Synopsis
The search for life in the Universe is one of the biggest questions for humanity.
In this explosive book, Steven Benner argues we've been looking in the wrong place. In 1976, NASA landed two Viking missions on Mars specifically tasked with looking for current (or extant) Martian life. Given how the results of the onboard experiments were interpreted, no space mission since has returned to search for life living on Mars today.
With unparalleled access to the Viking archive, Benner explains why those results were misinterpreted, why it is possible that the Viking landers did find life, and why and how we can go back to be sure. In the fifty years since Viking, Mars science missions have studied questions of geology and past habitability, but deliberately steered away from the riskiest question: is anything alive there now?
In Meet the Neighbors, pioneering astro-biochemist Steven Benner reveals why we’ve been looking the wrong way, and lays out the practical path to find life on Mars. Half a century on he reexamines Viking’s results, the politics that sidelined life detection, and the recent blueprint to search Mars’s best ‘refugia’ (caves, subsurface, ice, salt).
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About the Author
Steven A. Benner is a pioneering chemist, synthetic biologist and storyteller whose career has taken him from Harvard to NASA, via ETH Zurich. Throughout he has helped reshape the modern definition of life and the search for it beyond Earth.
Founding Director and Distinguished Fellow at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution, Benner helped found the fields of synthetic biology and paleogenetics. In 2023 he was awarded the Harold Urey Medal from the International Astrobiology Society for the study of the origin of life.
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Meet the Neighbors (Hardcover)
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Penguin Books Ltd, London, 2026
ISBN 10: 0241808308
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Hardcover. Condition: new. Hardcover. A pioneering astrobiochemist argues that the 1976 Viking landers may already have found life on Mars - and shows how we can prove itAre we alone in the universe? Mars has always seemed where we were likeliest to find the answer. Yet, 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 A. Benner 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 cosmos. He 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. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. Seller Inventory # 9780241808306
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Hardback. Condition: New. '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 2.0Are we alone in the universe? Mars has always seemed where we were likeliest to find the answer. Yet, 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 A. Benner 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 cosmos. He 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. Seller Inventory # LU-9780241808306
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