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by: Paul Davies  List Price: $15.00 Amazon.com's Price: $10.20 You Save: $4.80 (32%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Binding: PaperbackDewey Decimal Number: 576.83 EAN: 9780684863092 Edition: 1 ISBN: 068486309X Label: Simon & Schuster Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 304 Publication Date: March 16, 2000 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Studio: Simon & Schuster Related Items:
Browse for similar items by category: Click to Display Editorial Review: Amazon.com: How did life begin? Did it start here, by blind chance or by necessity, or was Earth seeded by extraterrestrial visitors? (And, if so, how did they arise?) Physicist and science writer Paul Davies tackles these heavy questions and more in The Fifth Miracle: The Search for the Origin and Meaning of Life, a wide-ranging survey of the field of biogenesis. From the "Martian meteorite" ALH84001 to the hardy microorganisms living on--and under!--our sea beds, Davies looks for evidence pointing toward our first ancestor. His willingness to consider any possibility makes for a fun, fascinating journey through our solar system and beyond. The Fifth Miracle provides convincing arguments that life flourishes, and may indeed have begun, deep within the earth's crust, and not in Darwin's "warm little pond." And if in our planet's crust, why not in others'? Indeed, he shows that it is not just possible but likely that living organisms have passed between Earth and Mars embedded within meteorites. Davies's command of the data and his facility with explaining it to nonprofessionals give the lie to his self-description as "a simple-minded physicist" intruding in another's domain. The best scientists hate to see questions finally answered and love to see new ones raised; by that standard (and by any other), The Fifth Miracle is a first-rate book of scientific speculation. --Rob Lightner Product Description:
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 Rating:  - A Fantastic ReadThis book is very, very good - an excellent read. It most certainly is a in-depth look at 'age-old' questions of "where did it all begin?" and with absolute neutrality regarding current scientic views versus current religious 'creator' views. Rating: - How did life on Earth originate?How did life on Earth originate? Wisely Davies begins his book by answering this question with the question of what is life? After discussing various theories that have been previously proposed, Davies concludes that it's an organicly autonomous creation sometimes capable of obtaining and metabolizing food and creating copies of itself. Having dealt with this question, Davies examines the three so far discovered domains of life on Earth: prokaryotes (us and pretty much ... Read More Rating: - Searching for the Laws of LifeAccording to the book of Genesis, God's fifth act of creation was to create life on earth. Modern science has a different myth. In the beginning, there was a simple soup of inorganic chemicals: water, ammonia and methane. And into this soup came a bolt of lightning that brought into being the amino acids that gradually assembled themselves into peptides and proteins, and the nucleotides from which came RNA and DNA. And the DNA learned the art of becoming self-replicating and so began the ascent of ... Read More Rating: - Simply AstoundingThis book is my Science recommendation for 2004. As usual Davies ploughes through a whole whack of cosmic data and implications to look at the question of life: How did it begin? What are the current theories of life? What are the necessary conditions for life forms. It is interesting to note that all of these questions are pre-evolution questions, since we do not need a mechanism to add, refine or make life more complex -- natural selection does that wonderfully --- the central question ... Read More Rating: - The best little book I have read in years.The fifth miracle is an outstanding little book that discloses a miriad of possibilities about the origin of life on earth. The controversy arises when Davis exposes some unorthodox theories like Panspermia, the truth is that when he does that he is really persuasive. Paul Davies is an intelligent scientist and one that has kept updated and with experience on field, so his arguments are no less than powerful and convincing, once again, even the controversial ones. Though he doesn't take part in most of ... Read More 
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