Earlier this month I found myself reading Is Earth Exceptional? by Livio and Szostak.
This is a popular science book (that is, not a textbook) which gives a status report on two related scientific efforts:
- How did life on Earth begin?
- Is there life anywhere else in the universe besides Earth?
Attempting to answer these questions involves both chemistry and astrophysics, and so it is reasonable that the book is co-written by an astrophysicist and a chemist.
Some 45 years ago, when I was an undergraduate at the University of Chicago, I remember taking an introductory course, I think it was called something like "Moons and Planets", which talked a bit about both of these topics. I don't remember very much about the course, but I definitely remembered learning about the Miller-Urey experiment, which was of course a highlight of the course given that the work had been done at the UofC. Whatever course it was I took, it was very similar to this course that is currently taught, so it's interesting to see that the University is sustaining their efforts to keep their students aware of this very interesting area of pure science.
It was fun to return to this area and get a feel for how much things have progressed in the 70+ years since Miller-Urey.
For a book on pure science, Is Earth Exceptional? is quite entertaining and strikes a good balance between scientific accuracy and approachability to the layman. You will read a fair number of passages such as:
Similarly, activated nucleotides dissolved in water will not polymerize, but if that solution freezes, as might happen during a winter cold snap, polymerization starts to happen because the nucleotides become concentrated in the thin liquid zones between the growing water-ice crystals. Wet-dry cycles can also lead to the formation of peptides. In one interesting process, alpha-hydroxy acids, when dried down, spontaneously react with each other to form polymers known as polyesters. Amino acids can then attack these ester linkages, becoming incorporated into a mixed polymer of amino acids and hydroxy acids.
This is, approximately, about as deep and about as shallow as any other arbitrary passage in the entire book. Which seems pretty reasonable to me. If you're comfortable reading material like this, you'll probably like Is Earth Exceptional? a lot and find it fascinating! If the above turned you off instantly, well, then, now you know.
UPDATE: Forgot to initially mention that if you like this stuff, don't miss the Dave Eggers piece in WaPo: The Searchers:
But at the moment, much of the work at JPL is devoted to finding and examining exoplanets, and there is an urgency to the work that is palpable. In more than a dozen conversations with some of the best minds in astrophysics, I did not meet anyone who was doubtful about finding evidence of life elsewhere — most likely on an exoplanet beyond our solar system. It was not a matter of if. It was a matter of when.
