Congratulations -                                paraphrased from "A Short History of Everything"
                                                                                 by Bill Bryson, Broadway Books, 2003.
     On making it to class today.

     For you to get here, trillions of atoms had to:

          - assemble in an intricate obliging manner to create you;
          - the arrangement of atoms is so specialized that it has never been tried before,
                 & will exist only this once;
          - your atoms keep you in supremely, but under appreciated, state known as existence.

     your atoms don't know or care about you; they don't even know they are there.

     bad news:  your atoms are fickled & will dissemble after about 650,000 hours of existence;

                  "The Atoms that so liberally and genially flock together to form life on Earth,
                 are exactly the same atoms that decline to do so elsewhere".    WHY? 
   

 

 

 

 

 


 
 
       Life is Chemically mundane (?)

          C, H, O, N, P, S,  a little Na, Ca, & a dusting of a few other elements...
                   their only really special property is that they can make you - in a miracle of Life

          to be here in class, alive in 21st century, and be aware of it, was due to an
                  extraordinary string of good luck
                         - billions of species in last 4.5 by (99.9% of all living things) are gone.
                         - Earth has been good at making Life, but it has been better at extinguishing it.
                         - average species is estimated to last only 4 million years.

          to survive longer, you must be prepared to change (evolve)
                         - your size, shape, color, species, everything
                         - to go from protoplasmal primordial atomic globule to sensient being,
                                      requires you to mutate new traits, over and over, for 100's of 1,000's of years

  
 

 

 

 

 

        1st you abhorred O2, then you doted on it;
         next you grew sins, limbs, and sails.
         you laid eggs,
         flicked food with a forked tongue;
         you've been slick, you've furry,
         you've lived underground,
         and been big as a bear, and small as a muse

            any deviation from this path
                    and you'd be licking algae from a cave wall rather than listening to me.

             or if your forebearers had been squashed, devoured, starved, wounded, or otherwise
             unable to mate together, then your DNA wouldn't be you.

    So congratulations on being here; you are a molecular evolutionary marvel.