Thermodynamic Inversion ― Origin of Living Systems

This book discusses the theory, general principles, and energy source conditions allowing for the emergence of life in planetary systems. The author examines the material conditions found in natural hydrothermal sites, the appropriate analogs of prebiotic environments on early Earth. He provides an overview of current laboratory experiments in prebiotic materials chemistry and substantiation of a new direction for the experiments in the origin of life field.

Vladimir N. Kompanichenko, Ph.D. (Geology) is a leading research scientist at the Institute for Complex Analysis of Regional Problems (the Russian Academy of Science) in Birobidzhan. He carries out the interdisciplinary research in Astrobiology that includes the theoretical elaboration of the inversion concept of life origin in fluctuating hydrothermal medium (on Earth and beyond), and the experimental exploration of hydrothermal systems aimed to detection of organic compounds and describing of pressure-temperature oscillations. He worked as a visiting scientist at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Department of Biochemistry (2001), and at University of California at Santa Cruz, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry (2004-2006). For the period of 1997-2004 he took a part-time position Professor at the two Universities in Khabarovsk (Russia) teaching Natural Science and the special course in Astrobiology.