The Life and Death of Planet Earth: How the New Science of Astrobiology Charts the Ultimate Fate of Our World

The Life and Death of Planet Earth makes the impression to have been written to cash in on the success of Rare Earth: it is relatively insubstantial, has numerous errors, and is not particularly well written. Its main point is that life as we know it on earth today has a very limited shelf life: it will likely end between 500 and 800 million years from now, having the dominated the surface of the Earth for a mere 1/12th of the life of the planet. This is a sobering thought.

Just got done reading Rare Earth ( 5 stars see my review) by the same authors. Peter Ward is a Paleontologist and Donald Brownlee is an Astronomer. Together they use their collective expertise to create 2 great books. Both books read well, have no boring parts and are page burners. The reader wants to learn more. Read both books in two days each.We see in The Life and Death of Planet Earth the different past ages and how long it took for primitive one cell life to evolve and then the great difficulty for planets and animals to evolve and last man. We see how fragile the planet is and the past extinctions where up to 90% of life at that time became extinct. We see ice ages and glaciers cooling the earth and greenhouse gases from Vulcanism and Plate Tectonics to keep earth warmer. We see a series of warming and cooling with different plants and animal becoming extinct. Later we see the loss of CO2 in the atmosphere, death of plants and animals. Finally only bacteria and single cell organisms left. We see the loss of the oceans until finally the earth is so hot all life perishes. Much later the sun expands into a red giant and swallows and destroys the Earth. Peter shows us the different cycles the earth has...CO2, water, Continent development and weathering and how each contribute to keep earth's climate in a range for liquid water to exist and plants and animals to survive.Lots more!Donald shows use the death of stars, our sun becoming a red giant and swallowing up most of the inner planets including Earth, super novas, gamma ray bursts and more. Lots of ways our fragile Earth can be destroyed.Later the authors tell us different ways we might try to escape Earth's final destruction. One go to Mars and terraform it. Two, move the Earth by deflecting comets and using their gravitational assist to move the Earth into Mar's orbit but first moving Mars out of the way. Seems far fetched to me. Then seeding different far away planets with our DNA and lastly the difficulty in stellar rocket travel.I liked the part where we are told yes the world will end just like every human being. Enjoy, protect and cherish the planet while we can. A very interesting book, on a fascinating subject with input from a paleontologist and an astronomer. 5 stars and recommended.

I had a dream that I was transported 30 million years into the future but there were no humans; not anywhere ! Compared to 'Rare Earth' the writing is more general in nature, almost as if the book were written very quickly. I wanted the english measurements vs the metric ones being the layman that I am which I on occasion got but I'm too lazy to make conversions. ie: -65 degrees celsius is the temperature of the stratosphere when it begins but -65 degrees celsius has no meaning to me. I want to know the fahrenheit degrees and since I'm lazy, I still haven't done the conversion because I'm not a college student. Comparing the death of planet earth to Peter's dying grandmother was very sad and a little creepy. The anology may turn out to be right on the money but writing about it even now I'm feeling creeped out. There are a good number of ideas presented but not in any real detail. An example would be the intriguing notion of when plate tectonics might end due to a slowing of upwardly rising heat. A little more background would have been appreciated because the idea is so interesting but these are the kind of things that happen when you're writing to a strict deadline. I'm giving the book 4 stars because it's a decent generalist read. If you're not lazy like me you might even consider doing the conversions and following up the sections of interest with further research.

11th -12th grade writing level. Interesting nevertheless.

Being a great fan of the author's works, I really had a good time reading this book. Its full of interesting theories and facts such as the earth golden period being already part of the past (300million years ago). The theories even sound sometimes too realistic (or pessimistic)Otherwise, the book is well structured and highy enjoyable. Maybe a bit more graphics?THe only minus is that I found the authors going a bit too far in terms of speculation. For example, there are interesting theories to move the earth further away to stay in the sun's comfort zone but I guess by that time we would have either died or move away.

A fascinating and very thorough examination of all the issues surrounding the origins of the Earth, and the limited period that life will exist upon it.

Reading the book revealed my ignorance of many fundamental facts, principles and theories. Easy to read, nice presentation of 4.5 bn years Earth history. No horror movie ever put me in such a grim mood as the book did though.

"The disciples said to Jesus: Tell us how our end shall be. Jesus said: Have you then discovered the beginning, that you seek after the end? For where the beginning is, there shall the end be."(The Gospel of Thomas, Logion 18)After  Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe , here comes another belter from Ward & Brownlee. The question of what has happened over the last 5 billion years of earth's history has of course been addressed in great detail by science. But what will happen over the next 5 billion?In this masterly study, W & B contend that everything is going to go pretty much in reverse, a kind of film run backwards of the history of the planet - we may even already be past the turning point and it's downhill all the way from hereon.A mind-blowing analysis. Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe

In my book at least, the page 91 has been replaced with page 95. Page 90 ends with "Even though we're in a very hot place, a place that in our world would be crowded with biodiversity, we soon notice that" - and, then, there's page 95 inserted here, before it continues with page 93.So, I will probably never know what exactly we will notice soon (I suppose a very low biodiversity?) :(