Journey of the Universe Page #3

After it had circled the Sun for hundreds

of millions of years, Earth's

most primitive organisms

developed molecules that

would resonate with the Sun.

How are we to picture this

process involving Earth and Sun

bringing forth photosynthesis?

As an engineering project?

I guess, but try a new metaphor.

Imagine two lovers longing for each other.

What is it they truly desire?

The relationship is charged

with energy and promise.

There is the Sun exploding with brilliance.

There is the Earth basking

in the Sun's rays.

But Earth is not passive.

Earth's systems attune to the Sun

changing their molecular structures

in order to draw in light

and convert it to food.

As the complexity of life deepens,

entwinement itself also deepens.

How are we going to tell the

story of the living Earth?

In particular, how are we

going to tell the story

of Earth to our children?

This is especially important because

in the last couple of centuries,

we have learned more about the Earth

than in perhaps the previous 100,000 years.

So the question is, how are

we going to convey that,

the essence of that to the next generation?

One thing is completely clear.

The Earth is very different

than what we thought.

The Earth is not a platform.

It's not a background.

In fact, the great discovery is this,

life doesn't exist on top of the Earth.

Life is a partner to the oceans

to the atmosphere, to the land.

For instance, if we look at the atmosphere

it is 21% oxygen.

This makes us unique among

all the known planets.

The only reason we have

oxygen in our atmosphere

is that life is pouring it forth each day.

So the very composition of our air

reflects the fact that life is here.

In that sense, life is

woven into the atmosphere.

But an even more radical

hypothesis is beginning

to emerge in the minds of some scientists.

Perhaps Earth is not only

an integrated system.

Perhaps Earth somehow maintains itself

so that life can flourish.

Consider temperature.

Life only exists in a very

narrow band of temperature.

So something like this

temperature has been true

of Earth for four billion years.

Now, scientists originally thought

this was because the Earth just happened

to be 93 million miles away from the Sun.

But during the 1950s, we learned about

the fusion processes taking place in stars.

And so now we know the Sun's temperature

has increased by over 25%

over the last four billion years.

Which means somehow Earth

has had to adapt itself

to maintain that stable

narrow band of temperature.

How?

We know some of the details.

Early Earth had 1,000

times the carbon dioxide

as present-day Earth.

So during that time, the Earth's system

has drawn the carbon dioxide

out of the atmostphere

forming for instance the

shells of marine algae.

And then when the marine algae die,

the shells go to the bottom of the ocean.

So more and more carbon dioxide

is taken out of the atmosphere

which enables the Earth to cool down

while the Sun heats up.

But the question returns, is all of this

being organized by the Earth as a whole

so that life could flourish?

If that's the case, then the atmosphere

is not just stuff.

It's something like a membrane.

And we are not living on an Earth,

we are actually participants

in a vast intricate system

that is something like a living cell.

A living cell has the power

to learn through time.

This is what distinguishes the first cells

from all the other beings

that existed prior

to life's emergence.

A star for instance, has the

power to organize itself

for billions of years.

But throughout that time, it never needs

to learn anything new.

Life learns

for life can adapt itself to new situations

by changing its form and by

remembering these changes.

Life remembers the past

by storing information

in its DNA molecules.

It is this power of memory,

encased in each living cell,

that enables life to learn and thus evolve.

One of the ways in which

understand the nature

of life's memory is by using the ideas

of the mathematician/philosopher

Pythagoras.

You know a number of Pythagoras'

ideas were revolutionary.

And like a lot of revolutionary ideas,

they weren't that popular.

In fact, Pythagoras had to hide

from the tyrant Polycrates who was

in charge of Samos.

And tradition has it this

is where he hid right here,

halfway up the mountain in a cave there.

One of Pythagoras' central convictions

was that the essence of life is not air,

or water or fire as the other

Greek philosophers taught.

Rather, the essence of life

is number, pattern.

It seems such an odd idea.

I mean, life is so sensuous.

It's so complex, so rich.

How can the essence of

that be something abstract

like number or pattern?

It is precisely this deep connection

between life and pattern that enables life

to remember its crucial achievements.

That's what DNA does.

In the precise sequence of the nucleotides,

DNA holds the essence of life.

Life did not hand down the

actual molecules to my body.

Instead, life handed their essence

in the form of genetic information.

Because of this, our bodies can come alive

1,000 different ways each day.

Life has learned to learn.

One of the central ways of learning

for our species involves seeing.

Life has invented so many

different ways of seeing.

The amazing thing is, this

process is not yet over.

Come with me into Pythagoras' cave.

Begetting billions of years ago,

the earliest cells began to

develop a sensitivity to light.

They can sense it and move toward it.

And it was this capacity

that led eventually

to the development of the eye.

And the first eye which we

have any fossil evidence

is that of the trilobite

500 million years ago.

The trilobite, intent upon

piercing through the darkness,

invented an eye using calcite, a mineral.

The trilobite was able to see only

in the direction of these rods.

A primal form of seeing

that proved so successful,

we find it even now in the compound eyes

of flies and lobsters.

An entirely different form of seeing

was invented by the worms

and carried forward by the fish.

The type of eye is the one we know best

for it's the one we inherited,

the water-based eye.

Even after 500 million years,

eyesight continues to evolve.

In humans, the power of seeing deepens

with a new kind of sight, insight.

We see on the inner screen

of our imaginations.

Life has learned yet another way of seeing.

One with the power to transform everything.

With this new way of seeing,

we find ourselves blinking in a thrilling

and yet unsettling light.

Rooted in the center of immensities,

we open our eyes and see each thing anew.

Each thing ablaze with the

cosmic creativity millions

of years old.

With the insights made possible

with conscious self-awareness,

our vision now extends

back through billions

of years of evolution.

We see not only the scurrying spider,

but the entire cosmic journey layered

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