: The discovery of the microscopic world, which revealed a hidden level of biological complexity previously unimagined.

: The book concludes by looking at current efforts to "create" life in laboratories to prove which chemical pathways are truly possible.

: His "warm little pond" hypothesis, which suggested a chemical origin for life even as he focused primarily on how life evolved after it began.

: Contemporary research is split between those who believe life started in deep-sea hydrothermal volcanoes and those who argue that essential building blocks were delivered to Earth via meteorites.