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Four billion years ago, the infant Earth was a seething cauldron of erupting volcanoes, raining meteors, and hot noxious gases, totally devoid of life. But a relatively short time later—100 to 200 million years—the planet was teeming with primitive organisms.
What happened?
Professor Robert M. Hazen, one of the nation’s foremost science educators and leader of a NASA-supported team that is studying the origins of life in the universe, leads you on a 24-lecture expedition to find the answer to this momentous question.
The search takes you from path-breaking experiments in the 19th century proving that the molecules of life are no different from other chemicals, to the increasingly sophisticated understanding in the 20th century of how the chemistry of life works, to the near certainty that the 21st century will see spectacular and unpredictable developments in our understanding of how life began…
From Simple Chemistry to DNA
For all its familiarity, life is an elusive concept that is hard to define, much less explain. This course shows how scientists are systematically building a picture of the process by which chemical reactions on the early Earth eventually led to the first appearance of the DNA-protein world that remains the fundamental basis of all life today.
Dr. Hazen’s own work makes him the perfect guide to present key ideas and controversies in this research, and to introduce you to the most important scientists working in the field—many of whom he knows personally. Under his guidance, you will join researchers as they seek to establish the earliest appearance of life on Earth, as they grapple to explain how it arose, and as they probe for evidence of life beyond our planet.
Dr. Hazen is a superb science teacher, whose previous course for The Teaching Company, The Joy of Science, earned this accolade in AudioFile magazine: “From the very beginning, one recognizes the gift of Professor Hazenàto make science easy to understand.”
This course is crammed with fascinating experiments, surprising results, heated debates, blind alleys, and promising leads. It is a mystery story in the truest sense—one in which the clues are slowly adding up but the solution is not yet in hand.
Not Your Usual Science Course
The Origins of Life introduces you to a scientific problem that is far from solved but one which is all the more thrilling for that reason. “The most exciting aspect of science is the process of discovery,” says Dr. Hazen. “The origin of life is a perfect subject to reveal that ongoing adventure that is the very essence of science.”
This is not your usual science course, which traditionally presents a consensus view on known facts about the world. Instead, Professor Hazen plunges into the thick of ongoing research. “I want to take you into the field to see what the geologists see, and to puzzle with them as they try to sort out the meanings of ancient rocks. I want to take you into the laboratory and show you how we do origin experiments. I want you to see how unscripted and creative the scientific process really is. I want you to get a sense of how scientists around the world are trying to fill in the blanks of our ignorance.”
“We are in the midst of a remarkably dynamic stage of research into the origin of life,” he continues. “I’ve never seen a scientific field with so many wild new ideas.”
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