The Life and Death of Planet Earth : How the New Science of Astrobiology Charts the Ultimate Fate of Our World

Rating:
Summary: Mind Numbing
Review: While a potentially interesting topic, the authors bored me. The consistantly repeat themselves. I don't know how many times I was told we know the furture because our authors have studied the past! The science was burdened with pseudo-short stories of past and future Earths which often turned out to be directly related to our authors. I felt the actual scientific content here presented could have been presented in a quarter of the pages much more clearly. After reading it in two nights I am left with a feeling of a mind numbed through repeated mental bludgeoning.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting follow up to Rare Earth.
Review: Wow, talk about depressing, although I don't know why it should be. Anyone who studies earth history with anything like a rational scientific interest knows that the planet will eventually cease to exist. Most of us don't plan on being here when it does. In fact, those of us with a background in paleontology might be willing to lay odds on whether the human race will survive to anything like a time "close" to the final days.

Basically the authors-and probably mostly Peter Ward-have given the last hours of planet earth the aura of a human death. In fact, Ward compares it graphically to the death of his own elderly mother, a gradual failure of all systems. While I found this very depressing, I found the concept of reverse evolution-if one can say that there is a "progress" to evolution-back to its beginnings an intriguing one; much like the "big bounce" concept in cosmology. In looking at the probable decline of our sun and of the living conditions of the planet because of it, one should find it unsurprising that life will evolve to simpler forms as a matter of entrenchment. With respect to the other possible ends to life on the planet, the death by fire in the form of asteroid impact has been done to death by the media over the past decade, while recently death by ice in the form of renewed glaciation is now gaining its fair share of film time.

In many respects the book is a continuation of Ward and Brownlee's earlier collaboration for Rare Earth, and repeats the assessment of what conditions favor life in general and intelligent life in particular. In both books the Drake equation is studied in detail with less of a rose tinted perspective. Basically The Life and Death of Planet Earth, like Rare Earth, points out the possibility that life at its most basic might be common enough in the cosmos but that what we see around us now on planet earth might not be. In short, once gone the magnificent experiement might truely be over.

Interesting follow up to Rare Earth.