Related papers: Foundations for reconstructing early microbial lif…
Our planet is experiencing an accelerated process of change associated to a variety of anthropogenic phenomena. The future of this transformation is uncertain, but there is general agreement about its negative unfolding that might threaten…
Water is crucial for the emergence and evolution of life on Earth. Recent studies of the water content in early forming planetary systems similar to our own show that water is an abundant and ubiquitous molecule, initially synthesized on…
The early start to life naively suggests that abiogenesis is a rapid process on Earth-like planets. However, if evolution typically takes ~4Gyr to produce intelligent life-forms like us, then the limited lifespan of Earth's biosphere…
Planet Earth has evolved from an entirely anoxic planet with possibly a different tectonic regime to the oxygenated world with horizontal plate tectonics that we know today. For most of this time, Earth has been inhabited by a purely…
Even when concepts similar to emergence have been used since antiquity, we lack an agreed definition. However, emergence has been identified as one of the main features of complex systems. Most would agree on the statement ``life is…
The origin and early evolution of eukaryotes are one of the major transitions in the evolution of life on earth. One of its most interesting aspects is the emergence of cellular organelles, their dynamics, their functions, and their…
From a purely operational standpoint, the existence of microbes that can grow under extreme conditions, or "extremophiles", leads to the question of how the molecules making up these microbes can maintain both their structure and function.…
The origins of planets, and perhaps life itself, is intrinsically linked to the chemistry of planet formation. In this chapter we will attempt to explore the chemistry of planet-forming disks from the perspective of knowledge gained from…
Understanding the origin and long-term evolution of the Solar System is a fundamental goal of planetary science and astrophysics. This chapter describes our current understanding of the key processes that shaped our planetary system,…
The solar system has changed dramatically since its birth, and so did our understanding of it. A considerable research effort has been invested in the past decade in an attempt to reconstruct the solar system history, including the earliest…
Microbes require several complex organic molecules for growth. A species may obtain a required factor by taking up molecules released by other species or by synthesizing the molecule. The patterns of uptake and synthesis set a flow of…
Human activity has an enormous impact on Earth, changing organisms, environments and landscapes, leading to the decline of original ecosystems and irreversible changes that create new combinations of living beings and materials. As a…
The dynamic nature of life's ability to thrive in diverse and changing planetary environments suggests that habitability and survival depend on the evolutionary path and life adaptation to environmental conditions. Here we explore such…
Life arose on Earth sometime in the first few hundred million years after the young planet had cooled to the point that it could support water-based organisms on its surface. The early emergence of life on Earth has been taken as evidence…
Since its inception six decades ago, astrobiology has diversified immensely to encompass several scientific questions including the origin and evolution of Terran life, the organic chemical composition of extraterrestrial objects, and the…
Life can be viewed as a localized chemical system that sits on, or in the basin of attraction of, a metastable dynamical attractor state that remains out of equilibrium with the environment. Such a view of life allows that new living states…
The Hadean, once thought to be uninhabitable and tumultuous, has more recently been recontextualized as a clement time in which oceans, land, and life likely appeared on Earth. This non-exhaustive chapter follows multiple threads from…
Environmental science almost invariably proposes problems of extreme complexity, typically characterized by strongly nonlinear evolution dynamics. The systems under investigation have many degrees of freedom - which makes them complicated -…
Earth's atmosphere has evolved as volatile species cycle between the atmosphere, ocean, biomass and the solid Earth. The geochemical, biological and astrophysical processes that control atmospheric evolution are reviewed from an "Earth…
Understanding the thermodynamic function of life may shed light on its origin. Life, as are all irreversible processes, is contingent on entropy production. Entropy production is a measure of the rate of the tendency of Nature to explore…