Robert M. Hazen

The author of the best-selling Science Matters outlines a radical new approach to geologic history that advances controversial theories that the Earth evolved and that life evolved from minerals, assessing supportive findings while explaining the impact of human actions.

The First 4.5 Billion Years, from Stardust to Living Planet

The Story of Earth

Carbon and the Evolution of  Everything

Symphony in C

Explains the basic scientific principles that govern our world, and shows how they manifest themselves in our everyday lives

Achieving Scientific Literacy

Science Matters

Scientist Robert Hazen attempts to offer a scientific explanation of how life on Earth began nearly four billion years ago, describing the sequence of events that caused non-living chemicals to become alive and create life.

The Scientific Quest for Life's Origin

Genesis

achieving scientific literacy

Science matters

Breve storia della Terra. Dalla polvere di stelle all'evoluzione della vita. I primi 4,5 miliardi di anni

James S. Trefil

Over 100,000 readers have relied on Trefil to gain a better understanding of physics, chemistry, astronomy, earth sciences, and biology. The book focuses on the great ideas in each field while showing readers how core scientific principles connect to their daily lives. The sixth edition emphasizes important themes and relationships, along with new real world connections. Scientific American has been added to the book along with completely updated examples. The presentation also employs a more visual approach that includes new illustrations and visuals. In addition, new problems help readers answer the big questions in science.

An Integrated Approach

The Sciences

Maxine Singer

Explores the unanswered questions of science, such as "Are we alone in the universe?" and "Can we unravel our genetic code?"

The Unanswered Questions at the Frontiers of Science

Why Aren't Black Holes Black?

Michael L. Wong

A distinguished geoscientist and rising-star astrobiologist offer a stunning new theory upending 150 years of established science—and an inspiring new vision of our universe. Of the codified laws of nature, famously, only one inscribes a direction to time: the dreaded second law of thermodynamics, which declares that the disorder of a closed system tends to increase as time passes. New shoes eventually scuff, our bodies weaken and die. Yet our senses tell us that miraculous order constantly emerges, too: children grow and learn; spontaneous patterns manifest in murmurations of starlings. Can it be true that the laws of our universe mandate only dissolution—rendering the intricate order of a butterfly’s wing, the much-vaunted complexity of the human brain, merely incidental? In Time’s Second Arrow, star scientists Robert M. Hazen and Michael L. Wong overturn more than a century of scientific canon, arguing that, in fact, there must be a second “arrow of time”—a heretofore missing law of nature that explains how the marvelously complex constituents of our universe came to be. Evolution, they boldly propose, is a universal phenomenon—not only in biology, but in the entire atomic, chemical, mineral, and physical universe. Showing how a natural process of selection for increasing function has shaped the universe since its inception, they explore how this new law could possibly help us identify life on other planets and—perhaps—even understand the purpose and meaning of life on Earth in a new way. Elegantly written and deeply moving, Time’s Second Arrow reveals how our cosmic inheritance includes, even alongside loss and decay, a drive toward wondrous invention and progress—ultimately revising our understanding of the universe and our place within it.

Evolution, Order, and a New Law of Nature

Time's Second Arrow

Dünya'nın Öyküsü

Adrian P. Jones

John A. Baross

Volume 75 of Reviews in Mineralogy and Geochemistry addresses a range of questions that were articulated in May 2008 at the First Deep Carbon Cycle Workshop in Washington, DC. At that meeting 110 scientists from a dozen countries set forth the state of knowledge about Earth's carbon. They also debated the key opportunities and top objectives facing the community. Subsequent deep carbon meetings in Bejing, China (2010), Novosibirsk, Russia (2011), and Washington, DC (2012), as well as more than a dozen smaller workshops, expanded and refined the DCO's decadal goals. The 20 chapters that follow elaborate on those opportunities and objectives.

Carbon in Earth

Margaret Hindle Hazen

"For, Lo! We live in an Iron Age--In the age of Steam and Fire!" wrote a poet mesmerized by the engines that were transforming American transportation, agriculture, and industry during his lifetime. Indeed, by the nineteenth century fire had become America's leitmotif--for good and for ill. "Keeping the flame" was deadly serious: even the slightest lapse of attention could convert a fire from friendly ally to ravaging destroyer. To examine the cultural context of fire in "combustible America," Margaret Hazen and Robert Hazen gather more than a hundred illustrations, most never before published, together with anecdotes and information from hundreds of original sources, including newspapers, diaries, company records, popular fiction, art, and music. What results is an immensely entertaining and encyclopedic history that ranges from stories of the tragic "great fires" of the century to fire imagery in folktales and popular literature. Dealing more with technology than with fire in nature, the book provides a vast amount of information on fire manipulation and prevention in urban life. Hazen and Hazen discuss the people who worked with fire--or against it. Founders, gaffers, blacksmiths, boilers at saltworks, and housewives knew how to "read" a fire and employ it for their purposes. A few dedicated investigators inquired about the scientific nature of heat and flame. And firefighters gradually progressed from "bucket brigades" to "using fire to fight fire" with the newly invented steam engine. The colorful stories of these Americans--the risks they took and the rewards they received--will fascinate not only social historians but also a broad audience of general readers. Originally published in 1992. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Robert M. Hazen

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