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12 Microbial Life in Brines, Evaporites and Saline Sediments: The Search for Life on Mars
When water on a planet begins to evaporate the dissolved minerals become more concentrated, form a brine, eventually precipitating out of solution...
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5 Global Distribution of Subsurface Water Measured by Mars Odyssey
While the presence of water in minerals of the Martian surface has been known for many years and the storage of ground ice in the past and present...
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The Material-Independent Signatures of Life.Forensic Tools of Astrobiology
Biological life is intimately related to the geochemical conditions on Earth and is fit for this planet’s energy flux. It has often been suggested...
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The Early History of Bio-Information
In a general sense, the information level of a structure equals the minimum number of instructions needed to specify the structure (Orgel 1973). The...
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Assembling the Early Puzzle of Life
So far no theory, no approach, no set of formulas, and no blackboard scheme have been found satisfactory in explaining the origin of life. The...
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The Early History of Bioenergy
Energy is most commonly defined as the potential to do work. The maintenance of the living state requires a constant flow of energy through the...
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12 Entropy Production in the Planetary Context
In this paper I review some applications of nonequilibrium thermodynamics to planetary science. Of particular importance are the horizontal and...
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10 Thermodynamics of the Ocean Circulation: A Global Perspective on the Ocean System and Living Systems
In this chapter, we investigate thermodynamics in a global-scale open ocean circulation and discuss the physical properties of “living systems”, that...
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16 Temperature, Biogenesis, and Biospheric Self-Organization
We argue that the biosphere has evolved deterministically as a selforganized system, given the initial conditions of the Sun-Earth system. With...
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8 Entropy Production of Atmospheric Heat Transport
We examine the rate of entropy produced by the atmospheric general circulation and the hypothesis that it adjusts itself towards a macroscopic state...
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18 Insights from Thermodynamics for the Analysis of Economic Processes
The laws of thermodynamics constrain transformation of materials and energy, and thus have implications for economic processes. This paper provides...
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1 Entropy Production by Earth System Processes
Degradation of energy to lower temperatures and the associated production of entropy is a general direction for Earth system processes, ranging from...
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15 Coupled Evolution of Earth’s Atmosphere and Biosphere
Earth’s climate has remained conducive to life for more than 3.5 billion years, probably because of higher concentrations of CO2 and CH4 greenhouse...
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2. Definition of Life
The definition of life is a long-standing debate with no general scientific consensus to be expected any time soon. The underlying problem is that...
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5. Building Blocks of Life
Life is based on complex chemistry yet only a few of all the available elements participate in most life-supporting reactions on Earth: carbon,...
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4. Energy Sources and Life
An external energy source is a necessary condition for life, because living systems require a flow of energy to organize materials and maintain a low...
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13 The Free-Energy Transduction and Entropy Production in Initial Photosynthetic Reaction
Initial photosynthetic reactions in bacterial photosynthesis are modeled in this chapter as transitions among discrete states of integral membrane...
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17 Entropy and Gaia: Is There a Link Between MEP and Self-Regulation in the Climate System?
The Gaia hypothesis posits that the Earth’s climate is self-regulating, while the maximum entropy production (MEP) principle suggests that the...
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3. Lessons from the History of Life
The discussion of life on other worlds is inevitably qualified by the phrase, “life as we know it.” This customary and appropriate caution among...
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1. Introduction
Astrobiology studies the origin, evolution, distribution, and fate of life throughout the universe, with no direct evidence that life exists anywhere...