Genesis: The Scientific Quest for Life's Origin

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. How did non-living chemicals become alive? While the question is (deceivingly) simple, the answers are unquestionably complex. Science inevitably plays a key role in any discussion of life’s origins, dealing less with the question of why life appeared on Earth than with where, when, and how it emerged on the blasted, barren face of our primitive planet. Astrobiologist Robert Hazen has spent many years dealing with the fundamental questions of life’s genesis. As an active research scientist, he is down deep in all the messy details that science has to offer on the subject, tracing the inexorable sequence of events that led to the complicated interactions of carbonbased molecules. As he takes us through the astounding process of emergence, we are witness to the first tentative steps toward lifeâ€"from the unfathomable abundance of carbon biomolecules synthesized in the black vacuum of space to the surface of the Earth to deep within our planet’s restless crust. We are privy to the breathtaking drama that rapidly unfolds as life prevails. The theory of emergence is poised to answer a multitude of questionsâ€"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 why we are here.

• Front Matter
• Prologue
• Part I Emergence and the Origin of Life -- 1 The Missing Law
• 2 What Is Life?
• 3 Looking for Life
• 4 Earth's Smallest Fossils
• 5 Idiosyncrasies
• Interlude-God in the Gaps
• Part II The Emergence of Biomolecules -- 6 Stanley Miller's Spark of Genius
• 7 Heaven or Hell?
• 8 Under Pressure
• 9 Productive Environments
• Interlude-Mythos Versus Logos
• Part III The Emergence of Macromolecules -- 10 The Macromolecules of Life
• 11 Isolation
• 12 Minerals to the Rescue
• 13 Left and Right
• Interlude-Where Are the Women?
• Part IV The Emergence of Self-Replicating Systems -- 14 Wheels Within Wheels
• 15 The Iron-Sulfur World
• 16 The RNA World
• 17 The Pre-RNA World
• 18 The Emergence of Competition
• 19 Three Scenarios for the Origin of Life
• Epilogue-The Journey Ahead
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Plates