Meet the Neighbors: Life on Mars and How to Find It - Couverture rigide

Benner, Steven A.

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0241808308 ISBN 13 : 9780241808306

Editeur : Allen Lane, 2026

Synopsis

'At last, a sensible and penetrating look at the possibility of life on Mars ... Bravo to Benner, one of the world’s most accomplished chemists, for putting the possibility of extant Martian life back on the scientific agenda'
Paul Davies, author of Quantum 2.0

Are we alone in the universe?

Mars has always seemed where we were likeliest to find the answer. Yet, since the Viking landers touched down in 1976, no mission has returned to the Martian surface to search directly for life living there now. Instead we’re searching the moons of outer planets, or the atmospheres of planets many light years away.

In Meet the Neighbors, pioneering astrobiochemist Steven A. Benner argues that this was a historic mistake. That we’re looking in the wrong place. Drawing on the Viking archive and explaining how the scientific process failed, he re-examines the mission that first searched for extant Martian life and makes the provocative case that its results were misunderstood. In the decades that have followed, Mars science has focused on water, geology and past habitability, while the most direct question – is anything alive on Mars today? – has been pushed aside.

Benner shows why Mars remains the most accessible place to discover a second origin of life, and why finding even microbial organisms there would transform our understanding of our place in the cosmos. He also asks a deeper question: what counts as life in the first place? From the chemistry that may give rise to living systems to “agnostic” tools capable of detecting unfamiliar biology, he lays out a bold and practical blueprint for the next phase of exploration.

At once a scientific detective story, a challenge to decades of orthodoxy, and a lucid guide to one of humanity’s biggest questions, Meet the Neighbors is the definitive, urgent brief on where to go, what to measure, and why the next discovery won’t just change textbooks – it will rewrite our place in the universe.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Steven A. Benner is a pioneering chemist, synthetic biologist and storyteller whose career has taken him from Harvard to NASA, via ETH Zurich. Throughout he has helped reshape the modern definition of life and the search for it beyond Earth.
Founding Director and Distinguished Fellow at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution, Benner helped found the fields of synthetic biology and paleogenetics. In 2023 he was awarded the Harold Urey Medal from the International Astrobiology Society for the study of the origin of life.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Allen Lane
• Date d'édition: 2026
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0241808308
• ISBN 13: 9780241808306
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 416
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: GPSR Kontakt; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Allemagne