The Spark Of Life: Darwin And The Primeval Soup

313 Pages·2001·18.913 MB·English

by  Christopher Wills, Jeffrey Bada

T
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"mchi i opher,_will§ and jeffrey bads
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Copgrrighl 0 2000 by Christopher Wills and Icffrcy Rads
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SPARK
Darwin and the Primeval Soup
CHRISTOPHER WILLS
'BADA
M

CONTENTS
hlrrmlurfiull xi
I The Rise and Fall of' Spontaneous Generation II
2 Primordial Soup 34
3 The Earth's Apocalyptic Beginnings 59
4 Prebiotic Soup: The Recipe 85
5 Sorting Out the Gcmisch 107
b The First Protobionts 123
7 From 'Ibp to'lbe 143
8 lourncy so the Center of the Earth I59
9 Evolution by Committee 183
10 Life Flscwhcrc 2111
II Epilogue 257
Glossnr y 26 I
Notes and Reji*rem'cs 267
fndex 28 I
vii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
WE ARE MOST GRATEFUL FOR THE ASSISTANCE OF MANY DIFFERENT
kinds, scientific and logistical, that we have received from Gustaf
Arrhenius, Bill Baity, Oliver Botta, David Brin, Mike Clark, Steve Free-
land, Michael Gaffey, Danny Glavin, Susan Green, Lenny Hamilton,
William Hartmann, Gerhard Kminek, Keith Kvenvolden, Lois Lane,
Antonio Lazcano, Marilyn Lindstrom, Norman Pace, Karsten Pedersen,
Glenn Schneider, Bill Schopf, and Susan Terebey. Special thanks to the
students and postdoctoral fellows who participated in our Origin of
Life discussion seminar in 1998. David Deamer, Russell Doolittle, Wal-
ter Fitch, Antonio Lazcano, and Stanley Miller read and commented on
parts of the manuscript, catching many problems in the process, but of
course we shoulder the responsibility for any errors of fact or interpre-
tation that remain. We are also indebted to our editor, Amanda Cook,
for pulling us up short whenever we tended to stray into thickets of
complexity. The University of California, San Diego, Chancellor's Asso-
ciates and National Aeronautics and Space Administration Specialized
Center of Research and Training in Exobiology provided support.
ix