Sources for Summer Assignment

Sources & Links that might be useful in answering the summer assignment. This list is by no means complete and you may feel free to use other sources. Just be aware that you must take into account the creditability of your sources.

Question #1

What is Life by Edwin Schrodinger. Schrodinger was a physicist who developed the equations for modern quantum mechanics. In 1944 he published a short book which is considered a classic in the way that a physical scientist looks at life.

http://home.att.net/~p.caimi/Life.doc

What is life by Lynn Margulis. This is an updated version of the above and may be available in the public library. Some sections of the book are available in Google books and of course you can purchase the book.

Question #2

An introductory article from Science magazine.

Origin Of Life On Earth

Origin of Life on Earth by Leslie E. Orgel, a research scientist at the Salk Institute, a research institute in the biological sciences near UC San Diego.

http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/lab/2948/orgel.html

An interview with Andrew Knoll, a professor of biology at Harvard and author of Life on a Young Planet: The First Three Billion Years of Life.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/origins/knoll.html

Extraterrestrial building blocks

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=were-meteorites-the-origi

An alien origin??

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=are-aliens-among-us

An alternative to RNA world

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-simpler-origin-for-life

Methane, or reduced carbon could have been one of the precursor molecules to initiating life processes:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=methane-on-mars-titan

New insights on the “primordial soup experiment “ of Miller & Urey

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=primordial-soup-urey-miller-evolution-experiment-repeated

Experiments related to attempts to reconstruct cells

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=primordial-soup-urey-miller-evolution-experiment-repeated

Alien origins???

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=are-aliens-among-us

Question #3

The following is an introduction to the thermodynamics of energy flow into and out of the biosphere.

http://physics.gmu.edu/~roerter/EvolutionEntropy.htm

Another introduction to thermodynamics and entropy as related to earth’s temperature.

http://www.newearthrising.org/2008/11/entropy-not-energy-is-the-issue.asp