The book deals with our scientific knowledge on the origin of life and the functioning of living matter. During ten years, the author experienced this knowledge through supporting and attending advanced research meetings on behalf of the European Commission. Next to a great number of recent research results - particularly in the field of molecular biology - simultaneously our knowledge deficiencies will be discussed. They mainly show up in understanding and controlling the molecular functional mechanisms of living cells and organisms, but also in our view on the universe. Regarding the functioning of living matter, sensitive information and on-line communication among the molecular partners of a system are fundamental. However, our classical physics ignores such principle and we meet difficulties in understanding the functional processes of living matter. In different chapters, the various ways of informative communication in living systems will be discussed. It remains a mystery, however, where the basic information of life, the genetic code, came from and why it exists at all. Possibly our ignorance is due to the fact that the universe - contrary to the Big Bang idea - has no definite limits, a thesis that the author explains in the third part of his study.

Wolfgang Hebel was born in Duisburg, Germany, in 1934. He is married with Ellen having together two children and four grandchildren. After his Technical University studies (Nuclear Engineering and Thermodynamics), he worked from 1959-1963 with the LURGI-Companies in Germany, then with EURATOM at the Belgian Nuclear Research Centre in Mol (1963-1980), and from 1981 on with the Research Directorate of the European Union in Brussels. From 1986-1996, he was responsible for supporting advanced research meetings in the European area in view of preparing future EU research actions. Since his retirement in 1996, he lives in Tervuren near Brussels. Wolfgang Hebel has published more than 30 scientific reports or studies first in the field of nuclear research and later on trends in fundamental research. During the recent twenty years, he participated at numerous advanced research meetings, among them also the yearly meetings of Nobel Laureates at Lindau in Germany.