Written in the stars: Inside Bachelor star Matt Agnew's new book Dr Matt's Guide to Life in Space

We were hooked as soon as the then-new Bachelor, looking dapper in a tux and armed with plenty of geeky jokes, embarked on his quest to find love. In front of millions of viewers.

While he may be an expert at what it takes to be a reality TV star, a different type of stardom is the focus of his first book. Hot off the press, the book helps answer one of the most common questions the astrophysicist gets asked - and no, it has nothing to do with his dating life.

Dr Matt's Guide to Life in Space is a book for people who are interested in learning about the solar system but may not know where to start. It begins with The Big Bang, explains why water is such a key part of our existence, before heading out on the search for planet B.

Of course, the question that Agnew is regularly asked - and tries to answer in the book - is "are there aliens?"

Having written multiple papers on the habitability of other planets, it's no surprise people are interested in his opinion.

"It's probably the number one question I get asked," Agnew says.

"So I leaned on my own personal research ... for the book. But also, I wanted to go into what natural human curiosity [leads people to think] about.

"I think one of the things that people do find interesting is the idea of [another Earth-like planet] and ... things that we've detected that make us ask, is it aliens? Or is this something else?

"And I entertained some of these ideas but I remain fairly rooted in science. And I give the scientific answer as well."

Talk of extraterrestrial life is enough to get most people excited, and isn't that the point? To get people engaged enough to learn about something new.

On the topic of aliens, science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke once said (and Agnew quotes this in his book): "Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying."

When it comes to the book's section about aliens - which is at the end, so strap in for some other big questions, such as "How did we get here anyway?" before tackling the extraterrestrial ones - Agnew begins with the Drake equation (and no, it has nothing to do with the rapper).

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Conceived by American astrophysicist Frank Drake, the equation effectively uses probability to search for life beyond Earth. It plugs in different variables such as the Milky Way's star birth rate, the average number of planets per planetary system and the hypothetical fraction of planets that can support life, and what we get is the predicted number of galactic civilizations that we would be able to communicate with. And believe it or not, the estimated number is three million.

This sounds like a lot, but as a relative comparison, there are somewhere between 100 and 400 billion stars. That's about one planet for every 83,000 stars. So it's a little less impressive, but for the optimists out there, it's still not zero.

"It's a fun area to play around with and I do remain firmly in science, but I do allow a bit of creative license because I think that's what excites people," Agnew says.

"That's what excites the next generation of scientists, the idea that there are these unknowns that we don't have answers to. And I think that's important for me, not just reminding people of their love of science, but also exciting the next generation of scientists to ask these questions."

Agnew is an unapologetic space nerd. It's hard to not get excited about space just by listening to him speak about it. Or, for that matter, reading the book, because he has taken a conversational approach to deliver the information.

He has this childlike excitement and curiosity that comes across - something he feels many adults have lost over the years when it comes to science.

"People do love science but for some reason or another, it might have got parked and put in a box and that could be because of distraction, or in really unfortunate circumstances if someone's made you feel not smart enough to do science."

But on a personal level, astrophysics was a way for Agnew to get back in touch with what he loved as a kid.

Agnew's original bachelor's degree was in engineering, and while he worked for three years in the field - and it was a career path that was well-suited to his siblings - it wasn't ticking the boxes for him. But when his dad asked him what excited him as a kid - to which the answer was, of course, space - astrophysics just clicked.

Sure, space is something that interests most kids. Many will even go through a phase where they want to be an astronaut. Agnew just never grew out of that. He even applied for an astronaut program last year. (Sadly, he was knocked back so we won't see a Bachelor head into space anytime soon).

"I think they had about 26,000 applications for six positions, so the numbers were stacked against me. Also, I have a PhD in astrophysics, but you're competing against people who have a PhD in astrophysics plus 1000 hours of flight time, plus a medical degree. These are the best of the best of the best."

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For now, Agnew has his feet firmly on the ground.

As far as space books go, Dr Matt's Guide to Life in Space looks at life on Earth more than you would think.

Topics such as weird deep sea creatures (that might as well be aliens - Google the water bear if you don't believe me) and what magnetic fields have to with the Northern Lights, are all brought up in the hunt to explain what makes Earth so special.

That naturally leads into the topic of planet habitability. In other words, are we going to need a planet B? What would we need from a planet B? And how soon are we going to need it?

"We certainly don't want to go the way of the dinosaurs," Agnew says.

"In the last month, there was a NASA mission where they tried to nudge an asteroid, to see how much they could move it off course by crashing something into it. The idea is that, if we could detect something on a path towards us, if we gave it a nudge early enough, could we redirect it so that it wouldn't impact us?

"But I think there's still an important idea that we have a planet B in the sense that there just might be something that we have no control over. There might be an asteroid that's just too big, that we can't nudge and it's going to impact Earth - what's our plan here?

"Have we found anything remotely close? The answer is no. There's nothing ... similar to Earth. And also nothing close, proximity-wise. Mars is certainly the place where I think we need to set up some kind of secondary colony as an existential redundancy situation. But the key takeaway is we have this amazingly beautiful planet and we are not doing our due diligence in terms of taking care of it."

Dr Matt's Guide to Life in Space, by Matt Agnew. Allen & Unwin. $32.99.

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