Life in the Universe

This is a great textbook. The information is up to date and it is very enjoyable to read.

This is a really expensive paperback, but it should have an honored place in your home, next to your dictionary, your atlas, your Roget's Thesaurus and your Holy Bible, Koran or any other book that is important to you. Its opening chapter, "A Universe of Life," is awe-inspiring, summoning up as it does the almost-endless, vast reaches of known creation and inviting us to consider how MUCH there is out there that might be home to any form of life --from the submicroscopic to beings, well, something like us (although not much of the book is given over to the latter possibillity). It tackles the place of religion, too, in all of this -- including Creationism and its offshoots -- and gives you some pretty good reasons for setting aside your feelings and just going along for the scientific ride in this 346-page stunner (plus appendixes). The artwork is superb. Worth the price of admission by itself. So, drag out the old credit card and put yourself even deeper into literary debt, because you will return to this book again and again over the years.

This book seems to have two goals. One is to teach the reader something about astrobiology. The other is to be a text for a science course for college undergraduates (in most cases, underclassmen majoring in something other than science). The book begins by discussing how stars and planets are formed. And then comes a major point: biology may be common in the universe given evidence that organic molecules form fairly easily, life appears to have originated early in the Earth's history, and there's evidence that Earth life can survive under a wide range of conditions. Next, there's a section on the nature of science and the scientific method. And then some material on the definition and nature of life. From there we go to the Earth's geological record. And there's a useful discussion of greenhouse gases, possible high surface temperatures on Earth when life first developed, and a possible "Snowball Earth" much later. Now comes a key chapter: how did life get started? And when. The text shows that it was not all that long after the Earth emerged from forming and being heavily bombarded. And that hyperthermophiles may well have been the common ancestor of life on Earth today. The book speculates that the process was: synthesis of organic precursor molecules, development of replicators (RNA), development of protocells (enclosing membranes), primitive cells (the RNA world), and then DNA-based cells. It also addresses the question of whether life could have migrated to Earth from Mars or elsewhere. There's a discussion of the rise of oxygen in the atmosphere. And how primitive life evolved into the intelligent life that now exists. These are certainly the right topics to start with. But I wish this book, even with the constraint of being for non-science majors, had gone into just a little more detail on all of them. It does just that on the rest of the topics. The book continues with an excellent section about possibilities of life elsewhere in our planetary system, including the environmental requirements. We look at Mars (including evidence from Martian meteorites), Jovian moons, and Titan. And we see why Venus is too close to the Sun to be in the "habitable zone." I hope that the next edition of this book, due out in 2006, will mention the Saturnian moon Enceledus as well. After that, there is a discussion of extrasolar planets and the serach for extraterrestrial intelligence. If anything, there is an excess of material here, including speculations about the possible technology levels of an intelligent society and interstellar travel. But this does lead to a worthwhile discussion of the Fermi paradox: if there are relatively nearby extraterrestrials, why aren't they here by now? Writing an overview of this field for non-science majors is a daunting task, and I think the authors did a really good job. After reading such a book, I think one will find it much easier to understand any advances made in this field in the future.

This is the ONE Science Textbook I will keep forever and ever.

This book seems to have two goals. One is to teach the reader something about astrobiology. The other is to be a text for a science course for college undergraduates (in most cases, underclassmen majoring in something other than science). The book begins by discussing how stars and planets are formed. And then comes a major point: biology may be common in the universe given evidence that organic molecules form fairly easily, life appears to have originated early in the Earth's history, and there's evidence that Earth life can survive under a wide range of conditions. Next, there's a section on the nature of science and the scientific method. And then some material on the definition and nature of life. From there we go to the Earth's geological record. And there's a useful discussion of greenhouse gases, possible high surface temperatures on Earth when life first developed, and a possible "Snowball Earth" much later. Now comes a key chapter: how did life get started? And when. The text shows that it was not all that long after the Earth emerged from forming and being heavily bombarded. And that hyperthermophiles may well have been the common ancestor of life on Earth today. The book speculates that the process was: synthesis of organic precursor molecules, development of replicators (RNA), development of protocells (enclosing membranes), primitive cells (the RNA world), and then DNA-based cells. It also addresses the question of whether life could have migrated to Earth from Mars or elsewhere. There's a discussion of the rise of oxygen in the atmosphere. And how primitive life evolved into the intelligent life that now exists. These are certainly the right topics to start with. But I wish this book, even with the constraint of being for non-science majors, had gone into just a little more detail on all of them. It does just that on the rest of the topics. The book continues with an excellent section about possibilities of life elsewhere in our planetary system, including the environmental requirements. We look at Mars (including evidence from Martian meteorites), Jovian moons, and Titan. And we see why Venus is too close to the Sun to be in the "habitable zone." After that, there is a discussion of extrasolar planets and the serach for extraterrestrial intelligence. If anything, there is an excess of material here, including speculations about the possible technology levels of an intelligent society and interstellar travel. But this does lead to a worthwhile discussion of the Fermi paradox: if there are relatively nearby extraterrestrials, why aren't they here by now? Writing an overview of this field for non-science majors is a daunting task, and I think the authors did a really good job. After reading such a book, I think one will find it much easier to understand any advances made in this field in the future.