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Cover

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