Table of Contents

1. An explanation for the absence of extraterrestrials on Earth Michael H. Hart; 2. One attempt to find where they are: NASA's high resolution microwave survey Jill Tarter; 3. An examination of claims that extraterrestrial visitors to Earth are being observed Robert Sheaffer; 4. The likelihood of interstellar colonization, and the absence of its evidence Sebastian von Hoerner; 5. Preemption of the galaxy by the first advanced civilization Ronald Bracewell; 6. Stellar evolution: motivation for the mass interstellar migrations Ben Zuckerman; 7. Interstellar propulsion systems Freeman Dyson; 8. Interstellar travel: a review Ian A. Crawford; 9. Settlements in space, and interstellar travel Cliff Singer; 10. Terraforming James Oberg; 11. Estimates of expansion time scales Eric M. Jones; 12. A search for tritium sources in our Solar System may reveal the presence of space-probes from other stellar systems Michael D. Papagiannis; 13. Primordial organic cosmochemistry Cyril Ponnamperuma and Rafael Navarro-Gonzalez; 14. Chance and the origin of life Edward Argyle; 15. The RNA world: life before DNA and protein Gerald F. Joyce; 16. The search for extraterrestrial intelligence Ernst Nayr; 17. Alone in a crowded universe Jared Diamond; 18. Possible forms of life in environments very different from the Earth Robert Shapiro and Gerald Feinberg; 19. Cosmological SETI frequency standards J. Richard Gott, III; 20. Galactic chemical evolution: implications for the existence of habitable planets Virginia Trimble; 21. The frequency of planetary systems in the galaxy Jonathan I. Lunine; 22. Atmospheric evolution, the Drake equation, and DNA: sparse life in an infinite universe Michael H. Hart.