Life Everywhere

by David Darling

Overview

To many people, the main question about extraterrestrial life is whether or not it exists. But to the scientific community, that question has already been answered: It does. So confident are scientists of the existence of life on other planets that they've invested serious amounts of money, time and prestige in finding and studying it. NASA has started an Institute of Astrobiology, for instance, and the University of Washington, Seattle, began in September 1999 to accept graduate students into its Department of Astrobiology. Life Everywhere is the first book to lay out for a general reader what the new science of astrobiology is all about. It asks the fascinating questions researchers are asking themselves and one another: u What is life? u How does it originate? u How often does life survive once it arises?u How does evolution work?u What determines whether complex or even intelligent life will emerge from more primitive forms?Informed by interviews with most of the experts in this nascent subject, Life Everywhere introduces readers to one of the most important scientific disciplines of the coming century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780465009985
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	10/15/2007
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
Lexile:	1300L (what's this?)
File size:	554 KB

About the Author

David Darling is a science writer and astronomer. He is the author of the acclaimed Equations of Eternity, among other books. He lives in Dundee, Scotland.

What People are Saying About This

Lynn Margulis

Except for the outrageous lack of a question mark in the title, Darling's book serves as an enthralling introduction to the new science of astrobiology and the old, still exhilarating philosophical question of our place in the universe.
—(Lynn Margulis, Author of Symbiotic Planet)

James R. Kasting

James R. Kasting, Penn State Astrobiology Research Center
A lucid and surprisingly accurate introduction to the field of astrobiology and a thoughtful response to the Rare Earth hypothesis. Carl Sagan would have been pleased to see this.

Interviews

Exclusive Author Essay
I ran into my first alien, almost literally, when I was six. It was a hot summer's day and I was jumping from rock-pool to rock-pool on the beach looking for a good place to explore. Suddenly, I came across the most terrifying thing I've ever seen. It was the wreckage of a monstrous crab, with legs spanning maybe four feet. Such nightmare creatures weren't supposed to exist in a sleepy English seaside town. I ran back screaming to my parents. But the tide was coming in and we never rediscovered my monster. Over the years I began to think I must have imagined it -- until one day I opened the pages of a science magazine and found the very creature staring out at me again. It turned out it was a box crab. Apparently, these beasties do grow to such size, and they have very occasionally been found off the British coast.

The years when I was growing up were also the dawn of the Space Age, and I became fascinated by what it might be like on other worlds. One book more than any other influenced me to go into astronomy -- The Conquest of Space by Willy Ley, with stunning artwork by Chesley Bonestell. Maybe it also had an influence on my becoming a writer, although it wasn't until my mid-20s that I really decided I wanted to -- or could -- write for a living.

Fresh with a Ph.D., I knew the last thing I wanted to do was go into research. I didn't have the head for working intensely in a narrow field. My interest has always been in looking at the big picture -- trying to draw threads together from a variety of disciplines and making sense (at least to myself!) of some really deep question. The writing came about almost as a byproduct of my need to explain big issues to myself -- issues like the origin and fate of the universe, the link between mathematics and reality, and the nature of consciousness. These questions formed the subjects of some of my earlier books, like Deep Time (1989), Equations of Eternity (1993), and Zen Physics (1996).

Then I came back to my childhood fascination. What about life on other worlds? Scientists have been pondering that for centuries, but until recently they didn't have much to go on. Astrobiology (or "exobiology" if you prefer) was a subject with very little data. What's so exciting is that this is no longer the case. The past decade -- and the past five years, especially -- have seen an explosion in the amount of observational and experimental results that shed light on the issue of life beyond Earth. It became obvious as I spoke to researchers in the field that astrobiology has moved out of its infancy. Scientists are no longer just imagining what might be out there or wondering if there might be anything at all. The big push now is to grasp the principles that govern life across the universe. What those principles might be, and when and where we can expect to find our first example of extraterrestrial life, form the subjects of Life Everywhere: The Maverick Science of Astrobiology. (David Darling)

Editorial Reviews

Astrobiology (also known as exobiology) has been rapidly gaining ground in recent years as new research points to the ever increasing likelihood of life in the universe. David Darling's excellent introduction to this subject covers the new discoveries, such as extremophile life forms and extrasolar planets, that make it more possible for life to exist beyond Earth and explores astonishing speculations, such as the one that life may have actually originated in outer space.

bn.com

A page-turning primer to a subject that will only become more contentious as time goes on.

Flaunt

Astrobiologists believe complex life exists throughout the universe. All we have to do is look harder.

Uncle Martin, no. Microorganisms, almost certainly yes. That's now the view of mainstream science, reports British astrophysicist David Darling in his new book, Life Everywhere (Basic Books, $26). Darling says scien-tists are increasingly confident that life exists in space. The only question is:What kind?

Over the decades enthusiasm about extraterrestrial life has waxed and waned. After the Viking landers failed to find life on Mars in 1976, the scientific consensus was one of skepticism that bordered on ridicule. But in the early 1990s the tide slowly began to turn, and a new scientific discipline, astrobiology, was spawned. NASA formed its Astrobiology Institute in 1998 to focus exclusively on researching life in outer space.

A recent series of discoveries has pushed scientists to shift their thinking dramatically. Right here on Earth, surprisingly hardy life-forms have been found inside hot underground rocks, around scalding volcanic vents at the bot-tom of the ocean, in desiccated Antarctic valleys and deep beneath polar ice. Most of these newly discovered species are microscopic, but genetic studies suggest they are also extremely ancient, implying life on Earth may have originated in areas formerly thought inhospitable.

If life can originate in such dark, subterranean hells, then life elsewhere in the cosmos appears that much more possible. All that's needed, apparently, is an energy source, some sort of carbon-based material and a bit of water. The first two are plentiful in outer space, and mounting evidence, like recent photographs ofMars and Jupiter's moon Eu-ropa, suggests that water is plentiful as well.

Just the right mixture to produce little green men? Probably not. Last year a couple of scientists at the Univer-sity of Washington fired a salvo at the notion that complex life is common anywhere but here. In a popular book called Rare Earth, paleontologist Peter Ward and astronomer Donald Brownlee laid out a pessimistic hypothesis. Scientists will eventually find widespread evidence of simple, microbial life, they theorized, but complex animal or plant life will prove extremely rare. The Earth is just too unusual a place, they insisted, with its stable orbit, nearby moon, watery sur-face, plate tectonics and unique position in the galaxy.

Darling, who earned a Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of Manchester and has penned seven well-regarded science books, disagrees, and he reports that the majority of astrobiologists do, too. In Life Everywhere he offers a strong countervailing note of optimism, supported by most astrobiologists' view of evolution: Life on Earth has demonstrated a tendency for ever-greater complexity. So why wouldn't life in outer space?

For now, Darling's theories amount to well-educated guesswork. The bottom line -- as of 2001 -- is that the only sort of life scientists have a good shot at verifying is monocellular bacteria.

While Darling's book was at the printer in late February, two teams of NASA scientists published new analyses of a 4.5-billion-year-old Martian meteorite. The brick-size rock, discovered in Antarctica 15 years ago, contains mag-netic crystals that appear identical to microscopic crystals produced by some earthly bacteria. Only living organisms, they argue, could have formed the crystals' long-chain structures. Perhaps. Critics contend the crystals could have been formed by some other mechanism not requiring life, such as chemical action.

Mars, though, is far from being the only test case for life in the cosmos. Astrobiologists are optimistic about Europa, one of Jupiter's four large moons. In December 1995 the space probe Galileo showed that Europa probably has an ocean beneath its icy crust, with tidal heating providing a likely energy source. Colliding asteroids and comets would have delivered plenty of organic matter. What forms of life might have taken shape in that subterranean sea? Some sci-entists, giving their imaginations free rein (and extrapolating from Earth's own sea creatures), have suggested filter-feeders, such as whales. Bacteria or good old slime are more likely.

Beyond our solar system, researchers are rapidly discovering previously unknown planets. The possibilities there are endless, insists Darling. "Billions upon billions of worlds are out there, many of them surely teeming with life,"he writes. "Within two decades we'll be able to point to some stars in the night sky and say, 'There live other crea-tures.'"

Darling's book is a bit heavy on this sort of enthusiastic speculation. But even if single-celled organisms are all we can manage to discover in the foreseeable future, Darling is eloquent about the ways in which such findings are now changing how we think about our own existence. Astrobiology offers a whole new paradigm for the conception of life on Earth. We're beginning to realize that what took place here may not be so special.
—Susan Adams

Forbes

Darling (Ph.D., astronomy, University of Manchester) provides an overview of astrobiology, describing its goals and methods and well as his predictions for coming advances. The book also exposes the creationist roots of the "Rare Earth" hypothesis and the "Intelligent Design" theory. The definition of "life", the conditions that produce life, the mechanisms of evolution, and the development of intelligence are all discussed. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews