Forty years ago, Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe challenged the long-held belief that life originated spontaneously from a primordial soup on Earth — a concept rooted in Aristotelian philosophy and dominant in Western science for over two millennia. They proposed that life might have originated elsewhere in the universe and spread to Earth through a process called panspermia.Hoyle and Wickramasinghe's research, supported by advancements in space technology and astronomy, argu...

With the rapid growth of new evidence from astronomy, space science and biology that supports the theory of life as a cosmic rather than terrestrial phenomenon, this book discusses a set of crucial data and pictures showing that life is still arriving at our planet. Although it could spark controversy among the most hardened sceptics this book will have an important role in shaping future science in this area.Contents:Foreword by Gensuke Tokoro

The idea that life is a cosmic, rather than a purely terrestrial phenomenon, has progressed from scientific heresy to mainstream science within the short timespan of a few decades. The theory of cometary panspermia developed by Fred Hoyle and the present author in the 1970's has been vindicated by a spate of new discoveries in astronomy and biology, and also with startling new evidence of microbial fossils in meteorites and micrometeorites. The recent Kepler Telescope searches for exoplane...

This is a revisit of a radical theory of cometary panspermia and cosmic life that was first proposed by Chandra Wickramasinghe and the late Sir Fred Hoyle in 1982. In its earliest form the theory of cosmic life started off as a speculation in 1974 after the first discovery of complex organic molecules and polymeric dust in interstellar space. The speculation soon developed into a serious scientific theory, predictions of which were available to be verified or falsified. Over four decades t...

The life story of this book spans many stages of the life and scientific career of one of the foremost astrophysicists/astrobiologists of our times. Starting from his boyhood days, the book describes the author's scientific work over the past 50 years, the ground-breaking discoveries he had made, the controversies generated in the scientific community, and the gradual acceptance of his discoveries. Written in lucid non-technical language it captures the essence of the author's research at ...

In the year 2015, 100 years after Fred Hoyle was born, the ideas relating to the cosmic origins of life are slowly gaining credence in scientific circles. Once regarded as outrageous heresy, evidence from a variety of disciplines — astronomy, geology, biology — is converging to support these once heretical ideas.This volume opens with recent review articles pointing incontrovertibly towards our cosmic heritage, followed by a collection of published articles tracing the development of the t...

Cosmic Genetic Evolution, Volume 106 in the Advances in Genetics series, highlights new advances in the field, with this new volume presenting interesting chapters on Panspermia, Cometary Panspermia and Origin of Life, The Efficient Lamarckian Spread of Life in the Cosmos, The Sociology of Science and Generality of the DNA/RNA/Protein Paradigm Throughout the Cosmos, The Mutagenic Source and Power of Our Own Evolution, Origin of New Emergent Coronavirus and Candida Fungal Diseases – Terrest...

This is the story of the author's unique scientific journey with one of the most remarkable men of 20th century science. The journey begins in Sri Lanka, the author's native country, with his childhood acquaintance with Fred Hoyle's writings. The action then moves to Cambridge, where the famous Hoyle-Wickramasinghe collaborations begin. A research programme which was started in 1962 on the carbonaceous nature of interstellar dust leads, over the next two decades, to developments that are c...

An exploration of how acceptance of panspermia will soon change history• Offers extensive scientific proof of panspermia--that life arose on Earth via comets and that evolution is seeded by viruses arriving via comets and interstellar dust• Explores the major philosophical, psychological, cultural, religious, and environmental ramifications of the acceptance of this new scientific worldviewMainstream consensus is that life arose on Earth spontaneously out of “primor...

Most people remember chemistry from their schooldays as largely incomprehensible, a subject that was fact-rich but understanding-poor, smelly, and so far removed from the real world of events and pleasures that there seemed little point, except for the most introverted, in coming to terms with its grubby concepts, spells, recipes, and rules. Peter Atkins wants to change all that. In this Very Short Introduction to Chemistry, he encourages us to look at chemistry anew, through a ch...

Astrobiology is the study of the origin and development of life on this and other planets. What fascinates people about astrobiology is that it seeks answers to long-standing unsolved questions: How quickly did life evolve on Earth and why did life persist here? Is there life elsewhere in the Solar System or beyond? The research of astrobiology has become more crucial than ever in recent decades, as biologists have discovered microbes that live in ever more extreme settings, such as bubbli...

With the development of a variety of exciting new areas of research involving computational chemistry, nano- and smart materials, and applications of the recently discovered graphene, there can be no doubt that physical chemistry is a vitally important field. It is also perceived as the most daunting branch of chemistry, being necessarily grounded in physics and mathematics and drawing as it does on quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, and statistical thermodynamics. With his typical clarity...