Astronomical and Biological Organizational Relationships

C H A P T E R

5 Astronomical and Biological Organizational Relationships The problems of the origin, evolution, and structure of the Universe and those of life on Earth and outside Earth have been intriguing and exciting questions for scientists. The Renaissance of the 15th and 16th centuries led to an increased concern with the real world and a turning away from scholastic theology.

5.1 FUNDAMENTAL DISCOVERIES IN ASTRONOMICAL AND COSMOLOGICAL SCIENCES Perhaps the most revolutionary discoveries were made in the field of astronomy and cosmology. Many of the astronomical discoveries were made under threat of severe punishment by the then economically and militarily powerful religious orthodox regime controlled by the Church. These fundamental discoveries are briefly addressed below to build a logical background for linking astronomical parameters to those in the biological sciences.

5.1.1 Discovering the Theory of Sun-Centric Model of Solar System The first individual who gave the modern concept of our Solar System was Nicolaus Copernicus (Fig. 5.1)—a Renaissance mathematician and starstruck astronomer; and a person of varied learning. Copernicus lived in an era when it was believed that the Earth was stationary and located at the center of the Universe, with the Sun, planets, and stars orbiting around it. This geocentric model—also called the Ptolemaic system—had been around since the time of the ancient Greeks and was codified by the 2nd century philosopher Claudius Ptolemy. But Copernicus challenged those long-held beliefs and proposed a new view of the world, igniting much criticism and controversy. Copernicus believed in a heliocentric (ie, Sun-centric) model and he argued that the Earth revolved around the Sun. The model formulated by Copernicus is considered to be a major event in the history of science, triggering the Copernican Revolution and making an important contribution to the Scientific Revolution. Today it is common knowledge that the Earth revolves around the Sun and that the Sun and the planets revolving around the Sun are just an infinitesimal part of the vast Universe. In the 16th century it was religious heresy to suggest that the planets revolve around the Sun. According to Koyr
e (1973), indirect evidence that Copernicus was concerned about objections from the so-called learned theologians comes from a letter written to him by Andreas Osiander in 1541, in which Osiander advises Copernicus to adopt a proposal by which Copernicus will be able to appease the Aristotelians and the theologians whose opposition Copernicus feared. Copernicus's prudence prevailed, and he finally managed the situation quite intelligently by simply delaying the publication of his model while the scientific community already knew, through word of mouth, the essence of his findings enshrined in his model. His book De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) was published just before his death in 1543. Copernicus is considered by many as the father of modern astronomy.

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FIG. 5.1 Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543), the astronomer who put the Sun at the center of the Solar System, upsetting the religious accepted theory. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolaus_Copernicus#/media/File:Nikolaus_Kopernikus.jpg.

5.1.2 Propounding the Idea of an Infinite and Homogeneous Universe and Cosmic Pluralism A cosmological theoretician of the late medieval era and the Renaissance was Giodano Bruno (Fig. 5.2). Apart from having been an outspoken advocate of the Copernican heliocentric celestial system, Bruno was an early proponent of the idea of an infinite and homogeneous Universe, described in his work De l’Infinito, Universo e Mondi (On the Infinite Universe and Worlds). He proposed that the stars are just distant suns surrounded by their own exoplanets. Apart from his cosmological ideas, Bruno had also postulated the possibility that these planets could even foster life of their own (a revolutionary philosophical position known as cosmic pluralism), which is strongly favored by many present-day scientists, but was frowned upon in the 16th century. What we previously thought of as insurmountable physical and chemical barriers to life, we now see as yet another niche harboring “extremophiles.” This realization, coupled with new data on the survival of microbes in the space environment and modeling of the potential for transfer of life between celestial bodies, suggests that life could be more common than previously thought. Rothschild and Mancinelli (2001) have examined critically what it means to be an extremophile, and the implications of this for evolution, biotechnology, and especially the search for life in the Universe, forcefully substantiating Bruno's 16th century revolutionary philosophical position on the possibility of life outside Earth.

FIG. 5.2 Giordano Bruno (1548–1600), who propounded the idea of an infinite and homogeneous Universe and cosmic pluralism, apart from supporting the Copernican view of a Sun-centric celestial system. He had to pay heavily for his visionary ideas and became the first martyr to the cause of free thought, at the hands of the intolerant Catholic Church. Courtesy of Christopher Warnock, http://www.renaissanceastrology.com/ bruno.html.

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Made fully naked, tongue-tied, and burnt alive at the stake in full public view on Feb. 17, 1600, as a heretic by the “Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition” (a system of tribunals developed by the Holy See of the Roman Catholic Church), Bruno is often seen as the first martyr to the cause of free thought (Mendoza, 1995). Bruno's brutal and highly humiliating killing—believed to have been executed with a well-planned and a gravely malicious intention of serving the dual purpose of taking revenge on his religious convictions and arresting free thinking in the search for scientific truth—is considered to be an indescribably condemnable dark spot landmark in the history of free thought and the future of the emerging sciences (see Hilary, 2002).

5.1.3 Discovering Fundamental Laws of Planetary Motion In the field of astronomy, Copernicus was followed by Johannes Kepler (Fig. 5.3), who was a great mathematician and astronomer. This German astronomer was the first person to explain planetary motion. His publication Stereometrica Doliorum formed the foundation of an important branch of modern mathematics, known as integral calculus, and he also made imperative advances in geometry. His Mysterium Cosmographicum is the first outspoken defense of the Copernican system. Kepler's most influential work, published in 1621, is Epitome Astronomiae. This publication discussed all of heliocentric astronomy in a systematic way. He then went on to produce the Rudolphine Tables, which included calculations using logarithms, which he developed, and provided perpetual tables for calculating planetary positions for any past or future date. Kepler used the Rudolphine Tables to predict a pair of transits by the planets Mercury and Venus of the Sun, although he did not live to witness the events. Kepler's three laws on planetary motion—the famous Fundamental Laws of Planetary Motion—were codified by later astronomers based on his works Astronomia Nova and Harmonices Mundi. Kepler is considered to be the chief founder of contemporary astronomy. Kepler, though a member of the Lutheran ministry, refused to adhere to the Lutheran position of a geocentric Universe, because of that he was expelled from the Lutheran Church. This and his refusal to convert to Catholicism left him alienated by both the Lutherans and the Catholics. Kepler died in Regensburg in 1630. His grave was demolished within 2 years because of the Thirty Years War (which was a series of religious conflicts between the Protestant and Catholic states in Central Europe during 1618–48; one of the most destructive conflicts in European history, and one of the longest).

FIG. 5.3 Johannes Kepler (1571–1630), a German astronomer and the first person to explain planetary motion; and well-known for formulating the famous Fundamental Laws of Planetary Motion, but belittled by the Lutheran Church for his outspoken defense of the Copernican system. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Kepler#/media/File:Johannes_Kepler_1610.jpg.

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FIG. 5.4 Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), an Italian physicist, mathematician, engineer, astronomer, and philosopher, who played a key role in the scientific revolution, but, in return, was convicted and humiliated by the Roman Catholic Church for overturning the notion of an Earth-centric celestial system. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Galileo-sustermans.jpg.

5.1.4 Advancing Astronomy by Construction of the Telescope Galileo Galilei was an eminent physicist, mathematician, engineer, astronomer, and philosopher, who made a great contribution to astronomy by construction of the telescope, and played a key role in the scientific revolution and ultimately overturned the hitherto accepted notion of geocentrism (Fig. 5.4). Galileo lived at a crucial crossroads in the history of science when different strands of thought met and clashed. These were (1) natural philosophy based on Aristotle's incorrect ideas, (2) the wrong beliefs of the then powerful Roman Catholic Church, and (3) evidence-based scientific research. In the end, the ideas of Galileo and other scientists triumphed, because they were able to prove them to be true. Galileo's support for the Copernican heliocentrism was suppressed by the Inquisition (Hawking, 1988). Galileo was imprisoned, tried by the Roman Inquisition in 1615, and forced to renounce publicly his beliefs and retract his “heretic” theory that Earth revolved around the Sun, in spite of the fact that the then Pope (Urban VIII) was supposedly a good personal friend of his (see Orear, 1979). Although his ideas triumphed, Galileo paid a high price for his science: In 1616, Galileo was ordered not to support Copernican theory. The Roman Catholic Church's Inquisition condemned Galileo for “vehement suspicion of heresy” and placed him under house arrest. Galileo spent the last 8 years of his life under house arrest, and the Roman Catholic Church banned the publication of anything written by him. Protestant and atheist critics of Catholicism's relationship to science have placed great emphasis on the Galileo affair. It was while Galileo was spending the rest of his life under house arrest (see Finocchiaro, 1997; Hilliam, 2005) that he wrote one of his finest works, Two New Sciences, in which he summarized the research he had done some 40 years earlier, on the two sciences now called kinematics and strength of materials (Carney, 2000). Galileo died on Jan. 8, 1642, at age 77 (Eldridge, 2000). The Grand Duke of Tuscany, Ferdinando II, wished to bury Galileo in the main body of the Basilica of Santa Croce, next to the tombs of his father and other ancestors, and to erect a marble mausoleum in his honor (Shea and Mario, 2003). These plans were dropped, however, after the intolerant Pope Urban VIII and his nephew, Cardinal Francesco Barberini, protested (Sharratt, 1994; Sobel, 2000). In a nutshell, science and technology have interacted with an adamant and intolerant religious society in a life and death way. Despite the condemnable belligerence and arrogance exhibited by the Roman Catholic Church against the philosophical concept of a Sun-centric celestial system, the scientific truth in this praiseworthy hypothesis as propounded by Copernicus, and supported by Bruno, Kepler, and Galileo, could not be suppressed for long.

5.1.5 Discovering Laws of Motion and Universal Law of Gravitation In the scientific revolution, a key figure who followed Kepler and is widely recognized as one of the most influential scientists of all time is Sir Isaac Newton (Fig. 5.5)—an English physicist and mathematician (described in his own day as a “natural philosopher”). Newton made seminal contributions to optics (reflecting telescope, theory of color, Newton's rings), and he shares credit with Gottfried Leibniz for the development of calculus; but who developed it first led to the “Leibniz-Newton calculus controversy.” Apart from his great contribution to algebra (power series,

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FIG. 5.5 Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1726), an English physicist and mathematician, popularly known for his laws of motion, called Newton’s Laws of Motion and The Universal Law of Gravitation, apart from his seminal contributions to optics (reflecting telescope, theory of color, Newton’s rings), and sharing credit with Gottfried Leibniz for the development of calculus. Image Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton.

generalized binomial theorem, roots of a function) and calculus, Sir Isaac Newton is popularly known for his laws of motion, called Newton’s Laws of Motion and The Universal Law of Gravitation. Newton's book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), first published in 1687, formulated the Laws of Motion and Universal Gravitation, and laid the foundations for classical mechanics. At the time when Newton was developing his Universal Law of Gravitation, not only did he apply it to falling apples and the Moon, but also to the force between the Sun and the planets. The fact that Newton could derive all three of Kepler's laws, which accurately described the motions of the planets in great detail, was taken as a final confirmation of Newtonian dynamics. Thus, Kepler's Fundamental Laws of Planetary Motion served as the basis for Isaac Newton's theory of Universal Gravitation. By deriving Kepler's laws of planetary motion from his (Newton's) mathematical description of gravity, and then using the same principles to account for the trajectories of comets, the tides, the precession of the equinoxes, and other phenomena, Newton removed the last doubts about the validity of the heliocentric model of the Solar System; propounded by the Renaissance mathematician and star-struck astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, and published in 1543. This work also demonstrated that the motion of objects on Earth and of celestial bodies could be described by the same principles.

5.1.6 Discovering Theories of Relativity The celebrated theoretical physicist Dr. Albert Einstein (Fig. 5.6) contributed more than any other scientist to the modern vision of physical reality. Einstein is best known for his Special Theory of Relativity and General Theory of Relativity and the concept of mass-energy equivalence expressed by the famous equation, E ¼ mc2. Einstein's Relativity theories assert that all motions must be defined relative to a frame of reference, and that space and time are therefore relative, rather than absolute, concepts. Einstein's theory has two main parts: the Special Theory of Relativity (or special relativity), which deals with objects in uniform motion, and the General Theory of Relativity (or general relativity), which deals with accelerating objects and gravity. In 1905, Albert Einstein, in his theory of Special Relativity, determined that the laws of physics are the same for all nonaccelerating observers, and he showed that the speed of light within a vacuum is the same no matter the speed at which an observer travels or the source moves (this is contrary to the nature of sound speed, which undergoes variation if either the source of sound or the medium in which the sound travels undergoes motion). Based on this unique finding with regard to the constancy of the speed of light within a vacuum, Einstein interpreted that space and time are interwoven into a single continuum known as space-time, thus introducing a radical concept to the scientific world.

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FIG. 5.6 Dr. Albert Einstein (1879–1955), a theoretical physicist, scientist, well-known for his Special Theory of Relativity and General Theory of Relativity and the concept of mass-energy equivalence expressed by the famous equation, E ¼ mc2. Einstein received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics “for his services to theoretical physics and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect”. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Albert_Einstein#/media/File:Einstein_1921_by_F_Schmutzer_–_restoration.jpg.

Special Relativity introduced a new framework for all of physics by proposing new concepts of space and time. Some then-accepted physical theories were inconsistent with that framework; a key example was Newton's theory of gravity, which describes the mutual attraction experienced by bodies due to their mass. By the beginning of the 20th century, Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation had been accepted for more than 200 years as a valid description of the gravitational force between masses. In Newton's model, gravity is the result of an attractive force between massive objects. Although even Newton was troubled by the unknown nature of that force (Westfall, 1978), the basic framework was extremely successful at describing motion. In 1915, Einstein provided the correct field equations for a relativistic theory of gravitation. This new theory, coined as General Relativity, proposed a new frame of reference for understanding the Universe. Einstein argued that gravity is not a force but an effect of the curvature of space-time caused by the distribution of mass and energy. In his theory of General Relativity, Einstein determined that massive objects cause a distortion in space-time, which is felt as gravity (see Fig. 5.7; Redd, 2012). According to Einstein's General Relativity theory, the observed gravitational effect between masses results from their warping of space-time. The theory allows scientists to overhaul cosmological theory. The Universe, until then a

FIG. 5.7 Artist’s rendition of Dr. Albert Einstein’s space-time around Earth. Source: Redd, N.T., 2012. Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity. SPACE.com Contributor; http://www.space.com/17661-theory-general-relativity.html; Credit: NASA.

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FIG. 5.8 Artist’s conception of the event horizon of a black hole. Credit: Victor de Schwanberg/Science Photo Library. Source: Howell, E., 2013. Goodbye Big Bang, Hello Black Hole? A New Theory of the Universe’s Creation. Universe Today, http://www.universetoday.com/104863/goodbyebigbang-hello-hyper-black-hole-a-new-theory-on-universes-creation/.

relatively vague concept, acquired a new consistency and became a physical entity defined by its space-time structure and its composition of matter, light, and radiation, in fact all kinds of energy. Space-time is endowed with a rich structure, expressed geometrically in terms of curvature and topology, and physically in terms of its matter and energy contents (see Luminet, 2011). Although instruments can neither see nor measure space-time, several of the phenomena predicted by its warping have been confirmed. For example, the orbit of Mercury has been found to be shifting very gradually over time, due to the curvature of space-time around the massive Sun. In a few billion years, it could even collide with the Earth. According to Einstein's theory of General Relativity, the electromagnetic radiation of an object is stretched out slightly inside a gravitational fielddmanifested as a phenomenon known as gravitational redshift. The spin of a heavy object, such as the Earth, should twist and distort the space-time around it. In 2004, NASA launched the Gravity Probe B. The precisely calibrated satellite caused the axes of gyroscopes inside to drift very slightly over time, a result that coincided with Einstein's theory. Cosmological solutions of Einstein's equations are obtained by assuming homogeneity and isotropy in the matterenergy distribution. This implies that space curvature is on the average constant (ie, it does not vary from point to point, although it may change with time). Einstein's equations are the centerpiece of General Relativity. Einstein's “Special” and “General” theories of relativity are still regarded as the most satisfactory model of the large-scale Universe that we know of. Einstein's Theory of Relativity is the basis for our cosmological models of space and time. A problematic feature of General Relativity is the presence of space-time singularities. These singularities are boundaries (“sharp edges”) of space-time at which the space-time geometry becomes ill-defined; with the consequence that General Relativity itself loses its predictive power. Furthermore, there are so-called singularity theorems that predict such singularities must exist within the Universe if the laws of General Relativity were to hold without any quantum modifications. The best-known examples are the singularities associated with the Model Universes that describe black holes (Fig. 5.8) and the beginning of the Universe (Mordehai, 2002; Boughn and Crittenden, 2004). Einstein received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921 “for his services to theoretical physics and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect” and he made some essential contributions to the early development of quantum theory. He was named “Person of the Century” by Time magazine in 1999, and “the greatest scientist of the 20th century and one of the supreme intellects of all time” according to “The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History” in 1978.

5.1.7 Discovery of Galaxies Moving Away From Earth To Albert Einstein's great surprise, his “field equations” showed that the Universe was either expanding or contracting—an idea that was thought to be absolutely absurd. Apart from the prevailing notion of a static Universe, this idea was against even Einstein's philosophical viewpoint. Furthermore, there were no measurements at the time to show as evidence for this purely theoretical prediction. For Einstein, the only remedy to overcome this perceived absurdity was to add an ad hoc, but mathematically coherent, term to his original equations. This term, which came to be known as the cosmological constant, has to keep exactly the same value in space and time. This addition corresponds to some sort

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FIG. 5.9 Dr. Vesto Melvin Slipher (1875–1969), an American astronomer, credited with the discovery of red-shift of light coming from galaxies. Image Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesto_Slipher#/media/File:V.M._Slipher.gif.

of antigravity, which acts like a repulsive force that only makes itself felt at the cosmic scale. Thanks to this mathematical trick, Einstein's modified model of the Universe remained as permanent and invariable as the apparent Universe. This way, Einstein attempted to model an eternally static Universe—one that has always been and will always remain the same size (see Luminet, 2011). While vigorous discussions on Einstein's revolutionary theoretical results were taking place amongst physicists and cosmologists, in 1917, an astronomer named Vesto Slipher (Fig. 5.9), discovered that the light from several “nebulae” (later found to be galaxies) was “redshifted”; that is, the light from a given galaxy (group of billions of stars that are clustered together and interspersed by clouds of dust and gas) is shifted further toward the red end of the electromagnetic spectrum (Slipher, 1913, 1917). This discovery made him known as “the discoverer of galactic redshifts.” The number of stars in our own galaxy (Milky Way) is about 100 billion, and the number of galaxies in the Universe is about the same. Based on the Doppler effect principle in physics, redshift in cosmological measurements results from the motion of the galaxy away from the observer (in the present case, away from the Earth). The Doppler effect, which was discovered in 1842 by the Austrian scientist Christian Doppler, is the change in frequency of a received wave when there is a relative motion between the transmitter of the wave (in the present case, the galaxy) and the observer (in the present case, the observatory on Earth). If the transmitter moves toward the observer, the received frequency will be higher than the transmitted frequencyda phenomenon known as blueshift in cosmology. On the other hand, if the transmitter moves away from the observer, the received frequency will be lower than the transmitted frequencyda phenomenon known as redshift in cosmology. The Doppler effect phenomenon has contributed significantly to a greater understanding of the celestial bodies, cosmic objects, stars, and so forth, primarily through measurement of redshift or blueshift in their spectral lines. Applications of the Doppler effect in astronomical investigations have greatly added to the present knowledge about the Universe. The redshift undergone by light coming from galaxies is an indication of them moving away from the Earth.

5.1.8 Shedding New Light on the Working of the Universe By late 1920, Alexander Friedmann (Fig. 5.10)—an eminent Russian cosmologist and mathematician—had belatedly become familiar with Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, which was published several years late in war-torn Soviet Russia. As a result of an in-depth study of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, in 1922 Friedmann

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FIG. 5.10 Alexander Friedmann (1888–1925), a Russian cosmologist and mathematician who constructed idealized mathematical solutions to Albert Einstein’s General Relativity field equations, thereby shedding new light on the working of the Universe. From https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Alexander_Friedmann#/media/File:Aleksandr_Fridman.png.

made valuable theoretical contributions toward understanding the working of the Universe. Friedmann did so by constructing idealized mathematical solutions to Einstein's General Relativity field equations, thereby providing the theoretical underpinnings for the steady state-, expanding-, and contracting-models of the Universe. At first, Einstein thought that Friedmann's solution was erroneous. However, in 1923 Einstein published a short “Note on the work of A. Friedmann ‘On the Curvature of Space.’” In this note, Einstein recognized and admired that Friedmann's results are correct and that they shed new light on the whole subject. In Jul. 1925, Friedmann participated in a record-setting balloon flight, reaching an elevation of 7400 m. However, within 2 months of this, on Sep. 16, 1925, Friedmann's life was tragically cut short at the young age of 37, and he died from typhoid fever, which it is thought he contracted during a vacation in Crimea.

5.1.9 Proposing a Linear Relationship Between a Galaxy’s Distance and its Redshift In 1925, Edwin Hubble was the first to demonstrate the existence of other galaxies besides the Milky Way, profoundly changing the way we look at the Universe. Later, in 1929, he also definitively demonstrated through measurements that the galaxies are moving away from Earth (considered by many as one of the most important cosmological discoveries ever made), and formulated what is now known as Hubble’s law to show that the other galaxies are moving away from the Milky Way at a speed directly proportionate to their distance from it. He has been called one of the most influential astronomers since the times of Galileo, Kepler, and Newton. In 1927, Dr. (Fr.) Georges Lemaıˆtre—a Belgian Roman Catholic priest, mathematician, physicist, and cosmologist (Fig. 5.11)—published in French a virtually unnoticed paper that provided a compelling solution to the equations of General Relativity for the case of an expanding universe (Lemaıˆtre, 1927). As mentioned earlier, his solution had, in fact, already been derived without his knowledge by the Russian meteorologist Alexander Friedmann in 1922. However, unlike Friedmann, who was primarily interested in the mathematical aspect of the problem, Lemaıˆtre attacked the problem of cosmology from a thoroughly physical point of view. From his model, Lemaıˆtre proposed that a linear relationship exists between a galaxy's distance and its redshift. In general, the further away a galaxy is, the greater its light is shifted toward the red end of the spectrum (lower frequency). After Hubble's observational evidence of receding galaxies, Eddington and other members of the Royal Astronomical Society had begun to undertake work to try to solve the problem brought about by the discrepancy between the hitherto accepted theory of a static Universe and the new observation of an expanding space. In 1930, Eddington

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FIG. 5.11 Dr. (Fr.) Georges Lemaıˆtre (1894–1966), a Belgian Roman Catholic priest, mathematician, physicist, and cosmologist, who is credited with the first definitive formulation of the idea of an expanding Universe and what was to become known as the big bang theory of the origin of the Universe, which Lemaıˆtre himself called his “hypothesis of the primeval atom” or the “Cosmic Egg”. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Georges_Lema%C3%Aetre.

reexamined Einstein's static model and discovered that, like a pen balanced on its point, it is unstable: with the least perturbation, it begins either expanding or contracting. Thus he called for new searches to explain the recession velocities in terms of dynamical space models. While Eddington was looking for the just mentioned new searches, Lemaıˆtre reminded him that he had already solved the problem in his 1927 article. Lemaıˆtre then sent a copy of his 1927 paper to Eddington who immediately saw that it provided an explanation. Eddington, of the Royal Astronomical Society, who had not read Lemaıˆtre's (1927) paper at the right time and begun to undertake work to try to solve the problem brought

FIG. 5.12 Dr. Edwin Hubble (1889–1953), an American astronomer, mathematician, and philosopher who, in 1929, definitively demonstrated through measurements the existence of other galaxies besides the Milky Way, thereby profoundly changing the way we look at the Universe. He also formulated what is now known as Hubble’s law to show that the other galaxies are moving away from the Milky Way at a speed directly proportionate to their distance from it. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Hubble#/media/File:Edwin-hubble.jpg.

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about by the discrepancy between the hitherto accepted theory of a static Universe and the new observation of an expanding Universe, made apologies and promoted Lemaıˆtre's model of expanding space. Indeed he translated himself Lemaıˆtre's French original into English for publication in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and indeed it appeared there in Mar. 1931. It was Lemaıˆtre who first solved the puzzle thrown to the world by the experimental data of Edwin Hubble (Fig. 5.12).

5.1.10 Propounding the Notion of an Expanding Universe Dr. (Fr.) Lemaıˆtre's (1927) seminal paper “Un univers homogène de masse constante et de rayon croissant, rendant compte de la vitesse radiale des n
ebuleuses extragalactiques,” was published in French in the Annales de la Soci
et
e Scientifique de Bruxelles, and in it Lemaıˆtre calculated the exact solutions of Einstein's equations. Lemaıˆtre reasoned that on its long journey to the Earth, a galaxy's light is stretched in frequency (a consequence of the Doppler effect) by the expansion of space itself rather than merely the galaxies moving away from Earth and from each other. Lemaıˆtre argued that space is constantly expanding and consequently the apparent separations between galaxies increase. This idea put forward by Lemaıˆtre—the first interpretation of cosmological redshifts in terms of space expansion, instead of a real motion of galaxies—proved to be one of the most significant discoveries of the century (Luminet, 2011). The longer the light's journey, the more the Universe has expanded—thus the greater the light's stretching or redshift. Lemaıˆtre backed up his claim by correlating published redshift data from Str€ omberg and Slipher with galaxy distance measurements by Edwin Hubble and Humason. Lemaıˆtre realized that his solution predicted the expansion of the real Universe of galaxies that observations were only then beginning to suggest. It must be emphasized that whereas the credit for proposing in 1927 a linear relationship between a galaxy's distance and its redshift goes to Lemaıˆtre, the credit for actually measuring it, 2 years later, using the world's largest telescope at Mt. Wilson in California, goes to Edwin Hubble. Perhaps ignorant of Lemaıˆtre's precedence because of his theory having been written in French, physicists labeled the redshift/distance relationship “Hubble's law” rather than “Lemaıˆtre's law.”

5.1.11 Eddington’s Efforts in Making Scientific Theories Beyond Linguistic Barriers Sir Arthur Eddington (Fig. 5.13) was a prominent English astrophysicist of the early 20th century. He is perhaps best known for his observational confirmation of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity and the bending of light due to

FIG. 5.13 Sir Arthur Eddington (1882–1944), a British astrophysicist and a member of the Royal Astronomical Society, whose observations and photographs during a solar eclipse in 1919 effectively confirmed Einstein's predictions of a slight shift in starlight caused by the gravitational field of the Sun; a proof of Einstein’s General Relativity theory. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Eddington#/media/File:Arthur_Stanley_Eddington.jpg.

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gravity, and his early adoption and popular expositions of Relativity were instrumental in gaining publicity for the Relativity theory and disseminating its ideas to the English-speaking world. He also helped develop the first true understanding of stellar processes and the internal structure of stars, and he established the Eddington limit, which dictates the natural limit to the luminosity of stars. He defined the so-called Eddington luminosity (or Eddington limit) of a star as the point where the gravitational force inwards equals the continuum radiation force outwards, assuming hydrostatic equilibrium and spherical symmetry. He demonstrated that virtually all stars, including giants and dwarfs, behaved as “ideal gases,” and that the interior temperature of stars must be millions (not just thousands) of degrees. In 1924, he discovered the empirical mass-luminosity relationship for stars, whereby the luminosity of a star is roughly proportional to the total mass to the power of 3.5. As Secretary of the Royal Astronomical Society during World War I (1914–18), Eddington came to know of Albert Einstein's new General Theory of Relativity. Eddington was one of the few British astronomers with the mathematical skills to properly understand it. Despite the fact that his country (Great Britain) was at war with Germany during this period, Eddington, with his large heartedness, showed keen interest in pursuing a theory developed by a German physicist. In fact, Eddington quickly became the chief supporter and expositor of Einstein's Relativity theory in Britain. Eddington's observations and photographs during a solar eclipse on the African island of Príncipe in 1919 effectively confirmed Einstein's predictions of a slight shift in starlight caused by the gravitational field of the Sun. This verification of the bending of light passing close to the Sun (as predicted by Relativity theory) was hailed at the time as a conclusive proof of General Relativity. During World War I, Eddington struggled to keep wartime bitterness out of astronomy and, as a Quaker pacifist—a member of the Society of Friends, which is opposed to the use of violence—he repeatedly called for British scientists to preserve their prewar friendships and collegiality with German scientists. For holding his pacifist views close to his chest, he was on the verge of being imprisoned by the British regime but for the timely intervention of some politically influential astronomers. Eddington, who had not read Lemaıˆtre's (1927) paper at the right time and begun to undertake work to try to solve the problem brought about by the discrepancy between the hitherto accepted theory of a static Universe and the new observation of an expanding Universe, made apologies to Lemaıˆtre and promoted Lemaıˆtre's model of expanding Universe. Indeed, he translated himself Lemaıˆtre's French original into English for publication in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and it appeared there in Mar. 1931. Eddington was someone who wanted to make scientific theories accessible to everyone. Interestingly, it was Sir Arthur Eddington who announced and helped explain to the English-speaking world Einstein's theory of relativity when he was still a German-based scientist and unknown to the world at large. Eddington's books and lectures were immensely popular with the public, largely because of his clear and entertaining exposition. Einstein himself suggested that Eddington's 1923 book Mathematical Theory of Relativity was “the finest presentation of the subject in any language.” His 1926 The Internal Constitution of the Stars became an important text for training an entire generation of astrophysicists. His popular writings on Relativity and Quantum theory were to make him, quite literally, a household name in Great Britain between the World Wars (http://physicsoftheuniverse.com/ scientists_eddington.html). Eddington was knighted in 1930, and received the Order of Merit in 1938, as well as many other honors from astronomical societies throughout the world.

5.1.12 Big Bang Theory on the Origin of the Universe From the belief that the Earth is the center of the Universe to the understanding that our majestic Sun (the king of the Solar System) is just one of approximately hundred billion stars that make up our own Milky Way, human knowledge traveled quite a journey between antiquity and the Renaissance. Like the great earthly explorers of the Renaissance, astronomers at the turn of the 20th century ventured farther out than ever before, and found the Universe a far larger place than anyone had previously imagined. Twentieth century astronomers and cosmologists discovered black holes lurking in the centers of galaxies, colliding galaxies, exploding stars, and quasarsdgiant shining beacons of light with the output of over 1000 Milky Ways. In 1927, Lemaıˆtre made what is perhaps the greatest discovery in modern cosmology—our Universe is expanding. Four years later, he proposed that the Universe began with a “single quantum”—a bold and controversial proposal that he called his “hypothesis of the primeval atom” or the “Cosmic Egg,” what is now known as the “big bang theory of the origin of the Universe.” Quite often scientists strive to understand the world around us through the use of “models” of what might be going on, which can then be tested. In the middle of the 20th century there were two competing models of how the Universe

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came into being, called the “steady state” model and the “big bang” model. Subsequently, the expansion-contraction model was also developed. At present there are three principal theories regarding the origin, evolution, and structure of the Universe: (1) the steady state model, (2) the big bang explosion, and (3) the expansion-contraction model (Wagoner et al., 1967; Fowler, 1975; Bru-Villaseca, 1994; Copi et al., 1995). According to the steady state model, there never was a beginning: the Universe had always existed in pretty much its present form. In fact, the very term Universe was quite vague, having no clear definition. Lemaıˆtre's big bang model of the origin of the Universe was a natural outcome of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity as applied to a homogeneous Universe, coupled with the observed redshift manifested as an outcome of the Doppler effect; consequent upon the galaxies speeding away from the Earth and among themselves. The results of cosmological measurements carried out by Edwin Hubble, at the Mt. Wilson Observatory in California, supported Lemaıˆtre's big bang model. In contrast to the steady state model of the Universe, Lemaıˆtre's big bang model suggested that the Universe began at a definite moment in time, in a strange kind of explosion. Big bang is the huge “explosion” that took place about 13.8 billion years ago in which the entire observable Universe (ie, the only Universe for which we have direct evidence) including all space, time, and energy, is thought to have been created or, rather, exploded into existence. According to this theory, the Universe began in a super-dense, super-hot state and has been expanding and, therefore, cooling ever since. The steady state model was very elegant, but eventually turned out to be wrong; that is, predictions made based on the steady state model were shown to be false. In contrast, the predictions made on the basis of the big bang model keep turning out to be right, and therefore it has now been generally accepted by most scientists. Some scientists consider that time itself began in the big bang, and we should no longer ask what happened before the big bang. Unfortunately, for quite some time, the fundamental significance of Lemaıˆtre's work remained unnoticed. When Albert Einstein was in Brussels to attend the Solvay Conference, Lemaıˆtre met the great physicist to explain his model. Albert Einstein said that although he thought Lemaıˆtre's solution of the equations of General Relativity were mathematically correct, the solution was not feasible physically. Einstein said (O’Connor and Robertson, 2008), “Your calculations are correct, but your grasp of physics is abominable.” Essentially, Einstein thought Lemaıˆtre's math was correct but what the math seemed to suggest was not. Close on the heels of the announcement in 1927 of Lemaıˆtre's proposal of the existence of a linear relationship between a galaxy's distance and its redshift, Edwin Hubble, at the Mt. Wilson Observatory in California, discovered through measurements in 1929 that galaxies were moving away at high speeds; and not having read Lemaıˆtre's paper, like most scientists, came up with the same redshift/distance relationship. Hubble announced that his observations of galaxies outside our own Milky Way showed that they were systematically moving away from us with a speed that was proportional to their distance from us. The more distant the galaxy, the faster it was receding from us. This result was further confirmed in subsequent, more accurate measurements of the more distant galaxies (Fig. 5.14). In 1929, Hubble published the experimental data showing a linear velocity-distance relation, which was strictly identical to Lemaıˆtre's, with the same proportionality factor. Hubble showed that more distant galaxies were moving

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FIG. 5.14 The relationship between a galaxy’s distance and its speed holds far beyond what Hubble originally measured. This diagram uses modern measurements to show the same relationship. The gray box shows the region that Hubble probed. Data from the Hubble Space Telescope Key project, courtesy Prof. John Huchra. Source: Cosmic Times Teacher Resources, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center; http://cosmictimes.gsfc.nasa.gov/ teachers/guide/1929/guide/universe_expanding.html.

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away from us more rapidly, as shown by a linear relationship between the distance (d) of a galaxy from Earth and the velocity (v) at which this galaxy moves away from Earth, expressed as v ¼ (Ho  d). In this relation, the constant of proportionality Ho is now called the Hubble constant. The common unit of velocity used to measure the speed of a galaxy is km/s, while the most common unit for measuring the distance to nearby galaxies is called the megaparsec (Mpc), which is equal to 3.26 million light years or 30,800,000,000,000,000,000 km! Thus the unit of the Hubble constant is (km/s)/Mpc. The current rate of expansion is usually expressed as the Hubble constant (in units of kilometers per second per megaparsec, or just per second). The latest currently available value of the Hubble constant is 74.3 km/s/ Mpc (Clavin and Harrington, 2012). Hubble's measurements marked the beginning of the modern age of cosmology (see Spergel et al., 1997). But Hubble did not make the link with expanding Universe models. In fact Hubble never read Lemaıˆtre's paper; Hubble interpreted the galaxy redshifts as a pure Doppler effect (due to the velocity of galaxies) instead of as an effect of space expansion. Thus, Hubble's real contribution in the discovery of an expanding Universe was to provide the observational basis for Lemaitre's mostly mathematically driven theory based on Einstein's General Relativity theory. Einstein's displeasure and disapproval of Lemaıˆtre's physical interpretation of Einstein's General Relativity field equations was a great disappointment to Lemaıˆtre. It may be recalled that, with the strong mathematical background obtained from Lemaıˆtre's studies with de la Vall
ee Poussin, Lemaıˆtre had turned toward mathematical astronomy and had gone to Cambridge in the United Kingdom where he studied with Sir Arthur Eddington during the academic years 1923–24. Together with Hubble's observations, Lemaıˆtre's paper convinced the majority of astronomers that the Universe is indeed expanding, and this revolutionized the study of cosmology. A secondary message that came from Hubble's measurements is that the cosmological constant, which Einstein added to his equations of General Relativity to account for a static Universe, may not be necessary, showing that even Einstein can be wrong occasionally! Einstein called incorporation of his cosmological constant “the greatest blunder of my life.” After Lemaıˆtre's English-translated paper was published with the help of Eddington, it became apparent to both skeptics and Lemaıˆtre himself that there was something missing in the theory of expansion of the Universe. The Universe is continuously expanding, but when and how did the expansion begin? This left Lemaıˆtre perplexed, but being a devoted scientist, he kept questioning. Lemaıˆtre explored the logical consequences of an expanding Universe and boldly proposed that it must have originated at a finite point in time. If the Universe is expanding, he reasoned, it was smaller in the past, and extrapolation back in time should lead to an epoch when all the matter in the Universe was packed together in an extremely dense state. In plain language, if one imagined the galaxies rushing away from us as a movie, just run the movie backwards, and after a certain time all those galaxies will rush together. Lemaıˆtre calculated that this event occurred about 13.8 billion years before the present. Fig. 5.15 shows an illustrative diagram representing the evolution of the Universe, starting with the big bang to the present day (the red arrow marks the flow of time). The fact that Lemaıˆtre was a mathematician, physicist, and cosmologist allied to his religious convictions (he had been ordained as a priest in 1923), added to his fellow cosmologists' natural resistance toward the instigation of a new world view. There was still a part of Lemaıˆtre's theory that scientists, including Lemaıˆtre's well-wisher Sir Arthur

FIG. 5.15 An illustrative diagram representing the evolution of the Universe, starting with the big bang to the present day. The red arrow marks the flow of time. Source: NASA; http://cosmictimes.gsfc.nasa.gov/universemashup/archive/pages/expanding_universe.html.

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Eddington, found impossible to accept; namely, the implication that the Universe had a beginning at a finite time in the past. Eddington proclaimed, “The notion of a beginning of the world is repugnant to me” (see Eddington, 1931). Apart from Eddington, Einstein also considered the primeval atom hypothesis “inspired by the Christian dogma of creation, and totally unjustified from the physical point of view.” Almost everyone wanted to believe that the Universe had always existed. It turned out that the just-cited criticisms were an unfair prejudice, because for Lemaıˆtre, as he expressed several times, the physical beginning of the world was quite different from the metaphysical notion of creation. And for the priest-physicist, science and religion corresponded to separate levels of understanding. Lemaıˆtre disagreed with his critics, and stuck to his guns (he served in the military during World War I)! It may be noted that Lemaıˆtre's considerable and varied studies (eg, engineering, mathematics, physics, cosmology) allowed him to cross paths with other noted astronomers and cosmologists of the day, including George Hale (discoverer of solar vortices and magnetic sunspots) and Vesto Slipher (who discovered galactic redshifts and oversaw the discovery of Pluto), which had a great influence on his later findings. Lemaıˆtre was rather inclined to think that the present state of quantum theory suggests a beginning of the world very different from the present order of nature. He argued that according to thermodynamical principles from the point of view of quantum theory, energy of constant total amount is distributed in discrete quanta. Likewise, the number of distinct quanta is ever increasing. In a May 9, 1931, letter to the prestigious academic journal Nature (still published today and has existed since 1869), Lemaıˆtre proposed an even more outrageous and radical idea: the Universe began as a “single quantum” (see Lemaıˆtre, 1931). The expanding Universe must have been smaller and smaller in the past, he reasoned. Thus it must have had a finite beginning. Based on this logic, Lemaitre put forth the idea that there was once a “primordial atom,” which had contained all the matter in the Universe. Thus, according to Lemaıˆtre's theory, the Universe grew from an infinitely dense point, termed singularity. Lemaıˆtre further argued that (see Lemaıˆtre, 1931), “it may be that an atomic nucleus must be counted as a unique quantum, the atomic number acting as a kind of quantum number. If the future development of quantum theory happens to turn in that direction, we could conceive the beginning of the Universe in the form of a unique atom, the atomic weight of which is the total mass of the Universe. This highly unstable atom would divide in smaller and smaller atoms by a kind of super-radioactive process. Some remnant of this process might, according to Sir James Jeans's idea, foster the heat of the stars until our low atomic number atoms allowed life to be possible. Clearly the initial quantum could not conceal in itself the whole course of evolution; but, according to the principle of indeterminacy, that is not necessary. Our world is now understood to be a world where something really happens; the whole story of the world need not have been written down in the first quantum like a song on the disc of a phonograph. The whole matter of the world must have been present at the beginning, but the story it has to tell may be written step-by-step.” The super-radioactive process that Lemaıˆtre brought to focus is the so-called big bang, although he did not coin this term to describe the super-radioactive process that is mentioned in his paper. Accordingly, Lemaıˆtre argued, if we go back in the course of time we must find fewer and fewer quanta, until we find all the energy of the Universe packed in a few or even in a unique quantum. Lemaıˆtre (1931) further argued that, in atomic processes, the notions of space and time are no more than statistical notions; they fade out when applied to individual phenomena involving but a small number of quanta. He asserted that, if the world has begun with a single quantum, the notions of space and time would altogether fail to have any meaning at the beginning; they would only begin to have a sensible meaning when the original quantum had been divided into a sufficient number of quanta. If this suggestion is correct, Lemaıˆtre argued, “the beginning of the world happened a little before the beginning of space and time. I think that such a beginning of the world is far enough from the present order of Nature to be not at all repugnant.” This was Lemaıˆtre's befiting response to Eddington, who stated (see Eddington, 1931), “the notion of a beginning of the world is repugnant to me.” As just noted, appealing to the new quantum theory of matter, Lemaıˆtre argued that the physical Universe was initially a single particle—the “primeval atom” as he called it—which disintegrated in an explosion, giving rise to space and time, and the expansion of the Universe that continues to this day. This groundbreaking theory marked the birth of what we now know as big bang cosmology. According to the big bang theory, the expansion of the observable Universe began with the explosion of a single particle at a definite point in time. The theory, accepted by nearly all astronomers today, was a radical departure from scientific orthodoxy in the 1930s. Many astronomers at the time were still uncomfortable with the idea that the Universe is expanding. To them, the hypothesis that the entire observable Universe of galaxies began with a bang seemed utterly absurd.

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Although Lemaıˆtre provided an explicit formulation of the currently accepted big bang theory in his 1931 Nature paper, which has been accepted by many scientists, the English astronomer Fred Hoyle did not accept this theory. Seldom charitable toward his scientific adversaries, Fred Hoyle made fun of Lemaıˆtre by calling him “the big bang man.” In fact, he used for the first time the expression “big bang” in 1948, during a radio interview. Strangely enough, in Lemaıˆtre's fortune, the term big bangdHoyle's scornful description of Lemaıˆtre's theorydisolated from its depreciatory context, and became part of scientific parlance across the scientific world. Hoyle therefore unwittingly played a major role in popularizing a theory that he refused to believe (see Luminet, 2011). Many physicists were suspicious of a beginning of the Universe proposed by a Catholic priest. For them, the idea was too close to the Genesis story in the Bible. On the contrary, the Catholic Church suspected that the big bang theory of the origin of the Universe (the Universe began as a “single quantum”) is in direct conflict with the Bible teaching in “Genesis” (the Old Testament). Consequently, Lemaıˆtre's big bang theory remained to be disapproved by the Catholic Church ever since its publication in 1931. Thus, Lemaıˆtre found himself between the devil and the deep blue sea, having been despised in a sense by the Catholic Church and most of his fellow scientists. Lemaıˆtre always defended his views to other physicists with great conviction. He published a more detailed version of his theory in 1933. The ideas presented in his 1933 paper reached the popular press who described him as the world's leading cosmologist. In 1933, Lemaıˆtre traveled with Albert Einstein to the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, for a series of seminars to give lectures to an awe-inspired audience; some of the greatest science luminaries of the time from around the world. Apart from Einstein, Edwin Hubble was one among them. After Lemaıˆtre detailed his big bang theory, Einstein stood up, applauded, and said, “This is the most beautiful and satisfactory explanation of creation to which I have ever listened.” Thus, Einstein publicly withdrew and renounced his earlier objections. When Lemaıˆtre finished his talk and Einstein proclaimed his now-famous quote, New York Times writer Duncan Aikman, who was covering the conference, took a picture of the two scientists together with the caption, “They have a profound respect and admiration for each other” (see Mark Midson, “A day without yesterday: Georges Lemaıˆtre & the Big Bang”). In the same article, Aikman continued, “There is no conflict between religion and science,” Lemaitre has been telling audiences over and over again in this country. … “His view is interesting and important not because he is a Catholic priest, not because he is one of the leading mathematical physicists of our time, but because he is both.” Just like Dr. Albert Einstein, who's laws of Relativity unified space and time, became a cynosure of all eyes; so too was Dr. (Fr.) Georges Lemaıˆtre, who propounded the big bang theory of the origin of the Universe. Honors from several different sources came his way. In 1934, the Francqui Prize (proposed by Albert Einstein, among others), the highest scientific honor that Belgium could bestow, was presented to Lemaıˆtre by King L
eopold III. In 1936 Lemaıˆtre was inducted into the Pontifical Academy of Science by Pope Pius XI, and he remained an active member until his death, accepting the position of president in 1960, and served as president until 1966. He was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts of Belgium in 1941, and became the first to be awarded the Eddington Medal by the Royal Astronomical Society in 1951.

5.1.13 Predictions of Cosmic Background Radiation In 1934, Lemaıˆtre powerfully invoked the notion of a cosmic microwave background (CMB) as a fossil radiation from the primeval atom. According to Lemaıˆtre, cosmic microwave background radiation is the “afterglow” of the big bang, a microwave radiation that might be still uniformly permeating all of space at a temperature of around 270° C below the temperature of ice. This background radiation, if identified, was considered to be the best evidence for the big bang model of the Universe. The abovementioned faint glow of light (radiation in the microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum) fills the Universe, falling on Earth from every direction with nearly uniform intensity. It is the residual heat of creationdthe afterglow of the big bangdstreaming through space these last 13.8 billion years like the heat from a sun-warmed rock, reradiated at night. The CMB is a relic of the Universe's infancy, a time when it was a firestorm of radiation and elementary particles. The familiar objects that surround us todaydstars, planets, galaxies and the likedeventually coalesced from these particles as the Universe expanded and cooled (see Leitch, 2004). This residual radiation is critical to the study of cosmology because it bears on it the fossil imprint of those particles, a pattern of miniscule intensity variations from which we can decipher the vital statistics of the Universe, like identifying a suspect from his fingerprint. When this cosmic background light was released billions of years ago, it was as hot and bright as the surface of a star. The expansion of the Universe, however, has stretched space since then. The wavelength of the light has stretched with it into the microwave part of the electromagnetic spectrum, and the CMB has cooled to its present-day

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FIG. 5.16 Dr. George Gamow (1904–1968), a Ukrainian-American theoretical physicist and cosmologist, whose predictions of cosmic microwave background radiation, following Lemaıˆtre’s prediction, and his explanation of the present levels of hydrogen and helium in the Universe both lent important theoretical support to Lemaıˆtre’s big bang theory. Source: http://physicsoftheuniverse.com/scientists_gamow.html.

temperature, something the glorified thermometers known as radio telescopes register at about 2.73 degrees above absolute zero (see Leitch, 2004). Lemaıˆtre published his new notion in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, USA (see Lemaıˆtre, 1934). In 1950, Lemaıˆtre published a summary, in English, of his theory, entitled “The Primeval Atom: An Essay on Cosmogony” (see Lemaıˆtre, 1950). However, Lemaıˆtre's revolutionary idea on the primeval atom was thoroughly unfashionable among his powerful opponents. Lemaıˆtre was not alone in predicting the possibility of a CMB as a fossil radiation from the birth of the Universe. Ralph Alpher and Robert Hermann, in collaboration with the Russian-born American physicist George Gamow (Fig. 5.16), calculated that one should today receive an echo of the big bang in the form of “blackbody” radiation at a fossil temperature of about 5 K. Their prediction did not ignite any excitement. They refined their calculations several times until 1956, without causing any more interest; no specific attempt at detection was undertaken (see Luminet, 2011). In the middle of the 1960s, at Princeton University, the theorists Robert Dicke and James Peebles studied an Oscillatory Universe model—a closed Universe in expansion-contraction mode. This model suggests that, instead of being infinitely crushed in a big crunch, the Universe passes through a minimum radius before bouncing into a new cycle. They calculated that such a hot bounce would cause blackbody radiation detectable today at a temperature of 10 K.

5.1.14 Discovery of Cosmic Background Radiation in Support of the Big Bang Theory In 1955 there erupted strong debates between those supporting the big bang theory and those who favored a “steady state” theory of the Universe, in which the Universe was eternal and unchanging. In particular, the debate raged about whether the big bang or steady state theory correctly describes the origin of the Universe. It so happened that, in 1965, at Bell Labs in New Jersey two engineers, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, had been putting the finishing touches on a radiometer dedicated to astronomy, and they had found a background noise that was higher than expected. After subtracting the antenna noise and absorption by the atmosphere, there remained an excess of 3.5 K. Penzias and Wilson (1965) argued that this background noise had to be of cosmic origin: it was the fossil radiation. Penzias and Wilson only gave the results of their measurements, while Dicke et al. (1965) gave their cosmological interpretation. None of them mentioned the predictions of George Gamow and his collaborators Alpher and Hermann, still less those of Lemaıˆtre (see Luminet, 2011). Ironically, at the moment of their discovery, they believed instead in the theory of continuous creation, rival to that of the big bang. Lemaıˆtre's ideas were finally vindicated with the discovery of the CMB—the residual radiation from the big bang explosion about 13.8 billion years agodthe remnant radiation from the very early Universe. Lemaıˆtre's assistant told

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him of this discovery in 1966 while Lemaıˆtre was in Hospital Saint Pierre, suffering from a heart attack. The man called “the father of the big bang” died 2 weeks later at the age of 71. The concept of the ever-increasing “balloon” Universe didn't start with Edwin Hubble, nor even Albert Einstein, nor any of the other heroes of the turn-of-the-20th-century-Universe such as George Hale, Percival Lowell, or Adriaan van Maanen. Rather it came from Lemaıˆtre, who wrote about it in 1927. Finally, all counterarguments against the theoretically backed and logical arguments of Lemaıˆtre, Gamow, Alpher, and Hermann vanished into thin air with the discovery of the cosmic background radiation much later, in 1965. This breakthrough discovery finally provided conclusive evidence in support of the notion of a CMB as a fossil radiation from the primeval atom. The detection of CMB fossil radiation practically signaled the death sentence of the steady state model, and loudly proclaimed the validity of Lemaıˆtre's big bang theory, when Lemaıˆtre was still alive. Gamow also died in 1968 without being recognized for his predictions. Alpher and Herman were almost forgotten. Penzias and Wilson gained the Nobel Prize in physics in 1978. Sadly, Lemaıˆtre missed the bus. It may be noted that Lemaıˆtre's big bang theory is constructed by a process of hypothesis and calculation, and supported by clear experimental observations, as is the rule in physics. No wonder, after half a century of rejection, Lemaıˆtre's primeval atom, in the guise of the catchphrase “big bang theory,” had at last been accepted by theoretical physicists.

5.1.15 Discovery of Cepheid Variables Today, Cepheid variables (a special class of pulsating stars) in a galaxy remain one of the best methods for measuring distances to galaxies and are vital to determining the expansion rate (the Hubble constant) and age of the Universe. In 1908, Henrietta Leavitt discovered that these stars (Cepheid variables) pulse at a rate directly related to their intrinsic brightness. Cepheids are, therefore, often likened to standard candles in our cosmos. Astronomers know how to identify these special “candles.” By measuring how bright they appear on the sky, and comparing this to their known brightness as if they were close up, astronomers can calculate their distance from Earth. Thus, as long as astronomers can find at least one of these candles in a galaxy, they can use it, with the assistance of well-established mathematical calculations, to estimate how far away the galaxy is. Fig. 5.17 shows a NASA Hubble Space Telescope (HST) view of the magnificent spiral galaxy NGC 4603, the most distant galaxy in which Cepheid variables have been found. Researchers found 36–50 Cepheids and used their observed properties to securely determine the distance to NGC 4603. Unlike NASA's HST that views the cosmos in visible and short-wavelength infrared light, Spitzer took advantage of long-wavelength infrared light for its latest Hubble constant measurement of 74.3 km/s/Mpc (Clavin and Harrington, 2012). A megaparsec is roughly three million light-years. According to Glenn Wahlgren, Spitzer program scientist at

FIG. 5.17

NASA Hubble Space Telescope (HST) view of the magnificent spiral galaxy NGC 4603, the most distant galaxy in which a special class of pulsating stars called Cepheid variables has been found. Researchers found 36–50 Cepheids and used their observed properties to securely determine the distance to NGC 4603. Observations of distant Cepheids such as those in NGC 4603 also help astronomers to precisely measure the expansion rate of the Universe. Source: NASA HQ press release (May 25, 1999); HUBBLE measures the expanding universe: latest results from the Hubble space telescope pin down the age of the universe; http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/1999/ast25may99_1/.

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FIG. 5.18

The cosmic distance ladder, symbolically shown here in this artist’s concept, is a series of stars and other objects within galaxies that have known distances. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech. Source: Clavin, W., Harrington, J.D., 2012. NASA Observatory Measures Expansion of Universe. NASA Mission News; http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/news/spitzer20121003.html; http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release¼2012-309.

NASA headquarters in Washington, infrared vision, which sees through dust to provide better views of Cepheids, enabled Spitzer to improve on past measurements of the Hubble constant using Cepheids. Spitzer observed 10 Cepheids in our own Milky Way galaxy and 80 in a nearby neighboring galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud. Cepheidsdthe pulsating starsdare vital crossbars of a ladder, so to speak, of various kinds of standard candles that can be used for measuring a range of increasingly great distances, stretching out even to very distant galaxies. Astronomers call this the cosmic distance ladder. The cosmic distance ladder is a set of objects with known distances that, when combined with the speeds at which the objects are moving away from us, reveal the expansion rate of the Universe. Cepheids are crucial to the calculations because their distances from Earth can be measured readily. Fig. 5.18 is an illustration of the cosmic distance ladder, symbolically shown as an artist's conceptda series of stars and other objects within galaxies that have known distances. Without the cosmic dust blocking their view, the Spitzer research team was able to obtain more precise measurements of the stars' apparent brightness, and thus their distances. These data opened the way for a new and improved estimate of our Universe's expansion rate (see Freedman et al., 2012).

5.2 CHEMICAL EVOLUTION LEADING TO THE ORIGIN OF LIFE—ROLE OF PRIMITIVE OCEANS Life is a difficult and contentious phenomenon to define. Life is usually considered to be a characteristic of organisms that exhibit certain biologic processes (such as chemical reactions or other events that results in a transformation), that are capable of growth through metabolism, and are capable of reproduction. The abilities to ingest food and excrete waste are also sometimes considered to be requirements of life. The two distinguishing features of living systems are sometimes considered to be complexity and organization. Some organisms can communicate, and many can adapt to their environment through internally generated changes, although these are not universally considered to be prerequisites for life. With this approximate background about life, let us turn to the discussions on the topic of chemical evolution leading to the origin of life. All known cosmic and geological conditions and laws of chemistry and thermodynamics allow that complex organic matter could have formed spontaneously on a pristine planet Earth about 4 billion years ago. Simple gasses and minerals on the surface and in oceans of the early Earth reacted and were eventually organized in supramolecular aggregates and enveloped cells that evolved into primitive forms of life. Chemical evolution, which preceded all species of organisms that are still in existence, is now accepted as a fact (Follmann and Brownson, 2009). The first indication of primitive life on Earth occurred just over 3.5–3.0 billion (ie, 109) years ago (Fowler, 1975; Alexander and Bacq, 1960; Kerr, 1995). Of all the hypotheses that were suggested (Farely, 1977; Kamminga, 1988), few were as fruitful as those of Oparin (Fig. 5.19). Oparin was a Russian biochemist, notable for his contributions to the theory of the origin of life on Earth, and particularly for the “primordial soup” theory of the evolution of life from carbon-based molecules. In 1924, Oparin officially put forward his influential theory that life on Earth developed through gradual chemical evolution of carbon-based molecules in a “primordial soup” (see Oparin, 1924), at just about the same time as the British biologist J. B. S. Haldane was independently proposing a similar theory. As early as 1922, at a meeting of

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FIG. 5.19 Alexander Oparin (1894–1980), a Russian biochemist, notable for his contributions to the theory of the origin of life on Earth, and particularly for the “primordial soup” theory of the evolution of life from carbon-based molecules. He received numerous decorations and awards for his work, and has been called “the Darwin of the 20th Century”. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Oparin#/media/File:Alexander_Oparin.jpg.

the Russian Botanical Society, Oparin had first introduced his concept of a primordial organism arising in a brew of already-formed organic compounds. He asserted the following tenets (http://physicsoftheuniverse.com/scientists_ oparin.html): • There is no fundamental difference between a living organism and lifeless matter, and the complex combination of manifestations and properties so characteristic of life must have arisen in the process of the evolution of matter. • The infant Earth had possessed a strongly reducing atmosphere, containing methane, ammonia, hydrogen, and water vapor, which were the raw materials for the evolution of life. • As the molecules grew and increased in complexity, new properties came into being and a new colloidal-chemical order was imposed on the simpler organic chemical relations, determined by the spatial arrangement and mutual relationship of the molecules. • Even in this early process, competition, speed of growth, struggle for existence, and natural selection determined the form of material organization, which has become characteristic of living things. • Living organisms are open systems, and so must receive energy and materials from outside themselves, and are not therefore limited by the Second Law of Thermodynamics (which is applicable only to closed systems in which energy is not replenished). Oparin showed how organic chemicals in solution may spontaneously form droplets and layers, and outlined a way in which basic organic chemicals might form into microscopic localized systems (possible precursors of cells) from which primitive living things could develop. He suggested that different types of coacervates might have formed in the Earth's primordial ocean and, subsequently, been subject to a selection process, eventually leading to life. Oparin effectively extended Charles Darwin's theory of evolution backwards in time to explain how simple organic and inorganic materials might have combined into more complex organic compounds, which could then have formed primordial organisms. His proposal that life developed effectively by chance, through a progression from simple to complex self-duplicating organic compounds, initially met with strong opposition, but has since received experimental support (such as the famous 1953 experiments of Stanley Miller and Harold Urey at the University of Chicago), and has been accepted as a legitimate hypothesis by the scientific community. Oparin proposed a long period of chemical abiotic synthesis of organic compounds as a necessary precondition for the appearance of the first life-forms. The first forms of life would then have been anaerobic heterotrophic microorganisms. According to the Oparin Ocean scenario (see Oparin, 1936, 1957), the primitive oceans became the ultimate repository for the great variety of chemicals and biochemicals thought to have been produced in the primitive anaerobic

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atmosphere through the action of ultraviolet radiation and electrical discharge upon water vapor, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and other gases. In this way the primitive ocean became a “soup” of energy-rich biochemicals. Interactions among these produced ever more complicated structures, which eventually (somehow) turned into complex living (self-replicating) cellular entities (Oparin, 1957).

5.3 PARTIAL CLUES TO ORIGIN OF LIFE IN SUBMARINE HYDROTHERMAL VENTS As indicated in the preceding sections, Earth's early atmosphere had a composition that was needed for synthesis of organic molecules essential for supporting life. However, there have been suggestions that organic compounds were destroyed on the surface of the early Earth by the impact of asteroids and comets. However, this notion was contested later. Lagoons have also been proposed to be sites for the emergence of life. At such sites, organic molecules delivered to the ocean by comets and meteorites could be concentrated by evaporation, providing an organic soup. Lagoons lack three important features of hydrothermal vents (Copley et al., 2007): (1) a mechanism for continuous delivery of reactive small molecules; (2) abundant catalytic surfaces composed of transition metals; and (3) a mechanism for physical compartmentalization. Consequently, hydrothermal vents are more favored against lagoons as the site for the origin of life. According to Copley et al. (2007), hydrothermal vents, particularly those constructed of transition metal sulfides, are appealing sites for the emergence of protometabolism. At such sites, small molecules (including CO2, H2, H2S, and NH3) are vented into porous structures lined with catalytic surfaces. Notably, pyruvate can be synthesized under such conditions (Cody et al., 2000). Molecules formed at high temperatures could have percolated through the porous walls into cooler chambers near the exterior, allowing synthesis of more fragile molecules, as well as compartmentalization essential for preventing dilution into the ocean. Interestingly, G€ unter W€achtersh€auser had predicted the synthesis of organic molecules under conditions as found in hydrothermal vents (see W€achtersh€auser, 1988, 1990). These predictions have been experimentally confirmed later. The unique high-pressure, high-temperature aqueous environment of deep-sea hydrothermal vents produces drastic changes in the reactivity of organic compounds. Whether such an environment would also cause small organic molecules to act as specific catalysts that would not perform this function in “normal” aqueous solution is not yet clear. The hypothesis that life might have originated in hydrothermal vents appears, to some extent, attractive also due to the fact that metal sulfides, found in those locations and capable of catalysis of simple organic reactions, are still found in the catalytic centers of central metabolic enzymes such as, for example, ferredoxin, and succinate dehydrogenase; possibly hinting at evolutionary preservation of primitive metal sulfide catalysis (Moritz, 2010). It has been found that minerals also play an interesting role in the synthesis of organic molecules essential for supporting life. Catalysis by minerals, such as those present in deep-sea hydrothermal vents, enhances reactions of organic molecules in such an aqueous environment. For example, it was shown that relevant organic molecules (eg, acetic acid) can be synthesized in chemical reactions involving gases and minerals such as iron sulfide (FeS) and nickel sulfide (NiS) present at deep-sea hydrothermal vents, with carbon monoxide (CO) and other small carbon-containing molecules as the carbon source (Huber and W€ achtersh€auser, 1997, 2006). It has been considered that fatty acids, as a source of membrane-forming material, might have been synthesized in hydrothermal vents too. In addition, there are also just warm to moderately hot hydrothermal vents that have semipermeable microenvironments of cell-like dimensions (mimicking a lipid membrane), which could retain molecules at high concentrations (see Moritz, 2010). These reactions require the high temperatures, or a combination of the high temperatures and pressures, found in deep-sea hydrothermal vents. Furthermore, water existing in high-pressure, high-temperature conditions as found in deep-sea hydrothermal vents. Organic molecules, once formed, show a level of (albeit not always particularly specific) chemical reactivity that is usually observed in “normal” aqueous environments only upon speeding-up of reaction rates by enzymes (see Hazen et al., 2002). Under high-pressure, high-temperature conditions, the physicochemical properties of water are severely altered to the extent that the hydrothermal vent-water behaves more like an organic solvent (see Basset, 2003). It is considered that thermal cycling might have been possible near or within the surface of hydrothermal vents or hot springs. It is further believed that thermal cycling could have allowed for solving the thorny issue of separating the double-stranded product of the copying reaction for further replication and increased nucleotide uptake (see Mansy and Szostak, 2008) at high temperatures, and copying at lower ones, analogous to the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) (see Moritz, 2010). According to Baaske et al. (2007), ribonucleic acid (RNA) monomers and oligonucleotides may have been greatly accumulated in hydrothermal pore systems due to a thermal gradient across the pore (high temperature

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on the inner side of the wall and low temperature on the outer side of the wall). Likewise, the thermal convection within hydrothermal pores would also have allowed for thermal cycling to separate the double-stranded product of RNA copying reactions (Baaske et al., 2007). A model known as the “metabolic model” also attaches great importance to hydrothermal vents in the “origin of life” studies. The metabolic model is an inventive and detailed hypothesis that integrates in an impressive manner a multitude of observations in the field of chemistry. It suggests that the beginning of life was what has been termed a flat life, an elaborate two-dimensional metabolism on mineral surfaces of deep-sea hydrothermal vents. Central to this and other “metabolism-first” hypotheses is the reductive citric acid cycle (reverse Krebs cycle) which provides a core mechanism of useful biomolecules from CO2 (Morowitz et al., 2000; Smith and Morowitz, 2004). Note that metabolism is the set of life-sustaining chemical transformations within the cells of living organisms. These enzyme-catalyzed reactions allow organisms to grow and reproduce, maintain their structures, and respond to their environments. The word metabolism can also refer to all chemical reactions that occur in living organisms, including digestion and the transport of substances into and between different cells, in which case the set of reactions within the cells is called intermediary metabolism or intermediate metabolism. Viable ecological niches are formed by the reaction of hydrothermal seawater with mantle rocks to form serpentinites and the subsequent reaction of the vent fluids with CO2-bearing seawater. Lane et al. (2010) and Russell et al. (2010) were geologically explicit. According to them life originated around alkaline (pH: 9–11) vents from serpentinite on the seafloor. The sulfide-rich and Ca2+-rich fluid precipitated iron sulfides on contact with Fe2+-bearing anoxic seawater and CaCO3 on contact with CO2 in seawater, forming a micrometer-scale pore space. Travertine on terrestrial (continental) springs is grossly similar. In addition to physical confinement, the vent chimneys contained Fe-, Ni-, and S-bearing minerals that acted as organic catalysts. Metal clusters in the still existing organisms are likely pre-RNA relicts in this hypothesis. Percolation of fluids through honeycomb pore networks concentrated nucleotide molecules and eventually nucleic acid chains (Russell and Hall, 2009), thus providing conditions favorable for life's origins (Branciamore et al., 2009). Recirculation through locally high thermal gradients in the porous networks further concentrated nucleic acids and lipids (Budin and Szostak, 2010). Sleep et al. (2011) have provided a discussion on the serpentinite and the dawn of life. Due perhaps to the molecular complexity of nucleic acids, “metabolism-first” models (as opposed to “replicationfirst” models such as the RNA world hypothesis) highlight the importance of the initial generation of small molecules through chemical or metabolic cycles. Establishment of a plausible energy source is a critical aspect of these models, some of which propose that life arose in the vicinity of hot alkaline (pH value in the range 9–11) undersea hydrothermal vents, with energy provided by pH and temperature gradients between the vent and the cooler, more acidic ocean (Russell and Hall, 1997; Martin and Russell, 2007; Martin et al., 2008; Sleep et al., 2011). In some ways, metabolism-first models appear not to conflict with the RNA world hypothesis, as they potentially offer a solution to the difficulty of ribonucleotide and RNA synthesis. According to Bernhardt (2012), the proposal that the RNA world evolved in acidic conditions (Bernhardt and Tate, 2012; Kua and Bada, 2011) offers a plausible solution to Charles Kurland's criticism (Caetano-Anoll
es et al., 2011) that the RNA world hypothesis makes no reference to a possible energy source. As de Duve (1991) has noted, “the widespread use of proton-motive force for energy transduction throughout the living world today is explained as a legacy of a highly acidic prebiotic environment and may be viewed as a clue to the existence of such an environment” (Randau et al., 2009). Although Sleep et al. (2011) have argued that proton and thermal gradients between the outflow from hot alkaline (pH value in the range 9–11) undersea hydrothermal vents and the surrounding cooler more acidic ocean may have constituted the first sources of energy at the origin of life, the lack of RNA stability at alkaline pH (Bernhardt and Tate, 2012; and references within) would appear to make such vents an unlikely location for RNA world evolution. Based on these findings, there exists a school of thought that life arose in deep-sea hydrothermal vents. If this hypothesis happens to be true, the composition of Earth's early atmosphere needed for synthesis of organic molecules essential for supporting life would become largely irrelevant. To a certain extent, this also holds true for organic building blocks delivered to the Earth by interplanetary dust particles and on carbonaceous meteorites (Moritz, 2010). As noted earlier, some Darwinists suggest that the common ancestor somehow evolved from nonliving matter (which they presume to be some kind of dirty-water soup-like composition as found in submarine hydrothermal vents and volcanoes). In this sense, submarine hydrothermal vents have become important to the “origin of life” studies. However, there are researchers who believe that certain chemical constraints make abiogenesis (ie, life arising from nonlife) an impossible event. Perhaps the most radical claim of the theory of evolution through natural selection is that “elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner” evolved from the simplest forms of life by a few simple principles.

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5.4 CHEMICAL EVOLUTION OF LIFE-SUPPORTING STRUCTURES There is evidence to believe that life originated on Earth about 4.1–3.8 billion years ago; that is, life did not exist on this planet before this “biotic era.” Unlike in religious beliefs, in which no evidence is sought by the believer for what he/she believes in, nothing that unambiguously passes the test of experimental evidence is treated as truth in science. Thus, mere assumption or hypothesis of a “spontaneous origin of life from nonliving matter” at the end of the “prebiotic era” needed to be tested before accepting it as a scientific truth. Essential to the spontaneous origin of life was the availability of organic molecules as building blocks.

5.4.1 Amino Acids The importance of amino acids in the context of origin of life stems from the fact that amino acids are essential to life. Amino acids are biologically important organic compounds composed of amine (dNH2) and carboxylic acid (dCOOH) functional groups, along with a side chain specific to each amino acid. The key elements of an amino acid are carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, though other elements are found in the side chains of certain amino acids. About 500 amino acids are known (Wagner and Musso, 1983), and can be classified in many ways. Amino acids are natural molecules that form a very large network of molecules, known as proteins, by a process of polymerization; that is, by chemical binding to other molecules. Thus, proteins are simply amino acid polymers. In other words, amino acids are the building blocks of proteins; that is, the structural units (monomers) that make up proteins. They join together to form short polymer chains called peptides or longer chains called either polypeptides or proteins. These polymers are linear and unbranched, with each amino acid within the chain attached to two neighboring amino acids. The process of making proteins is called translation and involves the step-by-step addition of amino acids to a growing protein chain by a ribozyme (Wagner and Musso, 1983). Note that ribozyme is a form of RNA (catalytic RNA) that can catalyze chemical reactions. Ribozymes catalyze the formation of peptide bonds, which eventually result in proteins. A complex network of more than 200 essential proteins is found in today's most elementary cells. The formation of stable covalent chemical bonds between the relatively small molecules sets polymerization apart from other processes, such as crystallization, in which large numbers of molecules aggregate under the influence of weak intermolecular forces. Sreenivasachary and Lehn (2005, 2008) have shown that polymers with the capacity for constitutional reorganization show a number of intriguing material properties, including self-healing and chemoresponsive characteristics (Sreenivasachary et al. 2006; Cordier et al. 2008). The order in which the amino acids are added is read through the genetic code from a messenger RNA (mRNA) template, which is an RNA copy of one of the organism's genes. Extrapolating from available data, it is inferred that inside fatty-acid vesicles the first self-replicating RNA molecule could have started copying itself. Note that in cell biology, a vesicle is a small organelle within a cell. Vesicles are mainly involved in the transportation of material in/out or within the cell. Vesicles are made of at least one layer of the phosphor-lipid bilayer; which is the major constituent of the cell membrane. During copying, various things would have been possible. High-fidelity copies would have yielded the same self-replicating molecule. Copies with errors would mostly have resulted in RNA that was nonfunctional, but in a minority of cases, they could have yielded RNA that copied itself faster (Moritz, 2010). However, there are researchers who consider that RNA acted as a precursor of both protein and DNA, in the sense that it can serve both as catalyst (like protein enzymes) and as carrier of genetic information. The hypothesis that a so-called “RNA world” was involved in the early evolutionary stages of life is now an almost universally held view (Joyce, 2002; Orgel, 2004).

5.4.2 Miller-Urey “Prebiotic Soup” Experiment There was likely a wide variety of molecules in the prebiotic chemical inventory, so the first formidable challenge was to find an abiotic mechanism by which “useful” building blocks were selected from a complex mixture. In a fundamental experiment, known as the Miller-Urey “prebiotic soup” experiment (see Miller, 1953), consisting of injecting electrical discharges acting for a week in a “spark discharge apparatus” into which a mixture of water vapor, hydrogen (H2), methane (CH4), and ammonia (NH3) had been injected to undergo chemical reaction (see Fig. 5.20), it was found that a large variety of more complicated biogenic molecules (eg, several amino acids, hydroxyl acids, and other molecules) including amino acids (which are essential to life) had formed spontaneously, thereby strongly supporting the above theories. The chemicals used in this experiment were simple molecules thought to have existed in the early terrestrial atmosphere. Note that biogenic/biomolecules are molecules that are present in living organisms, including

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FIG. 5.20 Electric discharge apparatus used to synthesize amino acids at room temperature. A 3-L flask is shown with two tungsten electrodes and a spark generator (after Miller, 1953; Oro, 1963b). Source: Oro, J., Miller, S.L., Lazcano, A., 1990. The origin and early evolution of life on Earth. Annu. Rev. Earth Planet. Sci. 18, 317–356, doi:10.1146/annurev.ea.18.050190.001533.

large macromolecules such as proteins, polysaccharides, lipids, and nucleic acids, as well as small molecules such as primary metabolites, secondary metabolites, and so forth. In fact, experimental studies on the origin of life kick-started with the classic Miller-Urey experiment. Miller (1957) has shown that the mechanism of synthesis of amino acids is the Strecker condensation, where hydrogen cyanide (HCN) and aldehydes formed by the electrical discharges condense with each other in the presence of ammonia, forming the amino nitriles that upon hydrolysis yield the amino acids. A similar mechanism can account for the synthesis of the reported hydroxyl acids. A study by Miller and Van Trump (1981) has shown that both amino acids and hydroxyl acids can be synthesized even at high dilutions of HCN and aldehydes in a primitive hydrosphere. Much after the Darwinian era, the great success achieved through the Miller-Urey experiment, which succeeded in the synthesis of biogenic molecules under the early Earth's climatic, physical, and chemical conditions, and kickstarted the origin of life studies (see Miller, 1986), is considered to be an important milestone in the origin of life research. The Miller-Urey experiment has been repeated and extended many times since, and it has been found that similar results are obtained with other dissociating and ionizing mechanisms, including ultraviolet (UV) radiation and X-rays. Urey (1952) developed a model of Oparin's reducing primordial terrestrial atmosphere. Following this development, Miller (1953) showed that a number of protein amino acids and a diverse assortment of other small organic molecules of biochemical significance could be made in the laboratory under environmental conditions thought to be representative of the Hadean or early Archean Earth. Since then, a wide variety of organic compounds of biochemical significance have been experimentally formed from simple molecules such as water, methane, ammonia, and HCN (Miller, 1987). In continuation of the results obtained from Stanley Miller's 1953 experiment, considerable amounts of work on chemical evolution and the origin of life on the Earth have been carried out (eg, Alexander and Bacq, 1960; de Duve, 1991; Pleasant and Ponnamperuma, 1980). Since then, several other steps in the synthesis of organic molecules have been carried out and experiments simulating prebiotic conditions have yielded sugars, fatty acids, and nucleic acid bases (Calvin, 1975; Keefe et al., 1995; Robertson and Miller, 1995). Observations of Jupiter and Saturn had shown that they contained ammonia and methane, and large amounts of hydrogen were inferred to be present there (this inference was confirmed later, and it is now known that hydrogen is the major atmospheric component of these planets). These “chemically reducing” atmospheres of the giant planets were regarded as captured remnants of the solar nebula; and by analogy the atmosphere of the early Earth was assumed to have been similar. Thus, the experimental conditions in the Miller-Urey experiment were assumed to simulate those on the primitive Earth. This assumption was found to have been realistic as attested in a subsequent study, which supports an early “reducing” atmosphere. The significance of these experiments to the origin of life has been debated, with no firm conclusions emerging, except that the generation of biogenic molecules under astronomical conditions is not particularly difficult, and can be achieved in a variety of ways. Therefore, it is interesting that essentially all the starting gases of the various Miller-Urey experiments are now found in the interstellar gas, under conditions that are radically different from those

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in planetary atmospheres and oceans, with densities lower by at least 15 orders of magnitude (see Thaddeus, 2006). Some of the end products of the Miller-Urey experiment are found in space as well; for example, formaldehyde and cyanoacetylene. Note that cyanoacetylene is a major nitrogen-containing product of the action of an electric discharge on a mixture of methane and nitrogen. It reacts with simple inorganic substances in aqueous solution to give products including asparticacid, asparagine, and cytosine (Sanchez et al., 1966). It can be reasonably suspected that many more end products of the Miller-Urey experiment are currently lurking just below our current level of sensitivity, amino acids especially. In a confirmatory test, the group of Bada reanalyzed samples from Miller's 1950s spark experiments, simulating water vapor-rich volcanic eruptions. Such eruptions would have released reducing gases. In these samples, amino acids were more varied than in the classical Miller experiment, and yields were comparable or even higher, indicating that even if the Earth's atmosphere had been neutral, localized prebiotic synthesis could have been effective (Johnson et al., 2008). Chondrites (ie, primitive material from the solar nebulae) are generally believed to be the building blocks of the Earth and other rocky planets, asteroids, and satellites. During and after planet formation, gases escape (ie, out-gassing occurs) from the chondritic material due to high temperature and pressure. Systematic, detailed calculations on what these gases must have been show that they are mainly the highly reducing hydrogen, methane, and ammonia; the same gases as in the Miller-Urey-type experiments (Schaefer and Fegley, 2007). Subsequent to the Miller-Urey experiment that produced amino acids under the early Earth's simulated highly reducing atmospheric conditions, Tian et al. (2005) measured the production of organic molecules through UV photolysis under the highly reducing atmospheric conditions of the early Earth, and concluded that at 1010 kg/year it “would have been orders of magnitude greater than the rate of either the synthesis of organic compounds in hydrothermal systems or the exogenous delivery of organic compounds to early Earth.” Although a chemically “reducing” atmosphere of methane and ammonia is extremely vulnerable to destruction by UV sunlight, Kuhn and Atreya (1979), Kasting et al. (1983), and Tian et al. (2005) point out that, based on recent developments, a reducing atmosphere is more stable than previously believed.

5.5 ORIGIN OF LIFE It is speculated that chemical evolution was probably followed by biological evolution, in which proteins were formed by polymerization of amino acids; and aggregates, called coacervates, appeared in the water medium along with other organic compounds (Orlovskii et al., 1977). Only after the origin of the genetic code, determined by the sequence of bases in nucleic acids, could the first self-reproducing molecule, self-perpetuating cells have arisen. Thus organization of life first took place at the molecular level; for example, proteins and nucleic acids [deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and ribonucleic acid (RNA)]. This was followed by evolution of the first cell on the Earth; that is, prokaryotic cells, which did not have distinct organization of nucleus. Prokaryotic cells evolved into more complex cells termed eukaryotic cells, in which organization of nucleus took place (Avakian et al., 1970; Cavalier-Smith, 1975; Portelli, 1979; White, 1994). Subsequently, in the long passage of time, continued evolutionary processes resulted in the formation of all the higher forms of complex multicellular living organisms spearheaded by modern humans purely from the lower forms of unicellular living organisms (Darwin, 1859; Simpson, 1967). It is now a well-established fact that the genetic code has played a key role throughout the evolutionary process (Kerr, 1995; Weiner, 1995; Gibbons, 1995; Futuyma, 1995) and acted as an intracellular computer in the organization of the cell and nucleus (Portelli, 1976, 1979). There are approximately two million different species of organisms known today. At the cellular and molecular levels there is a unique master plan of organization common to all. For example, all organisms have the cells as their basic structural and functional unit. Likewise, all organisms have essentially the same genetic code made of DNA.

5.5.1 Probable Specialties of the Earliest Living Systems Because the earliest living systems arose in a bath of nutrients, they had no need to synthesize amino acids, nucleotides, and other products of intermediary metabolism and so did not develop such capacities. In other words, the first organisms were likely to be extreme heterotrophs, having neither photosynthetic nor autotrophic capabilities (Oparin, 1957). They were in essence sinks for the chemical energy stored in the oceans (Woese, 1979). Only when these early cells began to exhaust their oceanic supply of nutrients did a need arise for intermediary metabolism, autotrophic

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capacity, and the ability to use light as an energy source, and only then did these features evolve (Horowitz, 1945; Oparin, 1957). Follmann and Brownson (2009) have given a review on experimental and theoretical research published over two decades, which has added a wealth of new details and helped to close gaps in our previous understanding of this multifaceted field. Recent exciting progress in the molecular and genetic analyses of existing life, in particular microorganisms of ancient origin, even supports the possibility that a cellular, self-reproducing common ancestor might be assembled and resurrected in anaerobic cultures at some time in the future. Charles Darwin did not, and indeed, could not, address and specify the earliest phases of life that preceded the Origin of Species. However, in a famous letter, he sketched “a warm little pond with all sorts of … (chemicals, in which) … a protein was chemically formed.” Follmann and Brownson (2009) have tried to trace the impact of his charming clear-sighted metaphor up to the present time. Oparin (1938) in his book The Origin of Life proposed that in prebiotic times spontaneous generation of life would be less difficult if the ocean contained a large amount of complex organic components similar to those present in living organisms. These compounds would serve both as structural components and as the energy source for the first organisms. He also proposed that the Earth had a reducing atmosphere of hydrogen (H2), ammonia (NH3), methane (CH4), and water (H2O) in its early stages, and that organic compounds might be formed under these conditions. Urey (1952) based his arguments for the reducing atmosphere on the thermodynamic properties of gases in a cosmic dust cloud from which the Solar System was formed. He proposed that organic compounds might be synthesized by UV radiation and by electrical discharges (lightning) in the reducing atmosphere.

5.5.2 Two Opposing Views on Origin of Life “Origin of Life” is a very complex subject, and oftentimes controversial. Two opposing scientific theories that existed on this complex subject for a long time were the so-called intelligent design and creationism. As indicated earlier, the satisfactory explanation offered by the big bang theory of the origin of the Universe gave a new dimension to the discussion on the topic of biological evolution. It has been hypothesized that complex life-forms on Earth, including humans, arose over a period of time from simple bacteria-like tiny cells by a process of self-organization akin to the evolution of the Universe by self-organization of simple material structures (ie, fundamental particles produced by the big bang) toward more and more complex structures. The “warm little pond” image neatly described by the celebrated naturalist Charles Darwin, and documented in The Life And Letters of Charles Darwin has played a significant role in shaping our view of bacterial origins. However, according to Woese (1987), Darwin's “warm little pond” image has never been intended to be a prescription for life's beginnings; probably, it was rather intended to give his successors a guiding principle. It is believed that Darwin understood that the subject of “life's beginnings” belonged to the future. The existence of thermophilic bacteria probably compels microbiologists to believe that the setting in which bacteria arose may well have been warm, but it was not the hospitable warmth implicit in the “pond” Darwin pictured. The collection of images associated with the prokaryote-eukaryote dichotomy, the Oparin Ocean scenario, and, to a lesser extent, Darwin's “warm little pond” form the starting point and dictate the direction of our thinking about bacterial evolution.

5.6 GENE AND GENETIC CODE One cannot talk about origin of life and living organisms without mentioning genes. In microbiology parlance, “gene” is the molecular unit of heredity of a living organism, controlling a particular inherited characteristic of an individual. It is used extensively by the scientific community as a name given to some stretches of DNA and RNA that code for a polypeptide or for an RNA chain that has a function in the organism. Genesdmade of DNAdare arranged (strung out) in a definite order, along threads called chromosomes (humans have 46 chromosomes). All genes, in every animal, plant, and bacterium that have ever been looked at, are coded messages for how to build the creature, written in a standard alphabet. Functionally, the chromosomes are very similar to the data tapes used with mainframe computers, because the information they carry is digital and is strung along them in order. The information consists of long strings of code “letters,” which can be read and counted. Living beings depend on genes, as they specify all proteins and functional RNA chains. Genes hold the information to build and maintain an organism's cells and pass genetic traits to offspring. All organisms have genes corresponding to various biological traits, some of which are instantly visible, such as eye color or number of limbs, and some others

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are not, such as blood type, increased risk for specific diseases, or the thousands of basic biochemical processes that comprise life. According to the hypothetical study of Gil et al. (2004), the minimal number of protein-coding genes is 206. All the proteins produced from these protein-coding genes are involved in a maze of pathways of metabolism, replication, as well as building and maintenance of structure, which is of bewildering complexity (Moritz, 2010). According to Moritz (2010), one cannot lose sight of the fact that the most elementary cells we currently know, which are not permanently dependent on host metabolism, the bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium, have 482 protein-coding genes (most bacteria, such as E. coli, encode for more than 2000 different proteins), from which, according to the most thorough experimental study conducted until 2006 (Glass et al. 2006), the essential ones are 387. One might wonder how could such a vastly complex network of more than 200 proteins have arisen by itself? One might ask: Would it not have to have arisen at once? Yet, evidence suggests that all this complexity may have evolved, step-by-step, from very simple beginnings (Moritz, 2010). The same genes occur in many different creatures, with a few revealing differences. For example, there is a gene called FoxP2 (a string of 2076 base pairs), which is shared by all mammals and lots more creatures besides. One can say that FoxP2 is the same gene in all mammals because the great majority of the code base pairs are the same. Then what is the distinction among different mammals? This can be explained thus (Dawkins, 2011): Of the total of 2076 base pairs in FoxP2, the chimpanzee has nine base pairs different from humans, while the mouse has 139 base pairs different. And that pattern holds for other genes, too. That explains why chimpanzees are very like humans, while mice are less so. There is no particular reason to single out the FoxP2 gene. The number of base pairs that all humans share in all their genes would be more than any human shares with a chimpanzee. Among humans, not all humans are the same genetically as all other humans. While comparing the human genes base pair by base pair, some base pairs will be different, and such differences make different humans genetically different from other humans, although as a common feature, all humans are much different from chimpanzees. The genetic code is the set of rules by which information encoded within genetic material (DNA or mRNA sequences) is translated into proteins by living cells. Biological decoding is accomplished by the ribosome, which links amino acids in an order specified by mRNA, using transfer RNA (tRNA) molecules to carry amino acids and to read the mRNA three nucleotides at a time. Thus, the genetic code is understood as the specific assignment of amino acids to nucleotide triplets (see Szathmary, 1999). The code defines how sequences of these nucleotide triplets, called codons, specify which amino acid will be added next during protein synthesis. With some exceptions (Turanov et al., 2009), a three-nucleotide codon in a nucleic acid sequence specifies a single amino acid. Because the vast majority of genes are encoded with exactly the same code, this particular code is often referred to as the canonical or standard genetic code, or simply the genetic code, though in fact some variant codes have evolved. For example, protein synthesis in human mitochondria relies on a genetic code that differs from the standard genetic code. While the genetic code determines the protein sequence for a given coding region, other genomic regions can influence when and where these proteins are produced. The genetic code is highly similar among all organisms and can be expressed in a simple table with 64 entries. There are 20 universal amino acids in the genetic code of all living organisms that are in existence. The 20 amino acids encoded directly by the genetic code can be divided into several groups based on their properties. However, whether all these 20 amino acids were present in the “RNA world” is not clear. Perhaps, it is likely that the RNA world might have relied on the few prebiotically available amino acids. In the absence of evidence, many of the most interesting questions about the genetic code have fallen into a twilight zone of speculation and controversy. Although it is generally accepted that the modern code evolved from a simpler form, there has been no consensus about when the initial code evolved or what it was like, how and when particular amino acids were added, or the processes by which the code could have expanded. Now, detailed study of the components of the translation apparatus is at last making these questions tractable. Three general approaches have recently yielded surprising intimations about how the genetic code evolved. The first is to appeal to general principles at a primary level, in this case the chemistry of nucleic acids and amino acids, to infer how a translation system might be constrained. The second is to alter parts of the translation apparatus in vitro in ways that might reflect earlier states, showing what changes are possible. The third is to examine the phylogeny of particular components, revealing how they have changed since the last universal common ancestor (LUCA) (or, in the case of paralogous genes, even before the LUCA), and to extrapolate backward from the principles thus revealed. Knight and Landweber (2000) have shown how key applications of these approaches begin to provide a general framework for understanding the origin and development of the code. According to Knight and Landweber (2000), research into different components of the translation apparatus is beginning to paint a consistent picture of how the genetic code might have evolved. The primordial code, influenced by direct interactions between bases and amino acids probably dates back to the “RNA world” or earlier. The code probably underwent a process of

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expansion from relatively few amino acids to the modern complement of 20. The diversity of events suggests that an explanation for the fixation of the canonical code in the LUCA will require more historical reconstruction than reasoning from chemical principles (Knight and Landweber, 2000). Li et al. (2013) reported experimental evidence that ancestral peptide catalysts substantially accelerated the development of genetic coding. Their finding flies in the face of the widely held theory that RNA self-replicated without the aid of simple proteins and eventually led to life as we know it.

5.7 HORIZONTAL GENE TRANSFER: A STORY OF GENETIC SUCCESS A fundamental concept in biology is that heritable material, DNA, is passed from parent to offspring; a process called vertical gene transfer. An alternative mechanism of gene acquisition is through horizontal gene transfer (HGT), also called lateral gene transfer, which involves movement of genetic material between different species (Crisp et al., 2015). The acquisition of genes from an organism other than a direct ancestor (ie, HGT) is well known in bacteria and unicellular eukaryotes, where it plays an important role in evolution (Polz et al., 2013), with recent estimates suggesting that on average 81% of prokaryotic genes have been involved in HGT at some point (Dagan et al., 2008). However, relatively few cases have been documented in multicellular organisms (Scholl et al., 2003; Keeling and Palmer, 2008; Dunning, 2011; Syvanen, 2012; Boto, 2014). Scientists have for several years established the existence of gene flow, or HGT, between species. Initially, some scientists thought that natural gene transfers took place mainly in simple organisms like bacteria. Only recently has it become clear that gene transfers are extremely widespread in nature across many species. What was once regarded as a peculiarity of lesser organisms has now been found to be true in human beings, too. It is now realized that even human beings have received gene transfers over the millennia, and so today carry genes that originally came from alien sources such as fungus, bacteria, and algae. HGT is well known in single-celled organisms such as bacteria, but its existence in higher organisms, including animals, is less well established, and is controversial in humans. Crisp et al. (2015) took advantage of the recent availability of a sufficient number of high-quality genomes and associated transcriptomes to carry out a detailed examination of HGT in 26 animal species (10 primates, 12 flies, and 4 nematode worms) and a simplified analysis in a further 14 vertebrates. Genome-wide comparative and phylogenetic analyses show that HGT in animals typically gives rise to tens or hundreds of active “foreign” genes, (ie, horizontally transferred genes) largely concerned with metabolism. Their analyses suggest that while fruit flies and nematodes have continued to acquire foreign genes throughout their evolution, humans and other primates have gained relatively few since their common ancestor. Note that nematodes are unsegmented worms of the phylum Nematoda, having elongated, cylindrical bodies (roundworms). The findings of Crisp and colleagues suggest that human beings have at least 145 genes that have crossed over from other species to humans (ie, picked up from other species by their ancestors). Admittedly, that is less than 1% of the 20,000 or so genes that humans have in total. Crisp and coresearchers examined the ever-growing public databases of genetic information now available. They did not study humans alone. They studied 9 other primate species, and also 12 types of fruit fly and 4 nematode worms. Flies and worms are among geneticists' favorite creatures, so lots of data have been collected on them. To avoid getting bogged down in the billions of base pairs of an animal genome, the researchers looked at what is known as the transcriptome. By looking at the messengers, one could be certain that they are recording active genes and not stretches of nuclear DNA that had once been genes but now no longer work. Fruit flies and worms multiply fast and so have long been used for biological research by scientists, helping create a vast body of scientific data. For every transcribed messenger, the researchers searched the world's databases, looking for matches. They excluded the immediate relatives of each of their three groups of animals (that is, no arthropods were compared with the flies, no vertebrates with the primates, and no other nematodes with the worms). They then asked whether similar-looking genes to those in a transcriptome were found more often in other animals, or in nonanimals. If the former was found, the most likely explanation would be that they were there by common descent from animal ancestors. If the latter was found, then, a HGT from species to species seemed the most probable explanation. The scientists found that on average, worms had 173 horizontally transferred genes, fruit flies had 40, and primates had 109. Humans, with 145 transfers, turned out to be more genetically modified than other primates. The results from all three groups (primate species, fruit fly, and nematode worms) suggest natural transgenics is ubiquitous. Thus, it might surprise many people that they are even to a small degree part bacterium, part fungus, and part alga! Research on these issues has barely begun, and could in due course reveal thousands more gene transfers into humans; after all, nature has had lots of time to make such changes!

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Altogether, the researchers found two imported genes for amino acid metabolism, 13 for fat metabolism, and 15 that are involved in the postmanufacture modification of large molecules. They also identified five immigrants that generate valuable antioxidants, and seven that aided the immune system. This is a story of genetic success, not risk. Many of the matches are to genes of unknown purpose, for it is still the case, more than a decade after the end of the human genome project, that the jobs of many genes remain obscure. But some human transgenes are surprisingly familiar. The ABO antigen system, which defines basic blood groups for transfusion purposes, looks bacterial. The fat-mass and obesity-associated gene, the effect of which is encapsulated in its rather long-winded name, seems to come from marine algae. And a group of genes involved in the synthesis of hyaluronic acid originates from fungi. Hyaluronic acid is a chemical that is an important part of the glue that holds cells together (it is also a frequent ingredient of skin creams). Does this genetic intrusion mean humans are a monster species? Hardly. So, genetic transfers are not a human invention at all; nature has been doing it for millennia. The gene transfer research scientists had to consider the possibility that what looked like gene transfers between species might actually be just genes from a common ancestor of the two species many millions of years ago. Now, genes from another animal could very possibly be the result of an ancient inheritance. But genes in animals that came from plants or bacteria would almost certainly represent HGT. The researchers identified five immigrant genes that generated valuable antioxidants, and seven that Crisp et al. (2015) argue that HGT has occurred, and continues to occur, on a previously unsuspected scale in metazoans (ie, any of numerous heterotrophic eukaryotic organisms of the kingdom Metazoa, characteristically having a multicellular body with cells differentiated into tissues; an animal) and is likely to have contributed to biochemical diversification during animal evolution.

5.8 SAFEGUARDING GENETIC INFORMATION: THE 2015 NOBEL PRIZE WINNING DISCOVERY Each day our DNA is damaged by UV radiation, free radicals, and other cancer-causing substances such as those found in cigarette smoke. UV radiation can make two thymines bind to each other incorrectly. But even without such external attacks, a DNA molecule is inherently unstable. Thousands of spontaneous changes to a cell's genome occur on a daily basis. Furthermore, defects can also arise when DNA is copied during cell division, a process that occurs several million times every day in the human body. It has been found that the reason our genetic material does not disintegrate into complete chemical chaos is that a host of molecular systems continuously monitor and repair DNA. Although scientists believed, in the early 1970s, that DNA is an extremely stable molecule, Tomas Lindahl (Francis Crick Institute and Clare Hall Laboratory, Hertfordshire, UK), who is a Swedish citizen, demonstrated that DNA decays at a rate that ought to have made the development of life on Earth impossible. This insight led him to discover a molecular machinery—base excision repair—which constantly counteracts the collapse of our DNA. Base excision repairs DNA when a base of a nucleotide is damaged, for example cytosine. Cytosine can easily lose an amino group, forming a base called uracil. Uracil cannot form a base pair with guanine. An enzyme—glycosylase— discovers the defect and excises (ie, cuts out) the base of uracil. Another couple of enzymes remove the rest of the nucleotide from the DNA strand. DNA polymerase fills in the gap and the DNA strand is sealed by DNA ligase. Another scientist, Aziz Sancar (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA), who is a U.S. and Turkish citizen, mapped nucleotide excision repair, the mechanism that cells use to repair UV damage to DNA. Nucleotide excision repairs DNA injuries caused by UV radiation or cancer-causing substances. The enzyme exinuclease finds the damage and cuts the DNA strand, and removes a certain number of nucleotides. DNA polymerase fills in the resulting gap. DNA ligase seals the DNA strand. Now the injury has been dealt with. People born with defects in the nucleotide excision repair system will develop skin cancer if they are exposed to sunlight. The cell also utilizes nucleotide excision repair to correct defects caused by mutagenic substances, among other things. Yet another scientist, Paul Modrich (Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, NC, USA), who is a U.S. citizen, demonstrated how the cell corrects errors that occur when DNA is replicated during cell division. This mechanism—mismatch repair—reduces the error frequency during DNA replication by about a 1000-fold. Congenital defects in mismatch repair are known, for example, to cause a hereditary variant of colon cancer. When DNA is copied during cell division, mismatching nucleotides are sometimes incorporated into the new strand. Out of a thousand such mistakes, mismatch repair fixes all but one. Two enzymes—mutS and mutL—detect the mismatch in DNA. The enzyme mutH recognizes methyl groups on DNA. Only the original strand, which acted as a template during the copying process, will have methyl groups attached to it. The faulty copy is cut. The mismatch is

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FIG. 5.21 Joint winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2015 (Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich, and Aziz Sancar) for mechanistic studies of DNA repair. © Nobel Media AB. Photo: Alexander Mahmoud. Source: https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2015/.

removed. The DNA polymerase fills in the gap and DNA ligase seals the DNA strand. As indicated earlier, the reason our genetic material does not disintegrate into complete chemical chaos is that a host of molecular systems continuously monitor and repair DNA. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2015 to Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich, and Aziz Sancar (Fig. 5.21) for leading research on damaged DNA and for having mapped, at a detailed molecular level, how several of these repair systems function, how cells repair damaged DNA, and safeguard the genetic information. The three Nobel Laureates have provided fundamental insights into how cells function, knowledge that can be used, for instance, in the development of new cancer treatments.

5.9 CORRELATION BETWEEN BIOLOGICAL AND ASTRONOMICAL ORGANIZATIONS: KUMAR’S HYPOTHESIS The preceding sections in this chapter have provided a bird's-eye view of the numerous discoveries in astronomy and cosmology, which provided deep insight into the origin and working of the Universe, and how living systems must have arisen on the primitive Earth in a bath of nutrients following a complex spontaneous chemical evolution. Boughn and Crittenden (2004) provided a correlation between the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) and large-scale structure in the Universe. But, would it not be reasonable to have a correlation between the cosmological and biological working of this Universe; at least the planet Earth where we live today? This vexing question remained rather elusive. Dr. Arbind Kumar (Fig. 5.22), an Indian biomedical scientist and professor at the postgraduate Zoology Department of Patna University, published a seminal paper in 2009 addressing this important question, and he provided an elegant mathematical relationship, correlating astronomy and biology in a logical manner (see Kumar, 2009). He is firm in his conviction that the need of the hour for science today is to look into the marvels of nature from different aspects of separate disciplines and then only can we crack the truth. He believes that there is an underlying order in nature and unifying principle in the physical as well as biological sciences, and that it might be possible to search and crack that ultimate truth of the Universe. The relationship established in his paper between the genetic code and amino acids of the living organisms on the Earth and the Solar System is indicative of that underlying unifying principle in the biological, astronomical, physical, and other sciences. Kumar's research findings imply that the two parts of nature, (1) the biological Universe (microcosm) and (2) the physical Universe (macrocosm) are intimately correlated both structurally and physiologically. Dr. Kumar noted that there exists a definite organizational plan in our Solar System and Galaxy, other galaxies, and cluster of galaxies, active galactic nuclei (AGNs), BL Lacertae objects (BL Lacs), and quasi-stellar objects (QSOs) or quasars of the expanding Universe as revealed by astrophysical research in every band of the electromagnetic spectrum (Hoyle and Fowler, 1963; Fowler, 1975; Romer et al., 1994; Yun et al., 1994; Bowyer, 1994; Rogers and Iglesias, 1994; Hjellming and Rupen, 1995; Ortolani et al., 1995; Renzini et al., 1995; Zuckerman et al., 1995). However, little has been done to investigate a correlation between the microscopic organization of living organisms and the astronomical organization. The following description of Kumar's investigation suggests a close relationship between the organization of DNA molecule and the cell during organic evolution, and the organization of our Solar System during inorganic evolution. In his studies, the astronomical data have been compared and correlated with the data of DNA molecule and the experimental data obtained through microscopic study of the cells of some organs such as liver, pancreas, testis, and ovary of

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FIG. 5.22 Dr. Arbind Kumar, an Indian biomedical scientist and professor at the postgraduate Zoology Department of Patna University, who discovered an elegant mathematical relationship between astronomy and biology.

the guinea pig. Light scanning and transmission electron microscope studies (Kumar and Susheela, 1994a,b, 1995) have shown that cells of a particular type are organized together to form a tissue of specialized function and different tissues are organized to form organs to perform a particular function in an organism.

5.9.1 Functional Resemblance Between DNA and Astronomy In formulating the mathematical relationships in DNA, Kumar (2009) relied on the well-established Watson-Crick model of DNA (see Watson and Crick, 1953). According to this model, the DNA structure is composed of two helical polynucleotide chains that form a double helix around the same central axis (Fig. 4.12). The two base pairs adeninethymine (A-T) and cytosine-guanine (C-G) are stacked inside the helix in a plane perpendicular to the helical axis. Two hydrogen bonds are formed between A and T, and three are formed between C and G. The average length of five hydrogen bonds, two base pairs, and backbone to backbone distance in double helix are shown in Table 5.1. From the DNA parameters given in Table 5.1, the following DNA ratios can be arrived at: a ¼ 0:5475 c b ¼ 0:2667 a

(5.1) (5.2)

The average of the values in Eqs. (5.1), (5.2), termed Average DNA ratio, is 0.4071. Kumar (2009) next considered the parameters of the planetary model of our Solar System, which is presented in Table 5.2. From this table it is found that the average of (r/R) ratios of five planets, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, is equal to 0.4126, and we will call it Average (r/R) ratio. Thus,

288 TABLE 5.1

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Parameters of DNA Molecules and Their Dimensions

Parameters

Symbol Used

Dimensions (nm)

DNA Ratios

Average of the Two DNA Ratios; Average DNA ratio

Average base pair length

a

1.095

a/c ¼ 0.5475

0.4071

Average hydrogen bond length

b

0.292

b/a ¼ 0.2667

Diameter of DNA double helix

c

2.0

Source: Kumar, A., 2009. Evolution and relation of microcosm and macrocosm. Biospectra 4(2), 459–466.

TABLE 5.2 (r/R) Ratios of the Mean Values of Earth-Sun Distance (r) and Planet-Sun Distance (R) for Exterior Planets and the Inverse Ratios for Interior Planets Planets

r/R Ratio

Mercury

0.387

Venus

0.723

Mars

0.656

Jupiter

0.192

Saturn

0.105

Source: Kumar, A., 2009. Evolution and relation of microcosm and macrocosm. Biospectra 4(2), 459–466.

r ratio R ¼ 1:013 Average DNA ratio Average

(5.3)

Let us term this constant Kumar’s astro-molecular constant (K). Thus, K ¼ 1.013. It has been estimated that the average distance of the Moon from the Earth is 3.84  1010 cm, and the diameter of the Moon is 3.52  108 cm, so the average distance (EM) that the Moon is in terms of its own diameter from the Earth is equal to 109.09. Likewise, the average distance of the Earth from the Sun is 1.4964  1013 cm, and the diameter of the Sun is 1.39  1011 cm. Hence, the average distance (ES) that the Sun is in terms of its own diameter from the Earth is equal to 107.65. Interestingly, EM ¼ 1:013 ¼ K ES

(5.4)

This value of K, which is close to 1, is responsible for the rare cosmological events presented by the sight of total solar eclipses in which the apparent size of the Moon as seen from the Earth almost equals the apparent size of the Sun. Eqs. (5.3), (5.4) portrays the following relationship: r ratio EM R ¼ ¼K Average DNA ratio ES Average

(5.5)

5.9.2 Mathematical Relationships Among Codons in the Genetic Code, Amino Acids, and the Astro-Molecular Constant Returning to the topic of DNA, it is well recognized that DNA is the genetic material of cells, carrying information in coded form from cell to cell and from parent to offspring. The information contained in DNA is based on four nucleotides that are made of four bases (ie, A, T, G, and C). The genetic code consists of 43 ¼ 64 codons. In this expression, the number 4 represents the number of bases in the nucleotides, and the number 3 represents the nucleotide triplets, called codons. Note that the genetic code is highly similar among all organisms and can be expressed in a simple table with 64 entries. Although about 500 amino acids have so far been identified in several living organisms (Wagner and Musso, 1983), there are only 20 amino acids (called universal amino acids) that are present in all the living organisms found in the world, and are specified by the 64 codons of the DNA. It may be noted that DNA is made up of four types of nitrogenous bases, adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C), and thymine (T). Cells can translate the four-letter code (A, T, G,

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and C) into 20 universal amino acids. Simply stated, the codons consist of three nucleotides that specify single amino acid. All living organisms share the same 64 codons and 20 amino acids. In the structure of DNA molecules of different species of living organisms (including humans), an important numerical relationship was discovered. The number of adenines (A) always equal the number of thymines (T); and the numðA + G Þ ¼ 1:0. ber of guanines (G) always equal the number of cytosines (C). This means that ðC + T Þ ðA + GÞ It is interesting to note that ratio in all DNAs, regardless of the species (Lehninger et al., 1993), is also in ðC + TÞ approximation to K. Mathematically linking codons in the genetic code, amino acids, and K yields an interesting relationship as given below: Codons in the Genetic Code  K ¼π Universal Amino Acids in Living Organisms

(5.6)

It is also known that there exists an astronomical number 339, which is the number of disks of the Sun to measure its apparent path along the ecliptic during the vernal and autumnal equinoxes in the celestial sphere. Dividing this number with ES (ie, the average distance that the Sun is in terms of its own diameter from the Earth), we have 339 ¼ 3:149 ¼ π ES

(5.7)

From Eqs. (5.6), (5.7) the following generalized formula can be arrived at: Codons in the Genetic Code  K 339 ¼ ¼π Universal Amino Acids in Living Organisms ES

(5.8)

Note that π is a universal number denoting the ratio of the circumference of a sphere or a circle to its own diameter. Thus, the formulae given above logically correlate the molecular data with the astronomical data, thereby implying a common organizational plan of the DNA molecule and our Solar System probably due to the influence of a common governing force; that is, the Sun's large gravitational force. The Sun keeps the planets in their orbits by its gravitational attraction and the centrifugal force of the respective planets. Gravitation, a general property of all matter, makes the Earth revolve around the Sun and the Moon around the Earth. Sir Isaac Newton first invoked the idea of gravity as a universal force. In the framework of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, the properties of space, time, and gravitation are merged into one harmonious and elegant picture. Albert Einstein propounded the idea of gravitational curvature of the four-dimensional space-time continuum (Lorentz et al., 1923; Eddington, 1959). The world line of orbital motion of the Earth is a helix and geodesic (Lorentz et al., 1923). It is tempting to speculate that there could be a correlation between the helical world line and the helical structure of the polynucleotide chains of the DNA molecule, which is the first self-reproducing molecule to have formed in the beginning of the biological evolution. We know that the diurnal rhythms (circadian rhythms) and annual rhythms observed in the activities, distribution, and physiology of organisms are related to the time of day (24-h basis) and season of the year. In some cases the rhythm is lunar (eg, the sexual heat exhibited by some animals during Full Moon and New Moon). However, the physiological basis of this time sense of the organisms is unknown. The genetic code made up of DNA, acts as an intracellular computer for the structure and physiology of the cell (Portelli, 1976, 1979) and governs the embryonic development leading to the formation of the body plan of the organisms. The relation of genetic code with the annual apparent motion of the Sun (Eq. 5.8) due to the movement of the Earth round the Sun might be one of the factors for the annual rhythms. The apparent diurnal revolution of the Sun due to the Earth's rotation might be one of the reasons for diurnal rhythms. The large gravitational force exerted by the Sun not only holds the members of the Solar System together but also causes them to take part in its true movement; that is, a movement relative to the adjacent fixed stars and a revolution (cosmic year) about the center of the Galactic System, which itself is moving in the space. Kumar (2009) reckons that it would be interesting to propose that cosmic year might cause biological rhythms on the Earth.

5.9.3 Functional Resemblance Between Cells and Astronomy A convincing astronomical connection exhibited by the DNA present in the cells of biological organisms prompted Kumar (2009) to search for similar possible astronomical connection in the case of biological cells as well. For this study, Kumar harvested cells from organs (ie, liver, pancreas, testis, and ovary) of six normal healthy guinea pigs. Following established laboratory procedures, he made careful observations under an optical microscope.

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TABLE 5.3 Size of Different Types of Cell (C), Nucleus (N), and N/C Ratios Cell Types

Cell Size (μm)

Nuclear Size (μm)

Sizeof Nucleus N ie; ratio Sizeof Cell C

Pancreatic cell (100)

12.080  1.148

6.418  0.377

0.530  0.060

Hepatocyte (100)

19.200  2.848

10.479  4.548

0.538  0.166

Spermatocyte (100)

14.950  1.605

10.182  0.700

0.679  0.057

Oocyte (5)

54.810  1.725

23.940  2.053

0.437  0.046

Source: Kumar, A., 2009. Evolution and relation of microcosm and macrocosm. Biospectra 4(2), 459–466.

The hepatic cells (liver), pancreatic acinar cells, primary spermatocytes (testis), and oocytes (ovary) were studied and micrometric measurements done. The measurements of the size of the cells and their nuclei were made at random using ocular and stage micrometers. The shortest and longest diameters of each cell and nucleus were measured and the mean of two diameters was taken. Total 100 cells and nuclei were measured for each type of cell except the mature oocytes, where five cells and nuclei were measured because mature oocytes are found less in number. The ratio of the size of nucleus and cell (N/C) was taken out for 100 cells and nuclei measured and their mean and standard deviation calculated. The experimental data obtained by Kumar (2009) are presented in Table 5.3. Interestingly, it was found that the N/C ratios of each type of the cells studied are in the range of r/R ratios of exterior planets ie, Mars and Jupiter and interior planets; ie, Venus and Mercury (Table 5.2). The ratios given in Eqs. (5.1), (5.2) are also in the same range of (r/R) ratios of these planets. The previous records (Kumar and Susheela, 1994a,b; Jethanandani, 1994) also show that in normal rabbits the N/C ratio of Leydig cell is 0.59 and of hepatic cell from different zones of the lobule is about 0.43, which are also in the same range of (r/R) ratios of Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter. The possible effect of the Sun's gravity on the organization of DNA molecule, which in turn governs the organization of the cell and nucleus (Portelli, 1976, 1979), may be the reason that DNA ratios and (N/C) ratios of the cells are in the range of (r/R) ratios of Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter. This reconciliation between DNA ratios, (N/C) ratios, and (r/R) ratios may also be correlated to the fact that the density of Mercury, Venus, and Mars are higher and they are nearer to the Earth in comparison to the other planets, and that the gravitating mass of Jupiter is very high in comparison to that of other planets. It is clear from Table 5.3 that in oocytes the size of cell and nucleus increases proportionately keeping the (N/C) ratio in the specified range of (r/R) ratios of these planets. In tetraploid hepatocytes, too, the size of the cell and nucleus increases so far as to maintain the (N/C) ratio in the specified range. Standard deviations of the size of hepatocytes and nuclei are higher because both diploid and tetraploid cells were included in the micrometric measurement.

5.9.4 Microcosm and Macrocosm Investigations carried out by Kumar (2009) clearly show that the microscopical numbers (ie, the number of codons of the genetic code, number of universal amino acids, and the average DNA ratio, which are common to all biological organisms) are functions of the astronomical numbers as shown in Eqs. (5.5), (5.6), (5.8). The study also implies a close relationship between the organizational plan of DNA molecule, cell, and nucleus during organic evolution and the organizational plan of different planets in the Solar System during inorganic evolution (Tables 5.1–5.3). The possibility of universal gravity ruling the organizational plan of DNA molecule, cell, and nucleus at least in the beginning of biological evolution cannot be ruled out. Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation is fundamental in celestial mechanics. Gravity rules the whole Universe. It holds together the billions of stars of our Milky Way; it makes the Earth revolve around the Sun; and the Moon around the Earth. It includes double stars that revolve about each other and holds together star clusters and galaxies. Study of Hoyle and Fowler (1963) on a super-massive star opened up a new field in astrophysics, called relativistic astrophysics, where Newtonian gravity is replaced by Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. Einstein has suggested that gravitational fields play an essential role in the elementary formations that go to make up the atom (Lorentz et al., 1923). Different combinations of the same atoms, obeying the same laws, comprise both the inanimate and the living worlds. The evidence has been presented that virtually all electrons and nuclei of the atoms

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that are or have been part of living matter on the Earth come from almost all stars in our and nearby galaxies and even from all other galaxies in the universe (Davies and Koch, 1991). Many scientists who believe in an underlying order in nature, search for an ultimate, unifying principle in the physical sciences as well as in the biological sciences (Nelkin and Lindee, 1995). Clearly, Dr. Kumar's thoughtful investigations have shed new light on a unifying entity between biological science and astronomical/astrophysical science. It has been reported that the presence of organic, prebiotic molecules on the composite grain clumps in the interstellar medium and in carbonaceous chondrites could have led to the start and dispersal of biological activity on the Earth and elsewhere in the Galaxy (Hoyle and Wickramsinghe, 1977). Whether life originated on the Earth or anywhere in the vast expanses of interstellar space, as the evidence has put forward (Hoyle and Wickramsinghe, 1977; Peltzer et al., 1984), it is probable that the gravitational force, which played a key role in the organization of our Solar System and Galaxy and other galaxies of the Universe, would also have played a significant role in the organization of the first self-reproducing molecule, DNA, and the cell at least in the early stages of the biological evolution. The selforganization of self-reproducing polynucleotide chains of the nucleic acid (Epstein and Eigen, 1979) in the beginning of biological evolution on the Earth might be governed by the force of gravity resulting in the syntheses of the genetic code (and life). Whether the recent genetic code represents the informational message transmitted by living systems of the previous cycle of the Universe or it could originate on the Earth within the present cycle of the Universe (Berger, 1976), in both cases gravitation would be the common influencing factor on the genetic code. The astrophysical entities like UV rays, gamma rays, X-rays, visible light, electrical discharges (lightning), and other mechanisms have been reported to have played a significant role in the chemical evolution and the origin of life (Alexander and Bacq, 1960; Calvin, 1975; Keefe et al., 1995; Robertson and Miller, 1995). A close relationship between the chemical evolution of life and the evolution of Earth's crust has been reported (Ingmanson and Dowler, 1977). It seems that the influence of gravitational force on the development of genetic code was one of the significant steps in the beginning of biological evolution. The genetic program has played a significant role throughout the evolutionary process, which has practical uses in our everyday life (Kerr, 1995; Weiner, 1995; Gibbons, 1995; Futuyma, 1995). The genetic code works as an intracellular computer (Portelli, 1976) that governs the organization of the cell and nucleus (Portelli, 1979) and the phylogenetic evolution (Portelli, 1975). Embryonic development proceeds in a particular order and according to a precise schedule set by the genetic program that determines when and where lines of differentiated cells will emerge, when and where different proteins will be made, and in what amounts. Both the quality and quantity of different proteins vary in time and space during embryonic development. And in the adult, various types of cells and tissues contain different collections of molecular types in accordance with their specialized functions. Hence, the genetic program controls the formation of the body plan. If intelligent life exists elsewhere in the cosmos (Coulter et al., 1994), it is likely that the basic structural organization of genetic code and cell system would be the same as on the Earth because of universal gravity acting in space and time. But its form and size might differ in various degrees depending upon the presence of different environments throughout the evolutionary process. So, extraterrestrial life might most likely look like us with different degrees of deviation in the body plan depending upon to which corner of the cosmos they belong. The large size of the dinosaurs, a group of reptiles that were the dominant fauna during the Jurassic period about 150 million years ago, might also have been influenced by the specific environment present on the Earth. Apart from the meteorite impingement in Mexico and several other regions of the Earth about 65.5 million years ago, the marked changes in the environment during the end of the Mesozoic era about 70 million years ago are considered to be one of the factors for extinction of these animals. Thus, we see that Dr. Kumar's investigations suggest a close correlation between the microscopic world and the astronomical world (Eqs. (5.5), (5.6), (5.8); Tables 5.1–5.3). Inorganic evolution and organic evolution may be seen to represent nothing but two different facets of the same cosmological phenomenon called gravitation. Dr. Kumar's study points out the possible continuity through the integrated levels of organization from microcosm to macrocosm. It is likely that Dr. Kumar's findings may open new vistas in our understanding of the origin, evolution, and structural organization of the Universe. It is tempting to speculate that the phenomenon of accretion of gas onto a massive black hole at the galactic center (Renzini et al., 1995) and the jets of material ejected from the accretion disc around a black hole, which expand and decay over a few days (Hjellming and Rupen, 1995), or the explosion of supernovae may be analogous with the phenomenon of assimilation (the process whereby the already digested foodstuffs are absorbed and utilized by the tissues) and secretion of material inside living organism. The process of stellar nucleosynthesis (Wagoner et al., 1967; Fowler, 1975) may be analogous to the synthesis of substances in the cells of organisms. These analogies existing on the two different scales of space and time might appear unrelated initially. Although new

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information on galaxies, and the birth and death of stars are coming in (Kraan-Korteweg et al., 1994), there are many long-standing mysteries enveloping the Universe. The advent of a new generation of astronomical instruments opens new windows for astronomers and may call for major revisions in the standard view of cosmology. Neutrino “telescopes” are expected to give more detailed information about celestial objects such as AGNs, massive black holes, neutron stars, and supernovae. Extensive and well coordinated work between different types of microscopes and telescopes could be able to unravel more mysteries enveloping the microcosm and macrocosm, thus bridging further the gaps between diverse disciplines such as biology, chemistry, and astronomy/astrophysics. The practical applicability of astronomy is often questioned in comparison to particle physics and medical science, but we see that it has got a direct bearing on the modern humans spearheading biological evolution, which is still in progress. Millions of people worldwide are witness to the spectacular celestial phenomenon of total solar eclipse, which also practically confirms Einstein's theory of General Relativity predicting deflection of light due to the Sun's large mass causing curvature of the space-time continuum in which life originated on the Earth. Dr. Kumar proposes that knowing the biology better will solve the mysteries of the Universe better.

5.10 BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION: THE ROLE OF ISLANDS Since the days of Charles Darwin (1809–82), scientists have been using the framework of the Theory of Evolution to explore the interconnectedness of life on Earth and adaptation of organisms to the ever-changing environment. The advent of molecular biology has advanced and accelerated the study of evolution by allowing direct examination of the genetic material that ultimately determines the phenotypes upon which selection acts. The study of evolution has been furthered through examination of microbial evolution, with large population numbers, short generation times, and easily extractable DNA. DNA is the genetic information every living thing carries inside it that determines how it is made. When individuals reproduce sexually, they mix their DNA. When members of one local population migrate into another local population and introduce their genes into it by mating with individuals of the population they have just joined, we call this “gene flow.” Interestingly, the DNA of species drifts apart when separated. An obvious possibility is the sea. Populations on separate islands don't meet each other—not often anyway—so their two sets of genes have the opportunity to drift away from one another. This makes islands extremely important in the origins of new species. Islands matter for species because the population of an island is cut off from contact with other populations (preventing gene flow) and so is free to begin to evolve in its own direction. The population of an island need not be totally isolated forever. Therefore, genes can occasionally cross the barrier surrounding it, whether this is water or uninhabited land. Darwin believed that the kind of thing that happened in the history of every animal and plant that has ever lived is merely the story of very slow and very gradual evolution through natural selection. The number of generations required for such evolutionary transformations to happen might be larger than anyone can possibly imagine, but the world is thousands of millions of years old, and it is known from fossils that life got started more than three and a half billion years ago, so there has been plenty of time for evolution to happen. This is Darwin's great idea, and it is called Evolution by Natural Selection. According to Dawkins (2011), the theory of Evolution by Natural Selection is one of the most important ideas ever to occur to a human mind, explaining everything we know about life on Earth. Dawkins further asserts that evolution is a real explanation, which really works, and that anything that suggests that complicated life-forms appeared suddenly, in one go (rather than evolving gradually step-by-step), is just a lazy storydno better than the fictional magic of a fairy godmother's wand.

5.11 DISCOVERIES IN LIFE SCIENCE: CLONING BY NUCLEAR TRANSFER Since the Renaissance, several great scholars have made immense contributions in life science. For example, JeanBaptiste Lamarck (1744–1829)da French naturalist and academic—was an early proponent of the idea that evolution occurred and proceeded in accordance with natural laws. Likewise, Gregor Mendel (1822–84)dan Austrian monk— gained posthumous fame as the founder of the modern science of genetics. Mendel invented a real world model of heredity based purely on his observations from experiments with breeding peas in his monastery garden and his imagination. In biology, apart from Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution, cloning technology was heralded as a revolutionary breakthrough. For insight into the early history of embryology and genetics, two books written in the 1930s by outstanding scientists Morgan (1934) and Needham (1934) cannot be bettered.

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5.11.1 Cloning Technique The advent of recombinant DNA (rDNA) enabled molecular biologists to clone genes. The “thought experiment” of Spemann in 1938 on what would happen if a nucleus from a differentiated cell, even an adult cell, were to be somehow introduced into an egg whose own nucleus had been removed, in the words of Spemann, “appeared at first sight to be somewhat fantastical” (Spemann, 1938). In 1952, Robert Briggs and Thomas King electrified the biological world by reporting successful nuclear transfer in the frog Rana pipiens (Briggs and King, 1952). Results of several subsequent experiments by several researchers (eg, Briggs and King, 1952; Bromhall, 1975; Gurdon, 1977; McGrath and Solter, 1983) were impressive, but still nobody had succeeded in making an adult amphibian by transplantation of an adult nucleus to an egg. In 1997, cloning topped the charts of scientific and social discourse. That was when the news broke that Dolly, the Scottish cloned female sheep, had been born [Dolly was actually born on Jul. 5, 1996, although her arrival has has been revealed only in 1997 (Weise, 2006a,b)]. According to McLaren (2000), one of the questions that has inspired the science leading to and emerging from Dolly is: Does the hereditary material in the nucleus remain intact as the embryo develops? In other words, what role does the nucleus play in development? Dolly the sheep was created using the technique of somatic cell nuclear transfer (ie, implanting genetic material from another cell), where the cell nucleus from an adult cell (in the present case, an udder (ie, mammary gland) cell from one sheep) was transferred into an unfertilized oocyte (developing egg cell) that has had its cell nucleus removed. The hybrid cell is then stimulated to divide (ie, triggering cell division) by an electric shock, and when it develops into a blastocyst, it is implanted in a surrogate mother (Campbell et al., 1996). In reality, Dolly represented just one stage in a whole series of experiments (ie, tinkering with the DNA machinery of cells) carried out in different laboratories by different teams of scientists, and all duly published in the scientific literature (see Campbell et al., 1996). Even though Dolly was not the first animal to be cloned, she gained much international attention because she was the first to be cloned from an adult cell (McKinnell and Di Berardino, 1999), a difference that is key in the promise and much of the controversy of the technology. There were two distinct scientific motivations that accounted for the creation of Dolly. The first was the fundamental desire to know whether the hereditary material in the nucleus of each cell remains intact throughout development, whatever the fate of the cell. The second related in particular to farm animals: the ancient and ongoing desire to replicate and conserve those rare animals that possess an unusually favorable combination of genetic characteristics. The desire to augment those characteristics still further by genetic manipulation introduces still another interweaving strand—stem cell biology—with its own history and its strong biomedical implications for the future (McLaren, 2000). For the general public, and indeed for many scientists whose attention was focused elsewhere, Dolly came like a bolt from the future (McLaren, 2000). The cell used as the donor for the cloning of Dolly was taken from a mammary gland of a sheep, and DNA tests revealed that Dolly was an exact genetic duplicate of the animal from which the single cell was taken. Furthermore, it was found that Dolly is unrelated to the surrogate mother. Production of a healthy clone therefore proved that a cell taken from a specific part of the body could recreate a whole individual. Just as the exploration of nuclear potential and the desire for replication have been two distinct strands in the evolution of cloning, so they remain distinguishable factors that will influence possible future lines of development, both in animals and in humans. The birth of Dolly caught the world community by surprise. In fact, the sheep's birth had been heralded as one of the most significant scientific breakthroughs of the time, although it was likely to spark ethical controversy (Weise, 2006a, b). Some believe that Dolly heralded an emerging technology that could have a “fundamental impact on human existence” (Weise, 2006a,b).

5.11.2 Ethical Objections to Cloning Because the nucleus that gave rise to Dolly came from an adult sheep (not even in frogs had an adult been cloned from adult cells), and because this feat of replication had been achieved in a mammal, the birth of Dolly, though surprising news in itself, also brought with it the shocking realization that making human clones, if needed, is a real possibility. Thus, Dolly, the sheep cloned by nuclear transfer from a cultured cell line—created outside the traditional male-female sexual intervention—was seen by many individuals as a symbol of threat to the traditionally held “sacredness of human birth and life.” Several ethical objections have crept up around the birth of Dolly (Jul. 5, 1996 to Feb. 14, 2003). The cloning of “Dolly the sheep,” called “the world's most famous sheep” by sources including BBC News and Scientific American (Lehrman, 2008), raised moral dilemmas amid fears that the technique could be used to clone humans.

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Most religious groups do not back the idea of human cloning. In particular, many questions are raised about cloning a human being. The Roman Catholic Church is strongly against human cloning research, and it believes that an outright ban is needed. Its views are based largely on the interpretation of the story of Creation. A passage in Genesis on the Creation of Adam is the moral standpoint of the Church against cloning. Cloning is interpreted by it as a step closer to becoming the Creator (ie, God). Those who accept the Catholic Church's viewpoint argue that cloning will violate their dignity as God's children. The Church of Scotland is somewhat softer in its view on cloning. It said while it is “fascinating” research work, it has reservations (Weise, 2006a,b). Many Jews, on the other hand, favor human cloning, with justifiable explanations. Indeed, apart from the religious orthodoxy, many people find cloning human beings entirely unacceptable ethically. Dr. Ian Wilmut, who led the team of Scottish scientists who were behind the birth of Dolly, described human cloning as both “repugnant” and illegal. There would, of course, be people who believe that personhood is present from the very beginning of embryonic life, so that using an embryo for any purpose other than making a baby is tantamount to murder. Public surveys, taken after the revelation of the birth of Dolly the cloned sheep, found that many people are opposed to human cloning (see eg, Time, Mar. 10, 1997). There is a greater tolerance for cloning animals to serve human purposes. According to some people, cloning of any species, whether they are human or nonhuman, is ethically and morally wrong. The news about Dolly's birth enraged animal rights activists as well. Ethical positions on animal cloning science and human values often clashed. There could be many different reasons why people might wish to clone themselves or others. Some reasons seem more ethically objectionable than others. According to McLaren (2000), the 21st century will see many deep ethical conflicts, but it will also see unprecedented biomedical advances that will benefit all humankind.

5.11.3 Positive Attributions of Cloning 5.11.3.1 Creation of valuable pharmaceutical products and cures for genetic diseases Several positive attributions can be made from cloning. In terms of perceived advantages of cloning, disease resistance is considered to be an early target, but the most immediate impact of nuclear transfer cloning that we are likely to see will be animals producing valuable pharmaceutical products in their milk or even urine (“pharming”), or producing milk lacking the proteins to which babies are allergic, or milk or meat with enhanced nutritional value (McLaren, 2000). According to the company that has bought the rights to the research (PPL Therapeutics, based near Edinburgh) Dolly would help to improve the basic understanding of aging and genetics, and lead to the production of cheaper medicines. Embryologist Dr. Ian Wilmut, from the Roslin Institute, part of the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, who led the team of Scottish scientists who were behind the birth of Dolly, opined that the Dolly research will enable us to study genetic diseases for which there is presently no cure, and track down the mechanisms that are involved. It is believed that, in the future, cloning can help discover cures for paraplegics, quadriplegics, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, diabetes, heart failure, and any other genetic disease. 5.11.3.2 Genetic modification of pigs for organ transplantation into humans Dr Ian Wilmut believes that the most interesting application of cloning might include efforts to genetically modify pigs so that their organs can be transplanted into humans without being rejected, potentially alleviating a severe shortage of human organs for transplant. Another possible application is creation of human antibodies in cattle that could be drawn out and used to treat such human ills as antibiotic-resistant infections, immune deficiencies, and cancer. There would be a huge potential benefit in having human antibodies because there is a great potential need for them in diagnostics. 5.11.3.3 Preserving endangered species Apart from some of the just-mentioned medical benefits, cloning may have applications in preserving endangered species and may become a viable tool for reviving extinct species (Trounson, 2006). In Jan. 2009, scientists from the Centre of Food Technology and Research of Aragon, in Zaragoza, northern Spain, announced the cloning of the Pyrenean ibex, a form of wild mountain goat, which was officially declared extinct in 2000. Although the newborn ibex died shortly after birth due to physical defects in its lungs, it is the first time an extinct animal has been cloned, and may open doors for saving endangered and newly extinct species by resurrecting them from frozen tissue (Gray and Dobson, 2009; Jabr, 2013).

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5.12 SELF-ORGANIZATION IN THE ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE AND BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION Discussions and debates on the hypotheses on the origin of life from below the ocean floor, volcanoes, and hot springs under severe conditions of high temperature and pressure have triggered international interest in recent times. It has been found that self-organization is an important aspect in the origin of life research (see eg, Eigen, 1971; Eigen and Schuster, 1977). A school of thought led by creationists (ie, those who believe in the intervention of God in creation) argues that self-organization of material structures happens because the underlying laws of nature were designed by God for this purpose (designed self-organization). According to them the actual findings of science suggest a much grander idea of God: the designer who laid out an elegant and self-sufficient set of laws of nature that accomplish the unfolding of His creation by inducing self-organization of the material world. It has been suggested that this idea is easily compatible with the concept of God of many mainstream religions, including most Christian ones. The other school of thought goes with the idea that the underlying laws of nature allows for it (undesigned self-organization). It is now generally accepted in scientific circles that the laws of nature are so self-sufficient that, based on them, the complexity of the entire physical Universe evolved from fundamental particles. Just as atoms, stars, and galaxies selfassembled out of the fundamental particles produced by the big bang, complex life-forms also self-assembled from simpler life-forms during biological evolution. Based on the just-mentioned processes involved in the evolution of the physical Universe from fundamental particles, and the evolution of complex life-forms from simpler life-forms in the biological world, one can reasonably argue that the laws of nature are self-sufficient enough to allow life itself to originate spontaneously, by chemical evolution of suitable structures, regardless of whether one believes these laws are designed or undesigned. Therefore, according to Moritz (2010), one should expect an origin of life by natural causes from both theistic and atheistic philosophical perspectives. As indicated earlier, according to the big bang theory on the Origin of the Universe (see Lemaıˆtre, 1931, 1934, 1950), the Universe evolved with the initial expansion (presumably resulting from an explosion) of a single point of matter with an infinite density and temperature at a finite time in the past (about 13.8 billion years before the present). Dr. (Fr.) Georges Lemaıˆtre's big bang model of the origin of the Universe was a natural outcome of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity as applied to a homogeneous universe, coupled with the observed redshift manifested as an outcome of the Doppler effect, and the results of cosmological measurements carried out by Edwin Hubble, at the Mt. Wilson Observatory in California. In the language of science embodied in Lemaıˆtre's big bang theory, the Universe evolved by selforganization of simple material structures (matter) toward more and more complex structures. Atoms, stars, and galaxies self-assembled out of the fundamental particles produced by the big bang. It has been suggested that, just like stars and their planets and their satellites in the Universe—formed primarily from heavier elements such as carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen that were born in the explosions of supernovae—we, who consist primarily of these very same elements, are thus literally born from the stardust (Moritz, 2010). The process of biological evolution started from bacteria-like tiny cells, termed the LUCA. It has been hypothesized that complex life-forms on Earth, including the humans, arose from such simple cells. It is admirable that the satisfactory explanation offered by the bing bang theory of the origin of the Universe, founded solely on Einstein's wellestablished General Relativity principle and cosmological measurements, gave a new dimension to the discussion on the topic of a totally different subject in science; namely, biological evolution of complex life-forms from simple cells.

5.13 HOW LIFE ORIGINATED: A PUZZLE TO BE RESOLVED Many accounts of the origin of life assume that the spontaneous synthesis of a self-replicating nucleic acid could take place readily. However, according to Shapiro (1984), serious chemical obstacles exist, which make such an event extremely improbable. This is because of the fact that any nucleic acid components that were formed on the primitive Earth would tend to hydrolyze by a number of pathways. Their polymerization would be inhibited by the presence of vast numbers of related substances that would react preferentially with them. Shapiro (1984) reckons that nucleic acids were not formed by prebiotic routes, but are later products of evolution. It has been pointed out that without any proof or even logical reasoning, it has been merely assumed that life might have arisen as a result of the spontaneous formation of a single substance that embodied within itself all of the fundamental properties associated with life. But, as a matter of fact, there is no such thing as a living molecule (Oro et al., 1990). Biology has been unable to produce a wholly satisfactory definition of life, but it is clear that one cannot reduce all characteristics of living systems to a particular substance that arises suddenly by a lucky combination of atoms or

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simple monomers. Note that a monomer is a molecule that may bind chemically to other molecules to form a polymer. The monomers of RNA are the 5-carbon sugar called ribose, a phosphate group, and the nitrogenous bases. Amino acids are natural monomers that polymerize to form proteins. Nucleotides, monomers found in the cell nucleus, polymerize to form nucleic acids—DNA and RNA. How the first biological systems capable of replication and translation emerged is one of the major problems in the study of the origins of life. Orgel (1987) reckons that it is even possible that the genetic code was established prior to the origin of RNA itself. Several origin of life researchers believe that the evolution of RNA is likely to have played an important role in the very early history of life on Earth but it is doubtful that life began with RNA. The idea that the first living systems on Earth were based on self-replicating RNA molecules has become popular as a result of the discovery of ribozymes. However, there are several major problems associated with the prebiotic synthesis of ribonucleotides. Based on consideration of several potentially prebiotic nucleotide analogues, Joyce et al. (1987) have proposed that RNA was preceded in the evolution of life by a polymer constructed from flexible, acyclic, probably prochiral nucleotide analogues that were synthesized readily on the primitive Earth. They have also discussed in this research paper some of the consequences of this proposal. According to Joyce (1989), consideration of what came before RNA must take into account relevant information from geochemistry, prebiotic chemistry, and nucleic acid biochemistry. While research in the field now appears vastly more promising than that at the end of the 20th century, the science on the origin of life is, compared to the science of biological evolution, still considerably underdeveloped in its explanatory power. Beyond assuming the first cell must have somehow come into existence, biologists have yet to explain its emergence from the prebiotic world approximately 4 billion years ago. According to Moritz (2010), overall it can be said that puzzle pieces are starting to come together in such a way that the scientific assumption of a spontaneous origin of life from nonliving matter finally has achieved plausibility on the level of experimental evidence. Based on studies conducted thus far, a spontaneous origin of life as simple “cells” containing a single genetic polymer, upon which natural selection could act, is feasible. A gradual evolutionary transition from these to common cellular complexity would have been possible (Moritz, 2010). As noted earlier, according to modern life science, thousands of basic biochemical processes comprise life. An organism's genome (ie, an organism's complete set of DNA, including all of its genes) contains all of the information needed to build and maintain that organism. In humans, a copy of the entire genome—more than 3 billion DNA base pairs—is contained in all cells that have a nucleus. Despite all the uncertainties involved in our description of the processes that led to the emergence of biological systems on our planet Earth, it is considered by many scientists that life is neither a miracle nor the result of a chance event but rather the outcome of a long evolutionary process. Whether or not this process can take place in any other place in the Universe is a matter of speculation, but the cosmic abundances (Cameron, 1980) of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and other biogenic elements (Oro, 1963a), the existence of extraterrestrial organic compounds, and the processes of stellar and planetary formation are suggestive that at least some of the requirements for life are met elsewhere in our galaxy (Oro et al., 1982; Oro, 1988). Until now we have no evidence of extraterrestrial life. However, because the planet Mars appears to have been particularly rich in water in the past (Carr, 1986; Pollack and Kasting, 1987), it is quite possible that the formation of biochemical compounds took place in the primitive Mars environment during the first 800–1000 Myr of its history. A more detailed discussion of this possibility has been reviewed by Oro and Mills (1989). As Oro et al. (1990) pointed out, it is difficult to conceive from a scientific point of view that “intelligent” life on Earth is a singular phenomenon in the trillions of galaxies that comprise the observable Universe. After contemplating the possibility of self-replicating ribozymes emerging from pools of random polynucleotides and recognizing the difficulties that must have been overcome for RNA replication to occur in a realistic prebiotic soup, the challenge must now be faced of constructing a realistic picture of the origin of the RNA world. The constraints that must be met to originate a self-sustained evolving system are reasonably well understood. One can sketch out a logical order of events, beginning with prebiotic chemistry and ending with DNA/protein-based life. However, it must be said that the details of this process remain obscure and are, according to Robertson and Joyce (2012), not likely to be known in the near future. Dr. Benner and his colleagues at the Westheimer Institute at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution in Gainesville have amassed evidence for one potential path by which chemicals could have become living matter. In chemical experiments, Dr. Benner and his colleagues have demonstrated the occurrence of many of the reactions in this path. Based on their studies, it has been suggested that small organic compounds could have reacted with each other to produce string-shaped, self-replicating molecules (Zimmer, 2013). These strands, known as RNA, later combined into double-strands: the DNA in which we and other species encode our genes.

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Before there was life on Earth, there were molecules. At some point in time, a few specialized molecules began replicating. This self-replication, scientists agree, kick-started a biochemical process that would lead to the first organisms. But exactly how those molecules began replicating has been one of science's enduring mysteries. To understand “how life—which depends on self-replication and Darwinian evolution—emerges from chemistry” is a complex question. Growing evidence supports the idea that the emergence of catalytic RNA was a crucial early step. How that RNA came into being remains unknown (Orgel, 1994). Furthermore, despite great success achieved in understanding the genetic makeup of numerous organisms, the question of how life actually originated from nonliving matter remains an unresolved problem. For decades, scientists have tried to understand the basics of life by taking existing life and trimming it back to its essence. But their experiments all failed. In the past decade, origins of life researchers began to try building it from scratch. Prof. Jack Szostak, a Nobel Prize-winning genetics researcher at Harvard Medical School, first showed how a simple membrane could form from clay available on the early Earth. More recently, he and others have been searching for a simple series of steps that can explain how primitive genetic material replicated itself (Weintraub, 2011). Prof. Szostak and the other origins of life researchers humbly admit that they are nowhere near actually creating life.

5.14 RELIGIOUS BELIEFS AND SCIENCE We do not have a detailed knowledge of the processes that led to the appearance of life on Earth. The first life is thought to have started in the ocean because the earliest relatively reliable evidence of life is found there. Most of the oxygen in the atmosphere originally came from the activities of photosynthetic organisms in the ocean. Active hydrothermal systems (ie, hot-fluid-spewing chimneys on the seafloor, similar to geysers, producing superheated, mineral-laden water) existed as soon as liquid water accumulated on the Earth more than 4.2 billion years ago. A real or virtual sojourn to active deep-sea hydrothermal vent environments is considered to be a visit to primordial Earth. It is possible that present-day hydrothermal vent microorganisms harbor relict physiological characteristics that resemble the earliest microbial ecosystems on the Earth. It is also possible that geochemical processes of carbon reduction in hydrothermal systems represent the same kind of energy-releasing chemistry that gave rise to the first biochemical pathways. Life need not have evolved this way, but the mere prospect that it could have is reason enough to probe these environments further. The best-known theories for the origin of organic compounds (representing the chemistry of life) are based on the notion of an “organic soup” that was generated either by lightning-driven reactions in the early atmosphere of the Earth or by delivery of organic compounds to the Earth from space. Some of the “Origin of Life” researchers believe that Mars might be a more likely place for life to have started than Earth. It has been hypothesized that a giant impact on the Red Planet could then have kicked up microbe-laden rocks, which later fell to Earth. When submarine hydrothermal vents were discovered in 1977, the hypotheses on the source of life's reduced carbon started to change. Hydrothermal vents thus unite microbiology and geology to breathe new life into research into one of biology's most important questions: What is the origin of life? There are several scientists who believe that just as chemists transformed industry, medicine, and daily life by mastering chemical synthesis and control, the Origins of Life research has the potential to allow biologists to synthesize and control the building blocks of life. It has been said that the “origins” researchers are constructing is a cathedral, which may take them a century to find answers; but what they build will still be standing in a millennium (Weintraub, 2011). Human evolution is very complicated. Humans are not unique but are merely a part of the complex diversity of evolving life. Changing gene frequencies over time is one definition of evolution. As the list of hominids grows, it becomes increasingly clear that the process of evolution is a tree, not a ladder, in Darwin's favorite metaphor. Stephen Jay Gould was tireless in stressing that we are not the inevitable pinnacle of evolution but an accidental twig on the tree of life. There are few people today who will deny the value of science, but there are many who are terribly confused about the content of scientific knowledge. They doubt the big bang theory on the origin of the Universe; they are suspicious about the conclusions of climatologists regarding global warming; and they think that it is still an open question whether evolution through natural selection is responsible for the origin of species. There existed a love-hate relationship between science and religion. For example, the relationship between some Churches (particularly the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran Church) and science is a widely debated subject. Ironically, in several instances in the past, instead of religious faith and science complementary to each other, the Churches and science were severely at loggerheads in situations where scientific findings were not in conformity with the teachings of the Churches [examples include the brutal murder of Giodano Bruno, who supported the views of

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Nicolaus Copernicus in placing the Sun at the center of the celestial system (heleocentric theory)], thereby upsetting the religious accepted geocentric theory (ie, the Earth at the center of the celestial system); expulsion of Johannes Kepler (a great mathematician and astronomer who became well known for formulating the Fundamental Laws of Planetary Motion and is also the chief founder of contemporary astronomy) from the Lutheran Church; conviction and humiliation meted out to Galileodphysicist, mathematician, engineer, astronomer, and philosopher, who played a major role in the scientific revolution and ultimately overturned the notion of geo-centrismdon charges of heresy; and so forth. According to the Bible teaching in Genesis, God created all plants and animals, and they have not changed since that time. Yet the only way that Darwin could explain all of his careful and factual observations during his 5-year voyage spanning the world oceans was that they had indeed changed. No wonder, Charles Darwin's theory of “evolution by means of natural selection” remained to be disapproved by the Roman Catholic Church ever since its publication (see Darwin, 1859). However, in the years since the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species in 1859, the position of the Roman Catholic Church on the theory of evolution has slowly been refined. For about 100 years, there was no authoritative pronouncement on the subject, though many hostile comments were hurled at Darwin by local church figures. It may be noted that since the time of the notoriously intolerant Pope Urban VIII, who ordered and implemented the brutal killing of Brunodan outspoken advocate of the Copernican heliocentric (ie, Sun-centric) celestial system, and an early proponent of the idea of an infinite and homogeneous Universe—the organizational power of the papacy greatly weakened, and his successors were unable to maintain the papacy's intolerance and long-standing political and military influence in Europe. Thus, despite disagreement, no punitive actions were reported to have been proposed by the Church of the times against Darwin. Realizing the futility of swimming against the surging waves of continued scientific discoveries and their impact on the thinking of modern people the world over, the Roman Catholic Church eventually began evolving some facesaving exercises in terms of interpreting some scientific hypotheses and discoveries in favor of the teachings of the Church. For example, in the 1950 encyclical Humani generis, Pope Pius XII confirmed that there is no intrinsic conflict between Christianity and the Theory of Evolution, provided that Christians believe that the individual soul is a direct creation by God and not the product of purely material forces (John, 2010). In Oct. 1996, Pope John Paul II outlined the Catholic Church's view of evolution to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, saying that the Church holds that evolution is “more than a hypothesis,” it is a well-accepted theory of science and that the human body evolved according to natural processes, while the human soul is the creation of God (Scott, 2003). This updated an earlier pronouncement by Pope Pius XII in the 1950 encyclical Humani generis that accepted evolution as a possibility (as opposed to a probability) and a legitimate field of study to investigate the origins of the human body; though it was stressed that “the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God” (Linder, 2004). Catholic issues with evolutionary theory have always been concerned with the question of how man came to have a soul (VonRoeschlaub, 2007). Taking note of the clear writings on the walls, the Catholic Church had to finally, though probably reluctantly, come to terms with Darwin's Theory of Evolution. In 2005, Pope Benedict XVI's close associate Cardinal Schoenborn wrote an article saying, “evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense— an unguided, unplanned process—is not.” In Oct. 2014, Pope Francis created a flutter when he admitted and declared that the theories of evolution and big bang are real, and that “God is not a magician with a magic wand.” He explained that both scientific theories (intelligent design and the “pseudo theories” of creationism), are not incompatible with the existence of a creator; arguing instead that they “require it.” Open-minded people learned to keep questioning past ideas that were centered purely on religious beliefs, formulate general principles on the basis of observation and experiment, and then to test these principles by further observation and experiment. In this way, modern physical science (and to an increasing extent, biological science as well; for example, Watson-Crick base pairing geometry) has been able to find mathematical laws of great generality and predictive power. Dr. Arbind Kumar's hypothesis on the correlation between biological and astronomical organizations is another example of finding mathematical laws of great generality. It is good to keep an open mind, even about the conclusions of experts, but there comes a point at which issues become settled (for instance, the Earth revolves around the Sun, not the other way round!). There may be people who are confused whether a person has to abandon religion to become a scientist. When this question was posed to Nobel Prize laureate American physicist Steven Weinberg, often described as one of the most influential living scientists in the world, he replied thus (Varma, 2015): “Certainly not. There are fine scientists (though not many) who are quite religious. But there is a tension between science and religious belief. It is not just that scientific discoveries

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contradict some religious beliefs. More importantly, when one experiences the care and open-mindedness with which scientists seek truth, one may lose some respect for the pretensions of religion to certain knowledge.” Giodano Bruno (1548–1600)—a cosmological theoretician of the late medieval and Renaissance era, who first proposed the possibility of life outside Earth—believed that everything composes an all-encompassing God who is pervading the Universe and manifested in the material world rather than outside the material world. The illustrious physicist and mathematician Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1726) was a devout but unorthodox Christian. But, unusually for a member of the Cambridge faculty of the day, he refused to accept ministerial orders of bishops, priests, and deacons (holy orders!!) in the Church of England, and, like Bruno, he rejected the doctrine of the Trinity. Charles Darwin (1809–82), who proposed the theory of evolution by means of natural selection, and whose work was pivotal in the development of modern biology and evolution theory, was initially a student of Anglican theology with the aim of becoming an Anglican priest. Following his return in Oct. 1836 from his 5-year long transoceanic voyage of the Beagle he remained orthodox in his religious views. Though Darwin thought of religion as a tribal survival strategy, Darwin still believed that God was the ultimate law giver (von Sydow, 2005; Moore, 2006), and later recollected that at that time he was convinced of the existence of God as a First Cause, and therefore he deserved to be called a theist. This view subsequently fluctuated, and he continued to explore conscientious doubts, without forming fixed opinions on certain religious matters. Though he remained silent about his religious views, in 1879 he responded that he had never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God, and that generally “an Agnostic would be the more correct description of my state of mind” (see “‘Darwin Correspondence Project’ What Did Darwin Believe?”). Thus, Charles Darwin can neither be described as an atheist nor a theist; he conveniently chose a middle path, holding the view that nothing is or can be known of the existence of God. It may be more appropriate to say that Darwin held close to his chest his naturalistic views rather than anything else. However, his belief in religion began to slowly wane toward the end of his life. He rather chose to go for a walk while his wife went to the church. Dr. Albert Einstein (1879–1955)—world famous physicist, Nobel Prize winner, and proponent of the Theory of Relativity—did not believe in any religion (Isaacson, 2007). But he believed in a God who is outside the ambit of any religion. On Apr. 24, 1921, Rabbi Herbert Goldstein of the Institutional Synagogue, New York, faced Einstein with the simple five-word cablegram: “Do you believe in God?” In reply to this query, Albert Einstein's most familiar statement of his beliefs is the following: “I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals Himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns Himself with fates and actions of human beings” (Schilpp, 1970). Einstein's famous mentioning about God was in 1926 with reference to his unhappiness, from a philosophical standpoint, about an inherently probabilistic “Copenhagen interpretation” of quantum mechanics, that “I, at any rate, am convinced that He (God) does not throw dice." The Russian physicist Alexander Friedmann (1888–1925), who constructed idealized mathematical solutions of Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity for an expanding and contracting Universe and obtained his famous “closed Universe model,” with a dynamics of expansion-contraction, and the one who expressed in purely scientific terms the problem of the beginning and the end of the Universe for the first time in the history of cosmology, was not only a brilliant physicist, he was also a fervent orthodox Catholic. For him, Einstein's General Relativity suggested creation of the world by God (although he did not formulate this statement in a published work). It may be noted that Dr. (Fr.) Georges Lemaıˆtre (1894–1966)dmathematician, physicist, cosmologist, and most importantly the proponent of the big bang theory on the origin of the Universe, was a religious Catholic priest. Lemaıˆtre believed that religion and sciencedor at least physicsddo not necessarily have to be incompatible, if only religion is prepared to accept the realities and truth brought out to the world through sustained scientific inquiries and testable investigations. While a devout Roman Catholic, Lemaıˆtre was against mixing science with religion (Singh, 2010). One can easily see that, in several cases, science is rapidly closing the gaps that previously might have been thought to be reserved for miraculous intervention by God. Many scientifically sensitive and truth-seeking people who refuse to be guided by unrealistic and outdated dogmas, harbor the opinion that, in the near future, a cloud of uncertainty is likely to hang over the fate of the very survival of several religious beliefs that go against proven scientific truths. It may be agreeable to most right-thinking people that without regard to one's purely personal religious beliefs, the scientific community and institutions should foster integrity and scholarship, not ideological bigotry, in science.

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