Time & Life

An unfinished journey through time.

13.7 billion years ago... The Big Bang. Although far from a certainty that this singular event was the stepping point for our universe, the evidence in terms of cosmic background radiation and so forth is sufficiently strong that it is at least the leading contender. (Of course the cause of the Big Bang is unknown to us, since we cannot see beyond the beginning of time – it is one of the many metaphysical gaps in science that can be filled only with our own beliefs, religious or otherwise). 

1,000 years later, and the universe is cool enough for atoms to form. We have our first differentiation of matter, although nothing that one would conventionally call life.

100,000 years later, and the universe ceases to be opaque, and light can finally escape. There is no better point in the history of time to say “Let there be light!”  

Around this time, we have stars (astrophysicists call them Population III stars) which by virtue of their various nuclear fusion reactions created all the elements up to iron in the periodic table. Not long after, we have new stars (astrophysicists call them Population II stars) which were responsible for fashioning all the other elements.

We have nothing yet that corresponds to what people call ‘life’, although with poetic license the distant suns may be seen as a primitive form of life, or at least a dynamic process with a cycle of life, birth and death, stardust to stardust.

 

5 billion years ago... The youngest stars (astrophysicists call them Population I stars) form, creating systems with matter comprised of all the many elements made by those stars that came before them. More than eight billion years of stellar ‘life’ has passed – I for one am not willing to rule out the possibility of something life-like (although quite unlike what we tend to call life) might have existed in this period... likely, we would never know if it had. 

Half a billion years later, and our own solar system is formed. A spinning disk of stardust, all comprised of the exploded remains of older suns, gradually accretes into the collection of worlds and failed stars that we all know so well.

 

4 billion years ago... Replicating chemicals begin to emerge. These are the basis for what we call life – DNA is one possible replicating chemical, but by no means the only conceivable configuration. We often limit our notion of life to the DNA substrate, but this could be wholly misleading – even chemical life could have other replicating chemicals at their base, and life in its larger sense could exist in substrates that are not chemical.  About such possible lifeforms we can only speculate.

300 million years later, finally we have life as we know it! Bacteria. Single cell organisms. Everything that we know as life today has come from these amazing creatures, but the path between then and us has been absurdly long. It has taken the universe some ten billion years to forge this basic unit of biological life on our planet – perhaps it took just as long to form elsewhere, although we are in no position to know one way or another. 

4 billion years ago, life in one cell.

 

1.6 to 2.1 billion years ago... After some two billion years of bacterial, single-celled life, now something new emerges. Bacteria, probably (as Lynn Margulis hypothesised) as a result of failed attempts at digestion of one another, finds itself in a whole new state of affairs – multiple single celled organisms embedded within each other. This turns out to be a supremely valuable biological state, as it allows for specialised components (biologists call them organelles) in the cells. This is the beginning of the eukaryotic cells from which all our complex biological life forms are comprised. There is nothing like that degree of complexity at this point, but there is red algae and the like:  organisms comprised of multiple cells, but without the specialisation of cells required for life as we normally imagine it.

2 billion years ago, life in many cells.

 

542 million years ago... The Cambrian explosion – and life bursts onto the stage in tremendous variety. The eukaryotic cells, having learned to co-operate internally forming tiny symbiotic communities now take this trick one step further, finding a means to encode DNA (or so it is presumed) that permits differentiation of cells into discrete roles. It becomes a huge success – life in abundant and bizarre variation comes into existence. The largest creature of this time is Anomalocaris, between 60 cm and 2 metres in length. 

Half a billion years ago, trillions of cells co-operating in one organism.

70 million years ago... the early mammals – our ancestors – appear. These creatures express new behaviours – they have more emotions than their predecessors, they form family groups and so forth in different, arguably stronger, ways than before. Not to mention, life as a whole has fallen into a recurrent pattern of global symbiosis – even when an extinction event (such as the one that ended the reign of the dinosaurs at this point in time) clears the playing field, life can and does find new balance points between myriad species, capable of sustaining life over the long term. While competition between species is rife, the biome as a whole falls into co-operative patterns which regulate the environment (Gaia theory). Co-operation is spreading!

Hundreds of million years ago, direct and indirect co-operation between organisms continues to expand.

 

130,000 years ago... the first anatomically modern humans appear. Humanity has finally made it onto the scene; a mere thirteen billion years after the universe began. The human body is comprised of between fifty and a hundred trillion cells (10¹⁴) – each of which co-operates internally with its constituent organelles, and externally with the other cells of the same body. Furthermore, humanity fosters co-operation of various kinds between other species – domesticating dogs, horses, cats and cattle – not to mention co-operation with other early humans. Despite the original anthropological view of humanity living in constant war, many anthropologists believe war did not exert itself on a significant scale until much later. 

Hundreds of thousand years ago, conscious co-operation between species expands.

 

5,500 years ago... written language develops in a number of places throughout the world. This allows for the development of early bureacracies which provide means for co-operation on a far larger scale than before. While large tribal groups existed before this point, there were no cities and nothing quite like the nations of modern times. But with writing, and hence bureacracy, larger scale projects could be undertaken – giant constructions like the pyramids of Egypt or the ziggurats of South America. With the rise of nations, the possibilities for conflict and competition are also increased - bureacracy also allows for larger fighting forces, such as million-man armies in early China. 

A few thousand years ago, humans co-operate to form super-organisms – nations.

 

550 years ago... the invention of the printing press.  As written language allowed for early nations, so the printing press allowed for something akin to modern nations. The capacity to produce written communications on such a grand scale allowed for co-operation between individuals in ways previously impossible because it was only possible to copy text manually (a slow and time consuming process). Now, instructions could be given to a great many people quickly, and ideas could be shared between many more people than ever before - accelerating (amongst other things) scientific development. The printing press also allowed people to co-operate against the established powers, as with Martin Luther's opposition to the abuse of authority in the Catholic Church.

A few centuries ago, new ways to co-operate  emerge.

 

200 years ago... The industrial revolution. Now the human super-organism, the nation, has the resources it needs to grow even larger. Vast conglomerations of people form – China with 1.3 billion people, India with 1.1 billion, the United states with 300 million people, not to mention different kinds of super-organisms such as corporations and other organisations – the Chinese army with 2.3 million people, the Indian State Railways with 1.5 million people, the British National Health Service with 1.3 million people. 

Two centuries ago, up to 10²³ cells co-operating hierarchically.

 

30 years ago... The Internet. The possibilities for communication are expanded to their current horizon. Six and a half billion people able to co-operate, if they so choose. The whole planet – in human terms, at least – held together in ties of competition and co-operation... a hyper-organism unlike anything that came before.

Not long ago, up to 10²³ cells cooperating non-hierarchically as a vast hyper-organism (humanity) formed of many super-organisms (nations).

 

Now... what next?

The opening image is Cosmic Dark Age by Don Dixon, which I found here. As ever, no copyright infringement is intended and I will take the image down if asked.

Comments

[Patrick]

Singularidad.

[zenBen]

This is what will happen next. Doomed! We're all DOOMED!

[Chris]

Patrick: well of course your religious beliefs tell you *that* is going to happen next, but what about the rest of us whose faith in transhumanism is not so strong? :D

zenBen: a 404 Link Not Found error! Aghh! :) Either the link is dead, or you typed it out wrong... ;)

[TT]

Maybe a 404 Link Not Found Error is what will happen next! The pendulum begins to swing; with so many people communicating/cooperating, possibilities for misunderstanding increase exponentially; everybody gets pissed off; links break; we decide silence is better. 404 Link Not Found.
TT

[Neil]

If you look at the link in zenBen's post you will see this at the end:

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/

Typepad does something weird to links when you just type them in plain text or don't include http:// or some such.

[Chris]

Ah yes, Peak Oil. Well, I won't deny this is a real issue that needs to be addressed; this particular report is thorough but wimps out at the end by saying "the corporations run everything and we can do nothing." What rubbish! We can certainly influence the corporations through collective effort - we just need to know what we want.

I suggest following Bucky's plan. The available energy on the planet is vast, but tapping it is not immediately profitable, which is what slows everything down. That just means we will have to make our governments foot the bill - which they will if we force them to do so.

There is time for this - and to save most of the species diversity on the planet, for that matter - we just need to be ready and able to implement the actions required. To do this, we must clarify our common position, communicate the vision, and force that vision onto government and industry through economic boycott and political non-violent conflict.

Beyond the oil crisis is the potable water crisis... We can only avoid this by taking control of population - but this is a separate battle.

All of these crises are simply problems humanity as a hyper-organism needs to solve. We can do it - but we have to communicate and co-operate to do it. Form a suitable collective, and nothing is out of reach.

While there is life, there is hope.

Best wishes!