Water: The Matrix of Life

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Water, the commonest of all substances around, has many uncommon and anomalous properties that are responsible not only for supporting life on our planet but also for its emergence and evolution. This book describes in simple terms the science that lies behind the astonishing role of water as the 'matrix of life'. Written in a lucid language and profusely illustrated, the exposition should whet the reader's thirst for a still deeper understanding of this most ubiquitous marvel of Nature.

Krishna Kumar Mishra did Ph.D. in chemistry, in 1992, from Banaras Hindu University and is currently a Fellow at the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, a national centre of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai. A prolific science communicator, he has written extensively, especially in Hindi, on a wide variety of scientific subjects with a view to popularising science among the masses.

Water is the basis of life. Indeed, life without water is beyond our imagination. The importance of water was, of course, known to our ancestors. Its crucial role as the substance of life has been described in countless scriptures and writings since time immemorial. The significance of water has been mentioned in the Vedas and other ancient books of learning. Man has always known that air (pran-vayu, which we now know as oxygen) and water are the two most important items for life. Yet, few people are aware of the scientific facts regarding water. In a sense, water is a weird compound of Nature.

Water is equally important for every organism, be it a tiny bacterium or a giant animal like an elephant. The whole chemistry of life processes is actually the aqueous chemistry of a class of carbon compounds, the bio-organic molecules. Though apparently a simple chemical com- pound, water has some hidden facets which are still being explored by researchers. The anomalous properties of water have been responsible for the origin and evolution of life. We are here on this Earth because of the presence of water. On the primitive Earth, some 3.5 billion years ago, oxygen was present in negligible amounts and the climatic conditions at the dawn of life were not oxidising in Nature as we find them today. Later, oxygen was released in the atmosphere by simple unicellular organisms, like blue-green algae. It was the presence of ample amounts of oxygen millions of years after biogenesis that oxygen-dependent multicellular higher organisms evolved on the Earth.

There are mysteries in the commonest of our experiences, mysteries that only science can unravel. Behind simple questions that can occur to anyone lie profound scientific insights. Humans must have always wondered what powers the Sun, why the sky is blue, what makes air inert but hydrogen inflammable, what drives the honeybees to build such exquisite beehives, and so on. It took centuries of painstaking work by countless men and women to give satisfactory explanations of some of these familiar phenomena.

There is scarcely anything more common than water. We take its amazing properties for granted. It is an excel- lent solvent, remains a liquid over a broad range of temperature, takes considerable heat to raise its temperature and to boil, and has the anomalous feature of its solid phase (ice) being lighter than its liquid phase. Yet, these and many other unique properties of water are responsible not only for supporting the life on our planet, but have indeed been the key to the genesis and evolution of life.

What lies behind this astonishing role of water? What makes water 'the matrix of life'? This book gives a glimpse of the science that attempts to answer these natural questions. An important clue, it turns out, is a type of intermolecular bonding called hydrogen bonding. In water, the hydrogen bonds are weak but they play a vital role in shaping the properties of water and its anomalous behaviour.