The Achievements and the Days

Book I: from the Origin to the HominidsRoland Maes

Copyright © 2011 by Roland Maes

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Acknowledgments

This work would never have concretized without the help of Ernst Van Ingen. I thank him heartily for his assistance and patience.

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Table of Contents

IntroductionChapter 1. The Evolution of Atoms.Cosmogony1.1 The Prime Mover 1.2 The Universe 1.3 The Big Bang 1.4 The Expansion of the Universe1.5 The Formation of Heavy Atoms1.6 The Sun-Earth-Moon System

Chapter 2. The Evolution of Molecules2.1 Chemical Complexification2.2 Polymers2.3 VirusesChapter 3. The Evolution of Cells

3.1 Prokaryotes3.2 The Eukaryotes3.3 Sexual Reproduction3.4 The Appearance of the Metazoans3.5 Evolution is not Chance but Necessity

Chapter 4. Evolution and Environmental Challenges4.1 The Mechanisms of Speciation4.2 Gene Determinism: an Erroneous Paradigm of Life4.3 Molecular Strategies in Biological Evolution4.4 Challenges of the environment4.5 Environmental Challenges and Species Survival4.6 Contemporary Climate Stress

Chapter 5. The Evolution of Metazoans5.1 The Phyletic Lines5.2 Land Invasion by Chordates5.3 The Amphibians5.4 The Reptiles5.5 The Great Dying5.6 The Mammals5.7 The Primates Is there intelligent life on other planets?

Chapter 6. The Heritages of the Chordate Phylum6.1 Individualization of the human organism6.2 Biological intelligence and survival6.3 Levels of encephalization of the vertebrates6.4 From biological intelligence to human intelligence6.5 Human cognitive development6.6 Conclusion

About the author

******Frontispiece: PORNOCRACY, aquarelle by F. Rops, 1878.

A pig with a golden tail leads a blinded provocative woman to a new adventure while her three former loves fly away.

Rops (1833-1898) was educated by the Jesuits but rejected their moral concepts at puberty. He lived with two sisters who shared him with additional transient female conquests in a decadent Paris immerged in macabre pleasures.In the spirit of that specific French period, the pursuit of pleasure was paid for by poverty and ruin, generated by the greedand cruelty of woman, and by fevers, sadness, illness and death generated by exhaustion and sexually transmitted diseases as gonorrhea and syphilis (HIV raged only in later times). Rops heldthe Devil as the master of sex, which corroded and disaggregated the body: “man is possessed by woman and woman is possessed by the Devil. Woman inspires great things but also prevents their realization”. Rops personally assisted to the rout of the French imperial armies at Sedan (1870) and attributed the decadence of the Latin countries to the overwhelming obsession with sex: according to him, the greater the importance and power of woman in a civilization, the greater its decadence. The most martial, brutal, misogynist civilizations are the most successful. Today, we assist to the decadence of some Western countries of Europe but nobody is going to attribute this downfall to obsession with sex: other reasons are at stake.

This aquarelle summarizes the subject of this essay. The first question is if evolution is the reconnoitering of unsuspected paths that draw unknowing explorers to them. This is discussed inthe first books. The following books treat of the second question, which challenges the positive role played by sex in theevolution of mammalians once the hominid level of cognitive development had been reached. Has the sexual drive not

overreached his goal and has it not become a hindrance to furtherprogresses? Should it not be kept in bounds and repressed insteadof tolerated and magnified? Do bestial pulsations jeopardize Man’s evolvement toward a humane destiny? I have been asked, for general acceptance of this art piece, to cover the model according to Lev. 18, 17 because nudity under any form is offensive to a large segment of the world population, also in theWest. Sex appears to be a central preoccupation of Humans and this subject is discussed at length in chapter 15. 2.3. The thirdquestion is of contemporary importance: the place given by various civilizations to love and trust. The immense majority of the civilizations thriving today distrust each other while their populations distrust their governing elites as well as each other. Are the trust and love in an union established between a man and a woman on a foot of equality, and the love lend by parents to their children throughout their education, and the management of the city and of the nation in a manner that commands the adhesion of the governed, not the key to an evolvement of a human group to a higher level of humaneness? Thiscomforts the view that some nations of the West, and more specifically the Netherlands, are the founders of a humane modernity. It is currently fashionable to underline the contributions and achievements of other civilizations, which pretend to be as much as some nations pertaining to the Western world, major contributors to civilization. It is of course evident that there was a general progress in technical modernity registered from the years 1400-1500 A.D on, in diverse cultures, as proven by the naval expeditions of China along the East African Coast. However, China and also Japan, closed its frontiers, restricting the entrance of foreigners as well as the exit of its nationals. One should not put the notions "civilization" and "culture" on the same level.

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Introduction

Darwin had an idea (1) that unites the two most disparate features of our universe: the world of meaningless matter in Brownian motion on the one side and the world of meaning, purposeand design on the other. This idea of evolution excluded human history. A chronological record of historical events (2 ) shows that there is progress in history but the sense of the evolution is not evident. Is it possible to draw up a coherent, if schematic, view of evolution, encompassing the whole phenomenon?The magnitude of the task may appear too great for the shoulders of a single individual, who cannot possibly have mastered all theaspects of the various scientific disciplines that contribute to this endeavour. There is always the danger that depth of treatment and command of issues will be wanting. A collegial approach would have introduced a guarantee of authority to the problems tackled. Yet, the specialist puts on blinkers that shut out from his vision the entire world but a small spot to which hefocuses his attention. Perspective is lost. By its very nature, this collegial approach would have destroyed the unity of the work and denatured its purpose. My attempt is not to produce a textbook but to present the reader with information that may be useful in establishing the different successive steps performed by evolution, leading from the origin of the Universe to contemporary Man.It is a long story and I fractionated this essay in five books. To assemble the evidences needed to build a coherent story givingthe conviction that the world makes sense, I had to deal with an almost unlimited ability to ignore my ignorance. This attempt meets a second severe limitation of the human mind, which is its imperfect ability to reconstruct past states of knowledge. Once anew Weltanschauung has been adopted, one loses much of one's ability to remember previous beliefs, and tends to view the worldas well-ordered, predictable, tidy, simple and coherent, althoughit is not. More often than not, no evidence supports our beliefs,except that the people we trust (politicians, pundits, scientists) hold them. And we trust them not because they know but because they inspire trust. They and we fool ourselves constantly by constructing flimsy accounts of the past and believing they are true. This is most evident in human history, of course, but is found in all scientific fields. The story I

tell shows that evolution gives an extremely large place to sheerluck.There is no science that does not rest on subjective bases. Even professions of objectivity are subjective. From the wealth of information available, the choice of the material selected and incorporated in this endeavour to present an over-all view of theentire phenomenon of evolution entailed a subjective approach. Subjectivity does not equate with partiality or intellectual dishonesty. The sequence of events that lead from the origin of the universe to contemporary man appears to me most coherently explained by the information selected. Man's intellectual activity usually functions within a frame of accepted concepts. He is the prisoner of paradigms that are only reluctantly questioned or abandoned. Centuries may elapse before the accumulation of paradigmatic abnormalities forces an overhaulof the accepted theories. This adjustment and adaptation of our current Weltanschauung to a better interpretation of true facts is usually violently contested and met with hostility. I discuss at length, in various chapters, the rise of a specifically human intelligence that sometimes supersedes our inherited biological intelligence: chapter 6. 2 exposes biological intelligence and survival, chapter 6.5 exposes the human cognitive development, chapter 14.1.1 discusses biological intelligence versus internal coherence of thought and 14.2 is about reason and emotion. The existence of two different intelligences used by Humans has been noted repeatedly in the course of history and has been "rediscovered" recently by D. Kahneman. This psychologist exposedthe facts in a manner accessible to a large public (3) and he applied it to develop an understanding of human behaviour that takes into account the numerous departures from raison one daily registers in our behaviour. D. Kahneman notes that historians ofany science share basic assumptions of their subject, which are seldom questioned. Kahneman disputes the two generally accepted assumptions that people are rational and that emotions drive people away from rationality. He demonstrates that errors in thinking occur very frequently due to the design of our machineryof cognition. According to him, we have inherited a basic primaryneural mechanism enabling us to assess on an instant basis a situation as good or bad, requiring escape or approach, and this

primitive mechanism gives us immediate, easy, intuitive answers, which are in most cases appropriate. It minimizes effort and optimizes performance, but not always because it has little understanding of logic and statistics. The inherited system I (i.e. the biological intelligence) is controlled, according to Kahneman, by a system II, which is reason and coherence of thought specific to the human race, which takes over only when glaring paradigmatic deviations prop up. Here are two examples oferrors due to reliance on intuitive thinking:

Is the figure on the right larger than the figure on the left?Kahneman gives the second example: "a bat and ball cost $ 1.10. The bat costs one dollar more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?" If you intuitively answer that the ball costs $0.10, you neglected the fact that the bat costs one dollar more than the ball: a ball at ten cents makes the bat alone cost $ 1.10.A disquietingly large number of scholars in all fields recurrently, systematically and easily succumb to biases of intuitive thinking. The constantly repeated erroneous initial interpretation, volunteered by a pundit, backed by a subsequent blind and respectful consensus resting on a stubborn refusal of individual expenditure of mental energy, may persist during centuries without correction (e.g. the sun revolves around the earth). We can be blind to the obvious and we are also blind to our blindness. Here I give a personal professional experience of blindness. I have battled during three decennia to have my colleagues mycobacteriologists admit that tuberculosis is immunosuppressive and that serological monitoring of the disease would be a useful adjunct to prognosis and treatment in that the

immune-depressed patients would be recognized and their immune reactivity boosted (4) . My efforts remain up till today, in July 2014, without success. The WHO advised a ban on serology in 2011 (5). This blindness to the true nature of the bacillus and interdiction to use evolved diagnostic tools when these are in such a crying demand, is of course not without consequences on the management of the disease, which progressed unhampered with huge success throughout the world since World War II, and provokes Public Health disasters. These could have been avoided, the means exist to meet the challenge, yet they remain unused. This failure to correctly interpret data is not restricted to scientific matters. The general failure of our management of human affairs should make us attentive to the actions of our elites at all levels of human activity. Dürer pointed this out asearly as anno 1524, after Machiavelli put in evidence the collapse of the Christian ethics of societal conduct. Machiavelliwrote "The Prince" in 1512. Whereas the counsellors of the medieval Emperors, with the exception of the counsellors of the French, emphasized the need for a humane approach of government, Machiavelli taught to secular Princes deceit, treason and bankingon human weaknesses. Most followed this advice.

Justice, Truth and Reason are muted and held captive by Deceit.Dürer, 1524.

Note that Deceit is not explicitly represented by a cleric.

After 5 centuries of implementation of this 'REAL POLITIK' systemof government by Nation-States, the result is appalling, yet there are no substantial signs of amendment. Our elites nurture an illusion of skill supported by a powerful professional culture. They believe themselves to be among the chosen few who can do what they believe others cannot and maintain an unshakablefaith in their own most absurd propositions because a community of like-minded believers, blind to reality, comfort and sustain them, even in democratic societies. This propensity to illusions will be repeatedly stressed in this essay. After the publication in 1610 by Galileo Galilei that the earth was not the centre of the world because Jupiter had planets of its own, the Royal Society of London, founded on 28 November 1660, proclaimed "Nullius in Verba" in 1661.

This motto roughly translates as 'take nobody's word for it'. It is an expression of the determination to withstand the dominationof authority and to verify all statements by an appeal to facts determined by experiment. I have, once Historical Man came into focus, indulged in an overabundance of names, places and dates. These references to specific events, people and times were deemed necessary and useful to the reader who might wish to verify that our description of the facts, and their interpretation, can be controlled in the face of the controvert conclusions I draw. Experimental scientists but also theorists have to work for months and even years analysing data to test whether it is contradicted by existing data and verifying if these existing

data are not marred with errors. With the abundance of new information daily generated, additional discoveries may at any time invalidate the most generally accepted theories. Nothing is known for sure. Stark and uncritical belief in the theories proposed is not warranted. As research progresses, the science changes as understanding improves. This does not imply that all science will always change. In many areas, at some point in time,the pieces fell into place, the basic theory is in place and thatarea stops changing. Most of the chapters have been composed from disparate sources. Some parts will however be recognized as bearing heavily the markof a master in his field. Quotation of sources was in this respect desirable. If applied to every observation reported, it would have been honest to a point of scrupulosity wherewith the burden of the enterprise would have increased to an unwarranted degree while not adding much to the conveyance of thought. References have often been omitted, including that of Hesiod, from whom I borrowed the title of the work.Contemporary good epistemological manners impose on the writer ofthis essay an orderly, sequential description of successive events. This approach runs counter to common human cognitive processes. We usually apply our inherited biological intelligenceto grasp a reality as a whole (i.e. the biological intelligence that is the System I advocated by D. Kahneman (3 ) ) and only laterbreak it up into its constituent parts through analysis and reconstitute it through synthesis (i.e. the System II of Kahneman). I cannot advise enough and encourage the reader to proceed as he wishes, for example from the last chapter toward the first if it suits him. The segmentation of this essay in various books allows this approach.This essay has been divided in books.The first book exposes the evolution of matter starting from elementary particles produced after the Big Bang. It is not an easy chapter to read because it contains lots of mathematic formulae. Mathematics is the creation of a logical reticulation whose vocation is its extension to the whole of the universe. It accomplishes this by formulae that condense in mathematical termsan immense experience. Modern science maps the chemical and

physical pathways that constitute biological systems, making the complexity of processes like inheritance, development, evolution,the origin of life, and of course cosmology, increasingly tractable. It is widely accepted that one needs at least some mathematical knowledge to understand physics at any degree of sophistication above the most elementary. The laws of nature are seemingly written in the language of mathematics. I will show in this essay that there was a time when this seemedunlikely and the realm of terrestrial physics was considered too messy to be amenable to mathematical modelling. Eventually, a mathematical theory covering both celestial and terrestrial physics developed. Ginsburg and Colyvan (6) went further in 2004 and developed a theory of population dynamics that rests on the observation that the chance of an individual to reproduce or die depends on its ability to acquire its share of the energy available to a population. This elementary observation leads themto treat organisms as real physical non-equilibrium systems of which they make the core of a theory of population dynamics. Thischange in perspective leads to a radically different mathematicalshape of the population dynamical equations, whose signal characteristic is that they respect the laws of inertia. In otherwords, according to Ginsburg and Colyvan, organisms continue in motion unless acted upon by a force. They conclude that the dynamics of populations depend not only on the amount of food available to a generation but also on the conditions under which the parental generation lived. They thus stress that historical knowledge is the mother of scientific knowledge. Ginzburg and Colyvan challenge the widely held opinion that therecannot be laws of nature in biology that have a standing comparable to those in physics! To them, mathematics rule supremeover all scientific fields. However, not only physical bodies andpopulations have inertial tendencies but so do habits of mind. Most human minds, including in the West, are not prepared to abandon their daily human concrete experience. I know how difficult it is to manage formulae and mathematical signs for readers not familiarized with scientific methods and I endeavour to avoid them. However, throughout this essay, it is sometimes not possible to do so.

Introduction. References.

1. Carl Zimmer: Evolution. The triumph of an idea. Harper and Collins, New York, 20012. Kroniek van de mensheid. B. Harenberg, Elsevier, Amsterdam-Brussel, 1986.3. Thinking, fast and slow. Penguin books, 2012 ISBN 978-0-141-03357-0.4. Maes R., Homasson JP., Kubin M., Bayer M. : Development of an enzyme immunoassay for the serodiagnostic of tuberculosis and mycobacterioses. Med Microbiol Immunol. 178 : 1989 : 323-335.5. WHO Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data. Commercial serodiagnostic tests for diagnosis of tuberculosis: policy statement. 1. Tuberculosis - diagnosis. 2. Serologic tests - standards. 3. Guidelines. I. World Health Organization. ISBN 978 92 4 150205 4.6. Biological Orbits. How planets move and populations grow. Ginsburg and Colyvan, Oxford Univ. Press. NY 2004 ISBN 0-19-516816-X.

******Chapter 1. The Evolution of Atoms

COSMOGONY

Lemaitre versus EinsteinWho developed the concept of the Big Bang?

What is our world made of? Where do we come from and where do we go? These are essential questions to which the most refined minds attempted throughout the ages to bring an answer. These answers were by necessity in the absence of developed instruments and

mathematical tools, mostly of a religious and philosophic nature.The paradigm commonly accepted was that either one or else several Gods created the earth intentionally out of chaos. During the last two centuries, progresses prompted by the availability of ever more refined instruments and the acute attention brought in the West to natural phenomena, produced a scientific effervescence and a challenge of the accepted paradigms governing our understanding of the world, which was best represented by Einstein. However, Einstein was not alone in his endeavours. Many of Einstein's contemporaries contributed so much to the development of the theory of relativity that some came close to pre-empting Einstein. If ever a scientific idea wascrying out to be discovered at a certain time, that idea was the special theory of relativity. I describe here some of the Homericdiscussions that mark this progress in our Weltanschauung, our understanding of how the Universe evolved. Einstein is lauded fora vision of the evolution of the Universe he did not share.Before Einstein, one thought that space and time were independentin an absolute way. One could thus measure time precisely. However, this paradigm was shaken with the discovery of the speedof light, about 300,000 kilometres per second. The excellent mathematician James Maxwell discovered in 1865 that light moves as a wave at a given speed in Ether. This implies that observers moving in the Ether should see light come at various speeds. However, it was shown in 1887 that the speed of light is the samein all cases. Einstein resolved the discrepancy in 1905, stating that e = mc2. This equation of energy with mass multiplied by thesquare of the speed of light indicates that nothing may move faster than light and that each observer of the speed of light may have his own measure of time, not necessarily similar to thatof his neighbour: all measures are relative. Einstein refined histheory in 1915, taking in account the action of gravitation: the general relativity says that time-space is not flat but curbed bygravitation, due to the mass and energy this time-space includes.In other words, the general relativity is a new geometry where time and space are said un-dissociable, where everything, including time and light, is influenced by gravity. Before Einstein, cosmology was apprehended essentially from a philosophic-religious point of view whereas with Einstein, the

Universe may be put in equations. In those days, the only galaxy known was our own, the Milky Way. Without adequate instruments, objects not similar to stars were called nebulae, be these gaseous or solid, and all were believed to be within our galaxy. In 1917, Einstein published his Cosmologic Considerations. Thanksto relativity, one may calculate the movement of the stars and nebulae in function of their mutual attraction and thus furnish anew model of the Universe, which was, according to Einstein, static and eternal. Einstein published in German. The Dutch professor Willem De Sitter (1872-1934) admired the view of Einstein and sent a copy of the article (the Netherlands were not involved in World War I)to Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, who promptly sent in 1919 a teamto the island Principe, off Occidental Africa, whose task it was to observe the deflexion of the sun's rays due to its mass, during a total eclipse. Einstein appears thus to be a genius. However, the American Vesto Slipher had observed in 1912 that themajority of the nebulae showed a spectre shifted to red (this is the Doppler Effect), from which he had deduced that the Milky Wayincreased in size. He was laughed at, except by the Russian astronomer George Friedman who advanced in 1922 that the galaxy was not stable but expanded. No one listened to him and this hypothesis proved in fact erroneous. The young Belgian astronomerGeorges Lemaître (1894-1966) also expressed, in 1925 in the Journal of Mathematics and Physics 4, 37-41, doubts on the Universe described by De Sitter. He demonstrated that one may give a non-static solution to the equations of relativity and reproached to De Sitter to have neglected the curvature of space.At the end of the year 1924, Edwin Hubble discovered 12 pulsars (named cepheids because discovered in the constellation Cephee) in the nebula Andromeda. Hubble applied the Doppler Effect to thecepheids and to the nebula (galaxies were not recognised in thosedays) and found out that Andromeda lies at one million light-years from us whereas our own galaxy had an estimated diameter ofonly hundred thousand light-years. He thus established that Andromeda was an extra-galactic nebula, closing therewith foreverthe problem of the nebulae. Hubble did not stop at that and established the existence of additional galaxies similar to our own, and confirmed the thesis of Copernic that the earth is only

a planet similar to others, of which billion others were likely to exist in other galaxies. Lemaître assisted in person in 1924 to the conference where the discovery of Hubble had been disclosed and set out to review the work of A. Einstein. He published in 1927 that the latter drew erroneous conclusions from his observations: the universe is not static but in expansion. Lemaître published his sacrilegious conclusions in the annals of the Société scientifique de Bruxelles, pages 49-59, wherein he demonstrated mathematically, not based on an experimental proof, the expansion of the Universe. No one noticed this obscure publication in an obscure journal and Lemaître set out to directly draw the attention of Einstein on it. They met in Brussels on 24 October 1927. The meeting was tense. Einstein retorted tartly to Lemaître: "I have read your article, your Reverence. Well,….your calculations are correct but your physics is abominable" and he discourteously continued the conversation in German with a friend. Shocked but not deterred, Lemaître went to see De Sitter in Leyden in July 1928 and was similarly rebuked. On 10 January 1930, at the reunion of the Royal Astronomical Society, De Sitter expressed doubts about the static universe of Einstein, which he himself had enthusiastically endorsed in 1917.Lemaître learned about this volte-face, protested by letter and, on May 1930, in a communication to the National Academy of Sciences, De Sitter recognised with elegance the cardinal contribution made on the subject by Lemaître in 1927. In 1929, Hubble formulated the principle of Hubble, which stipulates that the speed at which a galaxy moves away from us isdirectly proportional to the distance that separates it from us. This is a revolution as pregnant as was the heliocentric hypothesis of Copernic because Hubble showed that the whole of the Universe appears to fly away in all directions. The constant of proportionality established by Hubble was affected by an errorof factor 10, which is only a small error in cosmogony. Another error he made was to conceive this escape of galaxies in a staticspace whereas Einstein had shown that it is not the objects that fly away but well the geometrical tissue space-time, in which theobjects are distributed, that inflates. The size of the galaxies remains stable but the galaxies themselves separate.

Lemaître was not satisfied with his 1927 model. Hubble had calculated that the Universe was two billion years old, which appeared too little to Lemaître, and he introduced a cosmologicalconstant into his equations to imprint a force of repulsion on the expanding universe, so as to have it a few billion years older than hitherto assumed, and he went on to envision the birthof the Universe, which he published in Nature on May 9.5 1931, page 706: The beginning of the world from the point of view of Quantum theory. Heargued that energy, which is in constant total quantity in the Universe according to the first law of thermodynamics, is distributed in quanta and, since the number of quanta increases steadily according to the second law, if we go back in time, we will find less quanta until the whole of the energy of the universe is condensed in perhaps one single quantum. This is a singularity because notions as space and time play no role in phenomena that concern only one single or a few quanta and there was no such thing as space and time in the beginning, until the initial quantum had split in a number of partial quanta. Lemaîtreproclaimed that the universe would have been born from a kind of cosmic egg, a primitive atom. This hypothesis brought about an immense and general toll from his colleagues, indignant that the master was contradicted, and Fred Hoyle coined the term "The Big Bang", in derision. Einsteinhimself reproached to Lemaître to be a priest who preached for his own chapel and who applied to his equations the cosmological constant lambda that he himself had once postulated and rejected.During much the rest of his life, Lemaître will attempt to bring an observational proof of his concept. He sought it in cosmic rays until 1962. He did not find it, first because cosmic rays were not involved in the evolutive process and second because theinstruments able to observe and prove the phenomenon were not yetdeveloped and available. The Russo-American Gamow (1904-1968) hadpredicted in 1948 the existence of a fossil radiation. He figured, what Lemaître had failed to do, that a condensed universe was hot. If the temperature increases, then light also increases. The primeval Universe was a universe of light. Gamow concluded that the Big Bang was followed with the emission of light, now much attenuated and decreased in intensity, which would not be detected unless by a refined instrument.

Lemaître lived long enough to see the hypothesis of the Big Bang validated by an observational proof obtained in 1965 with a refined detector of centimetric waves. The instrument was developed by the Bell telephone Laboratories, involved in the conquest of space. The physicists Penzias and Wilson discovered the cosmologic radiation at three degrees Kelvin. In 1992, small irregularities were discovered in the cosmic fossil radiation, essential to show that the matter of the young universe presentedvariations in density, which allowed the formation of galaxies. In 2014, proof was obtained that the anti gravitational wave postulated by Einstein and later rejected by him, and postulated by Lemaître but without having any proof of its existence, reallyexisted and promoted the initial expansion of the Universe, a fewmilli-seconds after the Big Bang. I give here a representation of the evolution of the universe, from the Big Bang to the contemporary aeon, as it is now generally accepted:

The Big Bang is immersed in light and the distance between the

objects increases with time, but not their own size.

Today, the contemporary great issue among cosmologists and astronomers is whether the Universe will collapse. The Universe started from an explosion and an expansion, and the reader who worries about the future one or two billion years ahead would like to know if the Universe will continue to expand and

terminate as a gigantic freezer or else will collapse into a gigantic furnace. The answer is, it will continue to expand.The second much debated question is whether the earth has any chance to disappear in a collision. This issue was exposed to public concern in a movie ( Armageddon (1) ) and the answer is no. Collisions are on the record but the expansion of the Universe isnow so large that future annihilating collisions are unlikely.The third inquiry is, how did it happen that, with only hydrogen,helium and traces of lithium initially present, so many differentatoms have become available, to build life on. The answer is thatthe time during which the universal expansion has taken place wassufficient to allow the occurrence of secondary events, as the coalescence of matter into galaxies and the formation of celestial bodies (stars, supernovae, etc.) where the creation of heavy atoms from hydrogen and helium could proceed by fusion. This chapter, and the next two, focusses on the extreme unlikelihood that the evolutive steps needed for the formation ofanimal beings endowed with reason would ever have had a chance tooccur. If the reader wants to delve deeper into the creation of atoms, molecules and cells he may read further, otherwise he may skip this arduous exposure. These subjects are accessible in pictures via the site: www.windows.ucar.edu/windows.html and may be satisfactory to most readers.

1.1 The Prime Mover"In the interval between dissolution and creation, Vishnou-Cesha rested in his own substance, luminous with dormant energy, among the seeds of all the lives to come." This is almost all that can be said about the time when there was no time, about the Universewhen there was no Universe. The Indian poet's vision can for the time being not be improved upon. In an altogether different language, two other poets said: E = h [nu], meaning therewith that the energy (E) carried by any oscillation is a constant multiple (h) of its frequency ([nu]), and E=mc2, which identifies energy (E) with mass (m), c being thespeed of light (299,792 km/second). This pregnant equation was published in 1905:

Max Planck and Albert Einstein who discovered these two fundamental equations were physicists who mastered fully the principal tool of their trade, mathematics, which allows logical tricks and short cuts, both essential to practice their profession.

A lecture by Einstein

Throughout this chapter, I will use mathematical short cuts to manage the numbers under discussion. What Einstein published in 1905 with E=mc2, is that the energy (E) hidden in a gram of mass has the capacity to accelerate that gram of mass about 90,000,000,000 centimetres per second, per second, upon a distance of a centimetre. The expression E=mc2 is obviously simpler. It is also elegant and constructive, in that a formula composed of only three symbols links in an unexpected way matter (m) and light (c) with energy (E) and favours further developments.Energy is the lord and giver of Life. This is a reality that transcends our mathematical descriptions. The purest form of energy, as Einstein explained, is the gravitational energy (G) ofmass that is the predominant form of energy in the Universe. The precise strength of this force is still not known accurately. Physicists have been able to build clocks that slip by only a second every million years but the accurate measurement of G is still a challenge. Recent determinations of G differ by nearly 40times their individual error estimates (2).The two next forms of energy that come into consideration are theenergies of rotation and of orbital motion. These three energies of a higher form can be degraded into energies of a lower form (light, heat, nuclear reactions, chemical reactions, microwaves, etc.) whose main characteristic is that they cannot be totally converted back into energies of a higher form. Up till 1998, it

was believed that these three forces were the only ones and that the Universe evolves by gravitational contraction. This view is now amended by the observation that the speed of the expansion ofthe Universe does not slow down with time but, on the contrary, has considerably accelerated in the course of time, which is not explainable by the amount of matter that is supposed to compose the Universe. To account for this acceleration, a large-scale repulsive force, called lambda, is postulated and was discovered in 2014. Stephen Hawking (A brief History of Time) reports that Einstein toyed since 1917 with the idea of a cosmological constant, which he finally -and erroneously- rejected as being foolish. This lambda cosmological constant represents about 70% of the Universe's energy, and only 30% is matter.The greatest challenge now (3) is to understand and describe whatmost of the Universe is made of and how it is structured.Quarks are elementary particles of matter. Quarks are the fundamental particles that make up most of the ordinary matter inthe universe. Elementary carriers of force (photon, electron) mediate the interactions among these matter particles. The photonmediates the electromagnetic force and the electron is the carrier of electricity. Two enigmas exist in the present mathematical model that attempts to explain the composition of the universe. The first is the size of the elementary particles, which the mathematicians consider to be zero, a point; for a mathematician, quarks and neutrinos are particles devoid of a radius. To a physicist who deals with the real world, and also toanybody endowed with common sense, this is an enigma. How can a particle with a mass have no size? The concept of particles without a radius is untenable because, as the distance between two particles whose diameter is zero but whose opposite electrical charges attract each other, gets progressively closer to zero, the electro-magnetic and gravitational forces become infinitely large, which is absurd. The second problem is the integration of gravity into a unified field theory that would link gravity with the other forces. Gravity, unlike the other forces, is proportional in strength to the mass of an object. Butmass, according to Einstein's formula, is simply another form of energy. There is an inconsistency here because, the closer two subatomic objects without a radius get, the stronger the forces

and the greater the fluctuations in energy they may undergo, which implies that their masses can sporadically become huge, which leads to an increase in the average strength of the forces,etc. The only way out is to abandon the idea that matter is composed of points and admit that it is a continuum of strings endowed with a non-zero radius.The struggle between these two opposing views has gone on for millennia. The Greeks initially were of the opinion that all matter is made up of four continuous substances, namely earth, water, air and fire. This was replaced by the atomic theory of Lucretius, and so on back and forth during centuries, down to ourown time: the discovery of the quarks forces again a pointillist model. At this moment in history, the absurdity of an explanationof the universe based on points is such that continuous strings are replacing points again. The use of these exceedingly short strings (10-35 meters) by physicists and mathematicians would allow the elaboration of a unified field theory satisfactory to the mind. However, their use raises a new problem. Most of us canhandle a world made of three dimensions, in which we move. The fourth dimension, time, is elusive to some cultures, which cannotadequately cope with the consequences their acts generate in a not too distant future. A unifying theory based on strings requires 5 additional dimensions, which makes it incomprehensiblefor the immense majority of the human race.

1.2. The UniverseWe all have a direct experience of earth, which is a planet possessing a satellite -the moon- and evolving with several otherplanets around a star called the sun. The Ancient Greeks knew this and arrived at this conclusion without sophisticated instruments as a telescope. This concept runs against common sense as well as against the teaching of Holy Books and this concept was forgotten during 1500 years until Galileo, following Copernicus, made this discovery again, because he could observe the firmament with the recently available telescope, devised by the Dutch Spinoza (an excellent maker of lenses). He challenged the current prevailing paradigm that the earth, the Microcosm, was the centre of the Universe and that the Macrocosm, heavens, covered it.

Our sun is a dim common star that belongs to a group called a galaxy. On clear nights, the Milky Way beautifully sweeps across the sky (Fig. 1.1).

Figure 1.1. The Milky Way must look very similar to Andromeda (Messier31)represented here above.

The most recent work on the subject represents the Milky Way as this

This is a picture of the centre of the Milky Way taken in the infra-red (EuropeanSouthern Observatory). The two small central arrows locate a Black Hole, whose

mass equals a million times the mass of the sun.

It is a very classical galaxy having the form of a flat ellipsoid, with a diameter of 9 x 1017 kilometres (that is 900,000,000,000,000,000 km). Such a distance requires quite an effort of imagination to visualize. It is composed of about 100 billion stars. A billion is a thousand million, 1,000,000,000 i.e. 109. In 16th century France, Bi-Million meant a million millions. The British kept this meaning but the French and Americans changed it for a thousand million. In French, a millionmillions is now a milliard, while milliard is a thousand millionsin Great Britain.Our galaxy has two small neighbours called the clouds of Magellan, and the next more important galaxy is the galaxy of Andromeda, which was, until 1923, recognized as being the farthest lying star still discernible with the naked eye. Now it is recognized that it is not a star but a pack of hundred billionstars lying at about 21 x 1018 kilometres away from the Milky Way.In 1998, 12 extra-solar planets were recorded. In 2000, a total of 30 planets were known to orbit distant suns. In 2003, 101 planets were on the record and more are constantly discovered.

Figure 1.2. The closest galaxies to the Milky Way, lying within a distance of 21 x 1018 km, are not distributed uniformly in space.On a small scale, galaxies are not disposed uniformly in space (fig. 1.2). About twenty galaxies form the local group, of which the two most important members are Andromeda and the Milky Way. Our closest neighbours are the clouds of Magellan. The evaluationof cosmic distances relies on a common yardstick. This yardstick is the distance at which lie the Clouds of Magellan. A direct technique for determining this distance is the parallax, which measures how much the stars move back and forth in the sky as theEarth orbits the Sun. It is inapplicable to the Clouds of Magellan, whose distance is somewhere between 40 kilo parsecs (130,000 light-years) and 60 kilo parsecs. Hence an uncertainty of 40% for all subsequently calculated cosmic distances.Our 24 neighbour galaxies are comprised within an area of 3 x 1019

kilometres and form the local group. It is a matter of observation that the galaxies lying outside this local group are also assembled in groups.If we localize the other groups of galaxies at further distances,we find, with the exception of small areas located north and south that cannot be probed because of the presence of the Milky Way, that there are about fifty groups of galaxies present. Sometimes these groups form themselves into clusters such as the cluster of the Virgin (Virgo). These clusters are apparently themselves assembled into clusters of clusters, and our local group seems to be located at the far-left end of such a Super-Galaxy (Fig.1.3). Down to 3 x 1022 km, there are about 108 galaxiesi.e. a hundred million galaxies.

Figure 1.3. A probing down to 4.5 x 1020 kilometres reveals that galaxies are distributed in about 50 groups, here represented by spheres. Our local group is in the centre, located at the far-end of a Super-galaxy. Galaxial dust of the Milky Way hinders any probing North or South.

1.3. The Big BangIn 1917, Einstein and all other cosmologists thought that the universe was static, neither expanding nor collapsing. At that time, Einstein considered gravitation and he put the lambda constant in his equations to prevent the universe from collapsingon itself from the gravitational pull of matter. He founded a theory of gravity in which the flow of time from place to place, and the creation and destruction of space, depends on matter. Thepriest Lemaitre (4)

exposed to Einstein that this theory implied that the universe had a beginning and he proposed the theory of the explosion in 1927, with the notion that the earth is only a grain of dust in the cosmos. Einstein found Lemaitre's conclusion so repugnant that he abandoned the lambda constant and tried to change his theory. Hoyle also found the theory of Lemaitre grotesque and derided it as a “Big Bang”. In 1929, Hubble

Hubble

confirmed that the Universe is expanding. Space really does grow and time has a beginning. The telescope used by Hubble heralded achange of cosmology from a field dominated by speculation to an observational science. Now cosmological theories die because of disagreement with observation and not because of the death of their proponents.

With the formidable numbers handled, cosmologists and astronomersturned to shortcuts. One of these is the light-year. It is the distance travelled by light during one year. This unit of measureis not entirely satisfactory because it relies on a local condition: the planet Earth that revolves around the sun in 365 days and rotates on its axis in 24 hours. A more acceptable unit is the Parsec that stands for Parallax Second. It is the distancefrom which one would see the astronomical unit, i.e. the distancebetween earth and sun, under an angle of one second. It amounts to 3.26 light-years or 3 x 1013 km: one light-year = 9.46 x 1012 km= 0.307 parsecs.Considering the universe on the scale of the gigaparsec (3 x 1022 km), it is composed of molecules of a gas. These molecules are galaxies. The density of the gas is about 3 x 10-31 gm/cm3 and thisis exceedingly small. About seventy years ago, it was recognized that this gas is in expansion: the current paradigm is that the galaxies are moving away from each other with a speed that is proportional to their distance. The speed (v) at which galaxies move away from each other is proportional (H) to their distance (d): V =Hd, where H is the Hubble constant, taken as 60 Km/sec/mega parsec. I will come back to the Hubble constant later. Since all galaxies speed away, there is supposed to have been a time when they were all together. The universe must have been at one time in a very condensed form, a ball of energy no bigger perhaps than the sun. The heat of the compressed gas must have been such that matter must have disintegrated to the state of elementary particles bathing in a gas of photons, which are particles of light. If elementary particles have no size, then the size of the primeval ball of energy may have been that of a ping-pong ball or less, which is absurd.If such were the initial conditions, then we must still bathe in a gas of photons, but this gas has cooled down tremendously due to its expansion; everywhere in space we should find a diffuse electromagnetic radiation at low temperature. Such a radiation was found in 1965. This cosmic background lies at 2.7° K (Kelvin temperature). The absolute cold state is reached with a temperature of -273.3° Celsius. The Kelvin temperatures are measurements starting from this ultimate cold state, using the same scale as the one used to define the Celsius: 0° is melting

ice and 100° is boiling water at a pressure of 760 mm of mercury,that is, at sea level. The observation of such a background practically proves that the universe at one time existed in a very condensed form.At time 0, the condensed Universe was of infinite thermal energy.An absurdity, of course, but what is the alternative, as long as photons, quarks and other elementary particles are claimed to have no size? Elementary reactions took place, of the type (e+) +(e-) = photon+photon. This equation means that pairs of electronsof opposite sign (the e+ is a positron) interact and are annihilated producing two photons of high energy, and the equation is reversible. Other elementary particles such as protons (hydrogen nucleus), neutrons and mesons are also present as well as their opposites, the antiprotons, antineutrons, etc. We suppose that matter and antimatter were continuously created and annihilated, with the production of thermal energy, i.e. photons. The assumption of the existence of antimatter may however be disputed, since no antimatter has ever been detected in space. The antimatter has the same properties as matter and follows the same physical laws. The luminous spectrum of antimatter is identical to that of matter. No radio or optical observation is able to tell us if we are dealing with a galaxy ofmatter or of antimatter. If, however, a collision occurs between two oppositely signed galaxies, then annihilation takes place with emission of energy under the form of, mainly, gamma rays.At the initial concentration of matter that is assumed, and this represents much more than all the matter now present in the wholeof the Universe, the particles present would interact many times within a short period of 10-23 seconds. This period started at time 0 when there was neither time nor even space. And it may have lasted for an eternity. Then, suddenly, the process changed.At 10-5 seconds after time 0 (that is a fraction of a 10,000th of a second), the "Big Bang" entered in a new phase. The temperature, after these 0.00001 seconds, dropped to 3.5 x 1012 degrees K. This apparently extremely hot temperature is, however,sufficiently low to favour the spontaneous separation of nucleonsfrom antinucleons. As said before, no antimatter has been detected and perhaps there is none left. If matter and antimatterwere exactly the same, then the energy from the big bang would

have created an equal amount of matter and antimatter, which would have annihilated each other. But the early universe had a preference for matter, which became the stuff of stars, planets and life. This preference implies that at least some elements making up the matter differ from antimatter.There are four fundamental forces recognized in the universe: theforce of gravity that keeps stars and galaxies from flying apart,the electro-magnetic force, the strong force that binds protons to neutrons, and the nuclear weak force (W). Physicists long assumed that any experiment performed with matter would give the same result with antimatter. This symmetry is known as "charge", or C (harge) symmetry. Similarly, the physicists thought that experiments should be identical, regardless if you swap right andleft, up and down, front and back. This property is known as parity, or P (arity) symmetry. The strong force, the electromagnetic force and the gravitational force obey C and P symmetries. However, this is not true for the nuclear weak force W, which exerts a subtle pull on quarks and on leptons, i.e. the neutrinos and the electrons, and ignores the common-sense rules that the three other forces obey.The origin of this concept started in the early 1930s, when Wolfgang Pauli attempted an explanation for the decay of cobalt into nickel (the beta decay): a neutron in an atom of cobalt releases an electron, turning therewith into a proton and changing the cobalt atom into a nickel atom. There remains, however, a tiny gap between the electron and the proton, which Pauli reduced by assuming that the neutron also emitted a tiny neutral particle. Enrico Fermi gave it the name neutrino in 1934,and thought that the neutrino was released by the action of a weak force (W). Today, we know that the beta decay is caused by the interaction of a quark within the cobalt neutron with a carrier force known as the W particle, changing the neutron into a proton and emitting an electron and an antineutrino.In the early 1950s, it became clear that the weak force at work on cobalt neutrons forced the released electrons in a preferential direction. The Weak force was left-handed. It violated Parity symmetry. Soon thereafter, it was found that it also violated Charge symmetry. Immediately followed the

observation that it violated CP symmetry, when the weak force acted on these two symmetries together. However, the tiny asymmetry between quarks and anti quarks cannot account for the preponderance of matter in our universe because the difference istoo small. The extra asymmetry discovered recently between leptons and antileptons would make up the difference.In the very beginning of time, about 10-35 seconds after the Big Bang, when elementary particles began to be formed, nature showeda slight preference for quarks and neutrinos over antiquarks and antineutrinos. In the late 1990s, it was discovered in Japan thatneutrinos change as the particles pass through earth (i.e. a muonneutrino changes into a tau neutrino). This indicates that neutrinos have a mass. It is possible that neutrinos also violateCP symmetry. These two asymmetries together would explain the preponderance of matter.At the time 10-4 seconds, the temperature had dropped to 1 x 1012 degrees K. The separation of matter and antimatter present as an emulsion like oil on water proceeded further, with annihilation of each other in an anarchic way when both types came into contact, until the presence of nucleons within a sphere of 10-4 cm3 exceeded the antinucleons in the same sphere by a factor at least 1028. In the meantime, however, this anarchic annihilation of matter and antimatter produced photons. These photons separatethe small units of matter formed. They establish a buffer zone. The pressure of photons is not a negligible factor. J. Kepler

proposed in 1619 AD that the tail of comets is pointing away fromthe sun's rays because of the pressure of light. It is currently assumed that large quantities of gas are ejected from very hot stars at velocities as great as 2 x 106 meters/second because the star produces intense UV light whose pressure on the ionized gas exceeds the gravity pull of the star itself.Twenty minutes after the original explosion, the units of matter and antimatter coalesced and united into larger, rounded units. These were less vulnerable to annihilation because the total surface of contact is reduced with this process.The temperature continued to drop and considerable annihilation proceeded further, with only one nucleon still being ultimately present for the 108 or 109 (hundred million to thousand million) initially separated. About one million years after the Big Bang, the surviving amount of matter had dropped to the level presentlyknown and the great journey into space started, with the general electromagnetic radiation being down to a level of about 3,000° K. Today, the level is down to 2.7°K.The perishability of matter is nowadays a commonplace idea. Creation and destruction of matter are intertwined twin concepts that are fully accepted in Western consciousness, yet they are utterly counterintuitive and their identification are a turning point in the history of science. Early mystical approaches concretized the concept of creation into religious creeds but these were by no means universally accepted. The Greek philosopher Democritus, 2400 years ago, regarded the lowest partsof matter as timeless. Atoms were considered by the Greeks as indivisible, as are quarks today. The Roman philosopher Lucretiusexpressed the idea in the following two principles: "nothing can be created by divine power out of nothing" and "nature resolves everything into its component atoms and never reduces anything to nothing". Needless to say that the tenants of the creation of the world out of nothingness by God considered Lucretius a heathen.The permanence of matter has persisted in scientific thinking until about 1920. In the eighteenth century, Lavoisier enunciatedthe law of conservation of matter and the concept survives in thelaws of conservation of energy but no scientist in the West stillholds the view that matter cannot decay.

Lavoisier

In 1905, Einstein described the photons, which are light quanta that do not exist before they are emitted and vanish at the end of their journey. However, light is not matter but a form of electromagnetic field, and these waves could be conceived as evanescent, as ripples appear on the sea with a puff of wind, to subsequently disperse. In 1932, Chadwick discovered the neutron. The neutron had been postulated by Rutherford as a necessary element constitutive of atoms. The building blocks of matter werethen the proton, electron, photon and neutron, which compose the atoms. Do not believe that the discovery of the existence of atoms went without resistance. D. Kahneman, cited supra in the introduction, insists that scientists, as most other humans, including our elites, rely on a system of Weltanschauung that jumps to conclusions from little evidence, and that this system is designed to ignore the size of the jump to conclusions becausemost humans rely solely on direct visible evidence: since there existed no instruments that could visualise their existence, manyscientists, among them Lord Kelvin (+ 1907), Mach (+ 1916), Berthelot (+ 1907) and Nobel-prize-winner Ostwald (+ 1932) considered atoms a gimmick.

OstwaldThey were dealing with the limited information they had as if it were all there was to know, built the best possible story they could from that information and, since the story was simple, coherent and made sense, stuck to it and rejected what they couldnot see. Quarks were not known in Rutherford’s time. Faithful to the paradigm of his days, Rutherford considered the neutron, made of a proton and an electron, to be a stable entity. This however proved an erroneous concept: a neutron confined to a stable nucleus becomes energetically impotent and can live there foreverbut the free neutron decays within fifteen minutes into a proton,an electron and an anti-neutrino. The free neutron is not an imperishable particle as the electron and the proton but is intrinsically unstable and vanishes. There is no way to interpretthis decay as a rearrangement of pre-existing components.The discovery of the spontaneous decay of the neutron was a turning point in physics: no principle in Newton's mechanics could deal with this event, nor could quantum mechanics. There existed no explanation for the vanishing of a particle of matter.Around 1930, a number of physicists worked on the enigma and solved it by integrating electromagnetism into the quantum principles. The new scheme, called quantum field theory, providesthe framework for understanding mathematically the disparate pieces of elementary particle physics, at the cost of an absurdity: particles with no mass.

All the particles of nature fall into one of two categories. The bosons, which include photons, interact easily between themselves. The fermions, such as electrons, quarks, neutrons andprotons, do not so easily interact. They cannot remain at the same time in the same place, and they stack up into successive shells. The different arrays of electrons on the energy ladders of different atoms give rise to the variety of chemical elements we see in nature. But these did not appear at once at the same time. I develop this in #1.7.The particles mostly involved in the initial formation of matter were the neutrons, the protons and the electrons. Upon cooling down to below 3,000° K, electrons and protons united to form hydrogen atoms. A more stable structure is reached when two hydrogen atoms combine and share a pair of electrons between the two nuclei, thus forming a hydrogen molecule. A molecule is the smallest unit quantity of a substance, which can exist by itself and retain all the properties of the original substance. In the case of hydrogen, a molecule of hydrogen requires two atoms of hydrogen. Helium is a very stable molecule that is composed of only one atom. It is made of two neutrons, two protons and, of course, two neutralizing electrons. Nothing else but hydrogen, helium and a little lithium was initially present. Also photons, which readily interact with electrons at high temperatures, are abandoned to themselves below the 3,000°K mark. Below that temperature, they are no longer able to react with matter. Together, hydrogen, helium and photons form 99% of the visible matter of the Universe.We may thus envision the universe as an expanding flow of matter.The matter is condensed into galaxies and the expansion provokes a cooling down of the Universe. Matter itself consists mainly of hydrogen, helium and photons. However, about 80% of the mass in the universe is composed of “dark matter”. The nature of this material, which can be detected only by its effects on gravity, is entirely unknown. The kind of matter we are familiar with, thevisible matter, makes 20% of the matter and is known as baryons. This matter forms the stars and galaxies but they contain less than a tenth of the baryons that existed when the universe was young.

Where went the missing baryons?A few billion years after the big bang, when the universe was about one-quarter of its current age, the baryons were still all there. In the present-day universe, 90% of them have vanished. The gas of baryons now found between the galaxies is not enough to account for the missing baryons. It is suspected that the missing baryons form filaments of matter much larger than galaxy clusters, which connect the galaxy clusters and groups in a cosmic web. Since the filaments are of very low densities, they are particularly difficult to detect, yet, the determination of the mass of baryons in the cosmic web is fundamental to understanding the formation and evolution of the structures in our universe.

1.4. The Expansion of the UniverseThe age of the universe has racked the minds of theologians, philosophers and astronomers for a long time. According to the contemporary orthodox Jews, the world was created in 3761 before the birth of Christ. Bishop James Ussher, Anglican archbishop of Armagh in Ireland, based his estimation on a detailed interpretation of the Bible and concluded in 1650 that the creation occurred in the beginning of the night preceding the Monday 23 October 4000 before Christ. In those days, the earth was considered by many to be the centre of the Universe. Twenty years later, Spinoza pointed out that the Bible was a human achievement of great nobility but rich in errors, contradictions and absurdities, and should be interpreted with caution. This superb mind currently read Hebraic, Portuguese, Dutch, Latin and Greek, and had good notions of other current languages but apparently ignored Arabic and unfortunately did not criticize theKoran. But Moslems would not listen, no more than contemporary conservative Christians. His critic was no inducement to evaluatecorrectly the age of the universe for the next 200 years: Spinozawas immediately excommunicated by the Hebraic community of Amsterdam and ostracized by the Calvinists. The other Christian communities (Lutherans, Anglicans and Roman Catholics) and Moslems, also despised him.I have mentioned that young Einstein and the immense majority of cosmologists living at that time thought that the universe was

static, neither expanding nor collapsing. The Universe, accordingto them, always was and they ridiculed those who advocated an evolution and expansion. At the beginning of the 19th century, they thought that the earth was of unlimited age. Lord Kelvin disputed this in 1844. He evaluated the volume of the earth and its inner temperature, evaluated the thickness of the cold crust that had formed on its surface and concluded that the formation of the cold crust took 200 million years, which was the age of the earth. In 1860, he had a better knowledge of the geothermal gradient and obtained for the earth an age of 24 million years. His former assistant, John Perry, recognized the error committed by Kelvin in the evaluation of the geothermal parameter and assured him that the earth was about 3 billion years old, but he was preaching in the desert: neither Kelvin nor the other scientists paid any heed to his claims for the next 70 years. I discuss this phenomenon of rejection more at length in chapter 12, § 6.In the 1930's, geologists determined that the age of the Earth was about 4,500,000,000 years (4.5 x 109 years, i.e. 4.5 billion years) while the cosmological age was thought by Hubble to be 2,000,000,000 years (2 x 109 years). In the 1980's, estimates of the cosmological age based on the age of stars stood in the rangeof 15-18 billion years. In the 1990's, the estimate of the cosmological age has been revised down to about 13.5 billion years.Measuring two parameters can derive the expansion age: the Hubbleconstant, i.e. a measure of the expansion rate of the Universe, and the deceleration parameter, which is determined by the mean mass density in the Universe. The value of the Hubble constant (H0) is determined by measuring the red shift of a galaxy and determining its absolute distance. Its determination has ranged between 50 kilometres per second per Mega parsec (about 17 kilometres per second per million light years) and 100 kilometers/s/Mpc. How much matter is there in the universe? A critical density of about 10 protons per cubic meter provides thegravitational pull needed to slow down the universal expansion and bring it to a halt. A value above the critical density means programmed contraction into a universal Black Hole; a value belowit means unending expansion into a gigantic freezer. The density

of the Universe is measured by measuring the density of deuteriumor lithium. After the Big Bang, there was produced 1 atom of lithium for 1010 atoms of hydrogen, which allows a deduction of the density of matter. These different techniques reveal that theuniverse has only about 25% of the critical density. Thus, the universe will expand forever. In a low density universe, H0 = 50 implies an age of 20 billion years, and H0 = 100 implies an age of 10 billion years. The best estimate seems to be 60 km/s/Mpc and this brings the age of an open universe to 13.5 billion years.At the moment of the Big Bang, all the matter and energy of the whole Universe was in a very condensed form described as a "BlackHole". It is a mass of such a tremendous density and gravitational force that not even light is able to escape from it. This makes a Black Hole invisible since even photons of lightwill fall back on it. In such a Black Hole, we are likely to finda space-time singularity where the gravitational forces are so infinitely strong that they deform and squeeze matter and photonsout of existence. The assumption here made of the existence of a space-time singularity is heretical: we started from a Newtonian theory of attraction and end up postulating a situation where thetheory, by definition of universal vocation, does no longer hold.Suddenly, however, perhaps due to the gravitational beam emitted by the space-time singularity, the process changed 13.5 billion years ago. A gigantic explosion dispersed matter, antimatter and photons into space. This voyage of matter into space will proceeduntil a gravitational contraction reassembles again all the substance of the Universe into a Black Hole. By definition, such a Black Hole can indeed only increase in size, never decrease, unless by an explosion. This is the theory. Recently, however, massive jets emanating from super massive black holes have been observed. These plumes of gas and dust that extend for thousands of light-years from the centre of some galaxies require considerable reserves of firepower, yet the black hole seems to blaze away without a recognizable fuel supply, which leaves theorists at a loss to explain the phenomenon.The Universe may thus be visualized as an expanding and contracting flow of energy and matter. We are now in an expanding

moment, with galaxies moving away from each other. We have no wayto know what happened before. For the present expanding movement,the initial annihilation of matter and antimatter with productionof photons, and the size of the universe are of such a magnitude that they have effectively protected us from the catastrophe of the universal black hole, i.e. a "closed" universe. Some estimates assume that 60% of the universal matter is condensed into Black Holes at the present time. The mass of the biggest Black Hole yet recorded equates 17 billion suns. The evoked catastrophe of the "closed" universe is thus not unrealistic. If the density of matter, now about ten protons per cubic meter, hadbeen only 10 times greater, the Universal Collapse would have already occurred 2 billion years ago. The initial annihilation ofmatter and antimatter and the extravagant extent of the universalexpansion now reached are thus enormously increasing the time granted to Life to reach high evolutive forms.Cosmologists can calculate how much matter the universe must contain to make it appear the way we see it. The ordinary matter that astronomers can observe and the dark matter that they infer from the pull of the universal gravity provide just a third of the energy required for the universe as we see it. There is a two-third deficit in matter, which the cosmologists call dark energy. Whereas ordinary energy pulls on other matter, dark energy has the strange property to be repulsive, so that it pushes away everything and makes the universe accelerate faster and faster. It seems almost certain that the Universe is either flat, meaning therewith that the expansion will at some time in the future come to a halt, or else "open" and will continue to expand indefinitely. In doing this, it cools down. We are in an immense freezer at -270°C. If expansion continues, the temperature will drop further and we will die of absolute cold. Yet, in a hotter Universe, one essential reaction of condensationof matter in nebulas destined to form stars is prohibited, so that life would not have appeared unless the temperature had dropped drastically.

1.5. The Formation of Heavy AtomsThirteen billion years ago, the Milky Way was a rotating mass of turbulent hydrogen gas. Under the influence of gravitational

forces, the gas in regions of low turbulence and high density condensed into 100 billion stars. As the stellar material contracted, gravitational potential energy converted into thermalkinetic energy and the interior of the star became very dense andhot. When the temperature reached 107 degrees Kelvin, and the density reached about 100 grams of hydrogen per cubic centimetre,this hydrogen began to interact. The fusion reaction produced helium and released even more heat. Contrary to man-made hydrogenbombs, the hydrogen found in the Universe is of a common type that will fuse peacefully without explosions. Its product of fusion will only be helium. This fact is very important; it is hard to imagine how further evolution would have been possible ifthe hydrogen had been more reactive, so that the Universe would have been only a succession of firecracker explosions.The conversion of hydrogen "fuel" into helium "ash" occurs preferentially in the core of stars because the temperature and density are highest there. There is however no mixing of the helium "ash" with the hydrogen still present in the outer membrane of a burning star. As long as the hydrogen undergoes fusion, further collapse is not possible because the energy released by the fusion reaction opposes it. In the long run, the depleted central region stops releasing energy, while the outer shell reaches temperatures of 3 x 107 degrees K. Once this stage is reached, the helium in the central core begins to contract. Again, gravitational energy is transformed into heat. The sudden rise in temperature of the core of a contracting star heats up the envelope. This envelope will expand tremendously, and a Red Giant will be formed (fig. 1.8). In the Red Giant, the temperature of helium reaches about 108 K°, and the density approaches 105 gm (100 kilograms) of helium per cubic centimetre.

Figure 1.8. Comparative sizes of various stellar objects. All objects have the same mass, i.e. that of the sun. The Black Hole is only 6.4 km in diameter. The diameter of the Neutron Star is about 20 km. The diameter of the White Dwarf is the same as that of theearth and the diameter of the Red Giant is 320 million km.

These are conditions that will allow fusion reactions of helium nuclei. Carbon and oxygen will be formed by this fusion. This process is accompanied by a release of energy that may provoke the explosion of the star, causing hydrogen, helium, carbon and oxygen to be blown into space, where these elements may condense,later on, into secondary stars.

This cloud of gas is the remains of a star that exploded at a distance of 3,000 light-years from Earth. Hydrogen is coloured red, oxygen is in green and sulphur is in

blue.

Our galaxy formed about 11 billion years ago and fusion reactionsstarted in the sun about 5.5 billion years ago. The sun began to shine 4.5 billion years ago. These fusion reactions will continuefor about 5 billion years more, before the conditions required for the next contraction will be met. In five billion years, the sun will have consumed most of its fuel and have grown, in the process, to a diameter of 320 million kilometres, swallowing up Mercury, Venus and the Earth. At this stage of its evolution, thesun will be a Red Giant, whose substance will be only a tenth as dense as air. The density of the sun is now about a fifth of thatof the Earth. If the star survives the Red Giant stage, the process of fusion will continue until all its helium has been transformed into carbon and oxygen. At the point of helium exhaustion, the star will again contract, and thus heat up, so that the heavier elements now present will begin in their turn toundergo fusion. The result of this fusion reaction is the formation of neon, magnesium, silicon and sulphur. The bloated Red Giant sun will then reverse its expansion and start contracting. This process will stop only after the sun has

reached a mere one-hundredth of its present diameter. It will have thus contracted then to the size of the earth. At that stageof its evolution, it will be a White Dwarf (fig. 1.9).

Figure.1.9. JPLCalltech/ESA/NASA. White dwarf, at 650 light-years. The dwarf is the barely visible tiny white point in the centre of the picture. In blue, we see a hot medium that cools down toward the exterior, taking a red colour. More Pictures can be obtained at www.spitzer.caltech.edu.

The density of the sun will then be enormous. All that remains thereafter for the sun to do is to cool off and pass from the stage of a White Dwarf to that of a Black Dwarf, i.e. a dead star.This normal fate for stars that have the size of the sun is well documented. Many stars exist, whose diameter is up to 50 times that of the sun. In this case, the gravitational pull originatingfrom the centre of the star at the White Dwarf stage will become extremely strong. If the star remains stable and does not explode, the evolutionary process continues. At temperatures near

3 x 109 degrees and densities of 3,000 kilograms per cm3, with various atoms now available, other nuclear reactions more complicated than simple fusions do occur, with the production of cobalt, nickel and iron. These elements are very stable.Fusion cannot create elements heavier than iron. Elements as gold, lead, and uranium had to be forged in some other way. Theirsynthesis depends on rare events. One possibility is the slow formation of such elements in secondary stars that have reached the iron-group stage. The burning of helium for hundred of thousands of years produces copious amounts of neutrons. These bombard the light elements produced by fusion in the aging star. Under the neutron assault, these atoms capture more and more of the neutrons and become heavier and heavier. This slow process accounts for roughly half of the elements beyond iron. The other half of elements heavier than iron are due to a rapid process, that requires a million billion times as many neutrons as a dyingstar can produce: the light atoms must be bombarded with an immense number of neutrons in a matter of seconds. After the bombardment ceases, the products decay into stable and semi stable elements (such as uranium) that dot our solar system. The rapid process is the gravitational collapse of a primary star that succeeded in reaching the iron-group stage. If the star is very big, the gravitational pull may be so great that the star will collapse through the White Dwarf dimension. Owing to the extreme densities and temperatures involved, the White Dwarf willexplode into a supernova. A supernova is the final uncontrolled explosion and death of a star. Supernovae come in two flavours: the types Ia are thermonuclear explosions of white dwarfs. The brightest type Ia supernovae are used to estimate the age and expansion of the universe. The types Ib are produced by the core collapse in massive stars. A supernova will outshine for a few days an entire galaxy, while as much as 90% of the star's mass could be ejected into space. The collapsed core of the supernova will eventually remain and find equilibrium as a Neutron Star.On earth, ordinary matter can be compressed to a density of about2.7 x 1014 grams per cubic centimetre. This is 2.7 x 1011 kilos percubic centimetre and represents the saturation density. In supernovae, the density is about 4 times the saturation density and, in neutron stars, it is nine times the saturation density.

These Neutron Stars have fantastic densities: gravitational pull has pushed the electrons into the protons and, in this way, formed neutrons. Pulsars are very probably rotating Neutron Stars. A star like the sun, upon reaching the stage of the Neutron Star, would have only about 10 to 20 kilometres in radius; the sun has now a diameter about 70,000 times greater than the diameter of the corresponding neutron star.Once a total mass equal to 3 solar masses is involved in the formation of a Neutron Star, the densities produced during the contraction would be too great to reach equilibrium and the Neutron Star will explode. An alternative to this fate would be further contraction of the Neutron Star into a Black Hole. Two stars have been observed that do not fit within the process here described: too small, too cool and too dim to be neutron stars. These strange objects may be composed of quarks.Conventional “collapsar” theory, first proposed by Stan Woosley of the University of California, Santa Cruz, holds that gamma raybursts (5) occur when a star at least 10 times as massive as the sun collapses into a black hole. At that moment, it spews jets ofmatter into space at close to the speed of light and, in the meantime, blows away its outer layers in an enormous supernova explosion. Supernovae are powered by the slow decay of radioactive nickel, and will take one to several weeks to reach their maximum brightness. The collapsar model predicts that the gamma ray burst occurs before the supernova reaches its peak brightness. The Hubble Space Telescope allowed verifying that thegamma ray burst followed the supernova instead of preceding it. It indicates that the core of the exploded star first collapses into a neutron star, which triggers a supernova. During the supernova explosion, there are produced silicon, sulphur, argon, magnesium and calcium. Heavy elements that are produced by nuclear fusion are ejected into space during the supernova explosion. This is followed by the collapse of the neutron star into a black hole, which provokes the gamma ray burst.The earth is provided with a relative abundance of heavy elements. It has long been thought that a Supernova explosion occurred near our part of the galaxy before the formation of the earth and fertilized the solar system's embryonic cloud with rare

isotopes. Superior life needs such elements to thrive and progress. In this hypothesis, the chance for superior life to appear somewhere in the universe becomes very hazardous. At a meeting held in 2001 (6), an alternative source of relatively abundant quantities of heavy isotopes on earth was proposed, based on the observation of the evolution of 43 stars with a sizesimilar to that of the sun, at ages 300,000 to 10 million years. Ninety five percent of them actively emitted x-rays almost continuously with astonishing ferocity. The flares were about 30 times more powerful and 300 times more frequent than the most intense flares unleashed today by the sun. This study indicates that the sun was unexpectedly and outrageously energetic in its first million years and was an intense accelerator of solar cosmic rays, boosting protons and other particles to near the speed of light. These, in turn, would have created radioactive isotopes readily. However, cosmic rays alone are unable to account for all the types of heavy isotopes now recorded on earth. The story is probably more complicated than it appears, even if one assumes that both solar cosmic rays and a supernova explosion nearby contributed to the supply of the earth in heavy isotopes.The halo of our galaxy contains the oldest stars. They were formed over 10 billion years ago, little later than the galaxy itself. These stars are very deficient in heavy elements. Some have over 1000 times less heavy elements than the sun. The enigmais that, up till today, not one single old star has been found that was totally devoid of heavy elements. Since we have assumed that matter consisted initially only of hydrogen, helium, lithiumand monopoles, old stars should be composed of only these elements. Yet all of them are contaminated with heavy elements.Hydrogen in the proportion of 75%, helium at 25%, deuterium at 0.01 % and traces of lithium were formed during the three minutesthat followed the Big Bang. The cooling and the expansion thereafter effectively stopped the process of synthesis of these elements. Other elements could not be created, unless in stellar nuclear reactors. Hydrogen transmutes into helium at a few dozen millions degrees. Helium needs 100 million degrees to form carbonand 500 million degrees are needed for carbon to produce neon, oxygen, magnesium and silicon. At higher temperatures, chromium,

manganese, nickel and iron appear. Beyond that stage, it is only through an implosion that the star is able to produce the fantastic temperatures needed to create elements heavier than iron (e.g. lead, silver, gold, platinum, uranium). With stars tento sixty times more voluminous than the sun, this whole process, ending up with the supernova implosion, occurs in a few million years. On the contrary, smaller stars need tens of billions of years to accomplish the same evolution, after which they fail to implode but simply cool off.Immediately after the Big Bang, the first stars that accreted from the primeval hot nebula were very massive, i.e. about 60 solar masses. They very rapidly went through all the stages of heavy elements formation and, just as rapidly, exploded. The rapid formation and dissemination of these elements was an occasion for younger, smaller stars that appeared later to incorporate these elements so that all existing stars possess at least a minimum of these heavy elements.

Our galaxy formed 11 billion years ago and our sun began to shine4.5 billion years ago. The sun is a primary star that peacefully and all by itself burns its hydrogen fuel. When the protostar that formed the sun imploded, a large proportion of the released matter condensed separately. This matter formed Jupiter, which alone contains 75% of the mass of all the planets. Jupiter and Saturn together form 90% of this mass. The remaining matter composes the 7 other planets. Note that Jupiter influences the fate of the earth: his gravitational attraction on asteroids compresses their trajectory in a more ellipsoidal form to such anextent that the ellipse of some of them may cross the path of theearth. A chance encounter of earth with a big asteroid is scheduled in the years 2035.How long did the formation of planets take?Early estimates asserted that it had taken about 100 million years for Earth and the other planets to form. Today, it is estimated that the accretion was accomplished in a few tens of millions of years. How were the measurements done? They are basedon the radioactive decay of hafnium-182 to stable tungsten-182, with a half-life of 9 million years. As a planet accretes, molten

iron separates from the rock and falls inward to form the metallic core. The iron carries tungsten with it but leaves hafnium in the rocks of the mantle, whose “decay clock” is effectively reset to zero. A comparison was made between isotopicabundance in meteorites and in the mantle of the earth, wherewithit was found that Earth’s accretion was complete by 30 million years after the solar nebula formed.

1. 6. The Sun-Earth-Moon System Small bodies of planetary size cannot contract to the point of reaching fusion temperatures because of mechanical incompressibility. The planets closest to the sun, i.e. Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars are essentially composed of silicon and iron. The more remote ones, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, andPluto are large and formed of fairly light elements such as water, hydrogen, methane and ammonia in solidified, frozen form.The contemporary average distance of the earth’s orbit from the sun is about 150 million kilometres. This is the astronomical unit. The earth, upon condensation from the stellar dust, had initially a diameter that was perhaps only as little as half the diameter it presents now. As a consequence, this very dense mass had a gravitational field sufficient to keep to a very large extent the initial atmosphere, mainly composed of hydrogen. We still experience today, at the upper levels of the stratosphere, a loss of hydrogen amounting to several thousand tons a year. Other planetary bodies, for example the moon, have lost all the hydrogen as well as more heavy elements.1.6.1 The sun Stars that are newly formed are richer in heavy elements than oldstars like the sun, yet they are subject to violent events. The majority of them are formed near the galactic centre and a cosmicgalactic wind originating from the galactic centre blows at such high speeds that these stars are stripped of their outer envelope. In addition, they appear in clusters that are reshuffled and subject to collisions. Planets that might evolve around these stars must live short lives and those that last are subject to a galactic wind of such magnitude that they would be

unable to keep a protecting atmosphere that would shield them from bombardments with electrolyzed particles. This would preventany attempt at evolution toward complex living organisms on theirsurface.At the local level, the sun is an enormous fusion reactor that consumes every second about 600 million tons of hydrogen (H2). Itproduces thereby 596 million tons of helium (He). The 4 million tons that are missing every second represent the solar radiations, i.e. the mass converted in energy. The matter lost inone million years represents only 0.000007% of the total mass of the sun. The type of electromagnetic radiations that flood the earth is by no means unimportant and we will talk about it infra.Yet, the sun bombards the earth with more than photons. The heat of the sun's core is such that it ejects at all times some matter. This matter is constituted of electrical particles and makes up the solar wind that hits the earth at the rate of 300 million particles per second, with a mean speed of 400 km per second. This solar activity is permanent and is doubled by an activity that oscillates every 11.1 years. Indeed, in addition toheat, the sun also produces a magnetic field. The lines of force of this field escape from the North Pole of the sun and re-enter at the South Pole. This solar magnetic field extends to 2.5 billion km, beyond Pluto, and is constituted of violent currents of electrically charged particles. Yet, the sun rotates upon itself and the differential rotation of the inner plasma and the outer layers upsets the magnetic field within the sun itself. Every 11.1 years, the field rearranges itself and its polarity changes, with the concurrent production of violent solar eruptions that provoke magnetic storms. The speed of these storms, also constituted mainly of protons, is about 10,000 km/second. The seats of the magnetic activity of the sun's surface appear as dark solar spots. They are dark because they are colder (about 4,500°C) than the general surface temperature of the sun (5,800°C). The solar surface temperature oscillates thus in accordance with the solar magnetic cycle that lasts 11.1 years, and this oscillation influences the temperature of the earth (Fig. 1.10).

Figure 1.10. A. The length of the "growing season" at Eskdalemuir in Central England (5.5°N; 3°W). This is the number of days in the year during which the averaged temperature exceeds 5.6°C. This number is not uniform throughout the years but varies in a wave-like fashion. B. Yearly mean sunspot numbers. The length of the "growing season" and the mean number of sunspots are in strong concordance.

The magnetic storms themselves provoke shock waves that upset andheat up the earth's troposphere. The earth is protected from direct hits by ionized particles because it is constituted of a metallic core and because it rotates upon itself. It creates thereby a magnetic field (the Van Allen belts) that entraps the majority of the electrical bombardment. Those particles that manage to hit the earth do so mainly on the North and South Poleswhere they create boreal and austral auroras. Without this magnetic field, solar wind and storms would have blown the atmosphere of the earth away, letting deadly UV light attain its surface and would further, by direct hits, have destroyed all life on the planet.The cosmic rays coming from outer space are composed of particlesmuch heavier than those emitted by the sun. This indicates that the sun may have been formed after the explosion of a supernova and also that, in other parts of the galaxy, the birth of life would have been much more difficult than nearer the sun, because the direct hits due to cosmic rays would be unbearable for life.

Astronomers can’t agree where the most energetic particles in theuniverse come from. The fiercest of these travellers slam into earth’s atmosphere with more than 100 exa-electron volts (100EeV=1020 eV). Each of these tiny particles, thought to be protons or helium and carbon, pack as much energy as a fastball from a professional baseball pitcher. It has been calculated in 1,966 that particles above 40 EeV collide with the microwaves remnant heat from the big bang, losing rapidly their energy. Overa few million light-years, any particle travelling faster than 40EeV will have been battered down below it. So, the Ultrahigh–energy cosmic rays detected on earth must come from no farther than 100 million light-years. But so far nobody knows their origin.1.6.2 The Earth-Moon System1.6.2.1 The origin of the moon

The origin of the moon has long been mysterious. Two hypotheses were initially advanced: a splitting off from the earth (the "fission" model) and the co-accretion model, which holds that Earth and Moon grew up together. But the composition, the age andthe size of the moon are incompatible with these hypotheses. The third hypothesis, first proposed in 1975, is a giant impact.The size of the moon is abnormal. It is 1,740 km in diameter, bigcompared to the moons of Mars, which are 27 and 15 km large, respectively. Venus and Mercury have no satellite at all. The moon, with 73.5 billion tons, represents 1.23% of the terrestrialmass. The moon is supposed to be 4.56 billion years old, which isa birth date almost identical to that of the earth. The sun was initially surrounded by a multitude of smaller planets that coalesced and aggregated into the 9 planets now existing. Initially, a large number of small bodies floated around and impacts among them were frequent. M. Toboul (Nature, 450:1206-1209, 2007) established that a Mars-sized planet smashed into Earth 50 million years after the birth of the solar system. Far from being a chance encounter, such an impact was almost bound tooccur during the first 100 million years. At that time, the size of the earth was only two thirds of what it now is. The impact liquefied Earth's surface. Under the impact, the iron core of theobject penetrated into the core of the earth and was assimilated,

while some pieces of the mantle of both planets were ejected intospace. Hence the absence of iron in the moon. The heat generated by the collision was such that the volatile elements of the dispersed matter vaporized and were lost, which would explain themoon's deficit in sodium and potassium. For such an event to occur, the speed of collision must be below 14 km/second and the relative sizes of the colliding objects must be such that neithercomplete assimilation nor complete loss of the foreign body be possible. A planet slightly larger than Mars would be just about right. After the collision, the mantle pieces would be ejected atonce at a distance of about 4 to 8 earth radii, resulting in an earth that has grown therewith considerably in size, provided itself with an oversized satellite revolving at a close distance,while the dual system lies at a fairly close distance from the sun.Strong interactions have taken place in the course of times and controlled the evolution of the dual system.1.6.2.2 Gravitation

The tides raised by the planet earth on the moon -because tides are felt not only on oceans but also on solid bodies- have had the effect of bringing the spinning of the moon to such a state that the time of the satellite's rotation upon itself is equal toits period of revolution around the planet. The moon will thus always present the same face to the earth, just like Mercury and Venus present always theirs to the sun since they also have been despun by the action of the sun. At the present distance from theearth, this despinning of the moon from a much faster initial rotation would have taken no longer than 10 million years.The tides raised by the moon on the planet earth apply to solid bodies, to the atmosphere and most spectacularly to shallow waters. Tidal currents flow over the bottom of oceans and create a turbulent boundary layer. When ocean waves approach a sloping beach, an ever-diminishing depth of water carries their energy. In response, their amplitude augments to the point of formation of surf and sometimes also "tidal waves".The mechanical energy of the movements of water is dissipated into heat, which is lost. Besides this dissipation of

gravitational energy into heat, another phenomenon takes place: the delay in response due to friction on solid bodies as well as on water (figure 1.11). This friction again is dissipated by the production of heat.

Figure 1.11. Tidal bulges are lagging three degrees in phase because of friction. The lagging tides are carried ahead of the moon by the rotation of the earth. The view isfrom the pole.

The fact that the tidal bulges of the earth are not in line with the gravitational force of the moon has a twisting force on the satellite, which tends to orbit in a circular fashion. The twisting force also gives the moon an additional angular momentumthanks to which the lunar orbit is slowly expanding, by about 3 centimetres a year (figure 1.12).

Figure 1.12. The moon's orbit is an ellipse. The impulsive addition of angular momentum at the moon’s closest approach to earth changes the orbit to a larger, moreeccentric ellipse.

Since the orbit now expands, the moon must have been closer earlier in time. An analysis of the daily increments per yearly bands of growth ridges in fossil corals confirms that the earth had a day length of 22 hours, 380 million years ago. The length of the days thus increased during the last 380 million years by approximately 20 microseconds per year. The moon would have been in those days at a distance of 58 earth-radii instead of the present 60.25.If we assume that the phase lag of 3° of an arc between gravitational force and tides has been constant in the course of time, then the moon was very near the earth less than 2 billion years ago. This fits with changes in the earth's lithosphere thatseems to have broken up into various continents around that time,while mountain building could be initiated. It is now believed that the moon was close to the earth, i.e. 10 earth-radii, about 4.5 billion years ago. At that time, the earth's day had a lengthof about 2.6 to 5 hours. Tides several kilometres in height occurred. The energy dissipated by tidal friction exceeded, very probably, the solar heating of the earth. Much of the ocean watermight have then been in the vapour state and even the mantle of the earth might have been partially molten. After a few thousand years, these extraordinary events would have subsided. This is only a hypothesis. It may very well be that there was no water onearth at that time, as I will expose infra.In the future, the moon will continue to recede from the earth, until it reaches about 75 earth-radii. The length of the days on earth will increase, to reach a stage where the earth's day and the lunar month will be equal.Another very important influence of the moon is its effect on theatmosphere of the earth. Atmospheric gravity waves propagate upwards or downwards. A turbulence, wind or even nuclear detonations at the lowest level of the atmosphere can propagate upward. The density of the atmosphere decreases however continuously with an increase in height. As a result, the energy carried by an upward-moving wave is carried by fewer and fewer molecules, the higher the wave reaches into regions of different gas density. The fewer gas molecules carrying the energy can do so only if they oscillate with greater amplitude. Thus such

atmospheric gravity waves tend, like surf, to grow stronger the further they rise above their source. The dissipation of atmospheric gravity waves leads to a heating of the atmosphere, which sometimes is at least comparable with the heating provided by solar radiation at ionosphere levels. A second not negligible effect is that the turbulence maintains the atmosphere in a chemically mixed state to heights of about 100 kilometres. With its cessation, the heavier species of molecules such as nitrogen rapidly diminish their concentration while the lighter species such as oxygen atoms increase in relative concentration. This point is very important for the achievement of life on earth, since it has allowed the creation of the ozone layer.1.6.3 The Earth's atmosphereThere are ways to analyze the composition of the primitive nebulathat formed the sun, and to compare it with the actual atmosphereof the earth. They are different. This indicates that the probability for the atmosphere of the earth to derive from the nebula is small. The initial atmosphere of the earth was very dense and opaque. The density of this atmosphere must have impeded the dissipation of the terrestrial heat. In those days, the UV radiations and the solar wind originating from the sun were much more intense than now and they eliminated the first terrestrial gaseous envelope. Yet, the first, oldest sedimentary rocks (the metamorphic rocks of Isua, in Greenland) date from about 3.8 x 109 years. This indicates that, by that time, there existed oceans large enough to allow their formation. Since the earth originated 4.5 x 109 years ago, it must be assumed that, between these two dates, an intense and abrupt de-gassing occurred, whereby about 80% of the volatile matter entrapped in the terrestrial crust was released. The impact that formed the moon may have been the cause of it. The residual de-gassing stilltakes place by the activity of volcanoes. Since the Precambrian rocks and the rocks formed at later times are of fairly similar composition, one can deduct that the Precambrian oceans were almost identical to the oceans now existing. The conclusion is that the secondary atmosphere that occurred by an intense de-gassing that took place 500 million years after the earth formation did not differ greatly from what it is today. This

abrupt de-gassing was composed of water (H2O), carbon dioxide (CO2), and nitrogen (N2) and was devoid of molecular oxygen (O2).The solar bombardment at that time must also have been considerably attenuated since the earth was able to keep its secondary atmosphere. One way to explain this is that, at the time of the earth's formation, 4.5 billion years ago, there existed no metallic core. But such a metallic nucleus (perhaps due to the impact that created the moon) existed 4 billion years ago, forming a magnetic field that could trap this solar wind. Wehave seen earlier that the Proto-Earth was supposed to have endured frequent impacts from small celestial bodies. On the basis of this hypothesis, the swift formation of oceans by an abrupt de-gassing may be disputed. It has been advanced that the primeval Earth was dry and devoid of free water. At the moment ofits formation, the earth contained about 2% H2O. Most of this water may have been lost from earth since then, or else may stillbe stored in Earth's deep interior. The inclusion of water in themantle occurs at high pressure and high temperature with a globalefficiency of 0.2%. When this capacity is integrated over the mass of the lower mantle, the total mass of water is roughly 5 times that of the oceans (7).The young planet was surrounded by a swarm of smaller bodies consisting mainly of comets. These would have had a mean diameterof 10 meters, travelling at about 30 kilometres per second at 5 to 10,000 kilometres above the earth. The continuous bombardment of the earth by these comets that were constituted mainly of ice would have contributed annually to about 0.4 mm of rainfall. Overthe earth's lifetime, this is enough to account for all the waterin all the oceans. Water, according to this hypothesis, is a secondary acquisition of the earth, originating from Outer Space.Water would have accumulated slowly in the course of time and oceans would have formed gradually.1.6.4 The earth's surface temperatureThe present surface temperature of the earth represents a balancebetween the sunlight that falls on the planet and the thermal emission that leaves it. The mean temperature of earth is now between 286°K and 288°K (about 14°C). Such a high temperature is due to a greenhouse effect: constituents of the atmosphere absorb

the departing thermal emissions but do not interfere with the arrival of the sun's rays.The luminosity of the sun has increased by about 40% in geologic times. If one assumes conservatively that the sun's luminosity was 30% less at the origin of the earth, then, also assuming thatthe composition of the earth's atmosphere was identical to what it now is, the temperature of the earth would have been below seawater freezing point less than 2.3 billion years ago. This runs counter to geological and paleontological evidence, since sedimentary rocks and bacteria have been found existing at times earlier than 2 billion years. This cold temperature may have beencounterbalanced by the action of the moon. Another parameter to consider is the history of hydrogen during the early times. A possible high concentration of about 1 bar (1 bar =106 Dyns/cm2= 0.987 atmosphere) of pressure of this light element may have beenpresent. Such a high concentration would have ended about 500 million years later by its dispersion into space. In this case, however, the retention of the thermal emission would have been ofsuch magnitude that the temperature on the earth would have been above the normal boiling point of water until about 3.5 billion years ago. This is quite close to the time when bacteria appeared. In view of the thermo stability of the prokaryotes, this is, however, not inconceivable.An alternative to the hydrogen hypothesis is that the greenhouse effect was produced by the presence of small amounts of ammonia (NH3). Indeed, burgeoning life would be favoured by the presence of this slightly reducing element that is a component of living matter. Also, this gas would protect the newly formed structures from dissociation by lethal UV light, in a way reminiscent of theaction of the ozone layer now.The burgeoning life as well as photo dissociation would have thenslowly consumed this ammonia, while the sun's luminosity increased in the meantime. By this dual process, the atmosphere of the earth would have maintained at all times a temperature suitable for the appearance and evolution of life on earth. The subsequent total disappearance of ammonia is most likely due to oxidation by the oxygen produced abiotically by UV radiations and, later, by plant photosynthesis. This oxygen appeared in

significant amounts about 2 billion years ago and resulted in a cooling-off of the earth that may have been very significant.The postulate of high levels of atmospheric ammonia presents problems because the sunlight-sensitive ammonia would have required a methane haze for protection. That haze would, however,have cooled earth as much as the ammonia greenhouse could warm it. Another hypothesis is the Gaia hypothesis that a methane greenhouse was spawned by life itself: in the absence of oxygen, methane produced by ancient methanogenic bacteria could have reached levels 1,000 times higher than todays. By exuding a methane blanket with a little carbon dioxide, which would preventthe formation of a cooling methane haze, life itself could have warmed the frigid world to within a few degrees of its current temperature.The three essential components of the atmosphere of the earth that have a direct influence on its surface temperature, are water, ozone and carbon dioxide. Changes are further introduced by the release of primitive gasses of volcanic origin.1. Water. Water is a very peculiar element endowed with at least 3 characteristics not found with other similar compounds. Let us compare 3 hydrides of two similar atoms, oxygen and nitrogen: H2O(water), H2O2 (hydrogen peroxide) and H4N2 (hydrazine). All three freeze and boil at about the same temperature. However, whereas the density of these liquids continually increase with decrease in temperature, that of water reaches a maximum at 4°C and then decreases between 4°C and 0°C. This means that once the temperature reaches 4°C, further cooling causes the colder water to rise to the surface and eventually solidify as ice at the surface. This phenomenon has allowed life to exist at low temperatures in cold lakes and rivers. Up to now, only 3 other compounds besides water have been found to present the same behaviour. A second abnormal property of water is its viscosity: usually, the more a liquid is compressed, the more viscous it becomes. This is not true for water compressed under 50°C: it becomes less viscous. This allows life to thrive in the depths ofoceans. Finally, there is the strange fact that water may absorb a large amount of heat without showing much increase in temperature. This is not true for other liquids: in order to

increase by 1°C the temperature of a gram of water, about twice as much more heat is necessary to raise the temperature of a gramof benzene. Also, water is the solvent par excellence of ionized substances such as salts and phosphates, and dissolving gases such as CO2 and O2, especially at cold temperatures. All these peculiar properties, restricted only to H2O, make the presence ofthis element on the planet an important factor in the further evolution of the elements towards life.Water appears to be abundant. If spread uniformly on the earth's surface it would provide a layer 3 km thick. Yet, considering thediameter of the earth, this represents in fact only a thin layer of moisture. It is believed that, in the early days, the diameterof the earth, which is now 12,740 km, was about 50% less. Considering that an increase in diameter of a sphere by 20 % already amounts to a twofold increase in volume, one may imagine how dense the primeval earth was. In those days, the layer of water was 8 km thick. That is, if water was present. At the outerlimit, the splitting of water into its oxygen and hydrogen constituents, followed by the loss of the light hydrogen element into outer space, would have provided for a constantly slightly oxidant atmosphere. Yet, a reducing atmosphere was required for the development of life.Water represents now 0.022 % of the total mass of the earth. Moreof it would have prevented the emergence of life from the primeval waters since no dry land would have been available, and less of it would have hindered the development of life itself. Water was probably discharged as a component of the secondary atmosphere, 500 million years after the formation of the earth orelse was acquired from outer space. This lends credibility to thehypothesis that the first organic synthesis that led to the appearance of life was accomplished not in water but among clay particles.2. Ozone. A second important element is ozone. As soon as free oxygen began to be produced from CO2, the solar ultraviolet radiations also began to produce ozone. Ozone is toxic, and even deadly, to primitive micro-organisms. These have devised a mechanism for the destruction of ozone. However, when ozone is separated from the earth's surface by the dense inferior

atmosphere, as is the case today, the same ozone protects life from the intensity of UV solar radiations. It is not unlikely that, right from the beginning of ozone production, it was restricted to the upper atmosphere. The mutagenic effects of unfiltered solar radiations on the micro-organisms from soil and oceans could very well endanger the survival of the whole of the biosphere. These mutagenic and carcinogenic effects increase proportionally two times with the decrease of ozone, so that a reduction of ozone by 3% increases skin cancers by 6 %. The totality of the atmospheric ozone, if compressed to the ground level, would amount to a 3 mm thick layer. Yet, it is now concentrated in a layer that is 25 km above earth, in the stratosphere.3. Carbon dioxide (CO2). The complex equilibrium of ozone production and destruction is further influenced by CO2. Near theearth, in the troposphere, i.e. no higher than 18 km, CO2 has a greenhouse effect. Higher up, it has a cooling effect and protects ozone from destruction. The more fossil sources of energy are used, the more likely is the level of ozone to increase. After the destruction of ozone that occurred around 1960 due to nuclear experiments, ozone levels have increased up to 1972 and the level remained thereafter stationary i.e. in balance between destruction and production.The CO2 emissions are ubiquitous. European estuaries release between 3.8 and 18 grams of CO2 per square meter per day. The surface of European estuaries is about 111,200 km2, excluding theBaltic Sea, and the emission of carbon by these estuaries is estimated to be between 30 and 60 million tons of carbon per year. The Amazon River and the Niger emit about 18 grams of CO2 per square meter per day. In developing countries, the overpopulation may be the cause of even larger emissions of organic carbon. Human activity produces each year about 7.1 x 1015

grams of carbon. Less than half of it stays in the atmosphere: atmospheric carbon dioxide increased at a rate of only 2.8 x 1015 grams of carbon per year, between 1988 and 1992. However, only about 2 x 1015 grams of the released carbon dioxide go to the oceans. About 2.2 x 1015 grams vanish into the land, probably taken up by plants during photosynthesis.

4. Volcanoes. However, not only man influences the almost perfectequilibrium ultimately reached between the earth, the air and life. Sometimes, an instantaneous injection of primitive gases (methane (CH4), sulphur dioxide (SO2), ammonia (NH3), and carbon dioxide (CO2)) perturbs the composition of the atmosphere now obtained (about 4/5 of nitrogen, 1/5 of oxygen, one percent of argon, a few thousands of carbon dioxide and a variable amount ofwater).Explosive volcanoes significantly influence the climate. This is achieved not by the clouds of dust that dampen the sun's rays butwith invisible gases, among them sulphur dioxide. This gas is transformed in the high atmosphere into clouds of sulphuric acid,whose half-life is about one year. This acid aerosol cools the earth down and acidifies the waters.These volcanic eruptions are by no means rare. In the last 85 years, there have occurred 1,700 eruptions. The explosive eruptions (of the St. Helen and Krakatoa type) are totally different to those that extrude liquid magma. The latter influence the climate only in a negligible way. The explosive eruptions influence the climate differently according to the location of the explosion: the quantity of volcanic aerosol reaching the stratosphere is twice as important in arctic regionsthan in temperate or equatorial ones. An eruption occurring in January in the Northern Hemisphere provokes a drop in temperatureof -1.4°C within 2 months.As the sun-earth system continues to evolve, the temperature of the earth will increase until a runaway greenhouse effect occurs.This will happen between 3 and 4.5 billion years from now, when there will occur an atmospheric pressure of 300 bars of steam. Ofmore immediate importance is the fact that we seem to be right now at the end of an interglaciary period (figure 1.13), althoughthis assertion is disputable, as I will expose infra.

Figure 1.13. An extrapolated temperature curve for the surface water of the centralCaribbean Sea suggests that we are at the end of an interglaciary period. In the meantime, man is changing the composition of the atmosphere in a way that could work in synergy with natural causes. This may lead either to a runaway greenhouse effect, as we observe it today, or on the contrary lead to an accentuation of the coming cold wave. This could occur as early as within the next 200 to 300 years. This topic will be discussed later in this essay.

The appearance and evolution of life as we know it on earth is, however, dependent not only on temperature but also on the quality of the electro-magnetic radiations, on which ride photons, which irradiate the planet.1.6.5 Electromagnetic radiations on earthThe electro-magnetic radiations on which ride the photons range from gamma rays, whose wavelength can be as short as 0.001 angstroms (one tenth billion of a centimetre), to radio waves that may have a wavelength of 1 kilometre or more. All these radiations are not equally suited for the performance of chemicalreactions by photons. The work (E) a photon can accomplish is inversely proportional (h) to its wavelength (nu). This was discovered by Max Planck (E = h [nu]). At long wavelengths, the chemical effectiveness of an electromagnetic radiation is simply nonexistent. All ordinary chemical reactions ("dark" reactions) need a radiation of wavelength comprised between 1,900 and 440 millimicrons (a millimicron is a tenth million of a centimetre). The energy needed to activate these chemical reactions is acquired in collisions with other molecules, i.e. heat. Chemical reactions leading to the formation of elementary molecules such as water, ammonia, prussic acid, etc. are usually restricted to regions in space located near sources of infrared radiations.

In other reactions, however, called photochemical reactions, light supplies immediately the energy of activation. The wavelengths most useful in this photochemistry are comprised between 1,430 and 280 millimicrons. However, radiations shorter than 300 millimicrons, though very effective in photochemistry, are incompatible with higher forms of life. This is because life utilizes chemical structures that are extremely long, highly organized and very delicate, such as proteins and nucleic acids. These molecules usually function only when held in a very specific configuration that radiations of wavelengths shorter than 300 millimicrons, in their effectiveness, destroy. This has disastrous consequences for a living cell. The appearance of rudimentary forms of life thus requires a narrow band of electromagnetic radiations, and this band has still to be reducedfurther for the evolution of higher living forms.Once higher forms of life were available on earth, the presence of light was exploited in two ways. The first was photosynthesis.The problem here is to use a minimum of photons to perform the task. Most green plants achieved this with chlorophyll. The second was vision, which hinges on differential sensitivity: on how to be able to see in glaring noonday light and also in starlight. Three animal phyla developed well-formed eyes based oncarotenoids. These phyla are the arthropods (crabs, spiders, and insects), the molluscs (squid) and the vertebrates. The range of wavelengths allowing vision and photosynthesis is still narrower than the one encompassing photochemistry. It extends from 300 to 1,050 milli microns (figure 1.14).

Figure 1.14. The bulk of the wavelengths carrying the photons of the sun towards the earth are adequate for chemical reactions as well as for photochemistry.

The availability of the proper range of wavelengths is crucial indeciding whether living organisms can develop in useful ways. This is very probably as applicable everywhere in the Universe ason earth. A planet without a range of radiations between 300 and 1,100 millimicrons would virtually lack photochemistry and, a fortiori, photosynthesis because only this range is suitable for the performance of the tasks demanded. There cannot be a planet on which photosynthesis or vision can occur in the far infrared or the far ultra-violet because these radiations are inappropriate to perform these functions.We live upon a very fortunate planet because the radiations that are useful in promoting orderly chemical reactions comprise about

75% of that of the sun. The longer wavelengths are sharply reduced by water vapour, CO2 and ozone in the atmosphere and evenmuch more so by liquid water. The short wavelengths are reduced by the ozone layer of the atmosphere, which becomes opaque to wavelengths of 290 millimicrons and below.Do extra-solar planets exist? Galileo Galilei discovered that Jupiter had a satellite because he could observe the planet with a telescope, instrument that his colleagues of former times did not have. He therewith showed that the earth is not the centre ofthe Universe. The Jesuits forced him to retract, not because he was wrong but because the immense majority of the believers in the Bible, and also the Moslems, resisted the existence of a complicated world. Likewise, planets could not be observed until1995 because neither the instruments needed to detect their presence nor the methods applicable to their detection (one must have an instrument able to measure the Doppler shifts in the spectra of light from the planets’ stars; one must also be aware that the Doppler shifts arise as the orbiting planets exert a gravitational pull on the stars and tug them in different directions) were available. In September AD 2002, the total number of known extra solar planets was 101. The methods used to detect the planets are such that only very heavy objects orbitingvery close to their star are detectable. The lightest extra planet initially discovered was 30 times heavier than earth, orbiting around its star in 4 days, at a distance of 0.06 astronomic units. The astronomical unit is the average distance of the earth’s orbit from the sun, about 150 million kilometres. The closeness of these planets to their star precludes the apparition of life there. The existence of planets of a size similar to earth is by no means excluded. In 2013, their number is evaluated to be at least 17 billion in the Milky Way. The orbit of most of them is close to their star. Four planets have been found orbiting at a distance of their sun that would allow life. One of them is of a size only 1.5 times that of earth. If some planets provide suitable environments for the emergence of life, the question that I will attempt to answer in the following chapters is if evolution there allowed the emergence ofintelligence.

Chapter 1. References

1. Armageddon is derived from the Hebrew "Mount of Megiddo", located east of Haifa. According to the Bible, Megiddo will be the site of the final battle between God and his enemies when time comes to an end. Note that the noise, in the movie, is unwarranted: sounds do not propagate in a vacuum.2. For the time being G = 6.6873 x 10 -11 m 3 . Kg-1. Sec-²; Schwarz J et al.: A free-fall Determination of the Newtonian Constant of gravity: Science 1998; 282: 2230-22343. Glanz J: Cosmic Motion Revealed. Science 1998; 282: 2156-21574. George Lemaitre: Valerie De Rath: Ed. Labor, 1994, ISBN 2- 8040-1025-2. Professor at the Roman Catholic University of Louvain, in Belgium. He was in later times named to the Vatican.5. The wavelength of gamma rays can be as short as 0.001 angstroms.6. Two years of Science with Chandra, 5-7 September 2001, Washington, DC.7. M. Murakami et al. Water in Earth's lower mantle. Science 295:1885-1887, March 2002.

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Chapter 2. The Evolution of Molecules