Table of Contents

Musing; The Universe: Christian Doppler and His Effect; Measuring Distances in the Universe; Edwin Hubble's Expanding Universe; A Weird and Wonderful Universe; Matter and the Universe: The Nature of Matter; The Big-Bang Hypothesis; How Matter Can Clump Together; The Universe Develops Structure; Stars, Stellar Clusters and Galaxies: The First Stars are Born, Live and Die; The Formation of Globular Clusters; Making the Sun - and Similar Stars; A Crowded Environment; The Solar System: Understanding the Nature of the Solar System; Introducing the Planets; Satellites Galore; 'Vermin of the Sky' and Other Small Bodies; Planets Galore; Forming the Solar System: Making Planets; Shrinking Orbits and the Survival; Now Satellites Form; What Can Be Learnt from Meteorites?; A Little-Bang Theory and the Terrestrial Planets; The Moon - Its Structure and History; The Very Small Planets - Mars and Mercury; Smaller Bodies of the Solar System; The Origin of Isotopic Anomalies in Meteorites; Life on Earth: The Earth Settles Down - More-or-Less; What is Life?; Forms of Life; Nineteenth Century Genetics - The Survival of the Fittest; Twentieth Century Genetics - The Alphabets of Life; Life Begins on Earth; The Restless Earth; Oxygen, Ozone and Life; The Evolution of Life - From Archaea to Early Mammals; Early Mammals to Man; Man and the Earth; Musing Again.