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The Scientific Quest for Life's Origins
Joseph Henry Press
September 2005
339 pages ISBN: 0309094321 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
Life on Earth arose nearly 4 billion years ago, bursting
forth from air, water, and rock. Though the process obeyed
all the rules of chemistry and physics, the details of that
original event pose as deep a mystery as any facing
science. By what process did life actually begin? How did
non-living chemicals become alive? Where, when, and how did
life emerge on the blasted, barren face of our primitive
planet? Author Robert Hazen is one of the world’s foremost
scientists seeking answers to these questions. As an
astrobiologist at the Carnegie Institution in Washington,
D.C., Robert Hazen has spent many years dealing with the
fundamental mechanisms of life’s genesis. As an active
research scientist, he is experimentally tracing the
spellbinding sequence of events that led to the complicated
interactions of carbon-based molecules. Conducting experiments that subject the mix of elements
found near deep-ocean vents to the high temperatures and
crushing pressures of those lightless depths, he
hypothesizes that life may well have begun in such a place,
nourished by a rich mixture of minerals and organic
compounds and energized by geotectonic forces. Other
scientists believe that life may have originated on Earth’s
surface, where ocean waves repeatedly lapped a rocky
shoreline. Theories abound. But with Hazen as our guide, we
are witness to the first, tentative steps towards life,
then privy to the breathtaking drama that rapidly unfolds. Genesis throws the debate over life’s origins into
brilliant relief, tracing the efforts of scientists all
over the world as they confront nature’s most enduring
mystery. We are taken out of the lab and into the field to
meet the key players, witness the debates, and participate
in the discoveries and disappointments that are leading
inexorably to a plausible explanation for the momentous
beginning of life. The theory of emergence is poised to
answer a multitude of questions – even as it raises the
possibility that natural processes exist beyond what we now
know, perhaps beyond what we even comprehend. Genesis tells
the tale of transforming scientific advances in our quest
for life’s origins. Written with grace, beauty, and
authority, it goes directly to the heart of who we are and
how we got here.
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