and promising intro the book becomes a collection of about 200 mini essays that often cover the exact same information. This book could have benefited from a full restructuring but as a non-science stuff reader I still found it informative and accessible to my liberal arts brain.
May 25, 2020
The best part was the acknowledgement that astrobiology was the only science that has never discovered its subject matter. After a torturous discussion of what is necessary to sustain life the author finally gets to what is underway to find life in the universe and some of human’s endeavors to habituate nearby planets & moons. Not what I expected!
March 26, 2022
It was a bit boring and repetitive, I found myself diagonal reading a lot. Wish there was actually a solid chapter on tardigrades!!! It's cool to think about and Preston presents the pros and cons of living on different planets pretty thoroughly, but yeah. It was okay. Honestly took me years to read, cause I couldn't get into it.
June 7, 2023
Overall, a decent read with some interesting insights into how we search for life elsewhere. The book falls by being somewhat repetitive. It's not much of a page turner, I took longer than expected to trudge through the relatively short book, but despite this, it provokes thought about ourselves and our place in the universe and I did enjoy it overall.
January 23, 2018
Finish this some day, it's really good!
March 29, 2020
NF
281 pages
Excellent! A journey of how life began
and what our future might be.
281 pages
Excellent! A journey of how life began
and what our future might be.
October 8, 2021
This was really fun! Really well-done and got my thinker thinkin.
February 5, 2022
A great book for beginners interested in astrobiology. I personally would've loved a bit deeper approach, but the entire universe is of course too vast to fit in 280 pages.
November 26, 2024
For a book with Waterbears in the title, very little water bears in the book
March 3, 2017
"It was ok" is maybe the most positive I feel towards this book. I'm not exactly sure what audience Dr. Preston is aiming for, but I definitely felt like the prose was intended for a teenager or younger. Science communication often tackles with how to inform your audience without necessarily being condescending; Goldilocks and the Water Bears introduces lots of concepts and helpfully italicizes them when first mentioned, giving off the feel of a textbook. Some of these chapters, like the one describing what defines life and conditions life might need, definitely felt textbook-ish, especially with several italicized vocabulary words per paragraph.
One of my earlier criticisms as I was reading was that I'm finding pop culture references walk a fine line between potentially dated and cool enough to draw the reader in. The first chapter of this book discusses science fiction and how our space fantasies may inspire us to develop similar technologies or look for life in various ways. While not the focus of the book, the short explanations for some pieces of media (like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) were very general- I initially dismissed this as "Well, it is a tangent so best not to linger on it..."
I read a library copy, and an earlier reader had penciled in corrections in a few places (slashing through a comma at one point, correcting numbers elsewhere, and in a later chapter, crossing out "carnivorous" and writing in "allotrophic" in the margins). I also take issue with the use roughly once a chapter of "Fun fact: [fact here]." If it's a fun fact, shouldn't the fact speak for itself?
Perhaps her TED talk is more engaging, but the prose is very eh. I'd maybe recommend this to a middle or high school reader.
One of my earlier criticisms as I was reading was that I'm finding pop culture references walk a fine line between potentially dated and cool enough to draw the reader in. The first chapter of this book discusses science fiction and how our space fantasies may inspire us to develop similar technologies or look for life in various ways. While not the focus of the book, the short explanations for some pieces of media (like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) were very general- I initially dismissed this as "Well, it is a tangent so best not to linger on it..."
I read a library copy, and an earlier reader had penciled in corrections in a few places (slashing through a comma at one point, correcting numbers elsewhere, and in a later chapter, crossing out "carnivorous" and writing in "allotrophic" in the margins). I also take issue with the use roughly once a chapter of "Fun fact: [fact here]." If it's a fun fact, shouldn't the fact speak for itself?
Perhaps her TED talk is more engaging, but the prose is very eh. I'd maybe recommend this to a middle or high school reader.
February 16, 2018
I enjoyed this! The writing is a bit clunky at the start, and the author does have issues with grammar that really should've been picked up by an editor, but once the book gets on to actual science it's very interesting. Not a life changing book, but fun to spend some time with.
December 19, 2016
Not terrible but not particularly good. If this is a subject that has interested you for awhile, you are probably familiar with 90% of it. If you're new to this concept, your learn some stuff but you will also be bored by its repetitiveness. I was greatly disappointed in the section dealing with "water bears," aka tardigrades. These are amazing animals with so many features that uniquely qualify them as interplanetary travelers. She touches on them, but not in depth.
The author claims that she is trying not to be Earth-centric, to have an open mind as to what alien life might look like but I would say she fails in this. Her treatment of aquatic life is very dismissive, as is her treatment of plant life (or non-animal life to be more general). She makes assumptions about what alien intelligent life must look like without examining all of the forms that possibly intelligent life takes on Earth. For example, hands and opposing thumbs are NOT necessary as seen by animals as diverse as cephalopods and elephants.
In general, the book can teach you some things but it will not expand your mind.
The author claims that she is trying not to be Earth-centric, to have an open mind as to what alien life might look like but I would say she fails in this. Her treatment of aquatic life is very dismissive, as is her treatment of plant life (or non-animal life to be more general). She makes assumptions about what alien intelligent life must look like without examining all of the forms that possibly intelligent life takes on Earth. For example, hands and opposing thumbs are NOT necessary as seen by animals as diverse as cephalopods and elephants.
In general, the book can teach you some things but it will not expand your mind.
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