The origin of life by Paul Davis (PDF)

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In August 1996, news broke that traces of past life had been found in a meteorite from Mars. President Clinton appeared in person before the television cameras and a stunned scientific community, and duly highlighted the far-reaching ramifications of the discovery, should it be confirmed. It was a memorable moment because it is not often that a scientific result is so directly publicized. The story hit like a bomb, and there was so much applause and ridicule that the true meaning of the results was soon lost.Science is in the midst of a dramatic rethinking of the origin of life. According to the textbooks, it all began billions of years ago in a warm pool on Earth, but growing evidence now points to a very different scenario. It appears that the first terrestrial organisms lived deep underground, in pressure-cooker conditions, locked in hot rock, and only later came to the surface. Amazingly, descendants of these primeval microbes can still be found miles deep in the earth’s crust.Until just a few years ago, no one would have believed that life could exist in such an inhospitable environment, but once people accepted that organisms could thrive deep below the surface of the earth, an even more fantastic possibility opened up: maybe microbes are hiding beneath the surface of Mars! The discovery of a boulder from Mars that appeared to contain fossilized bacteria gave this theory considerable impetus. But that was not all. Suddenly it was also conceivable that life on Mars may have started and landed on a meteorite.Behind the excitement about the Martian meteorite was a bitter dispute between experts about the interpretation of the data. Its confirmation could mean, on the one hand, that life originated twice in our solar system and, on the other hand, that life is capable of spreading from one planet to another. The second explanation would not bring us any closer to answering the question of the actual, first origin of life, fascinating as the discovery that organisms can hop from planet to planet would be. How did life begin? What exactly are the physical and chemical processes that can turn dead matter into living organisms? This much more difficult problem remains one of the great scientific questions of our time. Currently armies of chemists, biologists, astronomers, physicists and mathematicians for an answer. From their research, many conclude that the laws of nature are “partisan,” so to speak, that they are somehow designed to bring about life. According to this school of thought, life must arise whenever conditions permit, not just on Mars but anywhere in the universe—including, of course, in test tubes. If these researchers are correct, life is part of the natural order and we are not alone in the universe. The view that life is programmed into the laws of nature sounds like a distant echo of a bygone, religious age, when it was believed that the universe was created as a home for us and other living beings. Many scientists regard such notions with displeasure and insist that the origin of life was an improbable accident of chemistry that only happened on earth; the development of complex organisms and ultimately consciousness is the random result of a gigantic cosmic lottery. In this debate is about nothing less than humanity’s place in the universe: who are we and where do we stand in the grand scheme of things?According to astronomers, the universe began in a big bang 10 to 20 billion years ago. The explosive birth was accompanied by a split second of extreme heat, giving rise to the basic physical forces and elementary particles. In the first second all the necessary ingredients of the cosmos arose. After that, space was filled with a brew of subatomic particles: protons, neutrons, and electrons in a 10-billion-degree bath of radiation.By today’s standards, the universe was extremely monotonous at that stage. The cosmic matter was almost perfectly evenly distributed in space, and the temperatur

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐This book is certainly only for scientists and very educated laypersons suitable.

⭐This is a very good scientific synopsis how the Universe was formed 4,65 billion years ago through the “Big Bang”. Subsequent processes following formation of the Universe are also well explained : these leading to the formation of galaxies & stars from gas and dust. Professor Paul Davies goes at length explaining how life came about : “early life’ probably started from Mars with basic uni-cellular forms/organisms, traveling to earth through/on “Asteriods” hitting the earth about 3 billion years ago when Mars was still compatible with life! He also deals with “Chicken or Egg Dilemma” rather well, concluding that the chicken probably came first! This is a very accessible book on the origin of the earth, life & Universe that is well written for the general public by a very knowlegable & respected scientist, a highly recommended reading.

⭐Any book purporting to explain the origin of life must depend on a certain amount of conjecture. The least we can expect is that this has a sound scientific base. Davies spends a considerable portion of the start of the book doing just this, in detailing the second law of thermodynamics (and the misconception that the origin of complex organized systems infringes this law – it would in a closed system, but in this case the system is open). He details the replication method well and suggests various possibilities for its origins: that RNA could have started out as the genome, that proteins self-replicated prior to RNA/DNA acting as genome (mad cow disease – BSE – is not a virus nor bacterium but a self-replicating protein !). Each case is presented as possibilities. As difficult as it is to say exactly “how” life began, it is increasingly accepted that it didn’t start in little pools of the `primordial soup’ but more likely in rocks deep underground. He presents the early earth as quite life-hostile and therefore suggests Mars as a more life-friendly environment 3.5 to 3.8 billion years ago (the age of life) which seeded earth via meteorites carrying microbes. However, the book is much more than just this Martian theory (Davies seems to be labelled by this one aspect of his writing). Finally, he suggests that the adage “given the right circumstances life will happen” could lead to a fundamental law akin to gravity for matter, that biology is due to built-in laws. But, because this is edging towards some kind of `vitalism’, most biologists would disagree. Instead, it is the laws of physics themselves that promote life-building. This is demonstrated by amino acid and peptide production…the sequencing is all down to interatomic forces that seem to `discriminate’ between different sequences and favour those that promote life!! Amazing stuff. The book is very readable and doesn’t get too technical.

⭐Paul Charles William Davies (born 1946) is an English physicist, writer and broadcaster, who is currently a professor at Arizona State University as well as the Director of BEYOND: Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science. He has written many other books, such as

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⭐, etc.He wrote in the Preface to this 2003 revision, “This book focuses on the origin of life. The problem of ‘biogenesis’ divides up into the when, the where and the how. We shall see that scientists have a pretty good idea of when life first established itself on Earth. As far as the where part… the evidence points increasingly to a hot, subsurface setting… but whether the transformation from non-life to life took place on Earth, or Mars, or both, remains an open question. The how part of the puzzle is undoubtedly the toughest to solve…” (Pg. xvii-xviii)He continues, “When I set out to write this book I was convinced that science was close to wrapping up the mystery of life’s origin. The dramatic evidence for microbes living deep underground… promised to provide the ‘missing link’ between the prebiotic world of biochemical soups and the first primitive cells… Several recent books convey the confident message that life’s origin is not really so mysterious after al. However, I think they are wrong… I am now of the opinion that there remains a huge gulf in our understanding… we are a long way from understanding the how.” (Pg. xxiii-xxiv)He explains, “Taking my cue from Francis Crick, and his reference to biogenesis being ‘almost a miracle,’ I called this book ‘The Fifth Miracle’ for its initial 1998 printing. The current revised edition is retitled ‘The Origin of Life’ to reflect more clearly its content. The work remains substantially unchanged, however; indeed, it proved to be remarkably prescient… I have updated the text here and there, and inserted notes to cover the recent developments.” (Pg. xxv)He observes, “How does one go about assembling a scientific account of the genesis of life? At first sight the task appears hopeless… If we had to rely on rock fossils along, the task… would indeed be formidable. Fortunately there is another line of evidence altogether… By studying how the modern cell operates, we can glimpse remnants of ancestral life at work… Even with such biochemical clues, the task of reconstruction would still be largely guesswork were it not for the recent discovery of… microbes that inhabit weird and extreme environments.” (Pg. 7-8)He suggests that “we will not be able to trace the origin of biological information to the operation of local physical forces and laws. In particular, the oft-repeated claim that life is written into the laws of physics cannot be true if those laws are restricted to the normal sort… we must seek the origin of biological information in some sort of global context. This… may involve some non-local type of physical law as yet unrecognized by science, that explicitly entangles the dynamics of information with the dynamics of matter.” (Pg. 44-45)He acknowledges, “Though it is very unlikely that we will ever find out exactly what happened, we might be able to deduce a plausible chemical pathway leading from simple chemicals to life… However, in our present state of ignorance, all we can hope for are a few pointers to the key chemical steps that may have been involved.” (Pg. 59)He points out, “Alas, the euphoria over the Miller-Urey experiment turned out to be somewhat premature, for a variety of reasons. First, geologists no longer think that the early atmosphere resembled the gas mixture in Miller’s flask… A second reason … is that amino acids are not, in fact, all that hard to make anyway. Many successful variants on the original Chicago set-up have been tried… It turns out that making amino acids is a cinch… There is also a conceptual reason why the Miller-Urey experiment is no longer accorded the status it once had. It is a serious mistake to regard the road to life as a uniform highway down which a coup of chemicals is inexorably conveyed by the passage of time… a collection of amino acids is a long, long way from the sort of large, specialized molecules such as proteins that life requires.” (Pg. 65-66)He states, “There is a more fundamental reason why the random self-assembly of proteins seems a non-starter. This has to do with … the particular order in which the amino acids link together. Proteins… are very specific amino acid sequences that have specialized chemical properties needed for life. However, the number of alternative permutations available to a mixture of amino acids is super-astronomical… Hitting the right one by accident would be no mean feat.” (Pg. 69)He argues, “Some people feel that something as basic as our own existence can’t be put down to a chemical quirk, and that … the word ‘accident’ is a cop-out… The Earth appears to be a typical planet around a typical star in a typical galaxy. So why should life on Earth not also be typical? Unfortunately this argument will not wash. Our own existence must be the exception to the rule that what we observe is unexceptional. If there is only one planet in the universe with life, it has to be ours! Obviously we won’t find ourselves living on a lifeless planet, by definition. So Earth will not be a randomly selected planet… because we have selected it by our very existence.” (Pg. 74)He explains, “In recent years, attempts have been made to build small and simple replicator molecules in the lab…. However, these experiments do not demonstrate molecular evolution in nature. They have het to show that the sort of small replicators that have been … fabricated in the laboratory will form spontaneously under plausible prebiotic conditions… In short, nobody has a clue whether naturally occurring mini-replicators are even possible, let alone whether they have got what it takes to evolve successfully.” (Pg. 113)He asserts, “I think there almost certainly WAS life on mars 3.6 billion years ago. The reason I am so confident in this belief is not because I am sure life emerged from a primordial Martian soup (though it may have been), but because the planets are not, and never have been, quarantines from each other.” (Pg. 203)He observes, “Of course, it isn’t necessary for the success of the panspermia process for each and every space-faring microbe to survive interstellar voyages. It demands only a single bacterium to make it alive and find a suitable planet to call home. Life might even be disseminated around the cosmos if microbes are officially dead on arrival… Entertaining though these ideas of ‘naked’ panspermia may be, I find it hard to take the theory seriously. While… [it] is theoretically possible, the odds are heavily against it. It is most unlikely to be going on systematically all across the Galaxy… However, there IS a way for microbes to journey from one planet to another in relative safety, and that is for them to hitch a ride in a meteorite.” (Pg. 207-208)He adds, “the Murchison meteorite proves one thing at least. There are objects in space loaded with just the sort of organic compounds needed for life to get started. It doesn’t require a primordial soup on Earth to synthesize the building blocks of life. These substances can fall from the sky, ready-made.” (Pg. 210) He continues, “Not only was Mars a better place for life to start, it could also have proved a favorable location for it to evolve… If life arose independently on Earth and Mars, then a Martian microbe reaching Earth might arrive to find organisms already well ensconced… The Martians might get gobbled up by Earthly bacteria as soon as they arrived.” (Pg. 218-219)He speculates, “There is thus a sort of hardware-software entanglement in quantum mechanics. Information … has downward causative power. So here is a mainstream physical theory that has information at its heart, which it tangles with matter in an intimate way. Furthermore, the interatomic forces that form biological molecules like proteins and nucleic acids are indeed quantum mechanical in nature. Could some sort of quantum organizing process be just what is needed to explain the origin of informational macromolecules?” (Pg. 243-244) He adds, “I concede that the ideas I have skimmed over in this section are highly conjectural, but the very fact that the problem of biogenesis prompts such speculation underscores just how stubborn a mystery it is.” (Pg. 245)He states, “If evolution is nothing but a lottery… there is little reason why life should go beyond the level of microbes, and no expectation whatever that it will advance obligingly towards intelligence and consciousness, still less develop humanoid characteristics. We should then be forced to agree with [Jacques] Monod’s melancholy conclusion that ‘Man… is alone in the unfeeling immensity of the universe, out of which he has emerged only by chance.’ Only if there is more to it than chance, only if nature has an ingeniously built-in bias towards life and mind, would we expect to see anything like the developmental thrust that has occurred on Earth repeated on other planets… On the other hand, there is an alternative view… It is the vision of a self-organizing and self-complexifying universe, governed by ingenious laws that encourage matter to evolve towards life and consciousness. A universe in which the emergence of thinking being is a fundamental and integral part of the overall scheme of things. A universe in which we are not alone.” (Pg. 255-256)This book will interest those studying ‘origin of life’ theories.

⭐Dropped sentences, missing paragraphs, etc.. Got so bad I just gave up. I’m speaking of the kindle unlimited version – same issues on iOS kindle and kindle paperwhite.

⭐”Those who can, do, those who can’t, teach” wrote my countryman George Bernard Shaw somewhat unkindly. The communication of ideas to others in a comprehensible, interesting form is a skill all of its own. Here we have an example of someone who not only can do, but also can teach, a leading scientist with a gift of communicating ideas clearly and in an interesting manner. Some of the concepts are mind-blowing, but Professor Davies seems to have an innate capacity to realise how far to take things, so that he remains within the boundaries of the intelligent layman, without straying into the highly-technical area of the specialist, yet does not leave that layman feeling in any way short-changed or talked down to. He gives us a glimpse into fascinating worlds of scientific endeavour and thought, but is refreshingly candid in saying “we don’t know”, when we don’t. All the possibilities, no matter how apparently bizarre, are given their say and subjected to rigorous examination.The origin of life remains a mystery, and may forever remain thus, and perhaps there are those who regard any sort of speculation as pointless. But that would be a denial of who we are, curious creatures driven by the urge to know and explore. Without that urge, we would no longer be human. This dazzling little book give full voice to that thirst for knowledge, into the most fundamental question of all. Highly recommended.

⭐It has arrived and in good condition

⭐learnt a lot very interesting explained as clearly as possible might have to read it again though will recommend it

⭐The question of Origin of Life is something I have always pondered upon and in my venture to understand the problem I once read a few essays on the topic by Alexander Oparin and JBS Haldane. But when Oparin and Haldane wrote back in 1920s the topic was still at an incipient stage. Since then many significant findings have taken place and scientists are now more nearer to the ultimate truth then ever before. This book by Paul Davies dives deep into the past of a planet under formation-the protoEarth, seeking for Life’s Origin, it discusses in length the possible pathways for the emergence of DNA- the miracle molecule which is the basis of all living beings on earth, the flooding of earth with necessary elements of life by comets from outer space. Davies spends a considerable time discussing the second law of thermodynamics to clear the misconception that a complex and organized system such as a Living Being violates this law; on the contrary life does follow the 2nd Law bringing about organization at the cost of increasing the entropy of the universe. A terrific idea suggested in the book is that given the right circumstances life will happen which is just like a body with mass being ruled by gravity, charged particles moving around according to the laws of electrodynamics, atomic particles being governed by quantum mechanics. So in a nutshell we as living creatures are not so special afterall.

⭐A fascinating account of the origin of life. Paul Davies writes about many different theories on the origin of life and has written of the best accounts on the idea of panspermia I know of. I also liked his detailed description of ancient Mars. The book arrived in a perfect condition.

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