Life Ascending - Audible - Sara - 0524

Life on Earth has transformed our planet into a beautiful blue and green sphere. Through the evolution of life, our planet has become a home that we share with incredible inventions. Photosynthetic bacteria brought oxygen to the oceans, allowing life to thrive. This led to the emergence of diverse and fascinating organisms. Our understanding of life has greatly expanded since Darwin's time, and we now have a detailed picture of its history. Evolutionary innovations have played a crucial role in shaping our planet and making our own existence possible. These innovations are not deliberate inventions, but rather the result of natural selection. Scientists, regardless of their beliefs, are united in their quest to understand the origins of life. LIFE ASCENDING INTRODUCTION THE TEN GREAT INVENTIONS OF EVOLUTION Set against the consuming blackness of space, the Earth is a beguiling blue-green ball. Barely two dozen people have ever experienced the emotion of seeing our planet from the moon and beyond, yet the fragile beauty of the pictures they sent back home is engraved in the minds of a generation. Nothing compares. Petty human squabbles over borders and oil and creed vanish in the knowledge that this living marble, surrounded by infinite emptiness, is our shared home and more a home we share with and owe to the most wonderful inventions of life. Life itself transformed our planet from the battered and fiery rock that once orbited a young star to the living beacon that is our world seen from space. Life itself turned our planet blue and green as tiny photosynthetic bacteria cleansed the oceans of air and sea and filled them with oxygen. Powered by this new and potent source of energy, life erupted. Monsters bloom and beckon, intricate corals hide darting goldfish, vast monsters lurk in black depths, trees reach for the sky, animals buzz and lumber and see, and in the midst of it all we are moved by the untold mysteries of this creation. Three cosmic assemblies of molecules that feel and think and marvel and wonder at how we came to be here. For the first time in the history of our planet we know. This is no certain knowledge, no stone tablet of truth, but the ripening fruits of mankind's greatest quest to know and understand the living world around us and within us. We have understood in outline since Darwin, of course, whose Origin of Species was published 150 years ago. Since Darwin our knowledge of the past has been fleshed out not only with fossils filling in gaps, but with an understanding of the intimate structure of the gene, an understanding that now underpins every stitch in the rich tapestry of life. And yet it is only in the last decades that we have moved from theory and abstract knowledge to a vibrant and detailed picture of life, written in languages that we have only recently begun to translate, and which hold the keys not only to the living world around us, but also to the most remote past. The story that unfurls is more dramatic, more compelling, more intricate than any creation myth. Yet like any creation myth it is a tale of transformation, of sudden and spectacular changes, eruptions of innovation that transfigured our planet, overwriting past revolutions with new layers of complexity. The tranquil beauty of our planet from space belies the real history of this place, full of strife and ingenuity and change. How ironic that our own petty squabbles reflect our planet's turbulent past, and that we alone, despoilers of the earth, can rise above it to see the beautiful unity of the whole. Much of this planetary upheaval was catalyzed by two handfuls of evolutionary innovations, inventions that changed the world and ultimately made possible our own lives. I must clarify what I mean by invention, for I don't want to imply a deliberate inventor. The Oxford English Dictionary defines an invention as the original contrivance or production of a new method or means of doing something previously unknown, origination, introduction. Evolution has no foresight and does not plan for the future. There is no inventor, no intelligent design. Nonetheless, natural selection subjects all traits to the most exacting tests, and the best designs win out. It is a natural laboratory that belittles the human theater, scrutinizing trillions of tiny differences simultaneously, each and every generation. Design is all around us, the product of blind and ingenious processes. Evolutionists often talk informally of inventions, and there is no better word to convey the astonishing creativity of nature. To gain an insight into how all of this came about is the shared goal of scientists, whatever their religious beliefs, along with anyone else who cares about how we came to be here.