Several major breakthroughs have helped contribute to the emerging field of astrobiology. Focusing on these developments, this fascinating book explores some of the most important problems in this field. It examines how planetary systems formed, and how water and the biomolecules necessary for life were produced. It then focuses on how life may have originated and evolved on Earth. Building on these two themes, the final section takes the reader on a search for life elsewhere in the Solar System. It presents the latest results of missions to Mars and Titan, and explores the possibilities of...

In the mid-sixties, John Robson and Christina Enroth-Cugell, without realizing what they were doing, set off a virtual revolution in the study of the visual system. They were trying to apply the methods of linear systems analysis (which were already being used to describe the optics of the eye and the psychophysical performance of the human visual system) to the properties of retinal ganglion cells in the cat. Their idea was to stimulate the retina with patterns of stripes and to look at the way that the signals from the center and the antagonistic surround of the respective field of each...