With Dr. Kaltenegger as our witty and knowledgeable tour guide, we discover not merely new continents, like the explorers of old, but whole new worlds circling other stars. This riveting account will appeal to anyone who has ever gazed at the night sky in wonder.
ALIEN EARTHS
The New Science of Planet Hunting in the Cosmos
by Lisa Kaltenegger
St. Martin’s Press, April 2024
For thousands of years, humans have wondered whether we are alone in the cosmos. Now, for the first time, we have the technology to investigate. The question should have an obvious answer: yes or no. But once you try to find life elsewhere, you realize it is not so simple. What is life, actually? How do you find it over cosmic distances? And where are we the aliens? As director of the Carl Sagan Institute at Cornell University, astronomer Lisa Kaltenegger works with teams of tenacious scientists building the uniquely specialized tool kit to find life on alien worlds. In Alien Earths, she provides an insider’s view of what scientists are learning from Earth’s history and its astonishing biosphere. With an infectious enthusiasm, she takes us on an eye-opening journey to a dozen of the most unusual exoplanets that have shaken our worldview—planets covered in oceans of lava, lonely wanderers lost in space, and planets with more than one sun in the sky! And she dives into the worlds of science fiction, using these imagined other worlds to entertainingly describe how close they come to reality. With the James Webb Space Telescope, other smaller telescopes, and the pioneering work that Dr. Kaltenegger is carrying out in her labs, we live in an incredible epoch of exploration.
Lisa Kaltenegger is the Director of the Carl Sagan Institute to Search for Life in the Cosmos at Cornell and Associate Professor in Astronomy. She is a pioneer and world-leading expert in modeling potential habitable worlds and their detectable spectral fingerprint. Kaltenegger serves on the National Science Foundation’s Astronomy and Astrophysics Advisory Committee (AAAC), and on NASA senior review of operating missions. She is a Science Team Member of NASA’s TESS Mission as well as the NIRISS instrument on James Webb Space Telescope. Kaltenegger was named one of America’s Young Innovators by Smithsonian Magazine, an Innovator to Watch by TIME Magazine.
In IT BEGINS WITH YOU, Jillian will share hard-won lessons from her own life experience and from her years of coaching thousands of people on their love lives. She will share personal anecdotes, as well as her clients’ experiences, alongside her best advice and practical tools, tips, and questions, to help readers examine their own lives and relationships. Each chapter will focus solely on one of her 9 Hard Truths, such as: “No One is Coming To Save You” – which looks at inner strength, accountability, and dependences – in the relationships we keep, and in ourselves. Jillian holds nothing back as she weaves her own experiences into her lessons; imperfections and failures are a part of all relationships and acknowledging this truth is a core principle of her teaching.
Many of us experience periods in our lives when something feels “off”: when we struggle to find joy in happy moments, and take little pleasure in things we used to enjoy. We might be motivated and productive at work, pulling our weight at home, and conducting a normal social life—but behind that façade we are barely surviving, and certainly not thriving.
It’s an international tale that takes us from Mozambique to Australia, from Hong Kong to New York, and of course, inside the hushed, marble corridors of Zurich’s banking elite.