Our Cosmic Origins: From the Big Bang to the Emergence of Life and Intelligence

by Armand H. Delsemme , Foreword by Christian de Duve

• ISBN13: 9780521794800
• ISBN10: 0521794803
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-03-05
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Looking at the stars at night, we have all wondered where we have come from and why we are here. Our Cosmic Origins traces the remarkable story of the emergence of life and intelligence right through the complex evolutionary history of the Universe. Armand Delsemme weaves together a rich tapestry of science, bringing together cosmology, astronomy, geology, biochemistry and biology in this wide-ranging book. In following the complex, chronological story, we discover how the first elements formed in the early Universe, how stars and planets were born, how the first bacteria evolved towards a plethora of plants and animals, and how the coupling of the eye and brain led to the development of self-awareness and, ultimately, intelligence. Professor Delsemme concludes with the tantalising suggestion that the existence of alien life and intelligence is likely, and examines our chances of contacting it. This provocative book provides the general reader with an accessible and wide-ranging account of how life evolved on Earth and how likely it is to exist elsewhere in the Universe.

Table of Contents

Foreword	xiii
Christian de Duve
Nobel laureate
Preface	xv
Acknowledgments	xviii
Locating humans in the Universe	1	(18)
Introduction	1	(4)
Pascal's two infinities	5	(3)
Ascent to the extremely large	8	(3)
Descent to the extremely small	11	(8)
The race toward complexity	19	(24)
The grand beginning	19	(2)
The first fossil trace	21	(2)
The Universe becomes transparent	23	(5)
The origin of the clusters of galaxies	28	(4)
The birth of stars	32	(5)
The quasars	37	(6)
The stellar alchemy of metals	43	(26)
The life of the stars	48	(1)
The fast evolution of massive stars	48	(5)
The steady evolution of less massive stars	53	(3)
The slow evolution of low-mass stars	56	(2)
The strange evolution of double stars	58	(2)
Seeding interstellar space	60	(2)
The second generation of stars	62	(2)
The chemistry of interstellar clouds	64	(5)
The formation of the planets	69	(44)
The Universe grows old	69	(2)
Cosmic abundance of the elements	71	(5)
The chondrites	76	(3)
Cometary dust	79	(1)
Variety of interstellar chemistry	80	(3)
Gravitational collapse	83	(1)
The accretion disk of the Sun	84	(2)
Temperature distribution in the disk	86	(4)
Formation of planetesimals	90	(4)
The T Tauri wind of the Sun	94	(1)
Agglomeration of the planets	95	(2)
The giant planets	97	(2)
Asteroids and comets	99	(2)
The terrestrial planets	101	(1)
Agglomeration of the Earth	101	(3)
Formation of the Moon	104	(1)
Fate of the planetismals	105	(2)
The planetary system	107	(6)
The emergence of life	113	(42)
The origin of the biosphere	113	(3)
Cometary bombardment	116	(5)
The atmosphere and the oceans of the Earth	121	(3)
The emergence of life on Earth	124	(2)
Defining life	126	(3)
The genetic code	129	(5)
Fossil traces of evolution	134	(1)
Evolution of the genetic message	135	(3)
Survival of the fittest	138	(1)
Evolution in molecular biology	139	(6)
The origin of life	145	(1)
Dissipative structures	146	(3)
Chance or necessity?	149	(6)
The history of life	155	(40)
The primordial Earth	155	(3)
Life makes its appearance	158	(2)
The world of bacteria	160	(3)
The eukaryotic cell	163	(2)
The Earth and the Moon	165	(1)
The evolution of the atmosphere	166	(2)
The age of the stromalites	168	(4)
Marine animals	172	(1)
Glaciations	173	(2)
Sexual reproduction	175	(2)
Life invades the continents	177	(3)
The age of the dinosaurs	180	(4)
The major extinctions	184	(11)
The awakening of intelligence	195	(14)
The nervous system	195	(3)
The age of the mammals	198	(2)
The evolution of the brain	200	(2)
The last glaciations	202	(2)
Homo sapiens	204	(5)
The other worlds	209	(36)
The plurality of inhabited worlds	209	(4)
Exploration of neighboring planets	213	(1)
Planet Mars	214	(4)
Bacteria in a Martian meteorite	218	(3)
Planet Venus	221	(1)
Evolutionary divergence of the rocky planets	222	(3)
Elsewhere in the Solar System	225	(4)
Where else could we find life?	229	(3)
Where are the other planetary systems?	232	(3)
Oxygen and life	235	(1)
Intelligent life	236	(3)
In search of other civilizations	239	(6)
Perspectives	245	(32)
The evolutionary thread	245	(1)
The `Augustinian era'	246	(1)
After the Big Bang	247	(1)
Branchings toward complexity	247	(5)
The anthropic principle	252	(3)
Multiple universes	255	(4)
The scale of the Universe	259	(1)
The future of the Universe	260	(1)
The future of our civilization	261	(1)
The next millennium	262	(4)
The distant future of life	266	(2)
Where are the others?	268	(1)
The answers of evolution	269	(2)
Free will and quanta	271	(1)
Why does the Universe exist?	272	(2)
`The feeling of the mysterious'	274	(3)
Appendix A. The standard model of the physics of elementary particles	277	(2)
Appendix B Symmetry in physics	279	(2)
Appendix C The strange role of time in relativity	281	(4)
Appendix D The measurement of long time spans and the age of the Universe	285	(4)
Appendix E The standard model of the Big Bang	289	(4)
Appendix F The cause of the Big Bang and inflation	293	(2)
Appendix G Chirality	295	(2)
Glossary	297	(12)
Bibliography	309	(4)
Figure index	313	(2)
Table index	315	(1)
Name index	316	(3)
Subject index	319