Abstract
Theologians were raising questions that we still cannot answer fully, long before the advent of science and philosophy. The first steps of philosophy were taken a few centuries before our own era by the ancient Greeks, notably by Thales of Miletus (active in 585 BC). A significant contribution to the birth of science was made by Democritus of Abdera, one of the founders of atomism (active in 420 BC).
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Notes and References
Russell, B. (1991) History of Western Philosophy and its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day, Routledge, London, p. 13.
Coyne, S. J., G. (1996) Cosmology: The Universe in Evolution, in Chela-Flores and Raulin (1996), loc. cit., pp. 35–49.
Kennicutt Jr., R. C. (1996) Nature 381, 555–556. Subsequent work with the HST (Wendy Freedman and co-workers) tends to confirm this value of HO.
This section is partially based on three reviews; firstly, Caldwell, R.R. and Kamionkowski (2001). Echoes from the Big Bang, Scientific American January 2001, pp. 28–33, secondly, Rago, H. (2000).Cosmos and Cosmology, in Chela-Flores, J., Lemarchand, G. A. and Oro, J. (eds.), (2000) Astrobiology From the Big Bang to Civilization, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, pp. 33-40; finally, Sneden C. (2001) The age of the universe Nature 409, 673-674.
Cf. Glossary: “supernova”; cf., also Riess, A., et al (1998) Observational evidence from Supernovae for an accelerating universe and a cosmological constant, Astronomical Journal 116, 1009–1038.
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Cf. Shapiro, R. (1996) Prebiotic synthesis of the RNA bases. A critical analysis, Summary presented at the ISSOL Conference, Orléans, July, Book of Abstracts, p. 39.
Ponnamperuma, C. (1995) The origin of the cell from Oparin to the present day, in Ponnamperuma, C. and Chela-Flores, J. (eds.), (1995) Chemical Evolution: The Structure and Model of the First Cell, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, pp. 3–9.
Darwin, C. (1859) The origin of species by means of natural selection or the preservation of favored races in the struggle for life, John Murray/Penguin Books, London, 1968, p. 455.
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Cf. Glossary: “DNA, RNA”.
12. Coveney, P. and Highfield, R. (1995) Frontiers in Complexity. The search for order in a chaotic world, Faber and Faber, London, pp. 190–236.
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Since the late 1990s comparative planetology has been enriched by many extrasolar planets as well as by new solar systems, such as the one discovered in Upsilum Andromedae, a star which belongs to the Andromeda constellation (cf., Chapter 10). For an earlier view on comparative planetology the reader should consult Murray, B., Malin, M.C., and Greely, R. (1981) Earthlike Planets. Surfaces of Mercury, Venus, Earth, Moon, Mars, W. H. Freeman & Co., San Francisco, p. 317.
Drake, F. and Sobel, D. (1992) Is there anyone out there? The scientific search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Delacorte Press, New York.
Heidmann, J. (1996) SETI from the Moon. A case for a 21st Century SETI-Dedicated Lunar Farside Crater, in Chela-Flores, J. and Raulin, F. (eds.), Chemical Evolution: Physics of the Origin and Evolution of Life, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, pp. 343–353. The work of the late Heidmann has been carried on by Giancarlo Genta (cf., Proceedings of the Sixth Trieste Conference on Chemcal Evolution. (In preparation.)
Cf. Glossary: “chemosynthesis”, “supernova”.
Ponnamperuma, C. (1993) The origin, evolution and distribution of life in the universe, in Ponnamperuma, C. and Chela-Flores, J. (eds.), (1993) Chemical Evolution: Origin of Life, A. Deepak Publishing, Hampton, Virginia, USA, p. 6.
Cf. Glossary: “Orion Nebula”.
Cf. Glossary “angular momentum”.
Pollack, J. B. and Atreya, S. K. (1992) Giant planets: Clues on Current and Past Organic Chemistry in the Outer Solar System, in G.C. Carle, D.E. Schwartz, and J.L. Huntington, (eds.), Exobiology in Solar System Exploration, NASA publication SP 512. p.96
Cf. Glossary: “hydrocarbons”.
cf., Abbreviations: AU, HIPPARCOS, HST, Myr; cf., also Glossary, “Kuiper Belt”, “zodiacal dust cloud”; finally we refer the reader to Schneider, G., Smith, B. A., Becklin, E. E., Koerner, D. W., Meier, R., Hines, D. C, Lowrance, P. J., Terrile, R. J., Thomson, R. I. and Rieke, M. (1999) NICMOS Imaging of the HR 4796A Circumstellar Disk, Astrophys. Journal 513, L127–L130.
This parameter — the surface temperature — is indicated by what is technically known as its ‘Planck radiation’, the name given in honor of the Physics Nobel Laureate Max Planck, to the distribution with wavelength of the radiation emitted by the star at various temperatures. Such temperatures can be measured by the spectral type of the star, or by its color index. (cf., Glossary for definitions of spectral type and color index.)
Cf. Glossary: “photosphere”.
Cf. Chapter 10, section: “Which are likely habitable zones?”.
27. Cf. Chapter 5, “evolution of the hominoids”.
Wells, H. G. (1996) The Time Machine, Phoenix, London, Abridged edition.
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Chela-Flores, J. (2001). From cosmic to chemical evolution. In: The New Science of Astrobiology. Cellular Origin and Life in Extreme Habitats, vol 3. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0822-8_2
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