Where would carbon-based life be without carbon? There are 118 known chemical elements, but carbon is the fourth most abundant and perhaps the most important to human life. Everywhere you look, ...

Prologue: The strange case of carbon -- pt. 1 : The natural. Out of the frying pan : carbon after the Big Bang ; Dancers and the dance : the origins of life ; The flood : molecular fossils and the ...

Roston, a former Time writer on technology and energy, positively revels in the chance to dig deep into the ubiquitous, life-enabling carbon. He begins his first book with the science of this element: ...