Journey of the Universe Page #2

They're born.

They develop.

They even die.

Star birth occurs when gravity squeezes

together a cloud of atoms so tight

that nuclear fusion ignites in the center.

In the process, hydrogen

fuses in the helium.

This nuclear energy expands outwards

and opposes gravity.

So stars represent an

amazingly creative balance

between the powers of

gravitational collapse

and nuclear explosion.

And once a star's nuclear fuel is spent,

there's nothing left to prevent gravity

from collapsing inwards, causing

the death spiral to begin.

This super-concentrated dot of matter,

which we call a supernova, explodes outward

with the power of 100 billion stars.

And as it expands, it creates

all of the elements,

phosphorous, oxygen, carbon, gold.

These are spewed out into

the Milky Way galaxy,

and then the whole process starts again.

They drift as a cloud

and then they collapse,

give birth to a star, the Earth.

It's by stupendous process that we can say

the stars are our ancestors.

It's just such an amazing discovery.

The carbon atoms of this

beet, and of the lettuce

and of you know, our brains, our skin,

all of it passed through an

intense explosion of a star.

In pondering the source of the Sun's power,

we can now reflect on something

no earlier humans could know.

The Sun is converting four millions tons

of its mass into energy every second.

All of life feeds on the

roaring energy of the Sun.

Our solar system then is a self-energizing

womb of creativity.

And all of this had its

start in a cloud of dust.

It was really difficult

for humans to realize

that we live on a planet circling a star.

I mean we were here for

hundreds of thousands of years

before Aristarchus, 2,000 years ago,

right here on Samos

realized we are spinning

around the Sun.

That was such an amazing insight

that it vanished actually.

And it wasn't until Copernicus

discovered it again

in the 16th century that humans really

began to absorb the fact that we are

on this planet.

Let me use these vegetables

to explain our solar system.

So here we have the Sun,

this cabbage as the Sun.

Now actually, if this were to be in scale,

this cabbage would have

to be a million times

the size of this pepper.

Budgetary considerations

made that impossible.

So you just have to use your imagination.

Now what we've learned in the 20th century

is about the composition of the planets.

First we have the large planets.

So we have Jupiter here,

and we have Saturn and Uranus, and Neptune.

These are large enough to hold on

to all the lighter elements so that

they actually are gaseous.

Too small to be a star,

but yet too large to be solid.

The other kind then, we have indicated here

with these rocks.

So we have Mercury.

Then we have Venus.

Jump over to Mars.

These are the rocky planets,

most of which are solid.

But there's one special rocky planet.

One that's not too small and not too big.

One that's not too hot and not too cold.

One that's not exactly solid,

but not exactly liquid.

We call it home.

Earth is very much like an egg.

The core of the Earth is like the yolk.

The mantle of the Earth

is like the egg white.

And the crust of the Earth

is like like the eggshell.

What happens is that early on

when the Earth is in a molten state,

all of the really heavy

elements like iron and nickel

sink into the core.

And then the elements like magnesium

form this outer layer around

the core, the mantle.

The crust is only 10 to 50 miles thick,

and that's the only solid part of Earth.

All the rest is in motion.

Plumes of molten rock will

rise up from the mantle

and harden into plates that form the crust.

As these plates slide around

the surface of Earth,

they collide and crumple into

majestic mountain ranges.

Or they're forced back down,

or they melt and sink

toward the center of Earth.

This discovery, which

originated with Alfred Wegener,

is called plate tectonics and is one

of the greatest of history.

Earth became encircled

by great tidal oceans

and held by a thin layer of atmosphere.

A churning volcanic Earth could now

bring forth the next wonder of existence,

the living cell.

How are we gonna tell the story of life?

How did it all begin?

What theory shall we offer to explain this?

The simple truth is that no one knows

with full certainty.

But even though the detailed

explanation still eludes us,

scientists have began to approach

the whole question of life from

a radical new perspective,

that of self-organization.

You see during the modern period,

we thought of the world as machine-like,

and that life was an accident.

But now, with the work

of a number of chemists,

notably Ilya Prigogine who won

a Nobel Prize for this work,

we are beginning to discover

the act of patterning

in matter itself.

It's intrinsic to matter.

From this new perspective,

life is not an accident.

Life is inevitable.

A planet weeks in a certain

complexity of its matter,

and then life at last comes

forth quite naturally.

Consider whirlpools.

This spiral swirling

action can appear anywhere

so long as there is a body

of liquid moving water.

It is not the water itself

that endures as a spiral,

because the water molecules are constantly

flowing in and out of the whirlpool.

It is rather the emergent

dynamic structure that endures.

Such is the nature of life.

The universe began as a great outpouring

of cosmic breath, cosmic energy,

but then swirled and

twisted and complexified

until it could burst forth

into flowers and animals

and fish and all of these

elegant explosions of energy.

But it's not just energy.

And it's not just living energy.

This is energy that is aware.

By awareness or sentience we mean something

that is more than what takes place

in the realm of elementary particles.

And yet, less than full

human consciousness.

So where do does such awareness arise?

Some biologists are beginning to speculate

that awareness has its foundation

in the very self-organizing

dynamics of the universe.

For cell biologist Ursula Goodenough,

this awareness is a kind

of primitive discernment,

and it reveals itself especially

in the membrane of each cell.

That thin skin-like layer

that covers every cell.

If we had microscope for eyes,

we could see it all happening right here

in these tide pools

where millions of cells are swarming about,

and they're encountering

molecules over and over again.

And with every encounter,

discernment emerges.

Why? Because a decision has to be made,

an intelligent decision.

Up in the cliff over here

there's an ancient castle

that will help me explain.

This church, which is called Metamorphosis,

is nearly 1,000 years old.

Above it is a castle that

once guarded entrance

into the magical Ptolemy Valley.

The castle is built to

do what membranes do.

Let your friends in, keep your enemies out.

The ongoing creativity

of the universe is seen

in the complex development of life itself.

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