Over the past two decades, advanced technologies and space missions have completely transformed our understanding of potential life beyond Earth. The resulting field, astrobiology, has become a multidisciplinary scientific discipline, encompassing many of the natural sciences and having implications for many areas of research. This book presents an introduction and overview of astrobiology. It deals with a wide range of fields, from the search for signs of life on planets in our solar system, to the discovery of exoplanets in distant solar systems and assessing the potential for life there. The book is based on the course of the same name that the author taught for more than two decades at the Hebrew University, and the course recorded on YouTube in the Cornerstones program , which has accumulated tens of thousands of views. The book is accessible not only to students of natural sciences, but to any reader who wants to learn about and understand the fascinating possibilities of life on other worlds.

The book takes the reader on a journey of discovery ranging from the planets of our solar system to stars and distant solar systems in the Milky Way, our home galaxy, and beyond to the ends of the universe. It proposes a reader-friendly introduction to astrophysics and the physics of stars and planets, accompanied by over one hundred illustrations. The book explains concepts, distances and phenomena from other worlds, very different from our everyday experience. Throughout its journey through the universe the book introduces the science of astrobiology: the search for biological life in space. It also accompanies the course "Astrobiology and Life in the Universe" presented by the author and recorded for the benefit of the public in the "Cornerstones" program of the Hebrew University. The book deals with topics that have received widespread media coverage in recent years, such as NASA's research missions to Mars and their Kepler and James Web space telescopes. While the Kepler mission led in 2010-2015 to a breakthrough in discovering numerous worlds suitable for life outside the Solar System, James Web, whose launch is expected in 2021, will provide to humanity for the first time the ability to detect signs of life in these worlds.