Is there anybody out there? Is ET trying to phone home? In the past decade or so, astrobiology has come of age. Once regarded as a laughing stock - physicists turned Roswell freaks - astrobiologists are increasingly greatly in number. Their subject is one of the few that has actually seen an increase in funding in recent years. Astrobiology blends astronomy, chemistry, and biology to search for amino acids and other building blocks of life. Practitioners seek new planets beyond our solar system, to seek out new life forms, to boldly go...Questions are posed, such as whether all life must be carbon based, whether only Earthlike planets can support life, and whether there "can be life, Jim, but not as we know it." This book is probably the first serious yet accessible book written on the subject. Plaxco is a chemist, Gross a molecular biologist and popular science writer.