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1 - Approaching the Topic

from Part I - Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2023

Raymond Hickey
Raymond Hickey
Affiliation:
University of Limerick
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Summary

How do you write a book about things, life and language on planets outside our own Solar System, when you do not even know if they exist or not? The only sensible answer is by looking at how life developed on Earth1 and then considering how this could manifest itself on exoplanets, those beyond the planets which orbit our star, the Sun. This is because when considering possible Earth-like planets (see Section 8.8 for 10 criteria) we have, at our present state of knowledge, a set consisting of only one member, our Earth; this is the ‘set of one’ issue (Figure 1.1).

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Life and Language Beyond Earth , pp. 3 - 14
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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  • Approaching the Topic
  • Raymond Hickey, University of Limerick
  • Book: Life and Language Beyond Earth
  • Online publication: 16 September 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009229272.002
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  • Approaching the Topic
  • Raymond Hickey, University of Limerick
  • Book: Life and Language Beyond Earth
  • Online publication: 16 September 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009229272.002
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Approaching the Topic
  • Raymond Hickey, University of Limerick
  • Book: Life and Language Beyond Earth
  • Online publication: 16 September 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009229272.002
Available formats
×