Searching for Alien Life… In Books
Think there’s alien life out there? I definitely do. And assuming extraterrestrials abound, I often wonder what would that life be like? Is it single-celled or big-brained? Do we want to meet it, or would that end badly for us (or them)? In trying to learn more, I’ve read a ton of books about aliens—fiction and nonfiction—and I’ve listed a handful of my favorites below. For those of you who might want to learn more before making up your mind, check out the second season of Wild Thing: Space Invaders and follow me down a wormhole of unanswerable (but fascinating!) questions.
The universe is how old?
What really convinced me that aliens could be out there was learning the age of the universe. Scientists think it’s around 13.8 billion years, give or take a few million years—see the illustrated timeline below. And when trying to wrap your head around this number, there’s probably no better book than Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time. In this nonfiction classic on cosmology, Hawking explains, among other things, the origins of the universe in a clear and straightforward way for us non-scientist types.
Now, to be clear, he doesn’t talk about extraterrestrial life but in reading this book, I thought about that 13.8 billion years and also how our home planet has only been around for about 4.5 billion years. There are lots of billions of years between those two numbers where other life could have arisen, other civilizations could have evolved. Not to mention the universe is currently estimated to be about 550 septillion miles across. That’s 550 with seven sets of 000s after it. How could life NOT be out there?
Timeline of evolution of the (observable part) of the universe from the Big Bang (left) to the present. Credit: NASA/WMAP Science Team
Traveling Through Time and Space
Of course, being good, scientifically-minded people, we can only hypothesize on the possibility of aliens. We still don’t have the kind of proof that would make the existence of extraterrestrials a fact. But, in my opinion, all that time and space and distance opens up some real possibilities regarding alien life. It could be it’s so far away that we’ll never know it actually exists. Or perhaps extraterrestrial life once existed and then died out, long before life ever arose on this planet. Or maybe aliens even once paid a visit to Earth—but billions of years ago, when it was just a hunk of flaming lava. If I were them, I wouldn’t want to visit again. Or what if a far-flung planet that we think isn’t habitable might have once been… or could become that way over millions of years?
As I was digging into these topics, I totally had my mind blown by Adrian Tchaikovsky’s science fiction novel Children of Time. Given the size of the universe and the distances between potentially habitable planets, it could take tens of thousands of years to travel between them. What would happen to a species as it made that journey? How would it evolve? Would we even resemble ourselves on the other end? And how would that planet itself change in the time it took to get there?
Space Rock or Space Alien?
And off course, there’s always the possibility that the aliens are still in the process of making their way here—or at least sending a probe. Ever heard of ‘Oumuamua? This was an interstellar object—an object from outside our solar system—that in 2017 came close enough (relatively) to Earth that we were able to capture distant images of it. Most scientists think it was probably an asteroid or comet of sorts, a piece of rock that had been violently flung out of its own solar system millions of years ago. But at least one scientist suggested that we should consider the possibility of it being a piece of alien technology. (Kids can learn more about this in Is There Anybody Out There?)
Artist's impression of ʻOumuamua. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser
What’s really cool is that this real-life story echoed the plot of the classic science fiction book by Arthur C. Clarke, Rendezvous With Rama. Set in the future, an interstellar object is detected by Earth’s defense systems and the authorities send a team to investigate it. What that team finds leaves them with more questions than answers as they attempt to piece together information about the civilization that might have created this object. What is it, exactly? Where did it come from? And what became of the civilization that built it? The frustration of not knowing is palpable and something I completely understood.
Laura Krantz is the host and producer of the Wild Thing podcast, which explores fascinating topics on science and society. A longtime journalist, editor, and producer, she also wrote the book Is There Anybody Out There?. She’s also an avid reader—the list above is just a small selection of the books I devoured when researching those two projects, so here’s a link to a few more!