EDITORIAL INFORMATION

Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe have again combined forces to write a book that is not just highly topical but in its broad sweep provides an insight into the origin and development of life and our place in the Cosmos.

(Extracted from the dust jacket).

GENERAL TABLE OF CONTENTS

-Contents.

-Foreword by Paul Goddard.

-Prologue.

-1- Planets and Life - A Tour Through the Solar System.

-2- Panspermia: An Overview.

-3- The Universe and Life.

-4- Primordial Soup and Related Matters.

-5- Beginnings of Biology in Comets.

-6- Microbial Invasions from Space?

-7- Biological Evolution.

-Epilogue.

-Appendix on Influenza.

-Relevant Bibliography.

-Index.

OUR REVIEW

Life on Mars? is not the first book written jointly by Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe. Their revolutionary idea that life on Earth has its origins in outer space, and that it was originally brought by means of the collision of comets, has received a special attention on the part of all the scientific community.

Since they stated for the first time their theory in the seventies, several advances have allowed to re-define many of the dark points they fell into. Now, they attack once again with a work where they intend to present, armed with logic and scientific reasoning, all the arguments that make of their idea a convinciong explanation of the origin of life.

Such discoveries as that of August, 1996, with the possibility of the existence of life on Mars, clearly corroborate the fact that life is probably a cosmic phenomenon, common to the entire universe, at the very least in a microbial stage.

The theory by this pair of eminent astronomers, known as panspermia, is here reviewed with special attention being paid to the details, so as to take us step by step into the different points that intend to support it scientifically.

In a clear, concise language, with a praiseworthy intention to divulge, Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe will fascinate the reader with their reasoned explanations, a mixture of astronomy, astrophysics, biology and chemistry easily understandable by everybody.

The book ends with an interesting appendix with a renewed theory on the strange origin of the influenza, probably extraterrestrial.