Improbable Planet Quotes

“What several decades of research has revealed about Earth's location within the vastness of the cosmos can be summed up in this statement: the ideal place for any kind of life as we know it turns out to be a solar system like ours, within a galaxy like the Milky Way, within a supercluster of galaxies like the Virgo supercluster, within a super-supercluster like the Laniakea super-supercluser. In other words we happen to live in the best, perhaps the one and only, neighborhood that allows not only for physical life's existence but also for it's enduring survival.”
― Hugh Ross, Improbable Planet: How Earth Became Humanity's Home

“Although today we consider earthquakes a dreaded danger to life, research reveals a synergistic relationship between Earth’s life and Earth’s movable crust. Life needs plate tectonics to persist; and plate tectonic activity needs life to persist. It especially needs photosynthetic life. (The metabolic rates exhibited by photosynthetic life are orders of magnitude greater than those in nonphotosynthetic primary organisms.) This interdependence between photosynthetic life and plate tectonics was first recognized in 2006.”
― Hugh Ross, Improbable Planet: How Earth Became Humanity's Home

“By whatever means life first arose on Earth, evidence shows that it came early and flourished in abundance in complex ecosystems of unicellular life-forms. When it arrived, it began to play a critical role in preparing Earth for more life, for all Earth’s future inhabitants. The next chapter explains some of the ways it served later life’s needs.”
― Hugh Ross, Improbable Planet: How Earth Became Humanity's Home

“We are living during the Sun’s most benign epoch.”
― Hugh Ross, Improbable Planet: How Earth Became Humanity's Home

“water vapor is a greenhouse gas,”
― Hugh Ross, Improbable Planet: How Earth Became Humanity's Home