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In its violent early years, Earth was a molten inferno that ejected the Moon after a fiery collision with another protoplanet, scientists suspect. It later turned from an expanse of water into a giant snowball that wiped out almost all life in existence.
Fierce hurricanes then pounded the newly thawed ocean with 300-foot waves. But this is nothing compared to the turbulence and fireworks in the sky 9 billion years before the birth of our planet.
Dan Levitt’s forthcoming science and historical documentary”What Happened to You: The Story of Your Body’s Atoms, From the Big Bang to Last Night’s Dinner,” a series of striking and often powerful images tracing how our cells, elements, atoms, and subatomic particles made their way into our brains, bones, and bodies. The book was published on January 24.
“We now know that the origin of the universe, the formation of the elements in the stars, the formation of the solar system and the Earth, and the early history of our planet was incredibly turbulent,” Levitt told CNN.
Explosions, collisions and almost unfathomable temperatures were essential to life.
A disturbance in Jupiter’s orbitFor example, it may have sent a barrage of asteroids at Earth, flooding the planet with water in the process. He created the molten iron that forms the core of the Earth A magnetic field that protects us from cosmic rays.
“So many things happened that could have happened differently, in which case we wouldn’t be here,” said Levitt.
He said that reconstructing the epic, step-by-step journey of our atoms over billions of years filled him with awe and gratitude.
“Sometimes when I look at people,” he said, “I think, ‘Wow, what incredible creatures you are, and every atom of ours has the same deep history going back to the Big Bang.’ He hopes readers will realize “that even the simplest cell is incredibly complex and deserves a lot of respect. And all people are.
Our body contains it 60 pieces or so, including the stream of hydrogen released after the Big Bang and calcium from dying stars called red giants. As Levitt gathered evidence of how these and more complex organic molecules came to us, he wove into the tumultuous history of the scientific process itself.
It wasn’t initially intended to parallel the upheavals of the universe and the scientific world, but it certainly came with the territory. “Many scientific facts have been discarded since our great-great-grandparents lived,” he said. – This is also part of the fun of the book.
After Leavitt finished his first draft, he was surprised to discover that some of the scientific confusion was due to various recurring biases. He said: “I wanted to touch on the leading scientists who had made great discoveries, to see the progress they had made and to understand how they were received at the time.” “I was surprised that the initial reaction to leading theories was almost always skepticism and rejection.”
Throughout the book, he points out six recurring mental traps that blind even the brightest minds, such as thinking “it’s too weird to be true” or “If our current tools don’t detect it, it doesn’t exist. ”
Albert Einstein, for example, initially hated the strange idea of the expansion of the universe and had to be convinced over time George Lemaitrea little-known but in-progress Belgian priest and cosmologist. Stanley Miller, the “father of prebiotic chemistry,” who brilliantly mimicked the conditions of early Earth in glass vials, was a fierce opponent of the hypothesis that life could develop in the deep oceans, fueled by mineral-rich enzymes and superheated vents. etc.
Levitt wrote in his book: “The history of science is full of grand statements by great statesmen about the certainty that will soon be overturned.” Fortunately, the history of science is also full of extremists and freethinkers who were happy to poke fun at these statements.
Levitt described how many leaps have been made by researchers whose contributions have not been adequately appreciated. “Let the little-known heroes be attracted by their dramatic stories that people have never heard,” he said. “That’s why I was happy that many of the most interesting stories in the book are about people I didn’t know about.”
Scientists like the Austrian researcher Marietta Blau, which helped physicists see the first signs of subatomic particles; Dutch physician and philosopher Jan Engenhaus, who discovered that sunlit leaves can produce oxygen through photosynthesis; And the pharmacist Rosalind Franklinwho was instrumental in developing the three-dimensional structure of DNA.
wonders of the universe
Lightning sparks of new ideas often strike independently around the world. To his surprise, Levitt found that many scientists had come up with plausible scenarios for how the building blocks of life might come together.
“Our universe is permeated with organic molecules, many of which are precursors to the molecules we make,” he said. “So I alternately think that beings like us are very unlikely to exist, and I think that life must exist in many places in the universe.”
However, nothing was clear on our journey after the Big Bang.
“If you try to imagine how life evolved from the first organic molecules, it must have been a jagged process, full of twists and turns and failures,” Levitt said. Most of them certainly didn’t go anywhere. But evolution has a way of creating winners from countless trials over long periods of time. ”
Nature also has a way of recycling building blocks to create new life. He is called an atomic physicist Paul Ebersold We discovered that “we replace half of our carbon atoms every one or two months, and we replace 98 percent of all our atoms every year,” writes Levitt.
Like a house that is constantly being renovated, we are constantly changing, replacing old parts with new ones: water, proteins, even cells, most of which we replace seemingly every decade.
Eventually, our cells will grow quietly, but their parts will merge into other life forms. “Although we may die,” wrote Levitt, “our atoms do not.” “It spins over life, the soil, the oceans and the skies in a vortex of chemistry.”
In other words, like the death of the stars, our destruction opens up another wonderful world of possibilities.
