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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Can you create life with just a taser and a bowl of soup? Most likely not, unless you give yourself a few hundred million years to experiment. Biologist Christopher Wills and marine chemist Jeffrey Bada show off the fruits of research looking for signs of life elsewhere and clues to the origin of terrestrial organisms in The Spark of Life. The writing is clear and every concept is explained well--Wills's reputation for translating scientific understanding into plain English is well-deserved, and Bada's insider status with NASA provides insight not found elsewhere. They examine the field of theories, from extraterrestrial origin to life spilling out of hydrothermal vents to deep-crust genesis, and find strengths and weaknesses in them all. Their own partisan stance has it that life began on the surface of our planet through Darwinian-like processes operating on primitive self-replicating chemicals. Though their arguments are fairly compelling, the jury is still out, and will probably remain out indefinitely; science often balks at providing explanations for unique events, preferring to stick to general principles. Still, we can see that the problem is valuable because the search for an answer turns up all sorts of unexpected scientific finds: RNA-catalyzed reactions, Martian environmental problems, and natural selection of nonliving chemicals all showed up amid these debates. While it won't settle the issues, we can be glad that The Spark of Life explains them so clearly and primes us for the research still to come. --Rob Lightner
From Booklist
Few scientific mysteries are as fascinating as the origin of life. Wills and Bada's book measures up to the subject's high interest. Both biologists, they ably relate the course of research since Stanley Miller and Harold Urey famously created amino acids in a test tube in 1953. The biochemistry of the primordial goo has since become better understood, as has the physical environment of the early earth. Wills and Bada's dramatic account of the forces at work during Earth's first billion years--huge tides due to the nearby moon, volcanism, a turbulent atmosphere, and an ocean of a composition that can only be postulated--makes the emergence of self-replicating molecules, let alone reproducing organisms, seem improbable indeed. Researchers attack the problem both from the bottom up, by trying to synthesize a system with self-replicating properties, and from the top down, by discerning how the biochemicals of the cell (ATP, RNA, proteins, etc.) function together. A tour of the exobiological potential of the solar system caps this lively presentation. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
See all Editorial Reviews
Can you create life with just a taser and a bowl of soup? Most likely not, unless you give yourself a few hundred million years to experiment. Biologist Christopher Wills and marine chemist Jeffrey Bada show off the fruits of research looking for signs of life elsewhere and clues to the origin of terrestrial organisms in The Spark of Life. The writing is clear and every concept is explained well--Wills's reputation for translating scientific understanding into plain English is well-deserved, and Bada's insider status with NASA provides insight not found elsewhere. They examine the field of theories, from extraterrestrial origin to life spilling out of hydrothermal vents to deep-crust genesis, and find strengths and weaknesses in them all. Their own partisan stance has it that life began on the surface of our planet through Darwinian-like processes operating on primitive self-replicating chemicals. Though their arguments are fairly compelling, the jury is still out, and will probably remain out indefinitely; science often balks at providing explanations for unique events, preferring to stick to general principles. Still, we can see that the problem is valuable because the search for an answer turns up all sorts of unexpected scientific finds: RNA-catalyzed reactions, Martian environmental problems, and natural selection of nonliving chemicals all showed up amid these debates. While it won't settle the issues, we can be glad that The Spark of Life explains them so clearly and primes us for the research still to come. --Rob Lightner
From Booklist
Few scientific mysteries are as fascinating as the origin of life. Wills and Bada's book measures up to the subject's high interest. Both biologists, they ably relate the course of research since Stanley Miller and Harold Urey famously created amino acids in a test tube in 1953. The biochemistry of the primordial goo has since become better understood, as has the physical environment of the early earth. Wills and Bada's dramatic account of the forces at work during Earth's first billion years--huge tides due to the nearby moon, volcanism, a turbulent atmosphere, and an ocean of a composition that can only be postulated--makes the emergence of self-replicating molecules, let alone reproducing organisms, seem improbable indeed. Researchers attack the problem both from the bottom up, by trying to synthesize a system with self-replicating properties, and from the top down, by discerning how the biochemicals of the cell (ATP, RNA, proteins, etc.) function together. A tour of the exobiological potential of the solar system caps this lively presentation. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
See all Editorial Reviews