Alien Oceans: The Search for Life in the Depths of Space
A Nasa scientist’s search for unusual ecosystems – in the depths of our own oceans and much further afield
Growing up as a science and science fiction enthusiast in the 1960s, I eagerly devoured the tales of techno-optimism from writers such as Arthur C Clarke. They pictured a near future where a united humanity had reached out beyond our planet’s surface to explore and live within both the ocean depths of Earth and on our solar family’s other, mostly barren worlds.
Well, we now know that in a fragmented post-cold-war world it didn’t turn out quite like that – but in corners of the science and aerospace communities, the essence of that dream persisted. This new book by Kevin Hand, a scientist at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the US, explores the search for unusual ecosystems – in the depths of our own oceans and much further afield.