Where did we come from? What does it mean to be ''alive''? And what is our place in the cosmos? In her twenty-year journey to answer these questions, Olivia Judson has travelled to all seven continents and dived in several seas; she has made mental journeys to other worlds - the Moon, Venus, Mars; she has travelled back in time, haunted the rock collections of natural history museums, read scores of books and thousands of papers. The Co-Creation proposes a radical new way of understanding life on Earth: not as a story written in genes and DNA, but as one driven by energy. Judson divides the history of our planet into five great epochas - rock, light, oxygen, flesh and fire - each marked by the unlocking of a new source of energy. Through these transformations, she argues, Earth evolved from a barren, asteroid-pummelled wasteland to the unique planet we inhabit today. However, just as Earth made life, life itself became a powerful geological force that reshaped Earth - shifting the positions of continents, upheaving mountain ranges, changing the colour of the sky and causing vast oceans to open and close. The Co-Creation reveals we are not merely occupiers of this planet, but integral to its very existence.

Autorentext

Olivia Judson is an evolutionary biologist and the award-winning author of Dr Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation: The Definitive Guide to the Evolutionary Biology of Sex, which was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize, translated into more than eighteen languages and was made into a three-part television show. She received a doctorate from the University of Oxford, is a former science journalist for The Economist, and has written for National Geographic, The Atlantic, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and New York Times.

Klappentext

Where did we come from? What does it mean to be 'alive'? And what is our place in the cosmos?

In her twenty-year journey to answer these questions, Olivia Judson has travelled to all seven continents and dived in several seas; she has made mental journeys to other worlds - the Moon, Venus, Mars; she has travelled back in time, haunted the rock collections of natural history museums, read scores of books and thousands of papers. The Co-Creation proposes a radical new way of understanding life on Earth: not as a story written in genes and DNA, but as one driven by energy.

Judson divides the history of our planet into five great epochas - rock, light, oxygen, flesh and fire - each marked by the unlocking of a new source of energy. Through these transformations, she argues, Earth evolved from a barren, asteroid-pummelled wasteland to the unique planet we inhabit today.
However, just as Earth made life, life itself became a powerful geological force that reshaped Earth - shifting the positions of continents, upheaving mountain ranges, changing the colour of the sky and causing vast oceans to open and close.

The Co-Creation reveals we are not merely occupiers of this planet, but integral to its very existence.