The Earth As A Cradle For Life

Author : Frank D. Stacey
Publisher : World Scientific
ISBN 13 : 9814508349
Total Pages : 306 pages
Book Rating : 4.46/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Earth as a Cradle for Life written by Frank D. Stacey and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2013 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book takes a long-term view of Earth's development as a habitable planet, incorporating physical, chemical and biological processes on the early Earth, through to human perturbations of the modern world and their implications for life in the future.

Author : Frank D Stacey
Publisher : World Scientific
ISBN 13 : 9814508357
Total Pages : 306 pages
Book Rating : 4.53/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Earth As A Cradle For Life, The: The Origin, Evolution And Future Of The Environment written by Frank D Stacey and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2013-06-21 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Earth as a Cradle for Life aims to fill the gap between readers who have a strong and informed scientific interest in the environment (but no access to the journal literature), and their desire for a basic understanding of the environment. It provides a comprehensive account, and requires no advanced mathematical skills. It will also satisfy a need for a textbook on fundamental science for students in tertiary environmental science courses that may otherwise neglect the underlying basis of their subject.The Earth as a Cradle takes a step back from common perceptions of the environment, and presents a new fundamental perspective. It draws attention to observations that have been neglected or discounted for reasons the authors found invalid, and which allow a more coherent account of the environment than is possible without them.Misunderstandings about the environment are common, even in the scientific community. They arise in part from the multi-disciplinary nature of the subject and the difficulty in keeping all relevant observations in mind and assessing their validity. These misunderstandings are often consequences of the band-wagon effect: when an idea is reinforced by repeated quotation and becomes difficult to contradict even when it is in obvious conflict with observations. This is especially so in a subject with strong media interest and conflicting commercial interests — and Cradle sweeps these considerations aside and presents a new environmental scenario.This book draws on several decades of research by the authors on fundamental Earth science, and presents probing insights on environmental questions that are not widely recognized — even in the professional community. For this reason it will become a landmark in the environmental science and Earth science literature.

Author : J. William Schopf
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691237573
Total Pages : 404 pages
Book Rating : 4.72/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Cradle of Life written by J. William Schopf and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the greatest mysteries in reconstructing the history of life on Earth has been the apparent absence of fossils dating back more than 550 million years. We have long known that fossils of sophisticated marine life-forms existed at the dawn of the Cambrian Period, but until recently scientists had found no traces of Precambrian fossils. The quest to find such traces began in earnest in the mid-1960s and culminated in one dramatic moment in 1993 when William Schopf identified fossilized microorganisms three and a half billion years old. This startling find opened up a vast period of time--some eighty-five percent of Earth's history--to new research and new ideas about life's beginnings. In this book, William Schopf, a pioneer of modern paleobiology, tells for the first time the exciting and fascinating story of the origins and earliest evolution of life and how that story has been unearthed. Gracefully blending his personal story of discovery with the basics needed to understand the astonishing science he describes, Schopf has produced an introduction to paleobiology for the interested reader as well as a primer for beginning students in the field. He considers such questions as how did primitive bacteria, pond scum, evolve into the complex life-forms found at the beginning of the Cambrian Period? How do scientists identify ancient microbes and what do these tiny creatures tell us about the environment of the early Earth? (And, in a related chapter, Schopf discusses his role in the controversy that swirls around recent claims of fossils in the famed meteorite from Mars.) Like all great teachers, Schopf teaches the non-specialist enough about his subject along the way that we can easily follow his descriptions of the geology, biology, and chemistry behind these discoveries. Anyone interested in the intriguing questions of the origins of life on Earth and how those origins have been discovered will find this story the best place to start.

Author : William K. Hartmann
Publisher : Workman Publishing
ISBN 13 : 9780894807701
Total Pages : 196 pages
Book Rating : 4.06/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Out of the Cradle written by William K. Hartmann and published by Workman Publishing. This book was released on 1984-01-01 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes and provides illustrations of the kinds of space exploration that may be done in the near future, and discusses the economic and political implications for the people of the earth

Author : Elizabeth M. Carman
Publisher : North Atlantic Books
ISBN 13 : 1583945709
Total Pages : 393 pages
Book Rating : 4.04/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Cosmic Cradle, Revised Edition written by Elizabeth M. Carman and published by North Atlantic Books. This book was released on 2013-04-16 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fascinating exploration of pre-birth consciousness—with over 200 real-life case studies—reveals we do make decisions about the families and circumstances into which we’re born. An affirming and inspirational read for parents and grandparents, regression therapists and spiritual counselors, and anyone interested in near-death experiences. Where was your soul before you were born? If your soul is immortal, did it have a “life” prior to birth? Did you choose your life and parents? Is reincarnation real? Elizabeth and Neil Carman, the authors of Cosmic Cradle, address these questions through interviews with adults and children who report pre-birth experiences (PBEs) not based on regression, hypnosis, or drugs. Instead, interviewees recall their pre-birth existence completely sober and awake. In contrast to near-death experiences (NDEs), which have been well documented to show us what the soul experiences after death, PBEs throw light upon our lives before birth. People with NDEs sense that they “return home” when their spirits cross to the other side. What is the nature of this place we “return” to? PBEs suggest that we come from the same place we return to: we come from the Light and return to the Light. The same eternal "you" progresses through life before life, human life, and life after death. This new edition of Cosmic Cradle explores your soul’s journey into your mother’s womb—where your soul comes from, the origin and purpose of your life, and the process by which you entered an earthly body. In pre-birth communications, parents meet a soul seeking to cross over from the heavenly realm to human birth. Persons with pre-birth memories recall existence in a luminous world before birth, in which they preview the upcoming life with a Divine Planner, and recall how they journeyed to their mothers’ wombs.

Author : William McDonough
Publisher : North Point Press
ISBN 13 : 1429973846
Total Pages : 207 pages
Book Rating : 4.47/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Cradle to Cradle written by William McDonough and published by North Point Press. This book was released on 2010-03-01 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A manifesto for a radically different philosophy and practice of manufacture and environmentalism "Reduce, reuse, recycle" urge environmentalists; in other words, do more with less in order to minimize damage. But as this provocative, visionary book argues, this approach perpetuates a one-way, "cradle to grave" manufacturing model that dates to the Industrial Revolution and casts off as much as 90 percent of the materials it uses as waste, much of it toxic. Why not challenge the notion that human industry must inevitably damage the natural world? In fact, why not take nature itself as our model? A tree produces thousands of blossoms in order to create another tree, yet we do not consider its abundance wasteful but safe, beautiful, and highly effective; hence, "waste equals food" is the first principle the book sets forth. Products might be designed so that, after their useful life, they provide nourishment for something new-either as "biological nutrients" that safely re-enter the environment or as "technical nutrients" that circulate within closed-loop industrial cycles, without being "downcycled" into low-grade uses (as most "recyclables" now are). Elaborating their principles from experience (re)designing everything from carpeting to corporate campuses, William McDonough and Michael Braungart make an exciting and viable case for change.

Author : Richard Fortey
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0307761185
Total Pages : 566 pages
Book Rating : 4.87/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Life written by Richard Fortey and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-03-23 with total page 566 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By one of Britain's most gifted scientists: a magnificently daring and compulsively readable account of life on Earth (from the "big bang" to the advent of man), based entirely on the most original of all sources--the evidence of fossils. With excitement and driving intelligence, Richard Fortey guides us from the barren globe spinning in space, through the very earliest signs of life in the sulphurous hot springs and volcanic vents of the young planet, the appearance of cells, the slow creation of an atmosphere and the evolution of myriad forms of plants and animals that could then be sustained, including the magnificent era of the dinosaurs, and on to the last moment before the debut of Homo sapiens. Ranging across multiple scientific disciplines, explicating in wonderfully clear and refreshing prose their findings and arguments--about the origins of life, the causes of species extinctions and the first appearance of man--Fortey weaves this history out of the most delicate traceries left in rock, stone and earth. He also explains how, on each aspect of nature and life, scientists have reached the understanding we have today, who made the key discoveries, who their opponents were and why certain ideas won. Brimful of wit, fascinating personal experience and high scholarship, this book may well be our best introduction yet to the complex history of life on Earth. A Book-of-the-Month Club Main Selection With 32 pages of photographs

Author : Mark Maslin
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0198704526
Total Pages : 257 pages
Book Rating : 4.22/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Cradle of Humanity written by Mark Maslin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the fundamental questions of our existence is why we are so smart. There are lots of drawbacks to having a large brain, including the huge food intake needed to keep the organ running, the frequency with which it goes wrong, and our very high infant and mother mortality rates compared with other mammals, due to the difficulty of giving birth to offspring with very large heads. So why did evolution favour the brainy ape? This question has been widely debated among biological anthropologists, and in recent years, Maslin and his colleagues have pioneered a new theory that might just be the answer. Looking back to a crucial period some 1.9 million years ago, when brain capacity increased by as much as 80%, The Cradle of Humanity explores the implications of two adaptive responses by our hominin ancestors to rapid climatic changes - big jaws, and big brains. Maslin argues that the impact of changing landscapes and fluctuating climates that led to the appearance of intermittent freshwater lakes in East Africa may have played a key role in human evolution. Alongside the physical evidence of fossils and tools, he considers social theories of why a large, complex brain would have provided a major advantage when trying to survive in the constantly changing East African landscape.

Author : Kurt Vonnegut
Publisher : Dial Press
ISBN 13 : 0307567273
Total Pages : 306 pages
Book Rating : 4.77/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Cat's Cradle written by Kurt Vonnegut and published by Dial Press. This book was released on 2009-11-04 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A free-wheeling vehicle . . . an unforgettable ride!”—The New York Times Cat’s Cradle is Kurt Vonnegut’s satirical commentary on modern man and his madness. An apocalyptic tale of this planet’s ultimate fate, it features a midget as the protagonist, a complete, original theology created by a calypso singer, and a vision of the future that is at once blackly fatalistic and hilariously funny. A book that left an indelible mark on an entire generation of readers, Cat’s Cradle is one of the twentieth century’s most important works—and Vonnegut at his very best. “[Vonnegut is] an unimitative and inimitable social satirist.”—Harper’s Magazine “Our finest black-humorist . . . We laugh in self-defense.”—Atlantic Monthly

Author : Terence McCarthy
Publisher : Penguin Random House South Africa
ISBN 13 : 1775840964
Total Pages : 334 pages
Book Rating : 4.61/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Story of Earth & Life written by Terence McCarthy and published by Penguin Random House South Africa. This book was released on 2013-07-10 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Geologically speaking, southern Africa is without equal, a treasure house of valuable minerals with a geological history dating back some 3 600 million years. In addition, the evolution of plants and animals, especially mammals and dinosaurs, is well preserved in the region, which also probably has the best record of the origin of modern man. This book provides a fascinating insight into that remarkable history: how southern Africa, and to some extent the world, came to be the way it is - how its mineral deposits formed, its life evolved and its landscape was shaped. Along the way readers will be enthralled by accounts of the Big Bang that marked the beginning of time and matter, by drifting and colliding continents, folding and fracturing of rocks, meteors colliding with the Earth, the time when the Earth froze over, volcanic eruptions and the start of life. Anyone interested in the landscape and ecosystems in which we live will be intrigued to discover how our natural landmarks were formed, from the deserts of Namibia to the mountains of the Western Cape or Mpumalanga. Why is South Africa so rich in minerals? How did glacial deposits come to be found in the Karoo? Why did dinosaurs become extinct? How did mammals develop from reptiles? How closely related are we to the apes? The answers to many such questions are found in this lavishly illustrated volume. The authors also suggest how we can learn from the past in order to anticipate the future - for instance, to be able to predict earthquakes, deal with volcanic eruptions and meet the challenges of global climate change.