Alien Earths

Archival Summary & Scope

For millennia, humanity has pondered life beyond Earth. Astrophysicist Lisa Kaltenegger, founding director of Cornell's Carl Sagan Institute, explains how we can now investigate this profound question. In *Alien Earths*, she reveals her team's innovative toolkit, using Earth's history and biosphere as a "Rosetta Stone" to detect life on distant exoplanets. With infectious enthusiasm, Kaltenegger takes readers on a journey through the cosmos' most astonishing worlds—from lava oceans to planets with multiple suns—identifying the best candidates for alien life and bridging the gap between scientific discovery and the imagined worlds of science fiction.