‘The Human Experiment: Two Years and Twenty Minutes Inside Biosphere 2’ by Jane Poynter
On September 26th 1991 six explorers stepped through an airlock and begun an adventure that would last over two years, and along the way subject them to severe psychological torment and starvation of both food and oxygen. The project was the operation of the first man-made biosphere, Biosphere 2, and involved an entire ecosystem being designed, constructed and hermetically sealed-off from the rest of the world; an experiment into the feasibility of using life itself as the life-support system to keep humans alive in space. The Human Experiment tells the incredible tale of what came to be...
Read More‘How To Build A Habitable Planet’ by Charles Langmuir & Wally Broecker
An expanded and revised edition of the original published in 1984, Charles Langmuir works with the same author Wally Broecker to bring this popular text up-to-date with the latest research and scientific ideas. Presented somewhere between the level of a textbook and a popular science book, How To Build A Habitable Planet covers a wide range of disciplines including physics, chemistry, biology, geology, astronomy and astrobiology. Spanning 21 chapters it starts with detailed theory on the formation of the galaxies and stars and how these attributed to the elements found in later generations...
Read More‘The History of Life: A Very Short Introduction’ by Michael J. Benton
“Talk to the point, and stop when you have reached it. Be comprehensive in all you say or write. To fill a volume upon nothing is a credit to nobody.” The above quotation, written in the 19th century by American author John Neal, might as well be the motto of the Oxford University Press’ Very Short Introduction range of titles. There are currently 193 in the series, covering subjects from the merits of Egyptian Art to an analysis of Game Theory, and seemingly everything in between. This latest title has been written by renowned palaeontologist Michael J. Benton, and it begins its...
Read More‘The Goldilocks Enigma’ by Paul Davies
It is now 40 years since Brandon Carter began thinking about how the preconditions necessary for human existence might bias the view we have of the Universe. Carter showed that fairly simple changes to the laws of the Physics yield Universes which are too simple to allow the emergence of life. For example, you can’t even alter the number of spatial dimensions since planetary orbits are only stable in three dimensions. Our Universe seems to exhibit quite a few examples of such fine-tuning and many of these are discussed in Paul Davies’s book. One way to explain these coincidences is to...
Read More‘Global Catastrophes: A Very Short Introduction’ by Bill McGuire
Much of astrobiology is concerned not only with what conditions life is thought to have emerged under and what environmental extremes it can survive, but also what sorts of hazards can threaten life on a planetary scale. And this pocket-sized book from OUP forms the perfect handbook to all the ways the world could end. Bill McGuire is professor of Geophysical Hazards at University College London and heads their Benfield Hazard Research Centre, so is certainly well-qualified for such doomsaying. Natural hazards such as tsunamis, volcanoes, and earthquakes are all featured in early chapters....
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