Five Billion Years of Solitude

This book by Lee Billings is good. An interesting topic is presented not in the dry language of facts, but in the form of an amazing story of people (astronomers, physicists, biologists, chemists, ...) who sacrificed their lives on the altar of science in the name of searching for our fellow beings of reason.

The book begins in the early 2000s with an encounter with the aging Frank Drake, who devoted his life to the SETI program - the scientific research program in search of extraterrestrial intelligence. From Drake's story, we learn how in the 1960s he formulated an equation estimating the number of advanced civilizations available for search, which included factors:

• average rate of star formation
• a fraction of stars with planets
• number of planets around such stars suitable for life
• a fraction of habitable planets
• a fraction of planets with intelligent life
• a fraction of alien civilizations capable of interstellar communication
• average duration of a civilization's existence

Multiplying the parameters listed above, we get Drake's estimate of the number of civilizations with which we could potentially communicate but first need to find :) In short, the rest of the book is dedicated to how one can assess each of the listed points.

The next chapter is dedicated to other heroes, whose time came after the appearance of the Kepler telescope and a whole series of discovered exoplanets. The author presents this as a competition between the American duo of Marcy and Butler and their European rivals. Interestingly, initially, each exoplanet led to bright newspaper headlines, but then there were too many announcements about discoveries, and they became commonplace events.

After that, the author plunges into the past for two and a half millennia and recalls the ancient Greeks, specifically Democritus and Aristarchus. These scholars had more accurate models of the surrounding reality, but Plato and Aristotle had different models of the world around them, which ultimately prevailed. The victors destroyed all works with alternative views, and the world forgot about it for a couple of millennia :)

Next, we return to the relative present and observe the history of Venus research and its transit across the Sun, which occurs approximately once every hundred years. After all, if you think about it, this is an excellent model of how one can determine the presence of planets orbiting stars.

Then we return to questions regarding our planet, particularly concerning its geological development. Processes of formation and accumulation of natural gas, oil, and coal, and further how humanity is currently burning it, increasing the level of CO2.

Further discussed is the thermobaric profile of exoplanets and how life may originate and be sustained on planets located in the habitable zone. This is a very interesting chapter, partly similar to the topic on which I almost started to write my bachelor's thesis :)

In the final chapters, the author recounts that not only does Roscosmos mess up its projects, but also NASA's space research suffers from a lack of funding and inconsistency in plans, partly due to market changes :)

It all ends with the personal story of scientist Sarah Seager, who dreams of reviving the Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) project and sees three paths:

• NASA and the right priorities regarding this project
• Involvement of private companies in the project
• Financing from personal funds, and for this, the organization of space startups that will make money and drive science forward.

And finally, I will quote the last words in the book:

"I have seen only the path itself. The path through barren lands."

P.S.

I believe that popular science books should be written exactly like this, in a narrative style, blending scientific facts with personal stories of the people who contributed to their emergence. This makes it easy to read and touches the heart.