The Story

According to the principles of thermodynamics, the formation of a cell from basic chemical components requires a constrained flow-through reaction system in which reactive carbon compounds and chemical energy are continuously supplied in the presence of primitive catalysts. Alkaline hydrothermal vents, associated with serpentinite formed through the reaction of olivine with water, appear to provide the full range of conditions required for such processes.

Energy is fundamental to the evolution of life. Virtually all living organisms obtain usable energy through redox (oxidation–reduction) reactions involving broadly similar respiratory chains. These reactions generate a proton gradient across a thin membrane, which in turn drives the synthesis of ATP (adenosine triphosphate), the principal energy-carrying molecule of living systems.

Following "The Birth and Structure of the Solar System", the story continues with "The Birth of the Earth and Its Early Evolution". One can then appreciate the Earth's most distinctive features—the presence of liquid water and the alteration of the oceanic crust accompanied by magma generation through interactions with seawater—and understand how these processes created the conditions that ultimately gave rise to the revolutionary organic system known as life.

The universe originated in the Big Bang, a momentous event accompanied, according to inflationary theory, by an unprecedented expansion over an extraordinarily brief interval. Of the total contents of the universe, the ordinary matter that we can directly perceive accounts for only about 5 percent. Approximately 27 percent consists of the mysterious dark matter, while the remaining 68 percent is dark energy, whose nature remains largely unknown. It is this dark energy that is thought to be driving the accelerated expansion of the universe.