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Before the universe was formed, before time and space existed, there was ... nothing. But then ... BANG! Stars caught fire and burned so long that they exploded, flinging stardust everywhere. And the ash of those stars turned into planets. Into our Earth. And into us. The author takes readers from the trillionth of a second when our universe was born to the singularities that became each one of us, while illustrations capture the void before the Big...
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"Drawing on his decades of field research and up-to-the-minute understanding of the latest science, renowned geologist Andrew H. Knoll delivers a rigorous yet accessible biography of Earth, charting our home planet's epic 4.6 billion-year story. Placing twenty first-century climate change in deep context, A Brief History of Earth is an indispensable look at where we've been and where we're going."-- Publisher's description.
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A thrilling and accessible tour of the cosmos
Our true origins are not just human, or even terrestrial, but in fact cosmic. Drawing on scientific breakthroughs and the current cross-pollination among geology, biology, astrophysics, and cosmology, Origins explains the soul-stirring leaps in our understanding of the cosmos. From the first image of a galaxy birth to Spirit rover's exploration of Mars, to the discovery of water on one
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"A breakout bestseller in Italy, now available for American readers for the first time, Genesis: The Story of How Everything Began is a short, humanistic tour of the origins of the universe, earth, and life-drawing on the latest discoveries in physics to explain the seven most significant moments in the creation of the cosmos"-- Provided by publisher.
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"In the tradition of E.H. Gombrich, Stephen Hawking, and Alan Weisman-an entertaining and uniquely informed narration of Life's life story. In the beginning, Earth was an inhospitably alien place-in constant chemical flux, covered with churning seas, crafting its landscape through incessant volcanic eruptions. Amid all this tumult and disaster, life began. The earliest living things were no more than membranes stretched across microscopic gaps in...
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When Charles Darwin finished The Origin of Species, he thought that he had explained every clue, but one. Though his theory could explain many facts, Darwin knew that there was a significant event in the history of life that his theory did not explain. During this event, the "Cambrian explosion," many animals suddenly appeared in the fossil record without apparent ancestors in earlier layers of rock.
In Darwin's Doubt, Stephen C. Meyer tells
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"The notion of a living world is one of humanity's oldest beliefs. Though scorned by scientists in the sixties and seventies, the facts supporting this concept have now become tenets of modern Earth system science, a relatively young field that studies the living and nonliving components of the planet as an integrated whole. Life did not evolve passively in response to its environment, as scientists have long assumed. Instead, it evolved with Earth,...
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In this book Bill Bryson explores the most intriguing and consequential questions that science seeks to answer and attempts to understand everything that has transpired from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization. To that end, Bill Bryson apprenticed himself to a host of the world's most profound scientific minds, living and dead. His challenge is to take subjects like geology, chemistry, paleontology, astronomy, and particle physics and see if...
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"An intriguing new scientific theory that explains what life is and how it emerges. What is life? This is among the most difficult open problems in science, right up there with the nature of consciousness and the existence of matter. All the definitions we have fall short. None help us understand how life originates or the full range of possibilities for what life on other planets might look like. In Life as No One Knows It, physicist and astrobiologist...
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Presents information that suggests humans were created by accident, and that the Earth and its diversity of plants and animals were created by chance. Notes, however, that many things (a series of fortunate events) had to happen in a certain way for us to exist and must continue if we are to remain a viable species. Explains the transmission of viruses, the role of DNA, and the evolution of species. Includes comedic discussions between dead scientists...
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In this NOVA scienceNOW series, host Neil deGrasse Tyson tackles one of science's major challenges in each episode of Where Did We Come From? He will guide us as he explores dramatic discoveries and the frontiers of research that connect each central, provocative mystery. Topics include: Revealing the Origins of Life; Origins of the Solar System; Lice and Human Evolution; and Profile: Andre Fenton.
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If ever God had an undertaker, it surely must be Charles Darwin. Yet, says his biographer James Moore "Darwin was never really an atheist". He has, nevertheless, become its patron saint. The evidence for evolution is compelling. Indeed its achievements lead to underlying questions about why it is so successful if there is no over-arching mind. In this episode, champions of the view that Darwin has buried God, clash with their theistic counterparts....
16) How Life Began
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Was life on Earth triggered by a specific event or did it arrive from some distant galaxy? This A&E Special investigates how the planet evolved to support a rich and vibrant menagerie of aquatic, terrestrial, and airborne creatures.
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Who would have predicted that a hot spot left over from the Big Bang would eventually lead to our galaxy, the solar system, the Earth, - and to us? Origins explores how the universe and our planet began amid chaos and eventually gave birth to the first stirrings of life. Join cutting-dege scientists on a voyage deep into the Earth to find analogs to the earliest life on our planet, and travel a million miles from Earth with a space probe designed...
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Astrobiology, the study of life in space, is one of today's fastest growing fields of science. In this accessible and elegantly reasoned book, scholar and researcher Impey explores the foundations of this rapidly developing discipline, where it's going, and what it's likely to find. If Earth is not the only planet, it is so far the only living one that we know of. Impey reveals the incredible proliferation and variety of life on Earth, paying special...