Wonders of life : exploring the most extraordinary force in the universe
by Cox, Brian, 1968- (Author), Cohen, Andrew (Film producer) (Author)
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Summary
A particle physicist and professor presents the story of the amazing diversity and adaptability of life told through the fundamental laws that govern it, from the origin of life to the human body. Full description
Table of Contents:
- Wonders of life
- Home. Evolution of life ; Return of the king ; A very special home ; Simple but complex ; The history of the exploration of water ; Water, water everywhere
- ; Water, the essential ingredient ; Walking on water ; Treetops to teardrops : the magic of hydrogen bonds ; Into the light. A train journey through time ; A child star ; A unique and colourful world ; The origin;s of life's colours ; From the smallest beginnings
- ; Eating the Sun ; A breath of fresh air ; Breath of life ; Four-legged life story
- What is life? The briefest of beauty. Day of the dead ; What is life? ; Energy and the First Law of Thermodynamics ; First life. Life's first energy source ; On Professor Cox's battery and the origin of life ; Searching for Eden : a warm little pond
- ; Universal life ; Prokaryotic and eukaryotic life ; Life and the Second Law of Thermodynamics : Schrödinger's Paradox ; Follow the Sun ; The origin of life's order ; One big family
- Size matters. Life-size differences. Same planet, different world ; Ocean giants ; The physics of a killer ; Small is beautiful ; Of royal crowns and ocean giants ; Big things don't jump ; Lost giants ; The world of the small. Inside an insect ; Beetle mania ; Broken men and splashing horses ; As small as it gets
- ; The smallest multicellular life on Earth ; Size really matters ; An island of giants
- Expanding universe. The expanding universe. Plugging in ; The common sense ; A bolt from the blue ; The universal nature of sensing ; River monsters ; Good vibrations. The power of hearing ; The human ear : a wonder of acoustic engineering ; The ossicles : one of nature's great evolutionary bodges ; Evolving ears and eyes ; The jawless lamprey ; Let there be light
- Seeing the light ; Eye wide open ; A very human experience of a very human creature ; Compound vs. camera : the advantages and disadvantages of the simple and the complex ; Seeing the universe
- Endless forms most beautiful. A universal common ancestor. Evolution and Madagascar ; Darwin's bark spider ; Darwin's orchid ; A name for life ; The stuff of life ; The bird : collision of a trillion suns ; The Hoyle Resonance : are we lucky to be here at all? ; Carbon cycle. The greatest cycles of life ; Harvesting carbon ; Why carbon? ; The building blocks of biology ; DNA from the beginning ; Meet the ancestors ; Tree of life ; Mutations : the spring from which diversity flows ; The power of mutations ; Tossing a coin isn't enough ; The power of islands ; Island Madagascar ; A creature from another world ; Precious islands.