Description: "What is life? This is among the most difficult open problems in science, right up there with the nature of consciousness and the existence of matter. All the definitions we have fall short. None help us understand how life originates or the full range of possibilities for what life on other planets might look like. In [this book], physicist and astrobiologist Sara Imari Walker argues that solving the origin of life requires radical new thinking and an experimentally testable theory for what life is. This is an urgent issue for efforts to make life from scratch in laboratories here on Earth and missions searching for life on other planets. Walker proposes a new paradigm for understanding what physics encompasses and what we recognize as life"--
Review Quotes: "Provocative and intriguing." --The Wall Street Journal
"A fresh take on the age-old questions 'Are we alone?' and 'Where did we come from?'" --American Scientist "Bracingly original. . . . This has the potential to be a game changer." --Publishers Weekly (★starred review★) "An honorable addition to a small genre that began with Noble Prize-winning physicist Erwin Schrodinger's What Is Life? . . . Ingenious." --Kirkus Reviews "This is vital information." --Los Angeles Times"A virtuoso intellectual performance. . . full of wit, mischief and bursts of insolent brevity." --The Telegraph (UK) "With wit and clarity, Walker outlines a radical new approach to bridge the conceptual gap between non-life and life." --Paul Davies, author of What's Eating the Universe and The Demon in the Machine "Reading Life as No One Knows It is like engaging in a mind-bending conversation about the biggest questions of all." --Tim Urban, creator of Wait But Why "A masterfully crafted and engaging account of Assembly Theory. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in fundamental physics, the origins of life, and pursuing a better understanding of the structure underlying all of the universe's creations." --Annaka Harris, author of Conscious