The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere (2016) is a book by Eric Smith and biophysicist Harold J. Morowitz which provides an introduction to origins of life research via a review of perspectives from a variety of fields active in this research area, including geochemistry, biochemistry, ecology, and microbiology. The book seeks to advance a novel theory by which the emergence of life can be conceptualized as a series of phase transitions, and in so doing relies on ideas from statistical mechanics and non-equilibrium thermodynamics.Cambridge University Press (2016) Publisher book description The book also argues for the primacy of metabolism, suggesting that the problem is not so much when and how life first appeared on Earth, but rather how a variety of non-biological chemical reactions came to be integrated into the earliest biotic metabolism. Given the nature of life's emergence through a series of phase transitions, and the abiotic origins of the various chemical processes constituting metabolism, the authors contend that the emergence of the biosphere, and its underlying biochemistry, is itself a planetary-scale process that is continuous with geochemistry and thus the biosphere itself should be considered the "fourth Geosphere," as the title suggests.Sara I. Walker; The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Physics Today 1 September 2017; 70 (9): 58. https://doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.3694
References
Sara I. Walker; The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Physics Today 1 September 2017; 70 (9): 58. https://doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.3694 Smith, E., & Morowitz, H. (2016). The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781316348772
External links - Talk by Eric Smith on "Biogenesis: The emergence of the fourth geosphere" - Aspen Institute McCloskey Speaker Series talk by Eric Smith on the origins of life - Talk by Eric Smith on inevitability of life at Santa Fe Institute