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In its violent early years, Earth was a molten inferno that ejected the moon after a ferocious collision with another protoplanet, scientists now suspect. Later, it transformed from a watery expanse to a giant snowball that nearly wiped out all existing life.
Then hyper-hurricanes with waves of up to 300 feet battered the newly thawed ocean. But that’s nothing compared to the celestial turmoil and fireworks in the 9 billion years before our planet’s birth.
Science and history documentary filmmaker Dan Levitt’s upcoming book, “What Got Into You: The Story of the Atoms in Your Body, From the Big Bang to Dinner Last Night”, conjures up a series of startling and often compelling images by tracing how our cells, elements, atoms and subatomic particles got to our brains, bones and bodies. The book comes out on January 24.
“We now know that the origin of the universe, the formation of elements in stars, the creation of the solar system and Earth, and the early history of our planet was incredibly tumultuous,” Levitt told CNN.
However, the explosions, collisions and almost incomprehensible temperatures were essential for life.
A disturbance in Jupiter’s orbit, for example, may have sent an asteroid shower to Earth, seeding the planet with water in the process. And the molten iron that forms the Earth’s core has created a magnetic field that protects us from cosmic rays.
“So many things happened that could have gone another way,” Levitt said, “in which case we wouldn’t be here.”
Reconstructing the epic step-by-step journey of our atoms over billions of years, he said, has filled him with wonder and gratitude.
“Sometimes when I look at people I think, ‘Wow, these are such amazing organisms and all of our atoms share the same deep history going back to the Big Bang,’” he said. He hopes readers will recognize “that even the simplest cell is incredibly complex and deserves great respect. And all people are too.”
our bodies contain 60 or more items, including the rush of hydrogen unleashed after the Big Bang and calcium forged by dying stars known as red giants. As Levitt pieced together the evidence of how they and more complex organic molecules got to us, he weaved together the tumultuous history of the scientific process itself.
It didn’t initially set out to compare turbulence in the universe to upheavals in the scientific world, but it definitely came with the territory. “So many scientific certainties have been overthrown since our great-grandparents lived,” he said. “That’s part of the fun of the book.”
After Levitt finished his first draft, he realized with surprise that some of the scientific confusion was due to various kinds of recurring biases. “I wanted to get inside the heads of the scientists who made great discoveries, to see their breakthroughs and understand how they were received at the time,” he said. “I was surprised that almost every time, the initial reaction to innovative theories was skepticism and rejection.”
Throughout the book, he pointed out six recurring mind traps that have blinded even the brightest minds, such as the view that it’s “too weird to be true” or that “if our current tools haven’t detected it, it doesn’t exist. ”
Albert Einstein initially hated the strange idea of an expanding universe, for example, and had to be persuaded over time by Jorge Lemaitrea little-known but persistent Belgian priest and cosmologist. stanley miller, the “father of prebiotic chemistry” who ingeniously simulated conditions on early Earth in glass jars, was a notoriously fierce opponent of the hypothesis that life could have evolved in the depths of the ocean, fueled by mineral-rich enzymes. and overheated vents. And so.
“The history of science is littered with grand statements of certainties by senior statesmen that would soon be overturned,” Levitt writes in his book. Fortunately for us, the history of science is also littered with radicals and freethinkers who delighted in delving into those pronouncements.
Levitt described how many of the breakthroughs were made by researchers who never received due credit for their contributions. “I’m drawn to unsung heroes with dramatic stories that people haven’t heard before,” he said. “So he pleased me that many of the most compelling stories in the book turned out to be about people I didn’t know.”
They are scientists like the Austrian researcher marietta blue, who helped physicists see some of the first signs of subatomic particles; Dutch physician and philosopher Jan Ingenhousz, who discovered that sunlit leaves can create oxygen through photosynthesis; and chemical rosalinda franklinwho was instrumental in working out the three-dimensional structure of DNA.
wonders of the universe
The lightning spark of new ideas often struck independently around the world. To his surprise, Levitt discovered that several scientists had come up with plausible scenarios for how the building blocks of life might have begun to assemble.
“Our universe is awash with organic molecules, many of which are precursors to the molecules we are made of,” he said. “So I alternate between thinking that it’s so unlikely that creatures like us exist and thinking that life must exist in many places in the universe.”
Yet nothing about our own journey since the Big Bang has been smooth.
“If you try to imagine how life evolved from the first organic molecules, it had to have been a bumpy process, full of twisting paths and flaws,” Levitt said. “Most of them must not have gone anywhere. But evolution has a way of creating winners from countless experiments over long periods of time.”
Nature also has a way of recycling the building blocks to create new life. A nuclear physicist named Paul Abersold discovered that “we change half of our carbon atoms every one to two months, and we replace 98 percent of all our atoms every year,” Levitt writes.
Like an ever-renewing house, we’re constantly changing and replacing old parts with new ones: our water, proteins, and even cells, most of which we seemingly replace every decade.
Eventually, our own cells will calm down, but their parts will reassemble into other life forms. “Although we may die, our atoms cannot,” Levitt writes. They spin through life, the soil, the oceans, and the sky on a chemical merry-go-round.
Like the death of the stars, in other words, our own destruction opens up another extraordinary world of possibilities.
