The Eerie Silence

One of the world’s leading scientists explains why—and how—the search for intelligent life beyond Earth should be expanded. Fifty years ago, a young astronomer named Frank Drake first pointed a radio telescope at nearby stars in the hope of picking up a signal from an alien civilization. Thus began one of the boldest scientific projects in history, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). After a half-century of scanning the skies, however, astronomers have little to report but an eerie silence—eerie because many scientists are convinced that the universe is teeming with life. Physicist and astrobiologist Paul Davies has been closely involved with SETI for three decades and chairs the SETI Post-Detection Taskgroup, charged with deciding what to do if we’re suddenly confronted with evidence of alien intelligence. He believes the search so far has fallen into an anthropocentric trap—assuming that an alien species will look, think, and behave much like us. In this provocative book Davies refocuses the search, challenging existing ideas of what form an alien intelligence might take, how it might try to communicate with us, and how we should respond if it does.

Eerie Silence is a revelatory, jolting exploration into the ramifications of justice inaction in America and beyond and how silence has destructively contributed to issues related to race, racism, education, theology, and racial identity development. The compiled scholarship and research contained within the Eerie Silence project is provoking, risky, confrontational, validating, challenging, feisty, and emotionally and intellectually vulnerable. It is a must read for every person seeking a better grasp of the historically interlocked elements of race, racism, religion, theology, authentic Christianity, and racial identity development, especially as it relates to America and its influence. Erie Silence is an amazing book! Dr. Saheli has carefully deconstructed not only biblical narratives but also global history like an artist. With every stroke of his brush, he has created a multi-layered and complete work that has direct applications in many fields and disciplines... —Jennifer Tosch, Founder, Black Heritage Tours in NY State & Amsterdam, Netherlands Member, Mapping Slavery Project Netherlands Well-researched, superbly argued, and profoundly written, Eerie Silence is all at once a history lesson, critical social commentary, autobiographical sketch, sermon, and call to action to end the silence on race/racism. Saheli does a masterful job of intersecting several areas that share the stamp of racism and injustice in common. This is a powerful read for those who are in need for a deep, thoughtful, provocative, intellectual, and empowering learning experience about race in the United States. —Sharroky Hollie, PhD Executive Director, Center for Culturally Responsive Teaching and Learning This is a wine that will not last long in the wineskins of traditionalism, conservatism, anti-ism, self-righteousness, and isolated fellowship with link minded others, it is a call to ministry to break down the middle wall of racial partition in the church and society in order that generations of women, men, and young people might go unencumbered in their full potential and development. —James L. Taylor, PhD, Professor of Politics San Francisco, California

The Great Silence explores the multifaceted problem named after the great Italian physicist Enrico Fermi and his legendary 1950 lunchtime question "Where is everybody?" In many respects, Fermi's paradox is the richest and the most challenging problem for the entire field of astrobiology and the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI) studies. This book shows how Fermi's paradox is intricately connected with many fields of learning, technology, arts, and even everyday life. It aims to establish the strongest possible version of the problem, to dispel many related confusions, obfuscations, and prejudices, as well as to offer a novel point of entry to the many solutions proposed in existing literature. Ćirković argues that any evolutionary worldview cannot avoid resolving the Great Silence problem in one guise or another.

This extraordinary graphic novel is a powerful denunciation of sexual violence against women. As seen through the eyes of a twelve-year-old girl named Una, it takes place in northern England in 1977, as the Yorkshire Ripper, a serial killer of prostitutes, is on the loose and creating panic among the townspeople. As the police struggle in their clumsy attempts to find the killer, and the headlines in the local paper become more urgent, a once self-confident Una teaches herself to "lower her gaze" in order to deflect attention from boys. After she is "slut-shamed" at school for having birth control pills, Una herself is the subject of violent acts for which she comes to blame herself. But as the police finally catch up and identify the killer, Una grapples with the patterns of behavior that led her to believe she was to blame. Becoming Unbecoming combines various styles, press clippings, photo-based illustrations, and splashes of color to convey Una's sense of confusion and rage, as well as sobering statistics on sexual violence against women. The book is a no-holds-barred indictment of sexual violence against women and the shame and blame of its victims that also celebrates the empowerment of those able to gain control over their selves and their bodies. Una (a pseudonym) is an artist, academic, and comics creator. Becoming Unbecoming, which took seven years to create, is her first book. She lives in the United Kingdom.

There were things at Teind House that must be kept concealed from the prying world at all costs . . . Selina March has lived in the remote Scottish hamlet of Inchcape, with its mysterious Round Tower, for nearly fifty years. Brought up by elderly relatives, long since dead, she now lives alone, shunning the outside world as much as she can. But when she reluctantly accepts a paying guest, Selina's secluded life will change for ever. Crime writer Joanna Savile has come to Inchcape to research her latest novel by interviewing inmates at Moy, the asylum for the criminally insane situated nearby. Her secret aim is to question former child murderer, Mary Maskelyne, Moy's most infamous patient. Joanna's prying will yield unexpected results. For, although they have never met, Selina March and Mary Maskelyne are connected by a shared family tragedy: a terrible act of unspeakable cruelty that took place in India fifty years before. And there are secrets in Selina's more recent past, too. Secrets that are about to be uncovered with the most devastating and shocking consequences . . . 'Rayne handles a complicated story with many skeins very cleverly. A top psychological thriller' Good Reading magazine

The inspiration for the Netflix series 3 Body Problem! Over 1 million copies of the Three-Body Problem series sold in North America PRAISE FOR THE THREE-BODY PROBLEM SERIES: “A mind-bending epic.”—The New York Times • “War of the Worlds for the 21st century.”—The Wall Street Journal • “Fascinating.”—TIME • “Extraordinary.”—The New Yorker • “Wildly imaginative.”—Barack Obama • “Provocative.”—Slate • “A breakthrough book.”—George R. R. Martin • “Impossible to put down.”—GQ • “Absolutely mind-unfolding.”—NPR • “You should be reading Liu Cixin.”—The Washington Post The Dark Forest is the second novel in the groundbreaking, Hugo Award-winning series from China's most beloved science fiction author, Cixin Liu. In The Dark Forest, Earth is reeling from the revelation of a coming alien invasion-in just four centuries' time. The aliens' human collaborators may have been defeated, but the presence of the sophons, the subatomic particles that allow Trisolaris instant access to all human information, means that Earth's defense plans are totally exposed to the enemy. Only the human mind remains a secret. This is the motivation for the Wallfacer Project, a daring plan that grants four men enormous resources to design secret strategies, hidden through deceit and misdirection from Earth and Trisolaris alike. Three of the Wallfacers are influential statesmen and scientists, but the fourth is a total unknown. Luo Ji, an unambitious Chinese astronomer and sociologist, is baffled by his new status. All he knows is that he's the one Wallfacer that Trisolaris wants dead. The Three-Body Problem Series The Three-Body Problem The Dark Forest Death's End Other Books by Cixin Liu Ball Lightning Supernova Era To Hold Up the Sky The Wandering Earth A View from the Stars At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

An amazing story of a missionary couple's journey into the toughest places on earth is combined with stories about remarkable people of faith they encountered to challenge and inspire those curious about the sufficiency of God.

'A gripping new drama in science ... if you want to understand how the concept of life is changing, read this' Professor Andrew Briggs, University of Oxford When Darwin set out to explain the origin of species, he made no attempt to answer the deeper question: what is life? For generations, scientists have struggled to make sense of this fundamental question. Life really does look like magic: even a humble bacterium accomplishes things so dazzling that no human engineer can match it. And yet, huge advances in molecular biology over the past few decades have served only to deepen the mystery. So can life be explained by known physics and chemistry, or do we need something fundamentally new? In this penetrating and wide-ranging new analysis, world-renowned physicist and science communicator Paul Davies searches for answers in a field so new and fast-moving that it lacks a name, a domain where computing, chemistry, quantum physics and nanotechnology intersect. At the heart of these diverse fields, Davies explains, is the concept of information: a quantity with the power to unify biology with physics, transform technology and medicine, and even to illuminate the age-old question of whether we are alone in the universe. From life's murky origins to the microscopic engines that run the cells of our bodies, The Demon in the Machine is a breath-taking journey across the landscape of physics, biology, logic and computing. Weaving together cancer and consciousness, two-headed worms and bird navigation, Davies reveals how biological organisms garner and process information to conjure order out of chaos, opening a window on the secret of life itself.