Muriel Gargaud,HervÃ© Martin,PurificaciÃ³n LÃ³pez-GarcÃ­a
This volume takes the reader on an amazing voyage through time, beginning over five million years ago, in a cloud of interstellar dust. The text explores the origins of life and provides an overview of the search for planets outside the solar system, especially for habitable ones. - How did the Sun come into existence? - How was the Earth formed? - How long has Earth been the way it is now, with its combination of oceans and continents? - How do you define life - How did the first life forms emerge? - What conditions made it possible for living things to evolve? All these questions are answered in this colourful textbook addressing graduate students in "Origins of Life" courses and the scientifically interested public. The authors take the reader on an amazing voyage through time, beginning five thousand million years ago in a cloud of interstellar dust and ending five hundred million years ago, when the living world that we see today was finally formed. A chapter on exoplanets provides an overview of the search for planets outside the solar system, especially for habitable ones. The appendix closes the book with a glossary, a bibliography of further readings and a summary of the Origins of the Earth and life in 7 boxes. Muriel Gargaud has contributed to Young Sun, Early Earth and the Origins of Life: Lessons for Astrobiology as an author.Muriel Gargaud is a research scientist at the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Bordeaux, CNRS-Universite Bordeaux 1, and is vice-president of the Societe Francaise d'Exobiologie, which is associated with the NASA Astrobiology Institute.
Science,Astronomy
Young Sun, Early Earth and the Origins of Life: Lessons for Astrobiology