Life as No One Knows It

“Provocative and intriguing.“ —The Wall Street Journal“A fresh take on the age-old questions ‘Are we alone?’ and ‘Where did we come from?’” —American Scientist“Bracingly original… . This has the potential to be a game changer.“ —Publishers Weekly (★starred review★)“An honorable addition to a small genre that began with Noble Prize–winning physicist Erwin Schrodinger’s What Is Life? … Ingenious.“ —Kirkus Reviews“This is vital information.” —Los Angeles Times“A virtuoso intellectual performance… full of wit, mischief and bursts of insolent brevity.” —The Telegraph (UK)“With wit and clarity, Walker outlines a radical new approach to bridge the conceptual gap between non-life and life.”  —Paul Davies, author of What’s Eating the Universe and The Demon in the Machine   “Reading Life as No One Knows It is like engaging in a mind-bending conversation about the biggest questions of all.” —Tim Urban, creator of Wait But Why   “A masterfully crafted and engaging account of Assembly Theory. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in fundamental physics, the origins of life, and pursuing a better understanding of the structure underlying all of the universe’s creations.” —Annaka Harris, author of Conscious

Sara Imari Walker is an astrobiologist and theoretical physicist interested in the origin of life and discovering alien life on other worlds. She is deputy director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science and a professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University. She is also a fellow of the Berggruen Institute and a member of the external faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. She is the recipient of the Stanley L. Miller Early-Career Award for her research on the origin of life, and her research team at ASU is internationally regarded as being among the leading labs aiming to build a fundamental theory for understanding what life is. Her research has been featured in Scientific American, Quanta Magazine, and a variety of other international outlets.