Jon Willis has spent years looking to the stars, but for the University of Victoria physics and astronomy professor, the search for alien life often begins right in his own backyard.
Willis released his second book, The Pale Blue Data Point: An Earth-Based Perspective on the Search for Alien Life, on Oct. 30, following up on his 2016 title, All These Worlds Are Yours: The Scientific Search for Alien Life.
The new book draws on his research and global expeditions, from studying hydrothermal vents off the coast of Vancouver Island to searching for ancient fossils in Australia, but Willis says the local perspective is central.
“Living in Victoria, even above the surface, you can’t escape that you live on a living planet that is vibrant and alive,” he said. “But oh my word, once you go into the oceans just one, two, three metres down, it’s just as beautiful and abundant, even more so, in our local waters.”
Willis joined the Ocean Exploration Trust in 2017, expecting trips around the globe.
Instead, his first adventure began in Greater Victoria, in Sidney, heading 200 kilometres off the Island to study deep ocean vents.
“I must admit I was taken aback at that point,” he said. “I thought there was gonna be air tickets and you know something like that, but no, so I took a taxi up to Sidney, joined the ship at the Institute of Ocean Sciences in Pat Bay.”
Students in his popular UVic course Search for Life in the Universe (ASTR 201) also shaped the book.
“They’re almost all there because they want to be, they’re out of interest,” Willis said.
“They’re really bright and on the ball, answering the questions they’ve had, have been a lot of inspiration for this whole process.”
He hopes the book inspires the next generation of astrobiologists, emphasizing that the search for life is often microscopic.
“The first life we encounter, especially if it’s in the solar system, it may well be microscopic. It’s gonna be things equivalent on Earth to our single-celled microbes,” he said.
The book blends science and adventure, taking readers on deep sea dives, desert expeditions, and stargazing at mountaintop observatories.
Willis describes it as “Indiana Jones meets Carl Sagan meets David Attenborough,” bringing readers along to experience both the excitement of exploration and the careful work of scientific discovery.
He hopes to leave people with a sense of wonder.
“It’s impossible not to when you’re in the water,” he said. “There’s all the different creatures… some of them, not just the jellyfish, but the comb jellies, when they flash in front of your vision with their iridescent colours and they’re pulsing, you could be in an alien world.”
The book invites readers to explore our single “pale blue data point,” the living planet we call home, and imagine what life beyond Earth might look like.