Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe

Peter D. Ward; Donald Brownlee

ISBN 10: 0387987010 / ISBN 13: 9780387987019

Published by Copernicus, 2000

About this Item

Missing dust jacket; May have limited writing in cover pages. Pages are unmarked. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less.

Seller Inventory # G0387987010I4N01

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe
• Publisher: Copernicus
• Publication Date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0387987010
• ISBN 13: 9780387987019
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket
• Weight: 1.7 pounds

About this title

Synopsis

What determines whether complex life will arise on a planet, or even any life at all? Questions such as these are investigated in this groundbreaking book. In doing so, the authors synthesize information from astronomy, biology, and paleontology, and apply it to what we know about the rise of life on Earth and to what could possibly happen elsewhere in the universe. Everyone who has been thrilled by the recent discoveries of extrasolar planets and the indications of life on Mars and the Jovian moon Europa will be fascinated by Rare Earth, and its implications for those who look to the heavens for companionship.

About the Author

Peter D. Ward is Professor of Geological Sciences and Curator of Paleontology at the University of Washington in Seattle. His previous books include Time Machines and The Call of Distant Mammoths, The End of Evolution and On Methuselah's Trail, and, with Donald Brownlee, The Life and Death of Planet Earth. A member of the National Academy of Sciences, Donald Brownlee is Professor of Astronomy at the University of Washington in Seattle. He has been a member of numerous important NASA teams, and specializes in the study of the Solar System's origin, comets and meteorites, and the underlying subject of this book, astrobiology.