BookShared
  • MEMBER AREA    
  • The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life

    (By Nick Lane)

    Book Cover Watermark PDF Icon Read Ebook
    ×
    Size 26 MB (26,085 KB)
    Format PDF
    Downloaded 654 times
    Last checked 13 Hour ago!
    Author Nick Lane
    “Book Descriptions: The Earth teems with life: in its oceans, forests, skies and cities. Yet there’s a black hole at the heart of biology. We do not know why complex life is the way it is, or, for that matter, how life first began. In The Vital Question, award-winning author and biochemist Nick Lane radically reframes evolutionary history, putting forward a solution to conundrums that have puzzled generations of scientists.

    For two and a half billion years, from the very origins of life, single-celled organisms such as bacteria evolved without changing their basic form. Then, on just one occasion in four billion years, they made the jump to complexity. All complex life, from mushrooms to man, shares puzzling features, such as sex, which are unknown in bacteria. How and why did this radical transformation happen?

    The answer, Lane argues, lies in energy: all life on Earth lives off a voltage with the strength of a lightning bolt. Building on the pillars of evolutionary theory, Lane’s hypothesis draws on cutting-edge research into the link between energy and cell biology, in order to deliver a compelling account of evolution from the very origins of life to the emergence of multicellular organisms, while offering deep insights into our own lives and deaths.

    Both rigorous and enchanting, The Vital Question provides a solution to life’s vital question: why are we as we are, and indeed, why are we here at all?”

    Google Drive Logo DRIVE
    Book 1

    The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life

    ★★★★★

    David Quammen

    Book 1

    The Story of Earth: The First 4.5 Billion Years, from Stardust to Living Planet

    ★★★★★

    Robert M. Hazen

    Book 1

    Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray

    ★★★★★

    Sabine Hossenfelder

    Book 1

    Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime

    ★★★★★

    Sean Carroll

    Book 1

    Some Assembly Required: Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA

    ★★★★★

    Neil Shubin

    Book 1

    The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human

    ★★★★★

    Siddhartha Mukherjee

    Book 1

    The Gene: An Intimate History

    ★★★★★

    Siddhartha Mukherjee

    Book 1

    Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History

    ★★★★★

    Stephen Jay Gould

    Book 1

    Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will

    ★★★★★

    Robert M. Sapolsky

    Book 1

    The Black Cloud

    ★★★★★

    Fred Hoyle

    Book 1

    The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect

    ★★★★★

    Judea Pearl

    Book 1

    How Life Works: A User’s Guide to the New Biology

    ★★★★★

    Philip Ball

    Book 1

    Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past

    ★★★★★

    David Reich

    Book 1

    How the World Became Rich: The Historical Origins of Economic Growth

    ★★★★★

    Mark Koyama

    Book 1

    The Sleeping Beauties

    ★★★★★

    Suzanne O'Sullivan

    Book 1

    The Particle at the End of the Universe: How the Hunt for the Higgs Boson Leads Us to the Edge of a New World

    ★★★★★

    Sean Carroll