The Life and Death of Planet Earth : How the New Science of Astrobiology Charts the Ultimate Fate of Our World - Hardcover

Peter D. Ward

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 074992425X ISBN 13: 9780749924256

Publisher: Piatkus Hb/Tpb, 2003

Synopsis

This is the first real biography of the Earth - not only a brilliant portrait of the emergence and evolution of life on this planet, but a vivid and frightening look at Earth's remote future. Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee combine storytelling power with extreme scientific care, and their narrative is as transfixing as any of H.G. Wells's fantasies, but more enthralling, for Ward and Brownlee have real power to prognosticate. This is a book that makes one shiver, but also inspires one to wonder how humanity (if we survive in the short term) will fare in the distant future." Oliver Sachs. Peter Ward and Don Brownlee, a geologist and an astronomer respectively, are in the vanguard of the new field of astrobiology. Combining their knowledge of the evolution of life on our planet with their understanding of the life cycles of stars and solar systems, the author's tell the awe-inspiring story of the second half of Earth's life. The process of planetary evolution will essentially reverse itself; life as we know it will subside until only the simplest forms remain. The oceans will evaporate, and as the sun slowly expands, Earth itself will eventually meet a fiery end.

About this title

About the Author

Peter Ward is Professor of Geological Sciences and Zoology at the University of Washington in Seattle; he is also the author of nine science books, including On Methuselah's Trail: Living Fossils and the Great Extinctions, and The End of Evolution. - David Brownlee is Professor of Astronomy at the University of Washington, and co-author with Peter Ward of the acclaimed and bestselling Rare Earth.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

From The Life and Death of Planet Earth:

There's a difference between a human's life and the life of our planet. Ruth Ward, born in 1916, aged gracefully but never resembled her youth again. Hers was a one-way trip. Planets have a different trajectory-the Earth, for instance, appears to be on a round trip of sorts. If you fire a cannon straight up, the projectile climbs to a certain height, slows, stops, and then falls back to the ground. Our planet's trajectory is similar. It started as a very hot, oxygen-free world. Water, air, plants, solar energy and plate tectonics created the conditions for natural evolution, and many people assume that the cannonball of biological complexity is still arcing upward. We believe that the cannonball has already begun to drop, and that the Earth has already started a return to a hot world where life becomes less diverse, less complicated, and less abundant though time. The last life on Earth may look much like the first life-a single-celled bacterium, survivor and descendant of all that came before.

About this edition

• Publisher: Piatkus Hb/Tpb
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 074992425X
• ISBN 13: 9780749924256
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 240