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Summary
Summary
Earth evolves. From first atom to molecule, mineral to magma, granite crust to single cell to verdant living landscape, ours is a planet constantly in flux. In this radical new approach to Earth's biography, senior Carnegie Institution researcher and national bestselling author Robert M. Hazen reveals how the co-evolution of the geosphere and biosphere--of rocks and living matter--has shaped our planet into the only one of its kind in the Solar System, if not the entire cosmos.
With an astrobiologist's imagination, a historian's perspective, and a naturalist's passion for the ground beneath our feet, Hazen explains how changes on an atomic level translate into dramatic shifts in Earth's makeup over its 4.567 billion year existence. He calls upon a flurry of recent discoveries to portray our planet's many iterations in vivid detail--from its fast-rotating infancy when the Sun rose every five hours and the Moon filled 250 times more sky than it does now, to its sea-bathed youth before the first continents arose; from the Great Oxidation Event that turned the land red, to the globe-altering volcanism that may have been the true killer of the dinosaurs. Through Hazen's theory of "co-evolution," we learn how reactions between organic molecules and rock crystals may have generated Earth's first organisms, which in turn are responsible for more than two-thirds of the mineral varieties on the planet--thousands of different kinds of crystals that could not exist in a nonliving world.
The Story of Earth is also the story of the pioneering men and women behind the sciences. Readers will meet black-market meteorite hawkers of the Sahara Desert, the gun-toting Feds who guarded the Apollo missions' lunar dust, and the World War II Navy officer whose super-pressurized "bomb"--recycled from military hardware--first simulated the molten rock of Earth's mantle. As a mentor to a new generation of scientists, Hazen introduces the intrepid young explorers whose dispatches from Earth's harshest landscapes will revolutionize geology.
Celebrated by the New York Times for writing "with wonderful clarity about science . . . that effortlessly teaches as it zips along," Hazen proves a brilliant and entertaining guide on this grand tour of our planet inside and out. Lucid, controversial, and intellectually bracing, The Story of Earth is popular science of the highest order.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
With a blend of storytelling and science (from mineralogy and geology to biochemistry), Hazen (Science Matters) illuminates the origins of Earth and the origins of life. Hazen begins some 4.5 billion years ago, when the solar system coalesced from a cloud of cosmic debris. Hazen, a professor of earth science at George Mason University, describes the "Big Thwack" from a wandering asteroid that knocked off a piece of molten Earth to make the Moon. The creation of oceans and continents fed by Earth's "inner heat"; a celebrated 1953 experiment to recreate the Earth's "primordial soup"; and the discovery of strange creatures living on volcanic vents deep underwater show that life probably began in the water. Hazen moves on to photosynthetic organisms and their impact on the atmosphere, and on the explosive growth of algae in shallow coastal waters. Fossils show that the first primitive animal life evolved at least 545 million years ago and endured despite the threats of natural disaster, mass extinctions, and the extreme cold of the Ice Ages. Hazen enriches his story with details about pioneering researchers like continental drift theorist Alfred Wegener, and his own experiences hunting for meteorites, handling moon rocks, and collecting trilobytes. This is a thoroughly accessible book, deftly mixing a variety of scientific disciplines to tell an unforgettable story. Agent: Eric Lupfer, William Morris Enterprises. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Genesis: The Scientific Quest for Life's Origins, 2005, etc.) offers startling evidence that "Earth's living and nonliving spheres" have co-evolved over the past four billion years. To support his persuasive though controversial views, the author updates evidence collected by mineralogists over the last two centuries. Describing the "discoveries of organisms in places long considered inhospitable [to life] in superheated volcanic vents, acidic pools, Arctic ice and stratospheric dust," he argues for the dating of the origin of life more than a billion years earlier than estimates based on Nobel Prize winner Harold Urey's groundbreaking experiments. These appeared to support the view that life originated 2.5 billion years ago in an oceanic environment with the creation of organic molecules. Hazen explains how Urey and his associates were able to re-create "primordial soup" in a simulation, which produced "a suite of biomolecules stunningly similar to what life actually uses." That theory has been challenged in the last two decades, based on the discovery that life "fueled by chemical [rather than solar] energy" exists in extreme environments in astonishing abundance. Hazen and colleagues at the Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory (with support from NASA) have succeeded in simulating conditions that would have existed on Earth as early as 4.5 billion years ago, while producing biomolecules that are today the building blocks of life. The author situates this latest experimental evidence in a series of discoveries about the earth's geological evolution, sparked by analysis of moon rocks brought back by Apollo astronauts. A report of a fascinating new theory on the Earth's origins written in a sparkling style with many personal touches.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
As an earth-sciences professor at George Mason University and the author of several previous popular-science books, including (with coauthor James Trefil) the best-selling Science Matters (2009), Hazen is the perfect candidate to pen this exceptionally readable layperson's guide to the earth's geological and biological history. Setting aside the usual geologic-era names such as Precambrian or Paleozoic, Hazen instead gives these periods more user-friendly labels like The Big Thwack, covering the moon's formation, and The Boring Billion, covering a span when terrestrial changes were relatively static. In describing the broad sweep of mineralogical and chemical alterations the earth underwent, from the appearance of the oceans to the emergence of primitive cellular life, Hazen demonstrates how minerals and living creatures have evolved together. This coevolution of life and rocks scenario represents a recent paradigm shift in geological science that, Hazen argues, merits closer study as the planet bears the brunt of human-caused climate change. Science junkies and readers interested in the environment will find Hazen's arguments compelling and his overview of earth's tumultuous history captivating.--Hays, Carl Copyright 2010 Booklist
Choice Review
There has not been as good a narrative on the material origins of Earth--from the origin of matter, elements, and chemicals to the present rocky planet--since Wallace Broecker's How to Build a Habitable Planet (1985; rev. ed., 2012). Hazen (George Mason Univ.) cleverly labels chapters as colors representing the shifting chemical state of Earth's surface as seen from space over time. The important theme, shared with the Gaia hypothesis of James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis, is that biological evolution has resulted in progressive irreversible changes in the surface chemistry of the planet. The rise of oxygen in the atmosphere, which is a direct result of the evolution of oxygenic photosynthesis (a biological process), shifted the reactive chemistry at the Earth's surface from reducing to oxidizing around 2.4 billion years ago. This environmental change is responsible for the creation of the majority of the minerals known on Earth today--the various oxides of metals and other elements. But Hazen does not dwell on this one issue. Rather, as a "reformed" mineralogist, he has constructed a more complete and modern narrative of early Earth history that is now well aware of the interplay between biology and geology. A truly excellent book. Summing Up: Essential. All readership levels. P. K. Strother Boston College
Library Journal Review
Hazen (senior research scientist, Carnegie Inst.; earth science, George Mason Univ.; Genesis: The Scientific Quest for Life's Origin) here describes mineral evolution-a sequence of mineral formation common to terrestrial planets. In later stages of this sequence, living organisms contribute to the formation of novel crystalline substances, while minerals make possible the evolution of new life forms; for example, Earth's first photosynthetic bacteria released oxygen into their watery surroundings and the atmosphere above, making possible new chemical reactions that produced a variety of oxygen-rich minerals. Some new minerals, in turn, provided sources of chemical energy that new life forms could exploit. Hazen is confident that life and minerals will continue to interact for millions of years, but he cautions that both natural geologic processes and human activity will probably jeopardize the survival of our own species. VERDICT While some overlap with the author's previous work is inevitable, this title is considerably more focused on geological history. Hazen has a gift for explaining science in lay terms, and even readers with a minimal understanding of geology, chemistry, and physics will find this book riveting.-Nancy R. Curtis, Univ. of Maine Lib., Orono (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Introduction | p. 1 |
| 1 Birth The Formation of Earth | p. 7 |
| 2 The Big Thwack The Formation of the Moon | p. 31 |
| 3 Black Earth The First Basalt Crust | p. 53 |
| 4 Blue Earth The Formation of the Oceans | p. 77 |
| 5 Gray Earth The First Granite Crust | p. 102 |
| 6 Living Earth The Origins of Life | p. 127 |
| 7 Red Earth Photosynthesis and the Great Oxidation Event | p. 154 |
| 8 The "Boring" Billion The Mineral Revolution | p. 181 |
| 9 White Earth The Snowball-Hothouse Cycle | p. 206 |
| 10 Green Earth The Rise of the Terrestrial Biosphere | p. 232 |
| 11 The Future Scenarios of a Changing Planet | p. 257 |
| Epilogue | p. 281 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 285 |
| Index | p. 280 |