About À l’aube de nouveaux horizons
"Who better than Nathalie A. Cabrol to take stock of one of mankind's most profound questions in a lively, didactic essay: are we alone in the Universe? The scientific director of the SETI Center (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) discusses in turn the exploration of our solar system, the search for exoplanets, the search for extraterrestrial signals and the types of civilization or life we hope to find there. The astrobiologist invites us to take part in the extraordinary odyssey we are currently experiencing, of which the images from the James-Webb telescope are but a tiny reflection. With 300 million exoplanets in our galaxy's habitable zone, thinking we're alone is "statistical nonsense". The sheer scale of some of these revelations makes us dizzy. From Titan to the planet 55-Cancer-e, from Drake's equation to Fermi's paradox, from the typologies of levels of extraterrestrial civilization to Gaia theory, a whole unknown world opens up to us. A stimulating, accessible book in the tradition of Hubert Reeves' Poussières d'étoiles. An invitation to a new kind of journey, in search of life elsewhere in the Universe, where "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence", in the words of Carl Sagan."
