Hazen (Earth Science/George Mason Univ.; Genesis: The Scientific Quest for Life's Origins, 2005, etc.) offers startling evidence that “Earth's living and nonliving spheres” have co-evolved over the past 4 billion years.
To support his persuasive though controversial views, the author updates evidence collected by mineralogists over the last two centuries. Describing the “discoveries of organisms in places long considered inhospitable [to life] – in superheated volcanic vents, acidic pools, Arctic ice and stratospheric dust,” he argues for the dating of the origin of life more than a billion years earlier than estimates based on Nobel Prize winner Harold Urey's groundbreaking experiments. These appeared to support the view that life originated 2.5 billion years ago in an oceanic environment with the creation of organic molecules. Hazen explains how Urey and his associates were able to re-create “primordial soup” in a simulation, which produced “a suite of biomolecules stunningly similar to what life actually uses.” That theory has been challenged in the last two decades, based on the discovery that life “fueled by chemical [rather than solar] energy” exists in extreme environments in astonishing abundance. Hazen and colleagues at the Carnegie Institution’s Geophysical Laboratory (with support from NASA) have succeeded in simulating conditions that would have existed on Earth as early as 4.5 billion years ago, while producing biomolecules that are today the building blocks of life. The author situates this latest experimental evidence in a series of discoveries about the earth's geological evolution, sparked by analysis of moon rocks brought back by Apollo astronauts.
A report of a fascinating new theory on the Earth's origins written in a sparkling style with many personal touches.
