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Is Earth Exceptional?
The Quest for Cosmic Life
Brief Description
A New York Times-bestselling astrophysicist and a Nobel laureate describe the quest to discover how and where the universe breathed life into matter. For a long time, scientists have wondered how life has emerged from inanimate chemistry, and whether Earth is the only place where it...
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See moreA New York Times-bestselling astrophysicist and a Nobel laureate describe the quest to discover how and where the universe breathed life into matter
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Description
A New York Times-bestselling astrophysicist and a Nobel laureate describe the quest to discover how and where the universe breathed life into matter.
For a long time, scientists have wondered how life has emerged from inanimate chemistry, and whether Earth is the only place where it exists. Charles Darwin speculated about life on Earth beginning in a warm little pond. Some of his contemporaries believed that life existed on Mars. It once seemed inevitable that the truth would be known by now.
It is not. For more than a century, the origins and extent of life have remained shrouded in mystery. But, as Mario Livio and Jack Szostak reveal in Is Earth Exceptional?, the veil is finally lifting. The authors describe how life's building blocks—from RNA to amino acids and cells—could have emerged from the chaos of Earth's early existence. They then apply the knowledge gathered from cutting-edge research across the sciences to the search for life in the cosmos: both life as we know it and life as we don't.
Why and where life exists are two of the biggest unsolved problems in science. Is Earth Exceptional? is the ultimate exploration of the question of whether life is a freak accident or a chemical imperative.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781541602960
Publisher: Basic Books
Format: Hardback
Date Published: 05 December 2024
Country: United States
Imprint: Basic Books
Illustration: 23 BW diagrams on text
Audience: Tertiary education, Professional and scholarly
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 34.0mm
Width: 156.0mm
Height: 238.0mm
Weight: 540g
Pages: 336
About the Author
Mario Livio is an astrophysicist who worked with the Hubble Space Telescope and a bestselling author of seven books, including The Golden Ratio and Brilliant Blunders. He lives in Hoboken, New Jersey.
Jack Szostak is a professor of chemistry at the University of Chicago, leading the Center for the Origin of Life. He shared the 2009 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. He lives in Chicago, Illinois.More from Science & Nature
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