Meet the Neighbors (inbunden, eng)

'At last, a sensible and penetrating look at the possibility of life on Mars ... Bravo to Benner, one of the world’s most accomplished chemists, for putting the possibility of extant Martian life back on the scientific agenda'
Paul Davies, author of Quantum 2.0

Are we alone in the universe?

Mars has always seemed where we were likeliest to find the answerYet, since the Viking landers touched down in 1976, no mission has returned to the Martian surface to search directly for life living there now. Instead we’re searching the moons of outer planets, or the atmospheres of planets many light years away.

In Meet the Neighbors, pioneering astrobiochemist Steven ABenner argues that this was a historic mistake. That we’re looking in the wrong place. Drawing on the Viking archive and explaining how the scientific process failed, he re-examines the mission that first searched for extant Martian life and makes the provocative case that its results were misunderstood.

In the decades that have followed, Mars science has focused on water, geology and past habitability, while the most direct question – is anything alive on Mars today? – has been pushed aside.

Benner shows why Mars remains the most accessible place to discover a second origin of life, and why finding even microbial organisms there would transform our understanding of our place in the cosmosHe also asks a deeper question: what counts as life in the first place? From the chemistry that may give rise to living systems to “agnostic” tools capable of detecting unfamiliar biology, he lays out a bold and practical blueprint for the next phase of exploration.

At once a scientific detective story, a challenge to decades of orthodoxy, and a lucid guide to one of humanity’s biggest questions, Meet the Neighbors is the definitive, urgent brief on where to go, what to measure, and why the next discovery won’t just change textbooks – it will rewrite our place in the universe.

Format	Inbunden
Omfång	416 sidor
Språk	Engelska
Förlag	Penguin Books Ltd
Utgivningsdatum	2026-07-23
ISBN	9780241808306