First formulated by Lovelock during the 1960s as a result of work for NASAconcerned with detecting life on Mars, the Gaia hypothesis proposes that living and non-living parts of the earth form a complex interacting systemthat can be thought of as a single organism. Named after the GreekgoddessGaiaat the suggestion of novelist William Golding, the hypothesis postulates that the biosphere has a regulatory effect on the Earth's environment that acts to sustain life.