Origin of Life via Archaea

Richard Gordon, Ph.D., is a theoretical biologist with a B.Sc. in Mathematics from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. in Chemical Physics from the University of Oregon, retired from the Department of Radiology, University of Manitoba in 2011. Presently he is a volunteer at Gulf Specimen Marine Lab & Aquarium, Panacea, Florida. Interest in exobiology (now astrobiology) dates from 1960s undergraduate work on organic matter in the Orgueil meteorite with Edward Anders. He has published critical reviews of panspermia and the history of "discoveries" of life in meteorites.

• Preface ixAcknowledgements xiiiAbbreviations xv1 A Fresh Start on the Problem of the Origin of Life 12 By the Light of the Moon 33Richard Gordon and George Mikhailovsky3 There Were Plenty of Day/Night Cycles that Could Have Accelerated an Origin of Life on Earth, Without Requiring Panspermia 41Richard Gordon and George Mikhailovsky4 Emergence of Polygonal Shapes in Oil Droplets and Living Cells: The Potential Role of Tensegrity in the Origin of Life 53Richard Gordon, Martin M. Hanczyc, Nikolai D. Denkov, Mary Ann Tiffany and Stoyan K. Smoukov5 When We Were Triangles: Shape in the Origin of Life via Abiotic Shaped Droplets to Living, Polygonal Archaea During the Abiocene 1256 The Fish Ladder Toy Model for a Thermodynamically at Equilibrium Origin of Life in a Lipid World in an Endoreic Lake 185Richard Gordon, Shruti Raj Vansh Singh, Krishna Katyal, Natalie K. Gordon and David Deamer7 How to Make a Transmembrane Domain at the Origin of Life: A Possible Origin of Proteins 229Richard Gordon and Natalie K. Gordon8 An Ensemble Approach to the Origin of Life 285Bradly Alicea, Bashir Ahmad and Richard Gordon9 A Review of the Archaea First Hypothesis for the Origin of Life 34110 The Astrobiology of Archaea 363 References 36611 A Survey of the Battlefield for the Origin of Life 41112 Bibliometrics of Archaea and Where to Find Them 58113 Resources 62114 Compendium of Archaea 63915 Analysis of Micrographs 1213