
Is Earth Exceptional?
The Quest for Cosmic Life
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Narrated by:
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Graham Winton
A New York Times–bestselling astrophysicist and a Nobel laureate describe the quest to discover how and where the universe breathed life into matter
For a long time, scientists have wondered how life has emerged from inanimate chemistry, and whether Earth is the only place where it exists. Charles Darwin speculated about life on Earth beginning in a warm little pond. Some of his contemporaries believed that life existed on Mars. It once seemed inevitable that the truth would be known by now.
It is not. For more than a century, the origins and extent of life have remained shrouded in mystery. But, as Mario Livio and Jack Szostak reveal in Is Earth Exceptional?, the veil is finally lifting. The authors describe how life’s building blocks—from RNA to amino acids and cells—could have emerged from the chaos of Earth’s early existence. They then apply the knowledge gathered from cutting-edge research across the sciences to the search for life in the cosmos: both life as we know it and life as we don’t.
Why and where life exists are two of the biggest unsolved problems in science. Is Earth Exceptional? is the ultimate exploration of the question of whether life is a freak accident or a chemical imperative.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2024 Mario Livio and Jack Szostak (P)2024 Basic BooksListeners also enjoyed...




















Critic reviews
—Joseph Silk, author of Back to the Moon: The Next Giant Leap for Humankind
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Update on current research
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Comprehensive analysis of fundamentals of Life.
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So Informative
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I am sure that readers who are curious to learn about the possibility of finding life beyond Earth will find this book inspirational.
Authoritative story about origin of life
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Please don’t consider my review if: you are a professor of organic chemistry, research the origins of life, or really like chemical reactions of phospholipids, nucleotides, etc. in an audiobook.
Starts great, too chem detailed for this reader
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The discussion of how readily we can no detect exoplanets is fascinating.
Much discussion of the biochemistry underlying life.
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Last quarter of the book is pure science fiction.
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