Andrew Cohen

Wonders of Life


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       THE BRIEFEST OF BEAUTY

       Day of the Dead

       What is Life?

       Energy and the First Law of Thermodynamics

       FIRST LIFE

       Life’s First Energy Source

       On Professor Cox’s Battery and the Origin of Life

       Searching for Eden: A Warm Little Pond…

       Universal Life

       Prokaryotic and Eukaryotic Life

       Life and the Second Law of Thermodynamics: Schrödinger’s Paradox

       Follow the Sun

       The Origin of Life’s Order

       One Big Family

      CHAPTER 3

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      SIZE MATTERS

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       LIFE-SIZE DIFFERENCES

       Same Planet, Different World

       Ocean Giants

       The Physics of a Killer

       Small is Beautiful

       Of Royal Crowns and Ocean Giants

       Big Things Don’t Jump

       Lost Giants

       THE WORLD OF THE SMALL

       Inside an Insect

       Beetle Mania

       Broken Men and Splashing Horses

       As Small as it Gets…

       The Smallest Multicellular Life on Earth

       Size Really Matters

       An Island of Giants

      CHAPTER 4

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      EXPANDING UNIVERSE

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       THE EXPANDING UNIVERSE

       Plugging In

       The Common Sense

       A Bolt from the Blue

       The Universal Nature of Sensing

       River Monsters

       GOOD VIBRATIONS

       The Power of Hearing

       The Human Ear: A Wonder of Acoustic Engineering

       The Ossicles: One of Nature’s Great Evolutionary Bodges

       Evolving Ears and Eyes

       The Jawless Lamprey

       LET THERE BE LIGHT…

       Seeing the Light

       Eye Wide Open

       A Very Human Experience of a Very Human Creature

       Compound vs Camera: The Advantages and Disadvantages of the Simple and the Complex

       Seeing the Universe

      CHAPTER 5

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      ENDLESS FORMS MOST BEAUTIFUL

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       A UNIVERSAL COMMON ANCESTOR

       Evolution and Madagascar

       Darwin’s Bark Spider

       Darwin’s Orchid

       A Name for Life

       The Stuff of Life

       The Bird: Collision of a Trillion Suns

       The Hoyle Resonance: Are We Lucky to be Here at all?

       CARBON CYCLE

       The Greatest