• Acknowledgements


• Introduction


• Origins: How Life on Earth Began


• Going to Extremes: The Habitats and Requirements for Life


• The Incredible Shrinking Martians: Searching for Life in the Solar System


• The Death and Life of Stars: Organic Chemistry and the Evolution of Solar Systems


• The Planet Finders: Searching for Life Beyond the Sun


• What Happens in Evolution? Chance and Necessity in the Origin of Biological Complexity


• SETI: The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence


• Dreamland: The Science and Religion of UFOs


• Exotica: Life as we don't know it


• Many Worlds: Cosmology and the Anthropic Principle


• Conclusion


• Endnotes

David Koerner is an Assistant Professor of Astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania.
Simon LeVay is an Independent Consultant and former Associate Professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.

In Here Be Dragons, astronomer David Koerner and neurobiologist Simon LeVay offer a scientifically compelling and colorful account of the search for life beyond Earth.
The authors survey the work of biologists, cosmologists, computer theorists, NASA engineers, SETI researchers, roboticists, and UFO enthusiasts and debunkers as they attempt to answer the greatest remaining question facing humankind: Are we alone? From their "safe haven of skepticism" the authors
venture into the "rough seas of speculation," where theory and evidence run the gamut from hard science to hocus pocus. Arguing that the universe is spectacularly suited for the evolution of living creatures, Koerner and LeVay give us ringside seats at the great debates of Big Science. The
contentious arguments about what really happens in evolution, the acrimonious UFO controversy, and the debate over intelligence versus artificial intelligence shed new light on the wildly divergent claims about the universe and life's place in it.