Items related to The Fifth Miracle: The Search For the Origin of Life
Synopsis
Reveals the new theories and discoveries that seem set to transform our understanding of life's role in the cosmos. Davies examines the evidence suggesting that the first organisms lived deep underground and that microbes carried inside rocks have travelled between Earth and Mars.
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Review
The origin of life remains one of the most attractive and yet seemingly intractable problems in science. Was it by accident or design that at least 3.5 billion years ago inorganic matter somehow became vitalized on Earth? And if it happened here, could it have happened elsewhere in the Universe? Nobel prize-winning biologist Jacques Monod concluded that life is the product of chance, that "Man at last knows he is alone in the unfeeling immensity of the universe."
Paul Davies cogently argues otherwise in The Fifth Miracle. Originally a British physicist, Davies is now a prize-winning science writer living in Australia. Writing for a general readership, he covers all the main topics surrounding this fundamental question, from microbial biology and biochemistry, through the fossil record and genetics to Martian meteorites. Eminently readable, generally accurate and without mind-boggling detail (references are provided for intellectual explorers), Davies presents the current ideas and data in a very even-handed way. He comes down on the side of those who believe that we are not alone but live in a "self-organizing and self-complexifying universe, governed by ingenious laws that encourage matter to evolve towards life and consciousness." -- Douglas Palmer
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