Word: planet
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...THINGS KEPT THE 3.15-ACRE GLASS-AND-STEEL structure called Biosphere 2 from being just another greenhouse: a hermetic seal separating 3,800 species of plants and animals, including four men and four women, from the rest of the planet, and a veneer of scientific legitimacy. The seal has been broken several times in the past year and a half -- most recently to pump in 10 tons of badly needed oxygen. Now the veneer of credibility, already bruised by allegations of tamper-prone data, secret food caches and smuggled supplies, has cracked...
Instead Kennedy began "initial readings in subjects (global warming, demography, robotics, biotech) that were then totally foreign to me." His goal was to learn enough about these scientific and transnational factors to try to divine the quality of life in different regions of the planet through the middle of the next century. In an era when knowledge is narrowly compartmentalized, Kennedy warrants praise for the breadth of these polymath ambitions, aided though he was by five research assistants. But ultimately what mars Kennedy's book is that his grasp never fully equals his global reach...
...endeavors might have only a marginal effect on the profound driving forces of today's world." If Kennedy truly feels that fatalistic, one fears that his next best-selling synthesis -- coming out around the turn of the millennium -- may be titled The Rise and Fall of a Great Planet...
...basic rules of chemistry are any guide, life should not exist. Scientists showed in the 1950s that shooting an electric spark through a soup of chemicals -- thus simulating lightning strikes on the primordial planet earth -- could produce simple organic compounds. But complex, self-reproducing chemicals like dna? They shouldn't have arisen in a trillion years. At an even deeper level, the second law of thermodynamics dictates that the universe should inexorably move toward disorganization. Cups of tea always cool off; they never spontaneously get hotter. Iron rusts, but rust never turns into iron...
...over the eons, a chaotic universe organized itself into stars and galaxies and planets. And at least one planet, our own, is now bursting with life in bewildering varieties, filled with organisms that have arrayed themselves into ecosystems, communities and complex societies. How did this happen? That is the question posed by a brand-new field of science known as complexity...