Life: Its Origins and Physical Basis

Examining how life came to be on Earth, this book asks the question: How could life have emerged from a catastrophic event? Primordial Earth was rendered into a blank canvas when it was struck by a Mars-sized object. The discussion in this book illustrates the importance of the high-temperature, chaotic system created in reaction and offers a consequential explanation of how chiral selection of amino acids occurred in the first steps to life.

Unlike much of the discussion in origin-of-life literature that favours an RNA-first world, chemistry researcher Peter D. Clark proposes a sequence of events based on their probability: namely, conversion of simple gases into amino acids, their simultaneous chiral selection and polymerization to L-enriched polypeptides, and then synthesis of RNA. Consequential evolution of this chemical system would then lead to the emergence of a codependent polypeptide–RNA chemical landscape and a rudimentary genetic code. Clark suggests that the important step of encapsulating replicating assemblies in a rudimentary cell membrane facilitated phosphate re-cycle – enabling development of life’s universal energy generation machinery, the proton motive force.

Applying these hypotheses to the potential for the development of life elsewhere in the solar system, this book demonstrates the possibility of simple life throughout the universe.

• Publication date: 29 September 2026
• Page count: 208
• Dimensions: Height 229 mm; Width 152 mm; Thickness 25 mm
• Publisher: University of Toronto Press
• Format: Hardback
• ISBN-13: 9781049804910