Rare EarthWhy Complex Life is Uncommon in the UniversePeter D. Ward and Donald BrownleePreface p Introduction Ch 1: Why Life Might Be Widespread in the Universe p Ch 2: Habitable Zones of the Universe p Ch 3: Building a Habitable Earth p Ch 4: Life's First Appearance on Earth p66 Reflects on the short time from about 3.8 billion years, where he places the end of the late heavy bombardment, to comments about mounds. I presume he is referring to stromatolites. He says that is about 300 million years later. p67 Then he appears to give great credibility to Miller-Urey in the 1950s as evidence that life was able to build itself. Stanley Miller estimated the time from the prebiotic soup to cyanobacteria to be as little as 10 million years. Also, years later in 1996 in an article with Antonio Lazcano he again expresses the thought that such life could come into being in less than 10 million years. Ch 5: How to Build Animals p Ch 6: Snowball Earth p Ch 7: The Enigmas of the Cambrian Explosion p Ch 8: Mass Extinctions and the Rare Earth Hypothesis p Ch 9: The Surprising Importance of Plate Tectonics p 220 "It may be that plate tectonics is the central requirement for life on a planet and that it is necessary for keeping a world supplied with water." Ch 10: The Moon, Jupiter, and Life on Earth p Ch 11: Testing the Rare Earth Hypothesis p Ch 12: Assessing the Odds p Ch 13: Messengers from the Stars p
|
Reading Reference | ||
|
Go Back |