Life on the Edge

A fascinating, accessible introduction to the frontier of the most important new field in the world of science Life is the most extraordinary phenomenon in the known universe, but how did it come to be? Even in an age of cloning and artificial biology, the remarkable truth remains: nobody has ever made anything living entirely out of dead material. Life remains the only way to make life. Are we still missing a vital ingredient in its creation? Like Richard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene, which provided a new perspective on how evolution works, Life on the Edge alters our understanding of our world’s fundamental dynamics. Bringing together firsthand experience at the cutting edge of science with unparalleled gifts of explanation, Jim Al-Khalili and Johnjoe McFadden reveal that missing ingredient to be quantum mechanics—the phenomena that lie at the heart of this most mysterious of sciences.