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Life will continue as long as there is a niche on Earth capable of
supporting it. We don't need Gott's calculations to make this
prediction confidently. Its 3.8 -billion-year history tells us
that life will not merely hold on but will
flourish and evolve
toward greater variety and complexity, despite major geographic and
climatic changes, even planetary cataclysms. It actually seems to
thrive on catastrophes.
Every time a mass extinction occurred in
the history of life, a riotous upsurge of new living forms followed.
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p. 285
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Christian de Duve
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Vital Dust: Life as a Cosmic Imperative
Basic Books, 1995
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"Gott's calculations" are those used by Princeton astrophysicist
Richard Gott, who uses the length of time a species has existed on
earth to estimate the probability of its existing in the future.
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