This book by Caleb Scharf offers a formal exposition about an exploding development throughout the world: the merging of multiple scientific disciplines to form a compelling new field, namely astrobiology.
The most profound questions posed by ancient civilizations largely remain unanswered, left for religious leaders, philosophers, and the curious among us to ponder throughout the ages. Ancient Greek philosophers intensely debated the uniqueness of our Earth and the possibility of life elsewhere, but they and their academic successors made little progress for 2400 years. Suddenly and startlingly, we stand at the brink of answering those old questions.
The answers are arriving from two directions: progress on the physical prerequisites for life, and hints of the first habitable worlds. Astronomers have found that the fundamental equations of gravity, electricity, and quantum physics (some yet to be fully understood) are the same everywhere throughout the spacetime of the universe. The atoms and molecules of which life is composed are also ubiquitous throughout the universe. The 92 naturally occurring atoms are seen in stars and galaxies by spectroscopic analysis of their light, filling the periodic table for most of the 13.7 billion year age of the universe. Those atoms combine into complex organic molecules such as alcohols and amino acids, which are found in comets, moons, and interstellar clouds.
The LEGOs™ of life are everywhere. Moreover, water, the great chemical cocktail mixer, is among the most abundant of substances in the universe, found on planets, moons, and comets.Water mobilizes, destroys, and recombines the organic molecules, to create uncountable molecular permutations of great size and complexity.
BOOK BY :
Extrasolar Planets
and Astrobiology
CALEB A. SCHARF
COLUMBIA ASTROBIOLOGY CENTER
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar