This evening I am not feeling very well. I came home from work and went to bed and have only gotten up to get soup. So instead of a book review I am going to post an interpretation of the miracle of how the Universe came to be that I wrote this last summer. I tried to be as accurate to scientific theory as I could and still evoke the mystery of how things begin and continue. When I think of this it fills me with awe and makes me grateful to be alive.
Miracle
Within the Prose Edda, the frost giant, Ymir, was created when Muspell the place of heat and light met the cold of Niflheim. From Ymir all things arose. When he was killed by Odin, Vili, and Ve, his blood became the lakes and seas, his hair grew to be the trees, his bones solidified into mountains, and pebbles and rocks were made from his teeth. This belief expresses a miracle.
But miracles are the stuff not of myth and story. They are reality. The natural world is wondrous without embellishment. Miracles are changes, either small and accumulating like lichens upon rocks, or sudden and devastating like lightning. Miracles are chains of events that transform reality and make it anew.
In the beginning the Universe was collapsed into one churning, heavy mass in heated turmoil. All potential writhed within. It heaved a great inward sigh and expelled itself outward. The Universe raced in all directions through the Void that was truly nothing until it blessed the Void with its presence. Over millions of years particles coalesced. Galaxies and quasars began to form after a billion years had passed. As the galaxies stumbled and began to pirouette on their axes, clouds of gas formed. Particles, like miniature worlds collided, fusion began. The suns began to shine. As the stars spun and pulled rings of dust to them, the pieces joined, formed into their own masses. The planets of a billion stars began to be born over billions of years.
So small, so insignificant the earth.
The Universe sped ever afterward, the galaxies spun, the stars fed off the energy of their particles, light danced over clouds of gas, and Earth began somewhere around 9.2 billion years after the initiation of the Universe's great change. Once upon a time our solar system was a hapless nebula rotating in space. For some reason, perhaps the super nova of an older star, the nebula began to contract and formed a proto-planetary disc. But the infant was not to slumber in peace, shock waves and the woggling angular momentum of larger pieces of cosmic flotsam continued to disturb it. The nebula cloud spun faster and faster, cosmic dust fell into its center, gravity pushed upon it. The Sun was born of speed, collision, gravity, and pressure. And there was light.
As the proto-planetary disc differentiated, it created rings. Fragments within the rings collided, joined, and formed bigger objects until over time the proto-planets were formed. They danced in orbit around the Sun and spun on their own axes. Again speed, collision, gravity, and pressure worked together to create the planets.
But the solar system was lifeless. As the Earth rotated faster and faster, the siderophile metals melted into the core. The stratification of the earth's layers began. The Catastrophe of Iron created the magic of the magnetic fields. Gravity allowed the Earth to retain an atmosphere that held water and the magnetic fields offered protection from the radiation of the solar wind.
As all was proceeding, another proto-planet hit the Earth. The mantle was broken and a piece shot off into space. The moon was born. The Earth's initial atmosphere was blown away and it cooled rapidly forming a basaltic crust whose ancient presence is still found at the oceans' floor. Marked forever by this catastrophic birthing of the moon, the Earth sits at a 23.5 degree tilt on its axes. The seasons were created by this accident.
Baby Earth was not at rest. The surface was molten. Meteorites pelted the planet. Volcanoes belched molten lava and steam from its interior. The second atmosphere began to form. Comets and other proto-planets bombarded the Earth and deposited water. As the planet continued to cool, clouds formed. From the clouds came rain. From the rain came the great oceans. The new atmosphere contained water vapor, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and smaller amounts of other gases. The first continents arose, disintegrated, reformed, were demolished, and formed the cratons. The cratons became the bones that the continents of today grew upon.
No one knows when life began on Earth. Somewhere in this Hadean nightmare, perhaps in hydrothermal vents beneath the Earth's surface, life began. It may have begun and been snuffed out several times. Perhaps life came to Earth from the stars. Perhaps life started as a brew of molecules ignited by a flash of lightning. But life began. It metabolized what it needed to sustain itself, it grew, it reproduced, and it began to adapt.
Life is very resourceful and has a great capacity for persistence and creativity. At first life learned to replicate, then it enclosed itself within a membrane and each reiteration was enclosed within its own membrane. Single cell life was born. The first cells were likely heterotrophs. Cannibals and opportunists, they used all organic material around them as food. As their food supply diminished, some cells evolved a new way to survive in this war of life. These cells used the light from the sun.
The oceans turned green with the by-product oxygen these tiny cells exhaled. Earth's third atmosphere came into existence and the ozone was created. No longer could ultra-violet rays irradiate the earth. Life moved to the surface of the ocean and to the land. But this new atmosphere was toxic to the flourishing life. Some forms burrowed into the mud for protection from the burning oxygen. Some grew together and diversified. Some learned to change a step in the process of photosynthesis and use the oxygen to burn food and make energy. The Great Catastrophe of Oxygen made it possible for more complex life to later evolve and the ozone protected the newly evolving life forms.
At times the Earth was frozen from pole to pole and all the way around its circumference. But between these times of ice, life evolved. Plants, animals, and fungi all split from a common ancestor even when they were still collections of cells. Once the Earth began to experience fewer times of being frozen, life began to diversify and multi-cellular creatures came about. During the Cambrian Age life upon Earth exploded into a variety of creatures. Creatures with shells, skeletons or exoskeletons, and hard body parts left a fossil record of this time of biological diversification. Fish began to swim in the oceans. Another ice age cleared the way for more, new, and better-adapted species. At some point tetrapods evolved from the fish, lifted their heads to breathe air, and became amphibians.
Between the Permian and Triassic periods another Great Extinction took place, but life persevered. It is not known if this die off was because of climate change, a super volcano erupting, or a massive collision. From the straggling remnants of life came the dinosaurs, birds, and later the mammals. The dinosaurs shook the ground of the supercontinent, Pangea, until they became extinct. The Age of Mammals was begun. The earliest mammal was a small rat-like creature that grew and changed and evolved over time into the myriad of mammals upon the planet.
So small, so insignificant are humans.
The Universe is approximately 13.7 billion years old. The Earth is somewhere around 4.5 billion years old. Australopithecus afarensis evolved 4 million years ago in East Africa. They became extinct after 2 million years of wandering the African continent, but not before leaving descendants that became the hominid ancestral line. Homo erectus left signs of being able to control fire 790,000 years ago. Beads were left at the Blombos Caves of South Africa approximately 75,000 years ago. Cave paintings at Chauvet Pont d’Arc appeared 32,000 years ago. Civilization did not begin until 10,000 years ago.
In the life span of the Earth, humans have occupied the planet for an eye blink, but consider the grand series of events that has led up to our time upon the planet. If some happy accident had gone differently, what other species might occupy this world? We are born of a fragile chain of cause and effect. Just as the existence of the dinosaurs was a miracle, our existence is a miracle. Earth keeps on changing and when we have become extinct some other species will inhabit our world. How wondrous is it that we, and all the life on Earth, came from the initial Big Bang of the universe? The Universe holds all potential and is constantly changing. Looking at a chain of daisies delicately wrought by small human hands it is hard to imagine the Universe's explosive beginning when hot and super dense matter was flung in all directions with immense energy. In that origin all miracles were begun.
Remember to look around and see how wondrous everything is.
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