The vital question: Why is life the way it is?
The Vital Question: Why is life the way it is? is a new book by Nick Lane that is due out on April 23rd. His question is not one for a static answer but rather one for a series of ever sharper explanations—explanations that apply at different resolutions to specific increments in the continuous chain of life, to the whole, and to generalizations of the process to other instances. For example, we might now boldly assert that an explanation for whether life evolved, or could have evolved, in the same way more than once on our own planet might also describe the same for any other planet. In reading Nick's staggeringly broad and indelible new synthesis, we reach the conclusion that in it's most rough top-level form this explanation must be that any sufficiently advanced chemiosmotic geochemistry is indistinguishable from life.