The Vital Question

Resumen del libro

Why is life the way it is? Bacteria evolved into complex life just once in four billion years of life on earth-and all complex life shares many strange properties, from sex to ageing and death. If life evolved on other planets, would it be the same or completely different? In The Vital Question, Nick Lane radically reframes evolutionary history, putting forward a cogent solution to conundrums that have troubled scientists for decades. The answer, he argues, lies in energy: how all life on Earth lives off a voltage with the strength of a bolt of lightning. In unravelling these scientific enigmas, making sense of life's quirks, Lane's explanation provides a solution to life's vital questions: why are we as we are, and why are we here at all? This is ground-breaking science in an accessible form, in the tradition of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species, Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, and Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel.

Biografía del autor

Nick Lanees bioquímico y profesor honorario del University College London. Es autor de varios libros galardonados con diversos premios y distinciones, entre ellos el Royalty Science Book Prize y el Book of the Year deThe EconomistyThe Sunday Times,Actualmente reside en Londres y escribe paraNature, Scientific AmericanyNew Scientist, entre otras publicaciones.Ha publicado también en ArielLos diez grandes inventos de la evolución.