Life's Matrix

Water is the fabric of snow, hail, vapor, and ice, and the only substance to exist on earth in all three of its physical states: solid, liquid, and gas. Water is central to our planetary environment. But what exactly is it? Life's Matrix tells of water's origins, history, and fascinating pervasiveness: there are, for example, fourteen different forms of ice, and a provocative exploration of water on other planets highlights the possibilities of life beyond Earth. The book reveals the unexpected in the most ordinary places--a drop of dew, a frozen pond, a cup of coffee--and the familiar in unexpected settings: there is water on the sun and the moon, at the heart of molecular biology, at the core of the cell, and there may be enough of it beneath the surface of the Earth to refill the oceans thirty times over. The final chapter surveys the grim realities of our natural water resources, and shows how it will become a scarce commodity in the twenty-first century. Life's Matrix offers a fresh exploration of one of the oldest substances known to man, and ensures that we will never think about this ubiquitous substance in the same way again.

Contents

Cosmic Juice

• The first flood
• Blood of the earth
• Storehouses of the hail
• Oceans in the sky

• Open to the elements
• Between heaven and earth
• Coold truths

• The real elixir
• Inner space

• Pride, prejudice, and pathology
• A drop of something stronger

• Epilogue: blue gold
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index