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Also by Robert M. Hazen:

Gen-e-sis, September 2005
Hardcover

GEN-E-SIS
By: Robert M. Hazen

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.

Media Buzz

Diane Rehm Show - NPR - December 21, 2005