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Extraterrestrial

The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth

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Extraterrestrial

By: Avi Loeb
Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
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About this listen

The world's most eminent scientist of space explains why he believes in extraterrestrial life.

Harvard's top astronomer lays out his controversial theory that our solar system was recently visited by advanced alien technology.

In late 2017, scientists at a Hawaiian observatory glimpsed a strange object soaring through our inner solar system. Astrophysicist Avi Loeb conclusively showed it was not an asteroid; it was moving too fast along a strange orbit and leaving 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 civilisation.

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

©2021 Avi Loeb (P)2021 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Astronomy Astronomy & Space Science Science Solar System Technology Interstellar

Critic Reviews

"Visionary." (Stephen Greenblatt)

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Loeb really shines a hot light in the dogmatic scientific community and the attitudes that plague it. It really is a shame that the broader scientific community are so averse to taking risks and exploring more exotic theories. Hopefully with leaders like Loeb, humankind can invest in exploring the stars and not trying to explain them away.

Inspiring work from Avi Loeb

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Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And in suggesting an alien origin of Oumuamua, Avi Loeb does make a bold claim indeed. Only problem is: there isn’t a whole lot of evidence for what he suggests. And since Oumuamua has since left the solar system, there isn’t the chance to take another look either. That’s not the authors fault of course. But it makes the factual foundation for this book quite thin. In fact, one could summarise the hypothesis that Loeb puts forward and the observational evidence that supports it in a single chapter. The author does not only turn this into a rather long-winded multi-chapter narrative, but also fills the pages with biographical details about himself and some general critique of astronomical science as a whole, which Loeb sees as overly cautious and conservative. Make of this what you want, but I find it telling that he then does not bother to properly discuss any counter-argument to his hypothesis, such that this book barely passes as a popular science read.

To sum it up: too many pages for too few facts and too much guesswork.

Too little substance

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I loved this book and recommended it to a number of family and friends.

It's provides a compelling story of humanities place in the universe and whether or not we are alone. I thoroughly enjoyed the dive into the scientific community and the current issues that lies within.

A fantastic book to listen to!

Exciting look into space and scientific culture

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good book, although it is in the wrong category. its a fairly sensible science book.

Pretty Fascinating

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this is my first science book and it was easy to follow along and used many examples to explain complex astrophysical theories

easy read for science amateur

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I’ve always had an interest in science. I never really considered the possibility of interstellar objects being of extra terrestrial origin. This has been a great eye opener for me . Congratulations to the author. A marvellous read

Open minded grandpa

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I found this book too verbose and often drifted off the subject matter. This made it difficult to focus on the content and caused my attention to wander too.

Not Concise

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Ultimately a plea against the scientific community to be open minded towards aliens. This is a great and fine point. The problem with the book is the majority of it seems spent in the very issues hes pleaing the world to be above, not on the other side where he's asking us to be. More of a revelation in the problem not the solution.

The idea is sound... but

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