The Spark Of Life: Darwin And The Primeval Soup - Softcover

Wills, Christopher

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0738204935 ISBN 13: 9780738204932

Publisher: Perseus, 2001

Synopsis

"A highly readable survey of the historical prelude to the study of the origins of life, as well as selected areas of current research, including the search for extraterrestrial life."-NatureWhere did we come from? Did life arise on earth or on some other planet? What did the earliest primitive organisms look like? Untangling a century of contentious debate, the authors explore current theories of the source of life-from Martian meteors to hydrothermal vents-and then present their own elegant scenario: Life arose not in the subterranean depths, as many believe, but on Earth's tumultuous surface, where a primitive form of natural selection spawned the first genetic material, perhaps in the form of a proto-virus. Knowing exactly how life began on Earth will not only teach us more about ourselves, it will bring us closer to finding life elsewhere.

About this title

Review:

How did life begin on earth? Has life evolved on planets other than our own? These questions have occupied scientists and philosophers for hundreds of years, even costing the lives of those, such as Giordano Bruno, who ventured unpopular answers. The penalties for guessing are less severe today, and scientists Christopher Wills and Jeffrey Bada have a fine time examining the possibilities. Some scholars posit that life first emerged far below the earth's surface, the product of anaerobic, fiery environments. Drawing on advances in catalytic chemistry, Wills and Bada suggest that far more happened on the earth's surface, where "protobionts", floating like oil slicks on a primordial ocean studded with hydrothermal vents, formed a "prebiotic soup"--one that lacked RNA, the supposed building block of life. The evidence for this is conjectural, of course, as Wills and Bada cheerfully admit: "All the primitive organisms ... have inconveniently gone extinct". Reconstructing the pre-RNA world "would require either the discovery of such organisms preserved today in some unusual ecological niche, or else a daunting amount of guesswork". The quest for that "unusual ecological niche" is ongoing, with exploration now focused on a group of freshwater lakes that are trapped beneath the ice of Antarctica. The techniques that American and Russian scientific expeditions have developed to examine those lakes will be applied one day to Europa and other extraterrestrial bodies, where, Wills and Bada believe, evidence of other forms of early life will turn up. --Gregory McNamee

Synopsis:

The definitive story-in all its fascinating detail-of the search for life's beginnings. "A highly readable survey of the historical prelude to the study of the origins of life, as well as selected areas of current research, including the search for extraterrestrial life."-NatureWhere did we come from? Did life arise on earth or on some other planet? What did the earliest primitive organisms look like? Untangling a century of contentious debate, the authors explore current theories of the source of life-from Martian meteors to hydrothermal vents-and then present their own elegant scenario: Life arose not in the subterranean depths, as many believe, but on Earth's tumultuous surface, where a primitive form of natural selection spawned the first genetic material, perhaps in the form of a proto-virus. Knowing exactly how life began on Earth will not only teach us more about ourselves, it will bring us closer to finding life elsewhere.

About this edition

• Publisher: Perseus
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0738204935
• ISBN 13: 9780738204932
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320