Review | Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth by Avi Loeb

Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth by Avi Loeb

I’m not sure what I expected from a book that posits that an alien structure passed through our solar system in 2017. Yes, I expected to read about some kind of weird anomalous, unexplainable object that passed through our solar system, and that’s definitely here. In the 11 days that we astronomers were able to observe it—noticed too late to possibly catch it before the interstellar object was on the way out of the solar system—it didn’t seem to fit all the characteristics of an asteroid or comet. Weird geometry, its luminosity, its lack of a cometary tail, the strange fact that it appeared to have accelerated away from the sun in a straight line, out of its orbit, somehow propelled…

All that I expected. And it’s really interesting. I’m not a scientist, but I find the natural world and Avi Loeb is an excellent writer. His book is replete with examples to demonstrate complex principles of physics. But the Extraterrestrial is not just a scientific argument for an interstellar visitor of alien origins. Also here is Loeb’s philosophical examination for what it means to look for evidence of aliens, why we should care, and why we should question scientific orthodoxy.

Yeah, that. It’s not as if Loeb is finding common cause with Galileo, who died accused of heresy by the Catholic Church because he would not agree with the orthodoxy of the day, though he’s certainly willing to point out the similarities. In his case, it’s the willingness to look for extraterrestrial life, something many of his colleagues in the field of astronomy are unwilling to do. The longest-serving chair of Harvard’s astronomy department, Loeb sees the impact of tenure, and the fight for tenure by young astronomers, as a force that influences young astronomers towards conformity instead of encouraging creativity and out of the box thinking.

Loeb is a good writer and his life-long interest in philosophy and an inclination to examine the big questions makes for an interesting narrative and mini-biography intermingled with how he got to a place where he’s mixing with Stephen Hawking, theorizing about black holes, and searching for evidence of extraterrestrial life. It’s really interesting stuff.

Is he right? Heck if I know. But he’s got me convinced that the questions we ask are about as important as the stuff we observe out there. If the universe is as big as we think it is, there’s good reason to think that other civilizations have arisen and, likely, are even more advanced than we are. When might we find evidence of them? Or they of us?

Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth Book Cover

Title: Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth
Author: Avi Loeb
Genre: Astronomy
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Release Date: January 26, 2021
Pages: 240

Harvard’s top astronomer lays out his controversial theory that our solar system was recently visited by advanced alien technology from a distant star.

In late 2017, scientists at a Hawaiian observatory glimpsed an object soaring through our inner solar system, moving so quickly that it could only have come from another star. Avi Loeb, Harvard’s top astronomer, showed it was not an asteroid; it was moving too fast along a strange orbit, and left no trail of gas or debris in its wake. There was only one conceivable explanation: the object was a piece of advanced technology created by a distant alien civilization.

In Extraterrestrial, Loeb takes readers inside the thrilling story of the first interstellar visitor to be spotted in our solar system. He outlines his controversial theory and its profound implications: for science, for religion, and for the future of our species and our planet. A mind-bending journey through the furthest reaches of science, space-time, and the human imagination, Extraterrestrial challenges readers to aim for the stars—and to think critically about what’s out there, no matter how strange it seems.