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Life on the Edge cover art

Life on the Edge

By: Jim Al-Khalili,Johnjoe McFadden
Narrated by: Pete Cross
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Summary

Life is the most extraordinary phenomenon in the known universe; but how does it work? Even in this age of cloning and synthetic biology, the remarkable truth remains: nobody has ever made anything living entirely out of dead material. Life remains the only way to make life. Are we missing a vital ingredient in its creation?

Like Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, which provided a new perspective on how evolution works, Life on the Edge alters our understanding of life's dynamics. Bringing together firsthand experience of science at the cutting edge with unparalleled gifts of exposition and explanation, Jim Al-Khalili and Johnjoe Macfadden reveal the hitherto missing ingredient to be quantum mechanics and the strange phenomena that lie at the heart of this most mysterious of sciences.

Drawing on recent groundbreaking experiments around the world, they show how photosynthesis relies on subatomic particles existing in many places at once while inside enzymes, those workhorses of life that make every molecule within our cells, particles vanish from one point in space and instantly materialize in another.

Each chapter in Life on the Edge opens with an engaging example that illustrates one of life’s puzzles - How do migrating birds know where to go? How do we really smell the scent of a rose? How do our genes manage to copy themselves with such precision? - and then reveals how quantum mechanics delivers its answer.

Guiding the reader through the maze of rapidly unfolding discovery, Al-Khalili and McFadden communicate vividly the excitement of this explosive new field of quantum biology, with its potentially revolutionary applications, and offer insights into the biggest puzzle of all: what is life? As they brilliantly demonstrate here, life lives on the quantum edge.

©2015 Jim Al-Khalili (P)2015 Random House AudioBooks

What listeners say about Life on the Edge

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

I wish Jim had narrated this book.

A very interesting book but sometimes a little hard to follow, but that is the nature of the subject.

I really wish it had been narrated by Jim and surprised it was not considering his Radio 4 and BBC TV work. I would preferred to hear his calm, traditional English voice than to the colonial one, which often mangled British names and places.

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9 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars

Tour de force! Excellent.

A truly eye opening book, with extremely convincing arguments to link how the very unlikely and paradoxical world of quantum dynamics may be the only reason that any life, as we know it, can exist.
The nuances of the effects of QD are eye opening in the extreme. The apparent workings of QD in the "warm and wet" environment of all living cells are so unlikely and of potentially world-changing in its possibilities in areas well outside living things, for instance, being able to use the effect to increase the energy extraction from the sun by using the same effect that photosynthesis does (which is almost 100% efficient!), would utterly change the possible options for our world energy requirements.
This is notwithstanding the question of how life came into existence in the first place, which is still a very live and puzzling thing.
The reader did his job well, although being English, there were naturally certain word pronunciations that grated - so not his fault!
I'd recommend this book to any enquiring mind. It will inspire you to view the world in a very different way. It's as though one has climbed a hill in what at first appeared an unpromising area and suddenly found oneself overlooking a stunning panorama with endless possibilities!

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6 people found this helpful

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Very disappointing

Very poor and superficial explanation of the quantum mechanics effects in molecular biology. The authors spends a lot of time on basic concepts of molecular biology and biochemistry but not nearly enough on the stuff the book claims to be about

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2 people found this helpful

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worth read again and again!

finally philosophy, quantum biology, physics and mechanic together! very good put together, worth reading again!

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2 people found this helpful

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Great Book

Would you listen to Life on the Edge again? Why?

Yes, its needed there are some great ideas that need re listening (in my case) to fully take in the absolute content of the book.

What did you like best about this story?

The Journey of the butterfly from America to Mexico

Which character – as performed by Pete Cross – was your favourite?

His Narration was very good

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2 people found this helpful

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A cutting edge look at life and quantum physics

Briging the gap between quantum physics and biology is no simple task but this book does a beautiful job of it and the narrative keeps the reader fully on board

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1 person found this helpful

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Important learning if you like science

Any additional comments?

This was recommended by a physicist friend. It's highly readable despite providing a full revision of modern physics before explaining new learning about the role quantum mechanics plays in the biology of life. I thought I had a reasonable grasp of biology but this stuff is dynamite!

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1 person found this helpful

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    2 out of 5 stars

Good for lay, flawed for science

Narration leaves much to be desired, as does the approach of the book. Oftentimes suggests very ambitious concepts without clearly connecting the concept to the example at hand with empirical science, which even now years after publication has not been fulfilled. Unclear to me who the desired audience is.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

pure and simply loved this key to me

This corner stone to seeing how we actually work in our environment or not

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    3 out of 5 stars
  • WK
  • 15-06-22

To Gappy

Love Jim Al-K documentaries so gave this ago. It uses very weird technique for a book on a complex subject, in that it builds up over and over to revealing how something works ….. and the switches subject. This might be ok in a light heart spy thriller but I find it annoying in the book. IMHO I think you can’t dance around a topic like this. Give it to me in slabs.

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