Читать книгу Wonders of Life - Andrew Cohen - Страница 5
ОглавлениеCover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
INTRODUCTION
WONDERS OF LIFE
CHAPTER 1
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 of Life’s Colours
From the Smallest Beginnings…
Eating the Sun
A Breath of Fresh Air
Breath of Life
Four-legged Life Story
CHAPTER 2
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
CHAPTER 3
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
CHAPTER 4
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
CHAPTER 5
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
Picture credits
Acknowledgements
About the Publisher
