The origins of life and the universe

232 Pages·2003·1.945 MB·English

by  Lurquin, Paul F

The Origins of Life and the Universe

The Origins of Life
and the Universe
Paul F. Lurquin
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS / NEW YORK
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Publishers since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
© 2003Columbia University Press
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lurquin, Paul F.
The origins of life and the universe / Paul F. Lurquin.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-231-12654-9(cl. : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-231-12655-7(pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Life—Origin. 2. Cosmology. I. Title.
QH325 .L87 2003
576.8(cid:1)3—dc21
2002035166
Columbia University Press books are printed
on permanent and durable acid-free paper.
Printed in the United States of America
Designed by Lisa Hamm
c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
p 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
T
o Hubert, Ilya, Jacques, Jean, Lucia, René, and Victor,
without whom I would know very little

Contents
Preface ix
Introduction 1
The Meaning of Science 2
What Is Life? 6
Some Origins Models Before Science 8
Chapter 1 Foundations of the Universe 13
What Is in the Universe? 14
Physics Holds One of the Clues to the Origins: Relativity 16
The Next Clue: Quantum Physics 26
Forces of Nature and Elementary Particles 37
Conclusions 41
Chapter 2 Building a Universe 42
Cosmology: The Big Bang Model 42
The Genesis of Stars and Planets 51
Conclusions 60
Chapter 3 Life as It Is Today 62
The Universal Blueprint 63
Variations in the Blueprint 72
Metabolism and Energy Transactions 78
Life That Depends on Simple Molecules Only 85
The Cell’s Envelope and Its Skeleton 87
Conclusions 89
Chapter 4 Prebiotic Earth: First Organic Compounds and First
Informational Molecules 92
Organic Compounds from Earth’s Putative
Primitive Atmosphere 94
Space Chemistry and the Origins of Life 99
Ocean Floor Chemistry 102
VIII | CONTENTS
Proteins and Metabolism First: The Iron-Sulfur World 104
Genetic Information First: The RNA World 112
Conclusions 116
Chapter 5 Life on Its Way 117
Lessons from Bacteriophages 118
Quasispecies and Hypercycles 120
Origin of the Genetic Code: From the RNA World
to Proteins 125
Protocells and the Emergence of the DNA World 131
First DNA-Containing Cells and Their Evolution 134
Paths of Fast Evolution 139
First Eukaryotes 141
Conclusions 152
Chapter 6 Has Life Originated Elsewhere and Will It End? 154
Panspermia 155
Life Elsewhere in the Solar System? 158
Discontent with Origins Models 166
The End of the Universe, the End of Life 170
Conclusions 171
Appendix 1 A Graphic Representation of Special Relativity 175
Appendix 2 More on Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle 177
Appendix 3 How Do We Know the Age of the Universe? 179
Appendix 4 Eric Chaisson’s View of Cosmic Evolution 181
Appendix 5 Do the Universe and Life Have a Purpose
and a Designer? 183
Notes 187
Glossary 195
Notable Scientists 199
Bibliography 201
Index 205
Preface
Step 1: “To be is to do”—Socrates
Step 2: “To do is to be”—Jean-Paul Sartre
Step 3: “Do be do be do”—Frank Sinatra
—compiled by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
M
y fascination with the origins of life dates back to my
undergraduate years as a chemistry major at the Uni-
versity of Brussels, Belgium, in the early 1960s. The
city of Brussels had at that time a large bookstore that specialized in the sale of
books from the Soviet Union. Possibly for propaganda purposes, the books sold
there were very inexpensive (always an attractive feature for college students)
and included titles from famous scientists like the biologist A. Oparin and the
astronomer I. Shklovskii. I bought for a mere pittance, in French translation,
Oparin’s “L’origine et l’évolution de la vie” (The origin and evolution of life)
and Shklovskii’s “Univers, vie, raison” (Universe, life, reason) ($1.10, hard-
bound). Reading these books, I became convinced of two things: first, ques-
tions relating to the origin of life and the cosmos itself were not silly, and sec-
ond, physics and chemistry, possibly more than biology, held clues to the
answers to these questions.
Like all chemistry students, I took the mandatory courses in statistical ther-
modynamics and quantum mechanics (the latter from the 1977Nobel laureate
for chemistry, Ilya Prigogine) as well as an elective course in nuclear physics.
The subject matter of these courses was a lot more sophisticated than what we