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The Aliens Are Coming!
- The Exciting and Extraordinary Science Behind Our Search for Life in the Universe
- Narrated by: Ben Miller
- Length: 7 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged Audiobook
- Categories: Politics & Social Sciences, Social Sciences
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Summary
Discover the fascinating and cutting-edge science behind the greatest question of all: is there life beyond Earth? For millennia, we have looked up at the stars and wondered whether we are alone in the universe. In the last few years, scientists have made huge strides towards answering that question.
In The Aliens Are Coming!, comedian and best-selling science writer Ben Miller takes us on a fantastic voyage of discovery, from the beginnings of life on Earth to the very latest search for alien intelligence.
What soon becomes clear is that the hunt for extraterrestrials is also an exploration of what we actually mean by life. What do you need to kick-start life? How did the teeming energy of the big bang end up as frogs, trees and quantity surveyors? How can evolution provide clues about alien life? What might it look like? (Probably not green and sexy, sadly.)
As our probes and manned missions venture out into the solar system, and our telescopes image Earthlike planets with ever-increasing accuracy, our search for alien life has never been more exciting - or better funded.
The Aliens Are Coming! is a comprehensive, accessible and hugely entertaining guide to that search and our quest to understand the very nature of life itself.
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What listeners say about The Aliens Are Coming!
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- C. Cooney
- 18-03-16
Interesting and witty
Ben Miller's light touch makes dense ideas easily digestible.
I sniggered out loud on public transport on several occasions and came away with my enthusiasm for this subject, well and truly informed and uplifted.
Thoroughly enjoyable.
2 people found this helpful
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- steve
- 03-03-16
Fantastically interesting . Brilliantly read .
The second Ben Miller book I've bought and very interesting it is too . Some very well described and funny analogies and some very informative facts . Brilliant book
2 people found this helpful
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- J. Arkinstall
- 20-02-16
Exceptional
I'm a physicist (PhD) with insomnia. So if I told you that I knew most of the content and used this audiobook to help me get to sleep, you'd probably conclude that I found it dull. You would be wrong. Firstly, for the general public this audiobook is very, very good at communicating concepts that most authors wouldn't dare go into. Secondly, the lines drawn between vastly different topics were very clever, and were certainly enough to distract my mind from my work and drop me to sleep (I listened to 30 minute chunks every night, the same chunk two nights in a row for anything I missed). The Author/Narrator needs no introduction, and there is little need to say that he does an excellent job at presenting the book. I welcome more of this kind.
5 people found this helpful
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- Simon
- 15-02-16
TOE explained without the formula.
Ben discusses many relevant scientific facts and weaves them together with his underlying witt. I was left with a picture of our place both on earth and within the universe which is quite different to how I viewed it beforehand.
2 people found this helpful
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- Dougie
- 20-03-17
It's Miller time
Ben Miller has a great ability to simplify the world of science. even a dolphin would understand (read it and it will make sense) not only that , his humour keeps you hooked on the subject. Great book
1 person found this helpful
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- Roy Evans
- 16-05-20
An enjoyable "science-made-easy" (almost) journey
I've lost count of the number of books I've read on the subject of the hunt for life off-planet, but this was one of the better ones. Ben Miller makes it so much more digestible with his plain and simple science mingled with pseudo-sarcasm, barbed wit and an agreeable presentation style. The section on the evolution of biology on planet Earth was a touch too long and heavy going, losing the flow somewhat, but overall worth every bit of the credit it took to acquire it.
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- Amazon Customer
- 04-02-20
No what I expected
Great book, good story and brilliant reading however the title does not reflect the content and for that I can only give 2 stars.
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- Lukas
- 07-06-18
very good.
I like that the author Ben Miller also read the book aload. I covers some good conspets.
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- Rich
- 16-04-18
Relaxing and entertaining
I listened to Ben while driving back and forth to work. His narration was funny and engaging. If your interested in this topic, I'd recommend give Ben a shot.
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- Gary
- 14-03-18
Not what I thought.
It wasn't what I was looking for, i wanted a lot more alien action. instead I got some very thorough, indepth and sometimes even interesting info on how life got going.