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In its violent early years, Earth was a molten hell that ejected the Moon after a fiery collision with another protoplanet, scientists now suspect. Then, it turned from a expanse of water into a gigantic snowball that wiped out almost all life in existence.
Then a violent storm with 300-foot waves hit the newly melted ocean. But this is nothing compared to the celestial upheavals and fireworks 9 billion years before the birth of our planet.
Dan Levitt’s upcoming science and history documentary,”What’s Happening to You: The Story of Your Atomic Body, from the Big Bang to Last Night’s Dinner,” a series of images that are striking and often powerful in tracing how our cells, elements, atoms, and subatomic particles find their way into our brains, bones, and bodies. The book was released on January 24.
“We now know that the origin of the universe, the formation of the elements in stars, the creation of the solar system and Earth, and the early history of our planet were very turbulent,” Levitt told CNN.
Explosions, crashes and almost incomprehensible temperatures are essential for life.
Disruption in Jupiter’s orbitFor example, it may have sent a shower of asteroids down on Earth, dousing the planet with water in the process. He created the molten iron that formed the core of the earth The magnetic field that protects us from cosmic rays.
“So many things happened that could have happened otherwise, in which case we wouldn’t be here,” Levitt said.
Reconstructing our atom’s epic journey step by step over billions of years, he says, has filled him with awe and gratitude.
“Sometimes when I look at people,” he says, “I think, ‘Wow, you are an amazing creature and all of our atoms have the same deep history since the Big Bang. simple is very complex and very valuable. And everyone.
Our body contains it 60 items or more, including the jets of hydrogen released after the Big Bang and calcium from dying stars known as red giants. As Levitt pieced together the evidence for how they and more complex organic molecules came to us, he was weaving the turbulent history of the scientific process itself.
It wasn’t originally created to align the upheavals in the universe with the upheavals in the scientific world, but it certainly comes with its territory. “Many scientific facts have been lost since our great-grandfathers were still alive,” he said. “That’s part of the fun of the book.”
After Leavitt finished his first draft, he was shocked to realize that part of the scientific mess was due to various types of repeated bias. He said, “I want to call on the chief scientists who have made great discoveries—to see what progress they have made and to understand how they were received at the time.” “I was surprised that almost every time the initial reaction to a leading theory was skepticism and rejection.”
Throughout the book, he points out six recurring mental pitfalls that blind even the most intelligent minds, such as the notion that it is “too weird to be true” or “If our current tools don’t detect it, it doesn’t exist.” ”
Albert Einstein initially resented the strange idea of expanding the universe, for example, and had to be persuaded from time to time by it George Lemaitrea little-known but still active Belgian priest and cosmologist. Stanley Miller, the “father of prebiotic chemistry” who brilliantly mimicked primordial Earth conditions in glass vials, is a staunch opponent of the hypothesis that life could have developed in the ocean depths, fueled by mineral-rich enzymes and superheating holes. etc.
In his book, Levitt wrote, “The history of science is replete with assertions of the certainty of great statesmen who are about to be overturned.” Fortunately for us, the history of science is also littered with extremists and freethinkers who love to pry into these statements.
Levitt describes the number of leaps and bounds made by researchers whose contributions do not receive the recognition they deserve. “I’m attracted to lesser-known heroes with their dramatic stories that no one has ever heard of,” he says. “That’s why I’m glad that many of the most interesting stories in the book turn out to be about people I don’t know.”
They are scientists like Austrian researchers Marietta Blau, which helps physicists see some of the first signs of subatomic particles; Dutch physician and philosopher Jan Engenhaus, who discovered that sunlit leaves can produce oxygen through photosynthesis; And pharmacist Rosalind Franklinwhich play an important role in building the three-dimensional structure of DNA.
the wonder of the universe
The 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 could have begun to be assembled.
“Our universe is full of organic molecules — many of which are precursors to the molecules we make,” he says. “So I alternated between thinking that creatures like us are highly unlikely to exist, and thinking that life must exist in many places in the universe.”
However, nothing is clear on our way from Big Bang.
“If you try to imagine how life evolved from the first organic molecules, it must be a halting process, full of tortuous paths and failures,” said Levitt. Most of them must have gone somewhere. But evolution has a way of creating victors out of countless trials over a long period of time. ”
Nature also has a way of recycling building blocks to create new life. He is called a nuclear physicist Paul Ebersold We found that we “exchanged half of our carbon atoms every one to two months, and we exchanged 98 percent of all our atoms every year,” Levitt wrote.
Like a house constantly undergoing renovations, we are constantly changing and replacing old parts with new ones: water, protein, and even cells, most of which we seem to replace every decade.
In the end, our cells will grow quietly, but their parts will fuse together in other life forms. “Though we may die,” wrote Levitt, “our atoms are not.” “It swirls through life, land, oceans, and skies in a chemical vortex.”
In other words, like the death of the stars, our destruction opens up the possibility of another beautiful world.
