The Intelligent Universe - Fred Hoyle PDF
The Intelligent Universe - Fred Hoyle PDF
The Intelligent Universe - Fred Hoyle PDF
0384
THE
INTELLIGENT
UNIVERSE
THE
INTELLIGENT
UNIVERSE
ISBN : 0 -0 3 -0 7 0 0 8 3 -3
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
ISBN 0-03-D7D0fi3-3
CONTENTS
FO REW O RD 6
1 -C H A N C E A N D T H E U N IV E R S E 11
2 - T H E G O S P E L A C C O R D IN G T O D A R W IN 25
3 • L IFE D ID N O T O R IG IN A T E O N E A R T H 51
4 * T H E IN T E R S T E L L A R C O N N E C T IO N 83
5 • E V O L U T IO N B Y C O S M IC C O N T R O L 109
6 • W H Y A R E N ’T T H E O T H E R S H ER E ? 139
7 - A F T E R T H E B IG B A N G 163
8 • T H E IN F O R M A T IO N -R IC H U N IV E R S E 189
9 • W H A T IS IN T E L L IG E N C E U P T O ? 217
10 • T H E IN T E L L IG E N T U N IV E R S E 241
IN D EX 252
FOREWORD
Everybody must wonder from time to time if there is any real
purpose in life. O f course we all have immediate aims, to
succeed in our careers, to bring up our children, and still in
many parts o f the world simply to earn enough to eat. But
what o f a long-range purpose? For what reason do we live our
lives at all?
Biology, as it is presently taught, answers that the purpose is
to produce the next generation. But many o f us are impelled
to persist in wondering if that can be all. If the purpose o f each
generation is merely to produce the next, does the overall end
result achieved sometime in the distant future have any
purpose? No, biology answers once more. There is nothing
except continuity, no purpose except continued existence,
now or in the future.
If that is so, what is the use o f that unique feature o f our
species, the moral code present in all human societies? Its use
lies in promoting our continued existence, the biologist
replies. Because humans achieve more by working together in
groups, a concern for the welfare o f others besides ourselves
promotes community survival.
Even if we grant for a moment that this proposition is true,
so what? There are many things that would assist our survival
which we do not possess. Throughout the history o f man it
would often have been an advantage in moments o f great
danger to be able to run like a hare or to soar away from the
danger up into the sky like a bird. But we can do neither.
These examples show that the logic is back-to-front. Just as
desire does not automatically generate that which is desired,
so advantage does not automatically generate that which
would be an advantage, either in biology7or elsewhere.
M an’s moral sense is a fragile affair. W e have to bolster it
with a tangle o f laws because in itself virtuous behaviour is not
predominantly advantageous to survival. In many cases in our
daily lives cheating is more profitable than truthfulness, while
brutality and aggression are all too often profitable to the
survival o f nations. Instead it would be easy to build a
6
considerable argument to show that the moral sense in man
persists despite all the temptations which constantly work
against it.
I came across the difficulties with which the moral sense in
man has to contend quite early in life. M y father was a
machine-gunner in the First W orld W ar, surviving
miraculously in the trenches o f northern France and Flanders
over three long years. He was one o f the few who came
through the immense Ludendorff attack o f 21 March 1918.
His machine-gun post was overrun, not by the usual few
hundred yards but by miles, so that he found himself far
within the enemy line. M y father told me afterwards that this
was his worst moment o f the war, because o f his ever-present
expectation o f encountering a lone German, with the prospect
that, without the possibility of verbal communication
between them, the two would be committed to fight it out to
the end in armed combat.
It was some years later that I saw the solution to my father’s
problem. If you were alone in no-man’s land, faced by a
German with whom you could not talk intelligibly, the best
thing to do— unless you had an unhealthy taste for combat to
the death—would be to remove your helmet. It the German
then had the wit to do the same you would both perceive the
fact that, hidden deliberately by the distinctive helmets, you
were both members o f the same species, almost as similar as
two peas in a pod.
Ever since this early perception I have believed that wars are
made possible, not by guns and bombs, not by ships and
aircraft, but by uniforms, caps and helmets. Should the day
ever come when it is agreed among the nations o f the world
that all armies shall wear the same uniforms and helmets then
I will know for sure that at long last war has been banished
from the Earth. So far from there being any prospect ot this
happening, the first thing that every emerging nation does
with its army, even ahead of acquiring physical weapons, is to
clothe its soldiers in distinctive uniforms, thereby artificially
creating a new “subspecies” of man, sworn to destroy other
artificially created “subspecies”. Such then are the odds
against which the moral sense in us all has to contend.
The modem point o f view that survival is all has its roots in
7
Darwin’s theory o f biological evolution through natural seleo
tion. Harsh as it may seem, this is an open charter for any
form o f opportunistic behaviour. W henever it can be shown
with reasonable plausibility that even cheating and murder
would aid the survival either o f ourselves personally or the
community in which we happen to live, then orthodox logic
enjoins us to adopt these practices, just because there is no
morality except survival.
If I were called on to defend orthodox science against this
unpleasant accusation, I would argue that it is not so much a
case o f biology influencing the state o f society as it is o f the
state o f society controlling the thinking o f biologists. I could
begin by demonstrating that the ideas o f Darwin’s theory were
already in place by 1830, almost a third o f a century before the
publication in 1859 o f Darwin’s book The Origin o f Species.
But while the ideas were there already, the state o f society was
not yet ripe. A n important change was needed before the
ideas were called forth.
It is easy to see what this change was. By the 1860s, the
industrial scene had burgeoned. Companies were competing
fiercely in the production o f similar products, railways were
competing for traffic, nations were competing for Lebensraum.
W hile the latter was not particularly new, the cut-and-thrust
o f commerce with its threat o f ruin on a grand scale certainly
was. Improvement o f products was the key to survival. From
practical experience in commerce it was then a short step to
the concept o f an improvement o f species through natural
selection— the Darwinian theory.
Except for a very few scientists, everybody overlooked a
crucial step in the analogy between commercial and natural
selection. Commercial selection works only because at the
back o f it there are human intellects constantly striving to
improve the range and quality o f their products. Commercial
selection is therefore very far from the purposeless affair
natural selection is taken to be in biology.
In reality, natural selection acts like a sieve. It can distin
guish between species presented to it, but it cannot decide
what species shall be sieved in the first place. The control over
what is presented to the sieve has to enter terrestrial biology
from outside itself—not just from outside the living world,
8
■ ■ ■ ■
Some events, like solving the Rubik cube at random, have an unlikelihood that
approaches the impossible. But the accidental origin o f life is more unlikely still.
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
12
CHANCE AND THE UNIVERSE
H O W P R O T E IN S A R E M A D E
Making proteins is a complex business which is and turns into a complex shape, characteristic
carried out on a massive scale. Throughout the o f the protein being made.
life o f a cell, coded instructions from DNA Protein manufacture is amazingly accurate.
stored in chromosomes are copied and used to O ne red blood cell for example contains many
direct protein manufacture. These copies, thousands o f molecules o f the protein
strands o f the shorter RN A, are “read” by haemoglobin, and millions o f red blood cells
ribosomes, complex molecules that move along are made every second in the human body.
the RN A, stringing together amino acids in the Yet, unless the D N A code itself contains an
order dictated by the code. As the amino acids error, every' molecule o f haemoglobin that it
are added one by one, the growing chain twists produces turns out exacdy right.
DNA
In a single human cell,
ahnost 6 feet (2 metres) of
DNA lie coiled up in each
chromosome.
13
Hi i
CHANCE AND THE UNIVERSE
15
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
AN EN ZYM E A T W O R K
A fitting partnership In the human body, millions o f biochemical
This diagrammatic reactions happen every' millisecond, and almost
sequence shows how every one is controlled by an enzyme. W ithout
ATP, the “energy enzymes, many o f these reactions would take
currency” of the cell, is minutes or even longer— too slow for life to be
made to react with the maintained.
sugar glucose. Enzymes work through their structure. The
substances that are to react together slot into
recesses in the enzyme like a hand into a glove.
G lucose Enz>'me O nce in position, their chemical structure is
put under stress by the presence o f the enzyme.
The result is that they react, the crucial
The three moleades clip rearrangement takes place, and the two
neatly together. But this is products disengage from the enzyme. The
an unstable situation, and enzyme itself is immediately ready for a repeat
part o f the ATP starts to performance.
break off.
Anp As soon as the transfer is
complete, the enzyme’s hold
on the reacting molecules
weakens, and they fall out
The part o f the ATP o f their respective slots. The
molecule closest to the reaction depends on the
glucose becomes detached enzyme’s structure being
and joins on to the glucose exactly right. Just one
molecule. This releases part critical mistake in its ammo
o f the ATP molecule’s G lu cose-^ Enzyme acid chain is enough to
energy store. phosphate prevent it working.
16
CHANCE AND THE UNIVERSE
18
CHANCE AND THE UNIVERSE
19
y e
TH E SE A R C H F O R LIFE’S O R IG IN S
In 1952-3 Stanley Miller and amino acids— the constituents
Harold Urey pioneered a type o f proteins, and nitrogenous
o f experiment that seemed to bases— the constituents o f
give strong support to the idea DN A.
that life could have originated The experiments have
gradually from non-living continued and many hundreds
chemical substances. The o f organic molecules have now
theory behind these been synthesized. In the early
experiments was based on what Earth’s oceans these molecules
the conditions were supposed would have accumulated, there
to be like on the newly formed being no living organisms to
Earth about 4.5 billion years “eat” them, and according to
ago. The atmosphere consisted the ideas o f the time no oxygen
o f a mixture o f gases that would to break them down. One
be poisonous to most modem researcher has estimated that
life-forms, being made up the primordial soup would have
chiefly o f methane, ammonia, been brimming with large
carbon monoxide and dioxide, molecules— in terms o f organic
and nitrogen. Oceans covered A classic experiment material about one third as
most o f the planet’s surface and Stanley Miller is seen here with the concentrated as chicken broth.
were whipped up by volcanic apparatus that was held to solve So far so good. However, the
activity and huge electric the mystery o f life’s origins. next step—the coming together
storms. o f subunits into larger organized
Miller’s apparatus was The results o f the molecules with the capacity to
designed to recreate these experiments were surprising reproduce themselves— has not
primordial conditions in a and, at the time, were hailed occurred in the laboratory flask.
laboratory, to find what almost as the answer to the There is evidence that some
chemical changes might have question o f life’s origins. Miller molecules can multiply on their
taken place on Earth. In early found a host o f organic or life- own in a test tube, but this is
experiments he passed 60,000 associated molecules in the only if they are correctly
volt electric sparks through the resulting “soup”, among which assembled in the first place, and
mixture o f gases, often were two basic types o f are “helped” by an enzyme to
continuing this for many days. biochemical building blocks, speed things along. As for the
20
CHANCE AND THE UNIVERSE
A Am m onia
C arbon dioxide
Tryptophan
W e
Phenylalanine
21
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
Creation and bigger than a swimming bath. Perhaps it was even as big as the
destruction
During the turbulent ocean”. Very7 well, let us reduce the amount o f chemical
opening chapter o f the complexity to be accumulated in the swimming bath so as to
E arth’s history, the energy
unleashed by electrical
allow for its smaller volume. The odds against producing the
storms would have 2,000 enzymes is the number we have seen before, the
destroyed life’s chemical number which occupies about torty pages with its zeros.
constituents as quickly as it
created them. Reducing this huge array of zeros pro rata to allow for the
smaller volume o f the swimming bath does improve the odds,
but only to the extent o f removing about half the last line on
the last o f the forty7pages.
One might also try7 arguing that the process gathered
momentum in the supposed primordial soup. A critic might
say: “You have allowed only for a single year in your
experiment. Because the process accelerates this is not long
enough for anything to show up. You should allow a
thousand million years”. In answer it is easy to prove that
even the most enormous acceleration would not remove
more than a fraction o f the last o f the forty7 pages, leaving
more than thirty--nine pages o f zeros, still an enormous
number. If acceleration were so important, the swimming
bath should be found to contain many proteins with amino
22
CHANCE AND THE UNIVERSE
23
2
THE GOSPEL
ACCORDING
TO DARWIN
Biology and the age of revolution • A new dogma
is bom • Why Darwin was wrong • Misreading the
fossil record • Evolution by jumps • The Earth
as an assembly station for life
How has the Darwinian theory o f evolution by natural
selection managed, for upwards o f a century, to fasten itself
like a superstition on so-called enlightened opinion'’ W hy is
the theory still defended so vigorously? Personally, I have little
doubt that scientific historians o f the future will find it
mysterious that a theory which could be seen to be unwork
able came to be so widely believed. The explanation they will
offer will I think be based less on the erroneous nature o f the
theory itself and more on the social changes and historical
circumstances that surrounded its development.
T o understand how Darwin’s ideas gained supremacy, we
have to look back over three centuries. The history o f classical
biology may be said to have begun in 1673 with the discovery7
o f the microscope by Van Leeuwenhoek. News of Van Leeu
wenhoek’s achievement quickly reached London, and soon
the Fellows o f the newly formed Royal Society were at work.
They used this exciting invention to investigate the hitherto
unseen detail o f living matter, recording its structure and
laying the foundations of the science of microscopy. Among
them was Robert Hooke, a man of mercurial thoughts, who
In this study at Down Hotise, Darwin wrote The Origin ot Species—a hook that has
since become the bible ofmoderri biology.
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
26
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN
movement that was different from the earlier ones. The rational age
As the tide of
The upwelling o f this movement ot the late eighteenth industrialism spread across
century was nowhere stronger than in France, and it was here northern Europe, it seemed
that the concept ot biological evolution first replaced the doc- that at last the natural
world was completely
trine o f special creation as the one preferred by philosophers undei m an’s control, and
and naturalists. It is hardly surprising therefore that the first in the new climate of
confidence scientists hoped
logically coherent evolutionary theory arose also in France, the to unravel all its mysteries
theory o f Jean Baptiste de Lamarck (1744—1829), according to by experirrlent and
which characteristics acquired by parents are transmitted to observation.
27
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
28
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN
29
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
30
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN
31
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ I
Selection or deception?
Is natural selection really the powerful idea it is popularly
supposed to be? As long ago as my teens, I found it puzzling
that so many people seemed to think so, because the more I
thought about it, the more circular the argument seemed to
become: “If among a number o f varieties o f a species one is
best fitted to survive in the environment as it happens to be,
then it is the variety that is best fitted to survive that will best
survive”. Surely the rich assembly o f plants and animals
found on Earth cannot have been produced by a truism o f
this minor order? The spark plug o f evolution must lie
elsewhere. It lies in the source o f the variations on which
natural selection operates. Darwinians believe nowadays that
the ultimate source lies in chance miscopyings o f genetic
information, a view which I believe to be quite erroneous.
Although in The Origin of Species he does not mention
Lamarck by name, Darwin himself suggested that variations
are caused by changes o f the environment, essentially the
same error as Lamarck had made. But the real plunge into a
logical abyss was taken by his followers rather than by Darwin
himself. It came when the most determined o f his disciples,
styling themselves the neo-Darwinians, or “new Darwinists”,
asserted that mutations are entirely spontaneous accidents
32
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN
IN H E R IT IN G A C H E M IC A L E R R O R
Just how precisely and accurately the body’s normal blood protein, haemoglobin, this DN A
genetic machinery works can be seen on the codes for an incorrect form. This distorts red
rare occasions when it makes a “mistake”. blood cells from their normal rounded shape,
Usually it is difficult to track down the exact and the resulting “sickle cells” get stuck in the
biochemical error that causes a mutation, but tiny blood vessels o f the body, making their
in one case—sickle cell disease—the nature of owner permanently short o f oxygen, an effect
the mistake is well known. It is a tiny fault. Just out o f all proportion to the original mistake.
one incorrect link out o f hundreds in part of The defect that causes sickle cell disease is
the DN A spiral has drastic results. Instead o f known as a point mutation, and is the simplest
coding for the amino acids that make up the type o f error that the genetic system can make.
33
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
Surviving a cells, and if you were to restring it in such a way that the
genetic error
W hen the body’s genetic colour o f one o f the beads was changed (the others being kept
system produces a the same as before) the restrung version would contain what
mutation, the effects are
biologists call a “point mutation”. This is one example o f the
rarely advantageous.
These “ostrich people” kind o f biochemical accident that is supposed to be
from southern A frica responsible for the variations that occur among living organ
share a genetic defect
which has been handed isms. Suppose you were asked to make copies o f all the
down within a small 200,000 strings o f beads. Given plenty o f string, scissors, and
community. They have
ample stocks o f the twenty different colours o f bead, the job
managed to survive their
handicap, but for could certainly be done, but it would surely be long and
individual animals a tedious. After a bit o f practice, you might perhaps manage to
mutation like this would
inevitably be fatal. produce an average o f one string in five minutes, in which case
the job would take a million minutes, about two years, even if
you worked both day and night at it. Yet this is the job our
bodies have to do whenever they produce new cells, as they
do all the time, if you cut your finger for example.
Contemplate now how many mistakes you would be likely
to make in performing such a task. W ithout deliberately
changing the colours o f beads, with the best will in the world,
34
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN
many mistakes, many mutations, would surely be made. For a A fatal inheritance
In the wild, an aninral
literal stringing o f beads there would be hundreds, if not with extra limbs like this
thousands, o f mistakes. However, in actual cells the mistakes Iamb would quickly be
made when DN A is copied are far fewer than this, and killed by predators. As
individuals, these intersex
mistakes like point mutations occur on average only once in butterflies would stand a
each complete copying o f the whole 200,000 chains. So better chance o f survival.
Each has a male side arid
instead o f throwing up large numbers o f natural mutations for a fem ale side, which
natural selection to act upon, the copying o f D N A seems to shows up in their non-
be remarkably accurate— not very helpful to the modem matching wings. However,
intersexes never h eed , ar\d
form of the Darwinian theory. their abnormal genes are
W hile changing the colour o f any bead always has some destined to perish.
effect on how a protein works, the effect is by no means
always the same. Sometimes it is too small to be noticeable, in
which case the mutation is said to be neutral. In other cases
the effect is drastic, even lethal. Quite a number o f proteins
used in the human body have counterparts in other animals,
and some have counterparts even in plants and micro
organisms. In cases where amino acids can be changed with
little effect, differences are found from one life-form to
35
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
36
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN
M A X W E L L ’S D E M O N A N D N A T U R A L S E L E C T IO N
The physicist James Clerk only in the other, the demon
Maxwell proposed an could in theory separate the
imaginary experiment which gas into hot and cold
featured a gas-filled box compartments. Maxwell’s
containing two compartments point was that this could only
linked by a trapdoor. The box happen with outside
was presided over by a intervention. Yet by an
“demon” who was able to analogous process, Darwinists
open and close the trapdoor imagine groups o f organisms
quickly enough to intercept with slight differences being
the constantly moving sorted into distinct species.
molecules o f the gas. By The problem is that outside
allowing fast or “hot” intervention has no part in the
molecules to move only in Darwinian theory. How then
one direction, and slow or does the sorting in the natural
“cold” molecules to move world occur?
37
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
V ariations on a th em e
Flowers show a vast
variety o f forms and
colours, one which
Darwinists claim is simply
a product o f natural
selection. The bee orchid
(above) imitates a fem ale
insect, luring the male to
mate with it and transfer
its pollen. The bird o f
paradise flower (right) is a
multicoloured landing
platfcnvt and nectar
station for the snrnll bird
which pollinates it.
38
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN
would have been correct, whereas for slight variations P red atory pitchers
This Venezuelan pitcher
Darwin’s statement is open to serious question. A human plant entices insects not /or
child bom a 100,000 years ago with a hole-in-the-heart defect pollination blit for food.
would not have survived to maturity, but a child bom 100,000 The pitchers have evolved
from quite simple leaves
years ago with a variation o f the heart that conveyed only an into elaborate traps
0.1 percent disadvantage in the struggle for survival would complete with pools of
digestive fluid.
scarcely have been affected in its chance of attaining maturity.
The disability o f running one hundred yards slower than the
norm by a mere six inches would hardly have been noticeable,
and would have been o f less consequence than chance events
like spraining an ankle, or some other comparatively minor
injury producing a slight lack o f pace. As a physicist would
put it, the “signal” carried by small variations is so insigni-
ficant that it is almost certain to become swallowed in the
“noise” o f everyday events.
These concepts can be formulated mathematically, and
39
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE wam^m
D A R W I N I S M ’S U N S O L V E D P R O B L E M S
Since Darwin first put The complex life of a parasite nerve below the ant’s mouth,
forward his theory o f The parasitic flatworm shown paralyzing its jaws. The ant is then
evolution by natural selection, here, Dicrocoelium dendriciaim, often stranded high up on a grass
biologists have tried to show lives as a larva in snails and ants, stem ready to be eaten by a
how all the characteristics o f and then matures in sheep. When passing sheep—a remarkable
animals could have evolved attacking an ant, the larvae split process difficult to explain by the
gradually through a series o f up into two groups; a small haphazard modifications of
earlier form s, each o f which number make for a particular evolutionary trial-and'error.
had som e survival value for its
owner. However, m any o f
The flatworm ’s eggs
A sheep eats the grass
today’s extraordinary animal blade to which the am
are scattered on grass is fixed
structures and behaviour
in sheep’s droppings
sequences would have been at
best useless o r at worst The larvae
dangerous in their early stages. paralyze the ant
Unless it is arbitrarily assumed They are
that these characteristics had eaten by a
som e great but unknown particular
different use during their species of
development, it m ust be snail, and
concluded that Darwinian hatch lawae await the
natural selection played little o f a foraging
o r no part in their origin. ant
The snail scatters
larvae in its slime trail
40
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN
41
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN
T he past preserved
Perfect fossils like these
shells from Italy are
formed when fine
sediment accumulates over
organic remains.
Sedimentation has been
common throughout the
Earth’s history, and so it is
strange that so many
evolutionary links have yet
to be found.
43
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
44
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN
E V O L U T IO N B Y JU M P S
Patterns of evolution
U/Ull
According to Darwin,
evolution proceeds at a slow Traditional Darwinism predicts
yet relatively constant rate. Put evolutionary “trees" which
simply, if a fossil 500 million branch gradually but
years old is similar to an continuously. With evolution by
animal living today, a related jumps, branching occurs in
fossil halfway between them in Traditional Punctuated
bursts, and then for a period
time should be halfway Darwinism equilibrium ceases completely.
between them in form. But in
the 1970s, a new evolutionary
pattern was put forward.
Instead o f gradual adaptation,
this pattern would be Stable period
produced by abrupt change,
followed by long periods of
stability, an idea borne out by
recent studies o f fossil snails in
East Africa.
Given that this “punctuated
equilibrium'' pattern has
occurred during evolutionary
history, what were the factors
that triggered the punctua
tions? TThe orthodox answer is
the sudden spread o f genes in
small groups o f organisms,
perhaps isolated from their Genetic jumps since died out, but if the fossil
fellows by some natural Fossil snails from Lake Turkana record is complete, here is
disaster. But an alternative in Kenya show the sudden evidence of evolution working in
explanation—one that appearance of new species in the fits and starts. These findings
accounts for the facts just as past, with the original species represent a drastic departure from
well— is the sudden arrival o f remaining unchanged. In this the expectations of the orthodox
genes from space. case, all the “new” species have Darwinian theory.
45
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN
47
old die and their places are taken by the young. Just as species
evolve towards better adaptation and towards greater com '
plexity o f function, so do cars. W hat is it that has driven the
“evolution” o f cars? A biologist would see it in terms o f
commercial competition and natural selection. The best
brands tend to scoop the market, and with the threat o f being
outscooped constantly above their heads, companies are per
petually thinking how to improve their products through
research and development.
Since the concept o f evolution through natural selection
can work commercially, why should it not work biologically?
The difference is that unlike the Darwinian theory the com
mercial system is artificial. There would be no improvement
o f cars on the road if human engineers were not thinking hard
all the time about how to secure such an improvement. Just as
the effect o f the Maxwell dem on’s intelligent judgment defies
the normal course o f events, so the intelligent judgment of
human engineers has produced an evolution o f cars on the
road. O ne can imagine a robot-controlled car industry with
factories reproducing both cars and themselves. If it were
intelligently designed it could operate for a long time, so
reflecting the quality o f its design. Nevertheless there would
be an inevitable slow deterioration. Tiny faults would appear
to begin with, and then would cascade into more grievous
faults, until in the end the system collapsed.
The Darwinian theory is wrong because random variations
tend to worsen performance, as indeed commonsense sug
gests they must do. There is no doubt that terrestrial life-
forms have evolved over geological periods from simple
beginnings to more complex forms. Because properly
working genes cannot be self-generated from within, they
must come from outside. The genes, the components o f life,
are assembled on Earth from elsewhere, from space.
Instead o f being the biological centre o f the Universe, I
believe our planet is just an assembly station, but one with a
major advantage over most other places. The constant
presence of liquid water almost everywhere on the Earth is a
huge advantage for life, especially for assembling life into
complex forms by the process we call “evolution”. Liquid
water can exist elsewhere, but throughout our galaxy, and in
48
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN
other galaxies, its existence is usually fleeting. For the most Assem bly station Earth
The Earth’s surface holds
part water exists in the cosmos as vapour or as hard-frozen ice. 330 million cubic miles
This is why the Earth is so important. The multitude of (1,37(1 h n 1) of liquid
trickles on a mountainside, trickles which grow into streams, water, a perfect
environment for the
streams which grow into rivers, and rivers which flow into the assembly of li ving matter
broad ocean are the Earth’s distinguishing mark. It is water on a vast scale.
that signals our presence here, not our presence as organisms
which have arisen at random from a local primordial soup,
but as the descendants of life seeded from the depths o f space.
This cosmic view can be confirmed because, as we shall now
see, those seeds of life can still be found today.
49
3
LIFE DID NOT
ORIGINATE
ON EARTH
Fireballs, meteorites and shooting stars • The discovery of
fossils from space • The Murchison meteorite
controversy • Explaining life’s sudden start on Earth • The
real nature of comets • The search for life in space today
In 1927 an expedition under L. A. Kulik penetrated to the
region o f the Tunguska river in Siberia, to discover a scene of
peculiar devastation. An extensive area of the taiga pine forest
had been completely flattened and burned, with the tree
trunks stripped o f their branches, all radiating out from a
central point. However, in the centre there was a remarkable
small area where the branchless trees were still standing, ruling
out the possibility o f an explosion on the ground. But despite
careful examination, nowhere was there any sign of what had
caused this spectacular destruction.
There have been wild and fanciful suggestions to explain
these bizarre facts, but by far the most likely is that this was
the latest example o f the Earth being struck by a large object
from outer space. O n entering the atmosphere it probably
broke up into a number of explosive fireballs, and hence no
impact crater was formed. Although this object did not leave
any trace within the ground, others certainly have. Craters
hundreds of yards in diameter have been formed by objects
from space, but fortunately for our peace o f mind such events
occur only at comparatively rare intervals, many thousands of
52
LIFE DID NOT ORIGINATE ON EARTH
Tunguska
tw enty years 011
The Tunguska impact
occurred in 1908, but wars
and revolution hampered
investigation o f its effects.
These huts near the centre
o f the devastated area
were set up by the Soviet
Academy of Science a fter
K u lik’s 1927 expedition.
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
and there is also the possibility that the objects brought a host
o f noxious diseases which affected and eliminated a vast
number o f animal species, both on the land and in the sea. No
habitat, ranging from the mountain tops to the ocean depths,
was immune from the disaster.
O f these possibilities my preference is for the noxious
diseases, essentially because the evidence suggests that the
animal extinctions took place, not all in a moment, but over
an interval o f several tens o f thousands o f years. Short as such
an interval might be from a geological point o f view, it is
nevertheless much longer than dust clouds from a large
missile would be expected to persist in the atmosphere.
54
LIFE DID NOT ORIGINATE ON EARTH
D E A T H B Y M E T E O R IT E
The disappearance o f almost
PRESENT
all the dinosaurs, many other
large reptiles and land animals,
together with a vast loss of
types ot plankton in the sea,
may have been the result o f a
huge meteorite colliding with
the Earth about 63 million
years ago. The meteorite itself
would have vapourized,
drastically changing the
Earth’s climate and perhaps
bringing with it diseases that
had a profound effect on the
Earth’s life. But although the
meteorite itself would have
disappeared, it might have left
evidence o f its arrival in the
Earth’s crust. A recently
discovered geological layer is The remains of a meteorite?
rich in the metal iridium, an A thin layer o f dark clay running
element otherwise rare on through this exposed section o f
Earth but common in surface rock contains 30 times
meteorites. If further iridium- more iridium than the layers
rich layers are found, this new above and below it. This may
discovery may be the solution have settled on the ground after
to one o f biology’s most a meteorite 6 miles (10 km) across
persistent puzzles. reached the Earth over 60 million
years ago.
55
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
/'' // /1 / //
//// J
///' // / 1
!' / 1,1 h ///
7 /, /// /•/ / ' i W/ //
If
7
7 / '////' . i j/'
// / /
A n annual sp ectacle cushioned by the atmosphere and after a fall o f weeks,
The Leonid meteor shower
occurs regularly orice a months or years gently landing on the ground.
year as the Earth passes The amount o f objects arriving from space seems to obey a
through a band of small
simple rough-and-ready rule. If you consider those with sizes
particles orbiting the Sun.
This heavy shoiver, in that span an octave (so that the largest in the group is twice the
which the meteorites diameter o f the smallest) then the average amount entering the
appear as vertical streaks
against a background o f atmosphere is about 50 tons per year, and this is approxi
star trails, was mately true whatever the octave o f sizes you care to choose.
photographed in 1961.
The object responsible for the Tunguska impact may have
weighed about 1,000 tons, so that according to the rule we
could expect this sort o f impact once every7 20 years, but
bearing in mind that about two-thirds o f the impacts fall
unnoticed into the sea, one should hit dry land about every 60
years.
At the other end o f the scale, the rule predicts that small
particles should enter the atmosphere in enormous profusion.
Over the many octaves ranging from the size o f a virus, for
example, up to a pinhead, there would be about 500 tons per
56
LIFE DID NOT ORIGINATE ON EARTH
year, sufficient for a huge number o f pinheads, let alone much Destination Earth
On 12 September 1923 a
smaller particles and the majority7of this material would fall to telescope camera in
Earth without ever being detected. Prague recorded a quite
unpred ictablc event—a
large meteorite or bolide
plunging through the
Life outside the Earth atmosphere. Bulges in the
trail show that the object
The chances o f finding any object that has fallen from space was tumbling as it fell.
are very small, but just occasionally meteorite-hunters strike
lucky. A shower of meteorites fell in 1864 near Orgeuil in
south-west France. Fortunately, much o f the shower was
recovered, and when sections of this Orgeuil fall were
examined microscopically during the early 1930s they were
found to contain carbon, a significant amount as spherical
skins surrounding grains of inorganic materials. These struc-
tures could have been formed either by carbon adhering to
the surfaces of mineral grains in the meteorite, or, a much
more dramatic possibility, to the preservation of once-living
spores or o f spherically shaped bacteria. This process, coali-
57
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
58
LIFE DID NOT ORIGINATE ON EARTH
didn’t explain how these earthly organisms had managed to Probing the secrets o f
m eteorites
become coalified in no more than a century in the case o f Hans Pflug in his
Orgeuil and in no more than a couple o f decades in the case o f laboratory. His work on
Ivuna. O n one thing all the critics were agreed, however. The the contents of meteorites
has given documentary
claim o f Claus and Nagy was wrong, wrong when seen from confirmation of life outside
the front, wrong when seen from the back, and the resulting the Earth.
uproar almost inevitably caused the two scientists to retreat,
although over the years Nagy has never ceased to hint that his
initial exuberant interpretation o f the evidence was probably
correct.
I suppose the problem of life-forms in meteorites would
have stayed in the rut into which it thus largely fell, had it not
been for Hans Dieter Pflug. A piece of a carbon-bearing
meteorite recovered near the town of Murchison, Victoria,
Australia, on 28 September 1969, came ten years later into
Pflug’s possession, and immediately he began studying it. It
was quickly apparent that the Murchison meteorite contained
structures similar to those in Orgeuil and Ivuna. Perhaps
having learned from Claus and Nagy’s experience, Pflug was
59
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
F O S S IL S F R O M S P A C E
The M urchison meteorite, in the atmosphere. Because its
which Hans Pflug detected the exterior has been heated
remains o f life from outside above melting point, the
the Earth, is what is known as search for any remains o f life
a carbonaceous chondrite— a centres on its interior. Here
chunk o f stony material that is the meteorite’s material
rich in carbon. Before entering should also be safely beyond
the Earth’s atmosphere it contamination by terrestrial
would have been substantially microorganisms, in which case
larger than it appears here, but anything found inside it could
during its fall to the ground, never have had contact with
heating would have destroyed the Earth. W hat it contains
a part o f its outer layers. has been carried to us in a
The meteorite’s blackened protective jacket o f stone
surface shows the aftermath o f which has arrived from the
its high-speed encounter with depths o f space.
60
LIFE DID NOT ORIGINATE ON EARTH
Cosmic viruses
A s well as finding evidence o f
bacteria in the meteorite, Pflug
also found other structures
uncannily similar to viruses here
on Earth, In these two
photographs, minute particles o f
material from meteorites can be
seen to contain regular dark
objects. The drawings inset show
how these resemble a collection
o f viruses, using the virus that
causes influenza as an example. In
this case the evidence comes not
only from the M urchison
meteorite. The lower photograph
shows a microscopic piece o f
material from the Orgeuil
meteorite which fell over one
hundred years earlier. The objects
seen in the M urchison
photograph show the distinctive
double membranes which are one
o f the features frequently found
in living organisms.
Structures like this have been
dismissed as contaminants,
microfossils from Earth that have
somehow mixed with material
from the meteorite. Although
careful experimental techniques
rule this out, it is interesting that
the objects have at least been
recognized as once-living matter.
61
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
62
LIFE DID NOT ORIGINATE ON EARTH
63
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
64
LIFE DID NOT ORIGINATE ON EARTH
more than 2,000 million years ago, that somehow managed to T he cy cle o f erosion
In Arizona, rain erosion is
rust the iron without there being ample oxygen in the air? carrying away the iron-rich
W hat could the source o f the oxygen have been? I suspect surface of the Painted
Desert just as it did over
that the answer to this question turns on the existence of
the whole Earth millions
marine organisms earlier than 2,000 million years ago. Photo- of years age >before land-
synthesis by blue-green bacteria, which are known to have based life appeared.
65
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
L IF E ’S E A R L Y S T A R T O N E A R T H
If we were able to travel back in time 3 billion the sea to form sediments. Y et geologists have
years, we would find a world completely discovered that these oxides— compounds like
hostile to human life. The air, a mixture o f ferric iron—were also deposited in the sea well
carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulphide and before there was much oxygen in the atmosphere.
nitrogen, would have been quite unbreathable. Indeed, the process seems to have occurred
However, 1.5 billion years later, the situation right from the moment the first land appeared.
had dramatically changed. Growing numbers A s far as is known, there is only one way in
o f simple marine plants started to generate which this could have happened. Som e living
oxygen from seawater as a waste-product o f organism in the primordial soup that made up
photosynthesis, creating the oxygen-rich the seas was providing the oxygen for this
atmosphere that exists today. Being a chemical reaction, and feeding on the energy it
chemically very active gas, this oxygen produced. It was a remarkable feat during a
combined with minerals in rocks to produce time that biologists suppose to be the “dawn”
oxides, many o f which were later washed into o f life, at the very' beginning o f evolution.
Time 3.7 3.5 3.0 2.5 2.0 1.5 1.0 0.5 Present
___________ 1____ I___________ L_ _ l _____________I_____________ I______ :______ I_____________ 1______________
(billions of years ago)
1 B A C T E R IA
i G REEN ALGAE
|P R O T O Z O A
A M P H IB IA N S 1
M A M M ALS 1
66
LIFE DID NOT ORIGINATE ON EARTH
synthesis at last gained the upper hand, pouring oxygen into A n ancient lineage
Blue-green bacteria like
the air, and so rusting the iron on the land. This cut off the these once dominated the
supply o f dissolved iron to the sea, and brought to a close the biological system of the
early Earth. However,
early long era in which the iron ore deposits were laid down.
their position as the
The “trick” was that unlike photosynthesis, which produces primary users o f sunlight,
oxygen gas, Pedomicrobium simply shuttled oxygen from one and hence the first step in
life’s food chains, has long
substance to another. since been taken over by
The iron ore deposits, or banded-iron formations, extend the green plants.
back in time to the earliest known rocks o f W est Greenland,
3,800 million years old. If biological processes were involved
in their formation, we have confirmation here o f the existence
of life on the Earth already at the dawn o f the geological
record. Pedomicrobium simply did not have time to evolve in a
supposed primordial soup— it must have “appeared” intact,
as indeed Hans Pflug finds it to be in the Murchison
meteorite. It was the failure in former decades to consider that
the Earth had life from the beginning, a failure that was a
consequence o f a misguided biological theory, which made
67
LIFE DID NOT ORIGINATE ON EARTH
69
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
70
LIFE DID NOT ORIGINATE ON EARTH
71
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
72
LIFE DID NOT ORIGINATE ON EARTH
73
74
The mass o f the progeny would equal, in about two weeks, all R are visitors from the
solar system ’s edge
the tiny particles that exist in all the gas clouds everywhere Comets only reach their
throughout the whole o f the Milky W ay, and in only three full brilliance when they
approach closest to the
weeks it would equal the whole o f the visible Universe.
Sun. For Comet West
Such situations would never happen literally o f course, (left) and Comet
because after a while the external chemical nutrients would Kohoutek (above) this
means just a brief blaze of
become exhausted, even if the physical environment other light before disappearing
wise remained favourable. W hat would happen is that bio again on orbits that may
logical reproduction would exhaust the available nutrients, take thousands of years to
complete.
which amount to many times the mass o f the whole Earth as
each new star system is formed. This brings us to the position
where we can conceive o f a closed loop, with microorganisms
passing from the interstellar gas to each new star system, with
the rapidly reproducing organisms then undergoing a popula
tion explosion, and with a fraction o f the resulting progeny
being returned back again to the interstellar gas, so completing
the loop.
From studies o f the numbers o f stars it can be seen that for
75
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE 1
76
LIFE DID NOT ORIGINATE ON EARTH
T he pull o f gravity
A giant ball oj gas with a
smaller solid intenor,
Saturn is large enough to
atti'act objects like comets
at a distance of millions of
miles, pulling them away
from their original orbits.
77
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
78
short orbits have been seen only once, and these are
presumed to have broken up into smaller pieces which now
escape observation.
As short-period comets exhaust their volatile material their
places are taken by a new crop. Short-period evaporating
comets are therefore in a state o f flux, with some appearing
and others disappearing all the time. However, the non
volatile residues o f comets have a far longer persistence than
this brief volatile phase. These are difficult to observe as they
move around the Sun, especially if the residues become
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE mmmmm
80
LIFE DID NOT ORIGINATE ON EARTH
81
THE
INTERSTELLAR
CONNECTION
Living dust between the stars • Could bacteria
survive a fall from space? • Alien organisms at the
atmosphere’s edge • The evidence for
life on Mars
“Empty” space, the immense void that separates the stars in
our galaxy, is not actually empty at all. Everywhere there is
matter. Usually this is in the form o f lone atoms, but in much
of space there are clouds o f interstellar dust composed of vast
numbers o f tiny grains. It would need about twenty-five
thousand o f them placed along a line to cover a distance of
only one inch (2.5 cm), so individually they are microscopic.
Yet despite their apparent insignificance these minute grains
have generated a great deal o f controversy, sometimes quite
ill-tempered, not just in modem times but over the whole of
the past century.
The problem with interstellar dust is that it acts like a fog,
scattering and absorbing the light o f stars. In a thin fog you can
still distinguish the middle landscape and perhaps even
features in the distance, whereas in a thick fog you can only
see your immediate surroundings, and otherwise the view in
all directions is a similar vague greyness. Throughout the half-
century from about 1875 to 1925 astronomers concerned with
the structure o f our galaxy—the Milky W ay—wanted to
know how thick this interstellar fog was. If it was thin, then
A few hours after the Martian dawn, gleaming clouds and polar ice stand out against
a planet where life may be fighting for survival.
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
Dust in space
The Hcrrsehead Nebida
(above), which lies in the
constellation of Oi ion, is
one o f the most distinctive
dust clouds visible from
Earth. The light from the
Milky W ay (right) 15
blotted out by a patchwork
of similar clouds which lie
within our galaxy.
THE INTERSTELLAR CONNECTION
85
T h e scale mixtures o f ice and graphite, then ice, graphite and particles o f
o f bacterial life
In this sequence o f
rock, and when these moderately complex mixtures also
photographs, a scanning failed, we tried hugely complex mixtures including organic
electron microscope vividly materials as well as ice, graphite and rock. Yet success in
illustrates the size o f
bacteria lying on the head matching the observations with real precision continued to
o f a pin. The picture on elude us, until the day in 1979 when an astounding thought at
the left is magnified 7
times; progressive
last entered our heads. Could the grains be o f biological
enlargements reach a origin'' W ere we in fact looking at life in space?
maximum at the fa r right
o f 1,800 times natural
size.
The seeds o f life
It took very little time for us to confirm that bacteria are
remarkably similar in size to the interstellar grains, and that
furthermore, the particles in space had an abnormally low
refractive index (a measure o f the extent to which they scatter
light), just as bacteria have when they are thoroughly dried.
Under normal conditions most o f the interior o f a bacterium
is water. Under exceptionally dry conditions, as in the
exceedingly low pressure o f interstellar space, the water
evaporates, leaving a particle with interior cavities. Hollow
particles behave as if they have a very low refractive index, a
86
THE INTERSTELLAR CONNECTION
87
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
The atmosphere is often put forward as being a harrier that would destroy any
objects o f the size o f biological cells before they reached the Earth. However, the
fate o f a small object heading towards our planet depends very much on the
angle at which it strikes the atmosphere.
At this point I was held up. How hot could a short burst of
heat be under dry conditions without destroying the micro
organisms? The answer turns out to be extraordinarily hot.
Some bacteria can live permanently at temperatures up to
212 F (100 C), the boiling point o f water, when they are
destroyed not so much by the heat itself as by bubbles of
steam. Surgical instruments are often sterilized by steam
heating at temperatures of about 300 F (150 C), and for
complete safety, such a sterilization procedure is usually
continued for about an hour. These facts suggested that for a
brief, dry heating of only a tew seconds bacteria can withstand
temperatures of 390 F (200 C), and this was the temperature
limit which I then proceeded to use in my calculations.
However, new information relating to this question of a
temperature limit has emerged very recently. In 1982 the
science magazine Nature carried a report of bacteria surviving
the unprecedentedly high temperature o f 582 F (306 C) in the
hot volcanic chimneys which exist on the sea-floor off the
89
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
mmm
Life in poisonous sulphur-laden pool
habitats (above) and the mineral-
Microorganisms flourish rich waters o f the Qrand
in some o f the most Prismatic Spring (right).
inhospitable environments Both harbour abundant
on Earth. These two views microscopic life that is able
o f Yellowstone National to tolerate conditions that
Park in Wyoming show would kill more complex
the steaming surface o f a organisms.
90
m b . t h e in t e r s t e l l a r c o n n e c t io n
91
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
92
THE INTERSTELLAR CONNECTION
Unearthly powers
Let us move on to consider some further tests o f the cosmic
theory ot lite that give truly remarkable results. It all of
biology is a terrestrially contained affair, as the conventional
theory would have it, there is no reason why microorganisms
should be able to withstand massive doses o f radiation in
93
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
Radiation-resistant life
The bacterium this field have been
M icrococcus produced in routine
radiophilus (above) is impections o f nuclear
just one o f a number o f reactors. The core o f the
species that can withstand Omega West reactor
enormous doses o f (right) is one of the most
radiation—far more than hazardous environments
would be lethal to other imaginable. But even this
forms o f life. Surprises in is not entirely without life.
94
THE INTERSTELLAR CONNECTION
&
95
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
T H E E L E C T R O M A G N E T IC S P E C T R U M
Light, the only part o f the
electromagnetic spectrum
which we are able to perceive,
is only a small part o f a huge
spectrum o f electromagnetic
radiation. W e have evolved
the ability to detect light
simply because much o f the
radiation present at the Earth’s
surface is in this form. The
characteristic which
distinguishes one part o f the
spectrum from another is
wavelength, or the frequency
with which the waves oscillate.
Wavelength increases by a
factor o f a thousand billion Radiation revealed light can be split up into different
from gamma rays to long Sir Isaac Newton’s own sketch o f his colours or wavelengths by passing it
wave radio. experiment which shmced how•white through a prism.
96
THE INTERSTELLAR CONNECTION
radiophilus, proceeded to repair this tremendous damage and Stranded on the M oon
Over two years after they
became viable again. were accidentally sent to
Likewise, another bacterium, a species of Pseudomonas, was the Moon in Surveyor III,
found in 1960 to be living inside an American nuclear reactor living bacteria were
brought back to Earth by
known as the “Omega W est”. Here it had been exposed to the creiv of Apollo 12.
radiation damage millions of times greater than has existed on Had they not been
“rescued”, the cluinces are
Earth at any period when life could have survived here. Such that they would have
an ability, necessary for survival in space, is quite inexplicable continued to survive on the
Moon’s surface.
in conventional biology, since the environment needed to
produce this characteristic has never existed on the Earth.
Further signs of the robustness o f microorganisms have
come from space. O n 20 April 1967, the unmanned Surveyor
III landed successfully near the eastern shore o f Oceanus
97
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
98
THE INTERSTELLAR CONNECTION
Interplanetary dust
This particle o f
dust—about the same size
as many bacteria—was
collected by a L12 aircraft
at an altitude of 12 miles
(20 km). Like the bacteria
in the stratosphere, it has
reached the Earth from
space.
99
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
100
wmmmmmmmmmmmwarn t h e in t e r s t e lla r c o n n e c tio n
-70
-6 0
101
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
IS T H E R E L IF E O N M A R S ?
The first tests for life on Mars obtain energy, they often
took place when two Viking release waste gases. This gas
spacecraft landed on the production would be quite
planet in 1976. Signals they likely o f any life on Mars. By
sent back to Earth as they fell adding nutrient chemicals to
through the thin Martian the planet’s soil, and then
atmosphere confirmed that all testing over a number of
the elements necessary for Martian days to see if gases
carbon-based life were were produced, it was hoped
present. O n the planet’s to determine whether or not
surface, a mechanical arm was the soil contained life.
activated on each lander, Although the results were said
which scooped up soil overall to have been negative,
samples to be tested for any this was not actually the case,
living matter. W hen and very1different conclusions
organisms process food to could have been drawn.
102
THE INTERSTELLAR CONNECTION
103
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
W h e re w ater o n ce admission that this vast sum had been poured out to no
flowed
Photographs like these definite end would not have increased public esteem, for
taken by the V iking N A SA , or for expenditures on science generally. So, for
landers clearly shoiv
reasons o f policy, a definite result had to be claimed. Since in
dried-up river channels on
the surface of the circumstances a positive result could not be given with
M ars—evidence that it certainty, a negative one was announced, and this is the way
once had plentiful water.
those who do not read the fine print believe it to have been to
this day.
This rather unhappy story was made even worse by the
failure o f the planners to perform a simple control investiga
tion ahead o f the mission. The nearest approach to Martian
104
THE INTERSTELLAR CONNECTION
A giant canyon
The Valles Marineris
which runs across this
picture is the biggest
known canyon in the entire
solar system. Its long
shadows might have given
rise to the myth of the
Martian canals.
105
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
T h e M artian twilight Mars and seen evidence there for the existence o f life. The
As the Sun sets on Mars,
its light is reflected in the argument has always been that the red colour implies that the
dust'laden sky. Having surface ot the planet is highly oxidized. Here, it should be
only a thin veil o f remembered that oxygen is an exceedingly active element.
atmosphere, temperatures
plunge as night creeps over W ithout life being present, it is hard to see where the oxygen
the planet’s surface. tor producing the red soil o f Mars might have come from.
Rather, it seems likely that, as happened on Earth, the supply
o f oxygen came either from photosynthetic organisms or
from an iron-oxidizing bacterium like Pedomicrobium.
The best chance for lite today on Mars is probably inside
glaciers, where it is possible for temperatures to rise
sufficiently for water to become liquid. Bacteria in such a
situation would need to live on some energy-producing
chemical reaction. If the reaction yielded a gas, as many
bacterial reactions do, as for instance in the gut o f an animal,
subsurface pockets o f gas might build up, exploding
sporadically to the surface to unleash quantities o f spores,
bacteria and inorganic dust into the Martian atmosphere. A
106
THE INTERSTELLAR CONNECTION
107
:» > >
••*
I '•
■!
ki«|i
k?fl
K &
EVOLUTION
BYCOSMIC
CONTROL
The true source of evolution • The world of
microorganisms • Reprogramming a cell • Nature’s
strange similarities explained • Diseases as foiled
evolutionary leaps
The most crucial aspects o f life, its origin and information
content, did not arise here on the Earth. Nor, despite wide
spread belief in the work o f Darwin, did terrestrial life evolve
in the way he proposed. Yet, evolution certainly has occurred,
there can be no doubt about that, but in a way that is
prompted from a very different source than the one imagined
by Earthbound theory.
The presence o f microorganisms in space and on other
planets, and their ability to survive a journey through the
Earth’s atmosphere, all point to one conclusion. They make it
highly likely that the genetic material of our cells, the DN A
double helix, is an accumulation o f genes that arrived on the
Earth from outside. This theory7 avoids the devastating im
probabilities we saw at the outset of this book which face
anyone who seeks to maintain an Earth-centred picture o f the
origin o f life, and it also avoids the faulty7logic of Darwinism.
T o be sure problems still remain. An explanation o f the
amazing complexity of life must still eventually be given, even
in a cosmic theory. Yet the whole Universe is so much richer
in the opportunities which it affords for solving this funda-
110
EVOLUTION BY COSMIC CONTROL
i f ® ® :
liM f
number of DNA links needed to code for it jumps from ten A com plete genetic
program
to twenty. A thousand billion generations would then be An entire D N A m olecu le
needed, and if one hundred links are required (as is often the s[nlls out o f a frog virus
that has broken op en . T h e
case), the number o f generations would be impossibly high
virus’s genetic mater ial is
because no organism reproduces fast enough to achieve this. about five hundred times
The situation for the neo-Darwinian theory7is evidently hope- longer than the /notem
shell into w hich it is
less. It might be possible for genes to be modified slightly Ik ic k ed .
during the course o f evolution, but the evolution of specific
sequences o f D N A links of any appreciable length is clearly
not possible.
111
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
112
EVOLUTION BY COSMIC CONTROL
A M IC R O S C O P IC P A N O R A M A
If you imagine the smallest object that can be appear on a scale o f decreasing size. Human
distinguished by the unaided eye, and then cells— which unlike microorganisms cannot
imagine that object being successively divided exist independently for long— are shown to the
up until each piece is only-one ten-thousandth same scale. The organisms in each box are on
the length o f the original one, you will then average one tenth the size o f the ones above
have some idea o f the difference in size between them, with the largest o f them being just at the
one o f the largest single-celled animals and a limits o f human sight. The unit o f
virus. The illustrations below show where measurement used— the micrometre (jx)— is
some o f the major types o f microorganisms equivalent to 40 millionths o f an inch.
113
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
114
EVOLUTION BY COSMIC CONTROL
115
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
H O W A V IR U S R E P R O G R A M S A C E L L
The T 4 virus shows how extra T he T 4 is one o f an
D N A can be added to intensively studied family o f
cells— in this case a bacterium. viruses that attacks bacteria, in
Normally, the virus inserts its this instance a species found in
D N A into a bacterium, and the human intestine.
this “hijacks” the host’s
biochemistry, instructing it to
make new viruses. This is Head
what happens in disease. containing
DNA
However, sometimes the viral
D N A simply adds on to that Collar
Tubular tail
o f its host, being passed on to
its descendants. A similar
system, whereby new genes A cluster of viruses
are added at a stroke, In this photograph taken by electron
probably occurs in our own microscope, empty viral shells
cells. surround a bacterium.
116
EVOLUTION BY COSMIC CONTROL
117
EVOLUTION BY COSMIC CONTROL
and instead o f producing new biochemical instructions for the D eadly m im icry
Crab spiders trap insects
cell, the gene will simply replicate itself, becoming part o f a pollinating flowers with
hidden “memory-bank” o f information, waiting to be used. It the aid o f their perfect
camouflage. As the insect
will be what microbiologists call a pseudogene, a part o f the
settles on the flower, what
cell program which is not switched on. looks like a petal launches
If new genetic material is reaching the Earth all the time, a surprise attack. The
colour of the flowers and
we can deduce that much o f the D N A o f every plant and spider are programmed by
animal will consist o f pseudogenes, a deduction that is over the same genes.
whelmingly true. A remarkable 95 percent o f the human D N A
is redundant in just this sense— it seems to do nothing at
all—and an even higher percentage is redundant in certain of
the lower plants and animals. The lungfish, for example, has
ten times as much D N A in each o f its cells as a human,
whereas an amoeba may have as much as five hundred times
A ctive and
our amount. dorm ant genes
The arrival o f genes from space also explains some other The colours of butterfly
wings (opposite) are
strange aspects o f terrestrial life. Incidence from space knows
produced by light being
nothing o f where a gene would be best directed, so genes that refracted from ridges on
are useful to some species, as for instance those which pro the wing scales. The
genetic program for this is
duce the blood o f animals, are found as pseudogenes in present in an inactive state
plants, for example. The genes responsible for the beautiful in man.
119
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
120
EVOLUTION BY COSMIC CONTROL
121
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
122
■■ EVOLUTION BY COSMIC CONTROL
T H E E V O L U T IO N O F E Y E S
There is little doubt that the eyes o f vertebrate have arisen in animals separated by hundreds
animals like mammals, those o f cephalopod o f millions o f years o f evolution? Orthodox
molluscs like octopuses and squids, and those biologists say that the three types o f eye have
o f insects have evolved quite independently. evolved in similar ways in response to a similar
Yet the eyes o f vertebrates and cephalopods are problem, using the best chemical system that
remarkably similar, and although the exists. However, there is another possible
compound eyes o f insects superficially look explanation. Retinol may well have been
quite different, they work on exactly the same available to living organisms as a complete
chemical basis as the two other types o f molecule which arrived on the Earth from
complex eye. All o f them focus light on to a space, providing a universal foundation for the
substance known as retinol which triggers the visual sense. Evolution by cosmic control
nerve impulses which the brain interprets as would then have produced the similarities
vision. But why should these com m on features found in the optical systems o f animals today.
123
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
124
h h m h EVOLUTION BY COSMIC CONTROL
125
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
T H E IN T E R S T E L L A R M O L E C U L E
Incidence from space could harness. Green light is simply
explain a number o f curious reflected back, so the energy it
features o f terrestrial biology. carries is lost. But this is one
For example, chlorophyll, the o f the m ost energy-rich parts
green pigment used by plants o f the Sun’s light, a part
to trap the Sun’s light energy, which should be very useful
has some characteristics that to plants. Chlorophyll is
are difficult to explain through therefore not particularly
orthodox evolution. good at its job. How then did
Chlorophyll is green because evolution in the plant world
this is the part o f the Sun’s consistently back a substance
spectrum which it is unable to which has this defect?
126
EVOLUTION BY COSMIC CONTROL
127
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
128
EVOLUTION BY COSMIC CONTROL
129
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
130
EVOLUTION BY COSMIC CONTROL
131
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
132
EVOLUTION BY COSMIC CONTROL
Infections rain
It is generally accepted by meteorologists that small particles
o f the sizes of microorganisms make their journeys down
through the dense air o f the troposphere inside water drops.
Thus diseases like viral hepatitis and diseases o f the stomach
and gut can be acquired by rain falling into our water supplies.
But how about respiratory diseases like influenza and the
common cold? W e do not snuffle rain drops into the nasal
passages, they drop conveniently off the end o f the nose,
which is perhaps why we possess substantially projecting
noses. At first sight then we might seem to be well protected
against microorganisms gaining access to the interior passages
o f the nose and throat. If the weather is dry they cannot fall,
but remain suspended aloft, and if it rains decisively they are
washed harmlessly away.
The trouble, however, is that conditions are not always this
clear-cut. As water droplets fall into warmer air near the
ground they tend to evaporate. If the evaporation is generally
incomplete, the droplets reach the ground and there is rain. If
the evaporation is complete, the weather remains dry. But
there are intermediate situations where the larger drops
manage to survive to ground-level but where most o f the
smaller droplets evaporate, some o f them evaporating away
close to the ground, releasing any microorganisms they may
have contained into the air at ground-level. This is how viruses
become available for breathing by animals. In desert con
ditions, however, rainwater usually evaporates back into the
133
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE ■Mi
134
English and W elsh boarding schools. W e were at first amazed T h e journey is
com pleted
at the enormous variations which occurred in the different A storm like this is exactly
houses o f the same school. A rather small school had most of what is needed to account
for the patchy incidence of
its pupils in two houses, each with about 55 pupils. One of
disease. After viruses have
them had 35 victims, the other only 2, a result that would have fallen to cloud level, they
been impossible if there had been appreciable cross-infection are trapped in raindrops,
and then fall to the ground
between pupils in the one house and the other, as normal as rain begins. Some areas
opinion would have it. Since the opportunities for cross- escape entirely, others
suffer a large dose of the
infection in school classes, at mealtimes, morning prayers and
incoming viruses.
during organized games are frequent, the clear inference was
that influenza is contracted by the virus falling downwards in
highly irregular patches, not by transference from one person
to another.
Another critical test for the person-to-person transmission
o f influenza has given sharply negative results. During an
135
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
T H E H IS T O R Y O F A N E P ID E M IC
DAVENPORT HOUSE 34 PUPILS
If diseases are caused by airborne viruses, this
should be reflected in the way epidemics
develop. Instead o f an infection being spread
gradually throughout a group o f people, it
should appear suddenly in a sporadic way as
viruses are carried to the ground. This effect is
exactly what has been found in studies o f
influenza epidemics in a number o f English
boarding schools. Here the pupils mix
throughout the day, so that there is plenty o f
opportunity for person-to-person infection.
However, the pupils sleep in different houses,
which are often some distance apart, so that
localized airborne viruses falling during the
evening and night could produce an uneven
spread o f the disease.
These graphs show how an influenza
epidemic in one school near O xford
progressed. Initially, levels o f infection across
the school wrere similar, but then suddenly, in
one house only, the number o f pupils with the
disease rocketed—just what would be expected
from the fall o f viruses over a restricted area.
136
EVOLUTION BY COSMIC CONTROL
137
WHY ARENT
THE OTHERS
HERE?
The search for intelligent life • Exploding the
UFO myth • Why we are prisoners of
the solar system • Evidence for a controlling
intelligence • A cosmic origin of life
People who devote a lifetime o f study to a particular area
often come to believe that the subject is their own personal
property. Fritz Zwicky, the famous Swiss astronomer, was
perpetually speaking about “my stars” and “my galaxies”. But
o f course the Universe recognizes no such proprietory rights.
N or does the Universe know anything of the separation we
make between biology and the other sciences— physics,
astronomy and chemistry for example. All subjects in the
world must therefore be taken together, if we are to under
stand properly the way things are, and ideas often have a
relevance in themselves irrespective o f which so-called branch
o f science they may come from.
For instance, a remark o f much interest to biology was
made by Enrico Fermi, the great atomic physicist. It was
apparent to him that if life was not unique to the Earth, it was
likely to have arisen thousands, if not millions o f times in our
galaxy alone. If other intelligent creatures beside ourselves do
exist, as one would expect from the cosmic theory, some
creatures it is argued would have attained a level o f technology
sufficient either to contact us or even to achieve space travel
Although the development o f the Shuttle makes space exploration seem a simple next
step, it is more likely that travel between the stars will remain forever beyond our reach.
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
140
WHY AREN’T THE OTHERS HERE?
M ESSA G ES T O TH E ST A R S
The Arecibo message
All the information in the
message is carried in binary form,
which is transmitted as a series o f
radio pulses.
141
WHY AREN’T THE OTHERS HERE?
143
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ I
144
WHY AREN’T THE OTHERS HERE?
U F O hoaxes
Believers in UFOs seem to
favour the idea that
visitors from outside the
solar system will arrive in
saucershaped vehicles.
This pair o f faked
photographs plays on this
expectation. The top
picture actually shows a
button “flying” through
the air, while the lower
picture is of a tabletop
model which has
apparently “landed” on a
hillside. Such evidence for
U FO s always finds a
ready audience.
145
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
146
WHY AREN’T THE OTHERS HERE?
147
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
H ie part o f the solar system which is own system, there are two planets on which life
potentially suitable for life is known as the could in theory have developed (disregarding
ecosphere, a theoretical shell around the Sun in the additional possibility o f life being
which a planet would be neither too hot nor supported by the internal heat o f the giant
too cold for life to occur. Only the Earth orbits outer planets). Because the Sun is in many ways
well inside the ecosphere; two other planets are just an ordinary star, this suggests that far from
in the vicinity, Venus and Mars, the latter being unique, the Earth is just one o f a great
orbiting on the ecosphere’s outer surface, number o f planets throughout the Universe on
close to the limits for life. So, even within our which living matter could settle and develop.
3 Earth
Average surface
temperature 20°C (68°F).
Large reserves of water,
much in liquid form.
Abundant life.
5 Jupiter 4 Mars
6 Saturn Innermost giant planet, Temperature rarely rises
Gaseous interior similar composed mostly of above freezing point,
to Jupiter. Rings of solid hydrogen. All but outer although surface may
matter—some possibly atmosphere at high reach 18°C (65°F) in
of ice. temperature and summer. Water locked
pressure. in polar icecaps.
148
WHY AREN’T THE OTHERS HERE?
on. Such a rapidly growing cascade of ships could seep its way
through the entire galaxy in a few million years, which from
the point o f view o f a major biological development is an
entirely acceptable interval o f time.
149
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
150
WHY AREN’T THE OTHERS HERE?
151
WHY AREN’T THE OTHERS HERE?
this purpose than those o f moderate size, say 20 inches (50 cm)
in diameter. This is partly because the atmosphere distorts
light and partly because the manufacture o f optical com
ponents o f a large telescope is subject to greater inaccuracies.
The best situation for distinguishing the two stars in a pair
would be a telescope o f moderate size mounted on a satellite
above the Earth’s atmosphere. The situation so far as angular
resolution was concerned would then permit two equally
bright stars, separated from each other by the same distance as
the Earth from the Sun, to be distinguished separately in the
telescope from about 100 light years away, the same as in our
colonization problem.
However, distinguishing two equally bright stars separately
is not the same as distinguishing a star from a planet, because a
planet is exceedingly faint compared to a star. So far as
brightness is concerned the Earth is very much the junior
partner in the Earth-Sun system. The Earth has a brightness
only about one ten-billionth o f the Sun, and so would be
entirely swamped by the Sun’s light. Indeed, when seen from
a distance o f 100 light years the Earth would be exceedingly
faint and would be hard to examine in detail even without the
Sun. In the Sun’s overwhelming glare it would be impossible
to distinguish by spectroscopic tests the hospitable Earth from
its inhospitable sister planet Venus, whose temperature at
ground-level is far above the boiling point o f water.
So if the spaceships cannot be targeted directly, what
happens if the nearest thousand star systems have to be
searched individually? At first sight one might think the
penalty would simply be a longer search, with the path o f a
ship zig-zagging between the stars, extending the journey
A baffling choice
between ten and a hundredfold, making the time involved in
Space colonists travelling
each step of the search 100,000 years instead o f the previous through our galaxy
thousand years. W hile being cooped up in a spaceship for tcnvards the constellation
V ela would have a grave
100,000 years would certainly not be an attractive proposi problem in deciding which
tion, it would not in itself make the journey a complete stars to visit, with each
being thousands of years
impossibility. Impossibility comes, however, with the
journey from its nearest
question o f how a spaceship could manage to zig-zag from one neighbour. The cloudy
star to another. If the ship travels at great speed, say at one- streaks in this photograph
are the remnants of a
tenth that o f light, the change in momentum at each zig and supernova—an exploded
each zag is very large, demanding an enormous amount of star.
153
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
154
I ■ H n m n n w h y a r e n ’t t h e o t h e r s h e r e ?
155
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
157
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
»
158
W HY'AREN’T THE OTHERS HERE?
159
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
A living Universe
I have pointed out already that the physical nature o f inter
stellar particles suggests that they not only look like bacteria,
but that they actually are bacteria. Although astronomical
measurements o f other galaxies are by no means as detailed as
they are for our own, astronomers have never doubted that
the interstellar particles in all galaxies are much the
same— hence, I suggest, all o f them bacteria.
160
m m m m m m i, i s « w h y a r e n ’t t h e o t h e r s h e r e ?
This sets the scene for the origin o f life on the largest
conceivable stage. The stage is not local, not restricted to our
solar system nor even to our own galaxy, but truly cosmic. If
an intelligence was involved in the origin o f life, the intelli
gence was very big indeed, as I suspect is recognized by the
religious instinct residing in all o f us, the instinct that whispers
in some remote region o f our consciousness. Life is therefore
a cosmological phenomenon, perhaps the most fundamental
aspect o f the Universe itself.
E arth calling
The globular star cluster
M l 3, to which the
Arecibo message (page
141) was sent, contains
over 100,000 stars. If
intelligent civilizations
exist there, they' could well
be communicating with
each other already.
161
AFTER
THE BIG
BANG
Stars, galaxies and the red-shift • Big bang
and steady state • The mysterious quasars • Microwaves
from space • A living radio transmitter • Has the
Universe “run downhill”?
It is not known who first stated that the points of light we see
in the sky, the points of light we call stars, are really objects
like our own Sun, but situated far away in space at distances
immense compared to those in everyday life. The claim is
sometimes made for the sixteenth-century Italian Giordano
Bruno. This attribution may, however, be due to the notice
which the unhappy manner o f his death has received. For his
work in astronomy, Bruno was denounced as a magician to
the Inquisition. He was extradited in 1593 from Venice to
Rome, and burned in Rom e as a heretic, at a spot which to
this day is marked for passers-by to see, a spot which I recall
visiting some years ago on a dark solemn January afternoon.
Isaac Newton a century later gave a solid argument for why
Bruno’s view had to be correct, and Newton’s argument is
usually taken to be the first that was reasoned in a proper
scientific way, rather than being simply stated as a matter of
opinion. The realization that stars are highly luminous objects
set astronomers an interesting puzzle, a puzzle widely known
as the Olbers paradox named after Heinrich Olbers (1758—
1840), despite the fact that documentary evidence shows it to
Islands in space
Using the ideas o f physics then believed to be correct,
Cheseaux and later Olbers were able to prove that everywhere
the sky would be fantastically bright, as it is if you look
directly at the full face o f the Sun itself. It was found that,
although the light we receive from just one star weakens the
further away it is, this weakening o f the light is compensated
for by more and more stars having to be reckoned with as
their distances from the Earth increase. Hence it was con
cluded that the basic assumption o f the calculation, that stars
are uniformly distributed in space, had to be wrong. It seemed
that all the stars o f the Universe were for some inexplicable
reason bunched together, so that in your imaginary journey
there would come a stage when you came clear o f stars, when
you could look back at a single isolated bunch o f them, an
island o f stars, in other words a galaxy.
The concept o f a single galaxy embedded in an otherwise
empty Universe survived until the early 1920s when a set o f
new observations and ideas erupted to shake orthodoxy until
its teeth rattled. Outstanding among these was the discovery
o f the so-called “red-shifts” o f the galaxies, which showed the
light we receive from collections o f stars outside our own to
be systematically weaker than had been calculated by
Cheseaux. W hen the light from these galaxies was analyzed it
was found to be reddened, a characteristic which indicated
that the galaxies were moving away from our own at great
speeds. This discovery was made by V . M . Slipher, although
it is attributed nowadays by the media invariably to Edwin
164
AFTER THE BIG BANG
Galaxies in retreat
Edwin Hubble was the
first astronomer to propose
a definitive link between
the distance o f galaxies
and the speed with which
they are retreating from
each other. Despite later
revision of his figures, the
principle of the expanding
Universe is now genet ally
accepted.
165
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
168
M E A S U R IN G T H E U N IV E R S E ’S E X P A N S IO N
The idea that the Universe is detected by the characteristic
expanding hinges on the visual absorption lines o f individual
equivalent o f a familiar elements within galaxies that
characteristic o f sound—that appear as narrow black bars
sound waves from a receding on the spectra. Using these
source are o f lower pitch than markers, it is possible to
those from one that is measure the amount by which
approaching. So it is with the the light o f each galaxy has
light o f galaxies. The faster a been shifted, and hence how
galaxy is receding from us, the fast the galaxy that emitted the
lower is the “pitch” o f its How light is “ stretched” light is receding from us.
light, or in optical terms, the Light waves from a relatively Using this method, it has been
further its light is shifted slow-moving galaxy reach us in established that it is the most
towards the red end o f the a fairly unmodified form. Those distant galaxies that are
spectrum. This shift can be from a fast-nwing galaxy are receding fastest.
“stretched”, causing a red-shift.
169
AFTER THE BIG BANG
test the steady state theory7 by surveying a portion o f the T h e changing sky
The constellation
Universe with a telescope, and that you repeat your survey Sagittarius is one of the
at a number o f moments millions o f years apart. As you brightest regions o f the sky,
pass from one survey to the next you will find that not only being illuminated by the
combined light o f millions
the constellations will be dramatically different, but whole o f stars in the Milky Way.
galaxies will have moved apart from each other, and after a Many millennia from
now, the Milky W ay’s
long enough sequence o f surveys any galaxy (outside our own) light ivill still be the same,
that was initially visible would have retreated so far that it blit the closest stars will
have moved from their
would have vanished. Eventually, your region o f observation
present positions. The trail
would become empty o f all the galaxies that at earlier times of an Echo satellite runs
were easily visible. across this photograph.
According to the steady state theory, this is not the end of
the story, however. Although empty holes have recently been
shown to exist in space, each is only a temporary
phenomenon. Throughout the Universe, the theory predicts,
new galaxies are forming from atoms that are perpetually
being created, and so the telescopic survey would show new
galaxies appearing to replace the old. Indeed the creation
rate is precisely what is needed to compensate for the ex
pansion—exactly the reason the name “steady state” was
applied to the theory. And lest it be thought that the idea ot
atoms being created from nothing is grossly far-fetched, it
should be remembered here that we are dealing not with a
Universe that obeys the laws o f Newton, but one that is more
faithful to the laws o f Einstein, in which matter and energy are
interchangeable.
In 1948 I was criticized for proposing a theory in which
matter could be created, but it is interesting to note that today
many physicists find the notion quite acceptable. The
Newtonian idea that matter could not be created or destroyed
has been replaced by a wider concept, one in which the sum W h e re stars are
o f matter and energy cannot be changed. It is this crucial step created
forward in the understanding o f physics that makes the steady Tlit’ Lagoon Nebula, also
in the constellation
state concept at least a theoretical possibility. Sagittarius, is a cloud
I suspect that one o f the reasons that the big bang theory which is made up chiefly
o f hydrogen gas. It is in
has proved so popular is that it is an idea which, at the clouds like these that stars
simplest level, is easy to grasp, one that is rooted in physical are bom. Imtead of matter
laws with which we are all familiar. But over the last 40 years becoming more scattered
as the big bang would
there has been a determined effort to back it up with some imply, here it is coming
thing more substantial by piecing together a detailed body of closer together.
171
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
A ladder o f matter
BIG BA N G U N IV E R SE
ST E A D Y ST A T E U N IV E R SE
suggested, it would have produced the entire range of
elements found in the Universe today.
If all the complex nuclear details could be shown to fall out
correctly, here would be a fine demonstration o f the merits of
the big bang theory. Unfortunately for Gamow, they did not
turn out correctly, indeed the theory fell down on one o f the
first hurdles it encountered. Some elements are so un
stable—so radioactive—that in the rapidly expanding and
cooling Universe just after the big bang, they would have
broken down again into smaller atoms only millionths o f a
second after being formed. In the ladder o f increasing atomic
mass, they would be missing rungs which could not be passed.
T o make matters worse for Gamow, two rungs were missing
almost at the bottom o f the ladder. These gaps, at numbers 5
and 8 in the sequence, seemed to be an insuperable problem
for this at first sight promising ally o f the big bang theory.
Instead what happened in the 1950s was that the nuclear
details seemed to fall out right for quite a different theory of
the genesis o f the elements, one in which the heavier elements
were thought to have been produced by exploding stars, long
after the big bang (if indeed it had actually taken place), was
spent. T o Geoffrey and Margaret Burbidge, W illiam Fowler
and myself, it did seem quite possible that the temperatures
inside supemovae, rapid and enormous stellar explosions like
the one observed by Chinese astronomers in 1054, might have
been great enough to form the heavier elements and fling
them out into the cold reaches o f space, safely away from the
furnaces that created them. The missing rungs on the ladder
would be by-passed in this theory and then so tar as the origin
o f the chemical elements was concerned there would be no
need for the big bang at all.
Our satisfaction with this situation was somewhat short
lived, however. In putting forward our case, we had passed
rather lightly over the first rung in the ladder, the generation
o f helium from hydrogen, since everybody already knew then
that helium is being made constantly from hydrogen inside
quite ordinary stars like the Sun. Helium seemed to be no
problem at all, and the steady state theory looked at first sight
to be under no threat from this direction.
Then in the mid-1960s two things happened which, when
173
AFTER THE BIG BANG
taken together, seemed to settle the dispute between the T h e relics o f a star
The supernova remnant in
theories and made the scientific world— and public opinion the constellation
after it—turn towards the big bang. Ironically enough the first Cassiopeia (opposite) is
involved me, and as a witness for the prosecution o f the all that is left o f a star that
exploded in the
steady state theory rather than for its defence. seventeenth century, a
cataclysm which probably
generated large amounts
Evidence from the elements of the heairy elements. In
this colour'coded
Helium makes up about a quarter o f the mass o f the visible photograph, visible light
appears red, radioivaves
Universe, perhaps 1047 tonnes o f it. Could the stars alone be blue arid X-rays green.
responsible for producing such a huge amount o f material?
W orking on this problem in 1964, R. J. Tayler (a close
colleague at the University o f Cambridge) and I reluctantly
A historic explosion
W hen the star that created
the Crab Nebula
exploded, it produced a
huge burst of light, one
which was visible for three
weeks in broad daylight
when it reached the Earth
in 1054. The Nebula is
about 13 light years in
diameter, while the star it
developed from has shrunk
to a tiny fraction of its
former size.
175
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
176
AFTER THE BIG BANG
TH E N U C LEA R LA D D ER
The process that powers the
Sun is nuclear fusion, a series
o f reactions that joins together
the nuclei o f light elements to
create heavier ones. Nuclear
fusion is not simply a matter
o f two nuclei crashing
together and remaining paired; Proton
At temperatures of
the sequence o f events is often O Neutron
much more complicated and
millions o f degrees, a
hydrogen nucleus or
o Electron
involves a number o f
proton collides with the
subatomic particles being
proton-neutron pair that
available at enormous
makes up the nucleus of
temperatures.
“heavy" hydrogen,
The highly simplified
releasing a hirst of light.
sequence on the right shows
the first step in this ladder o f A helium nucleus in turn
element building, in which collides with the three-
“heavy” hydrogen nuclei are panicle nucleus, and
converted into helium nuclei, more light is produced as
undergoing reactions that they combine.
eventually produce light— the
ultimate energy source for life
on Earth.
Millionths o f a second Another proton
later, an electron becomes combines with the
Hydrogen incorporated into the nucleus, and at this
growing nucleus. point the nucleus
splits up. The result is
Helium two helium nuclei—
one which joined the
Other elements sequence earlier, and
one which is newly
formed.
-------
The hydrogen Universe
Helium g
About 92 percent of all nuclei in
the Universe are those of
hydrogen; helium nuclei
constitute nearly 8 percent, 0
whereas nuclei of all the other
elements form just 0.1 percent.
Nitrogen nuclei, which contain 7 The carbon nucleus contains 6 Oxygen nuclei, with 8 protons and 8
protons arid 7 neutrons, can in turn protons and 6 neutrons, and can be neutrons, are formed by the
be formed from carbon. formed from helium nuclei. combination o f helium nuclei.
177
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
M ysterious quasars
W ith the apparent size o f
stars, h it moving with the
speed o f galaxies while
releasing floods of energy,
quasars confront
astronomers wnth a
perplexing combination o f
characteristics—some o f
ivhich may have a bearing
on how the Universe
evolved. This radio map
of a quasar shows some of
its prodigious output o f
energy.
178
AFTER THE BIG BANG
179
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
A critical pective o f where they pointed the antenna in the sky the result
breakthrough
Ten years after their was the same, like a steady hiss o f internally generated “noise”
momentous discovery, on a radio. Cosmic radiowaves had been known from as long
A m o Penzias arid Robert
Wilson starid in front o f
ago as 1931, but these had come from particular regions close
the aritenna with which to the Milky W ay, showing them to be generated inside our
they first detected the own galaxy. W ith the development o f radio-astronomy in the
background microwaves
from space. years following the Second W orld W ar, radio waves from
other galaxies had also been detected. Yet unlike the galactic
radiowaves, the microwaves that Penzias and W ilson had
picked up were spread out uniformly, not confined to patches
in the sky. There seemed to be no objects that could be
responsible for them. After careful checking, astronomers
made the exciting deduction that this uniformity indicated
180
AFTER THE BIG BANG
that they were connected not with local stars or galaxies, but
with the structure o f the Universe itself.
Penzias and W ilson’s discovery is now generally accepted
as justifying the idea o f the big bang, but this is really just a
convention, a way o f skirting the fact that our knowledge of
the Universe is still scant and tentative. If we look back at
what the big bang and steady state theories actually have to
say about the microwave background, the situation is no-
where near as cut-and-dried as the textbooks would have us
believe.
Each theory' had one point right and one point wrong. The
steady state theory predicts a background of radiation, but
expected it to be in the form o f starlight, not in the form o f
radiowaves. The big bang theory includes a microwave back
ground (indeed its existence had been predicted by the
theory’s protagonists who were actively searching for it) but
this success is tempered by the fact that it was expected to be
between ten and a thousand times more powerful than is
actually the case. The question now is which of these two
inaccuracies is really the less damaging to the theory from
which it arises.
It the steady state theory7 is right, something has to change
the starlight into radiowaves. This sort o f transformation is
not unknown, indeed something of the kind happens when
the Earth absorbs light from the Sun. The Sun’s energy7is not
lost o f course, because the Earth re-emits it into space as heat,
or infra-red radiation, which has a longer wavelength than
visible light. So is there anything which could cause an even
greater alteration in starlight throughout the whole o f space?
181
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
B acterial radio
Bacteria ivhich grow in
filaments like these can be
found in vast numbers on
Earth. Similarly shaped
organisms may play a key
role in converting starlight
into the cosmic
background radiation.
182
AFTER THE BIG BANG
183
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
E X P L O SIO N
BIG BA N G U N IV E R SE
L ITTLE BIG BA N G U N IV E R SE
184
AFTER THE BIG BANG
185
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
186
AFTER THE BIG BANG
187
8
THE
INFORMATION-
RICH UNIVERSE
Changing views of the atom • The frontiers of
particle physics • A world of uncertainty
How consciousness makes order from chaos • Living from
future to past
The picture o f the origin o f the Universe, and o f the forma
tion o f the galaxies and stars as it has unfolded in astronomy is
curiously indefinite, like a landscape seen vaguely in a fog.
This indefinite, unsatisfactory state o f affairs contrasts with
other parts o f astronomy where the picture is bright and clear.
A component has evidently been missing from cosmological
studies. The origin of the Universe, like the solution o f the
Rubik cube, requires an intelligence.
T o appreciate the difference an intelligence can make,
imagine a spaceship approaching the planet Earth, but not
close enough for its occupants to see individual humans. They
do see roads, fields, hedges, railway lines and the buildings o f
cities, however. A confused situation would evidently reign
among the space visitors if they tried to explain their observa
tions in terms o f natural processes alone, and a similarly
confused situation may well be reigning for us in the study o f
the Universe.
There are many people, especially those of religious
persuasion, for whom the existence o f a larger-scale intelli
gence than ourselves is simply taken as a matter of axiom, to
In the detection chamber o f the CER N synchrotron, a cosmic ray shatters an atom to
produce a fountain-like array of subatomic particle tracks.
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
190
THE INFORMATION-RICH UNIVERSE
191
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
192
THE INFORMATION-RICH UNIVERSE
far outside it. This is a cosmic ray, and in atomic terms its
effects can be spectacular.
Despite their name—which was in fact no more than a label
which has since become permanent—cosmic rays are not rays
at all. They are atomic nuclei, stripped o f their electrons. M ost
of them are nuclei o f the light elements hydrogen and helium,
but sometimes they can be much heavier. If one o f these
nuclei hits an atom in the atmosphere, the impact produces
a shower o f particles, some o f which were found to be dif
ferent from the set o f four— proton, neutron, electron and
neutrino—that were supposed to be complete.
Cosmic rays do not appear to order in necessarily the most
convenient form, so to side-step this problem machines have
been built which go part ot the way towards imitating their
effects. These particle accelerators have become, down the
years, much the largest research instruments ever made.
M odem accelerators consist o f a huge ring o f electromagnets,
sometimes miles in circumference. Every' time the particle in
question completes a circuit o f the ring it gains speed, and
eventually the accelerated particles are allowed to crash into
each other, or into some fixed target. W hen research using
these machines got underway it became more and more clear
THE HISTORY OF THE ATOM
Until the end of the last The discoi'ery of the Quantum theory put an Particle physics
century, the atom was electron in 1897 was end to the idea that experiments then
thought of as an followed early this electrons have distinct revealed that even
indivisible particle, with century by the discovery locations on orbits protons and neutrons
a different type of aton\ that even the atomic around the nucleus, were made up of
for each element. nucleus ivas composed smaller particles, known
o f separate particles. as quarks.
193
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
194
■ THE INFORMATION-RICH UNIVERSE
195
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
B R E A K IN G A T O M S A P A R T -
Because such enormous
energies are involved, research
into the nature o f subatomic
particles is conducted with
machines out o f all
proportion to the matter that
they investigate. The C ER N
proton synchrotron, which
straddles the Swiss—French
border, is nearly l j miles
(2.4 km) in diameter, and
consists o f a circular
underground tunnel encased
in a ring o f powerful
electromagnets. These
magnets steer and accelerate
protons through the tunnel
until they have gained
sufficient speed to be released
at a target.
T racin g a collision
Inside the detection chamber,
tracks produced by particles
are recorded with high-speed
cameras. T he direction o f the
tracks can be used to
determine the nature o f the
particle that produced them.
In the chamber’s strong
magnetic field charged
particles turn in spirals o f
varying tightness, while
uncharged particles fly o ff in
straight lines, unaffected by
the field. O ften millions o f
collisions have to be staged
before a single track turns up
evidence o f a new particle
which previously had only
been theoretically predicted.
T h e collision ch am b er
Inside this massive structure
(above), atoms are broken apart
by high-energy protons.
S ubatom ic vapour trails
E ach o f these trails (right)
shows the path o f a particle
pi'oduced by a high-energy
collision. Most o f the unstable
particles exist for only a minute
fraction o f a second.
196
THE INFORMATION-RICH UNIVERSE
A seme of uncertainty
Quantum mechanics began with the dramatic proposition
that there is a fundamental unit o f energy—a e]uantum—
which makes up all radiation. In everyday practical terms we
think o f light, for example, as being infinitely variable in its
intensity. But on an atomic level, the intensity o f light in-
197
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
198
m THE INFORMATION-RICH UNIVERSE
W a v e s and particles
A spectrum o f light is
produced by
photons—particles which
carry the energy o f
radiation. It was the
realization that all forms
o f radiation are made up
o f separate packets o f
energy that opened the
way to quantum
mechanics.
199
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
A Q U A N T U M P H Y S IC S E X P E R IM E N T
The easiest way to understand the implications certainty is that on average half the time it will
o f quantum physics is through the help o f an be on one side o f the box, and half the time on
imaginary experiment with a single subatomic the other. Quantum physics states that until it
particle. Here an electron is released inside a has actually been observed, it does not have a
box. In classical physics, what happens is distinct position at all. Only at the moment that
predicted on the left. The electron bounces like the consciousness of the experimenter
a ball, and at any moment its precise position intervenes is the position o f the electron
can be calculated just by knowing how it set suddenly “decided”. This link between mind
off. But quantum physics, shown on the right, and matter is completely at variance with the
holds that the electron will behave classical view o f physics, yet there is little doubt
unpredictably, following any o f an infinite that only quantum physics can fully explain the
number o f routes. All that can be said with unfamiliar world o f subatomic particles.
If quantum theory is correct— and all the mechanics states that subatomic particles
indications are that it is—experiments like this should produce a Universe which becomes
imply that it is not possible to think o f the more and more indefinite. Yet this is the
subatomic world as units o f matter that we can opposite o f what we see in the physical world,
observe in a detached manner. Quantum where order, not chaos, is paramount.
200
THE INFORMATION-RICH UNIVERSE
201
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
202
THE INFORMATION-RICH UNIVERSE
203
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
204
THE INFORMATION-RICH UNIVERSE
Quantum consciousness
It is evident that such a sequence could carry a message, it
could carry information. Suppose our brains contain a
quantum “experiment”, an experiment repeated many times
under similar initial conditions, each with the equivalent of a
dot or a dash as its result. The outcome could be a potential
message available for permanent storage in the memory, ready
to be acted upon, an injection of information that could form
the basis for the behaviour that we call free will.
I should emphasize yet again that this idea is one o f two
alternate possibilities, but if quantum sequences are ordered
in this way a profound difficulty, with which it is otherwise
205
m m m t h e in f o r m a t io n - r ic h u n iv e r s e
207
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
IN F O R M A T IO N IN L IV IN G M A T T E R
A t first sight, a piece o f synthetic rubber and a their basic constituents. But although rubber is
piece o f collagen— an elastic protein in skin and made up o f just a tangle o f molecules, collagen is
tendon—might seem to be very similar materials. remarkably ordered, composed o f a whole
But underneath, they show how vastly more hierarchy o f different kinds o f structure. This is
complex living matter is, and how much more true o f many o f the substances that make up
information is needed to produce it. Below, both living tissues. The more complicated they are,
rubber and collagen can be seen built up from the m ore information is needed to create them.
208
THE INFORMATION-RICH UNIVERSE
Collagen tissue
The organization o f this
relatively simple protein
does not even end at the
fibril stage. Bundles of
fibrils are arranged in
sheets (left and below),
with a right-angle change
of direction separating the
fibrils in each sheet. This
gives collagen its great
strength and elasticity, a
property that is vital in
skin and tendons.
Compared to a synthetic
equivalent, collagen is
extraordinarily complex.
209
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
210
THE INFORMATION-RICH UNIVERSE
mmmmm
Learning by
exp erien ce
Instead of inheriting
precise programs of action,
humans inherit the ability
to leam. The construction
of these thatched houses in
Korea shouts some
similarities with the
weaver bird’s nest.
However, none of the
villager s was bom with an
instinctive ability to build
them- their design has
developed through
learning, and over the
years will have seen many
changes.
211
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
212
wmm THE INFORMATION-RICH UNIVERSE
213
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
214
THE INFORMATION-RICH UNIVERSE
215
9
WHAT IS
INTELLIGENCE
UP TO?
Is the Earth unique? • The end of carbon-based life
How intelligence keeps ahead • Adapting for
the future • Man’s unexploited intellect
The outward instinct
It is common for children to wonder what would have
happened to them if their parents had never met, to try to
imagine life if the circumstances which led to their birth had
never existed. Usually a child’s answer to this brain-teaser is
that its parents would have married different spouses, and that
they would have produced different offspring. But because
this conclusion does not actually answer the original question,
there the matter rests. After a few minutes o f puzzling, the
child shrugs off the problem, deciding that since the position
seems impenetrably obscure, there is no point in pursuing
what is after all only a hypothetical enquiry.
Although it may sound naive, this mode o f thought is
characteristic not only of children but also of a number of
astronomers and philosophers, tracing not their own origins,
but the significance o f all life on our planet. They too shrug off
the problem by concluding that since life does exist on Earth,
there is no point in seeking any meaning in the fact that our
planet seems to be ideally suited to our needs. It must be so.
This, in a nutshell, is the so-called anthropic principle, which
is a modem attempt to evade all implications o f purpose in
218
WHAT IS INTELLIGENCE UP TO?
Accident or design?
I came across this remarkable property' o f carbon and oxygen
The X-ray star
in the early 1950s with my friend W illy Fowler. It is by no The Sun produces large
means an isolated example. The list o f anthropic properties, amounts o f X-rays which
appear here as bright
apparent accidents o f a non-biological nature without which patches of light. These two
carbon-based and hence human life could not exist, is large views, taken a few weeks
and impressive. Take protons, electrons and neutrons, for apart, slioiv how the
X-ray emission quickly
example. If the combined masses o f the proton and electron varies over the Sun’s
were suddenly to become a little more rather than a little less surface. At Earth’s
distance from the Sun, this
than the mass o f the neutron, the effect would be devastating. radiation is weak enough
The hydrogen atom would become unstable. Throughout the to be absorbed in the
Universe all the hydrogen atoms would immediately break atmosphere. However, a
minute change in the
down to form neutrons and neutrinos. Robbed of its nuclear characteristics o f
fuel, the Sun would fade and collapse. Across the whole of subatomic particles could
easily destroy the delicate
space, stars like the Sun would contract in their billions, balance that is crucial to
releasing a deadly flood o f X-rays as they burned out. By that terrestrial life.
♦
X
219
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
220
WHAT IS INTELLIGENCE UP TO?
C ycles o f change
The surface of the Earth is
a scene of constant
change. These buttes in
Monument Valley,
Arizona, are all that is left
of a layer of rock that over
millions of years has been
almost completely eroded
away. Because the human
lifespan is shcnt, we can
only establish this by
deduction. But it is also
possible that the whole
Universe is undergoing
fundamental changes—
changes so long term that
unlike in geology, the
eviderice of past “eras”
is at present beyond our
reach.
221
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
222
WHAT IS INTELLIGENCE UP TO?
223
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
224
WHAT IS INTELLIGENCE UP TO?
225
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
226
WHAT IS INTELLIGENCE UP TO?
chimpanzee has simply left the same rope swinging aimlessly Chrom osom al cousins
When the chromosomes
in the wind. It is otherwise difficult, if not indeed impossible, from the cell of a
to understand the outstanding talents of man, talents that chimpanzee (left) and a
hitman (right) are lined
simply cannot be explained just in terms of the Darwinian
up, the similarities are
struggle for survival. striking. Although the
chimpanzee has an extra
two chromosomes, this is
The unexploited intellect probably just the result of
one pair splitting, as this
arrangement suggests. The
Over a century ago, Alfred Russel Wallace was perplexed by
differences tire otherwise
this very problem. He began a remarkable essay written in insignificant compared to
1875 by showing that the brain capacity o f stone-age man the different roles that the
two species play on the
was much the same as the brain o f modem man. Prehistorians Earth.
have since confirmed that the brain of Cro-Magnon man of
35,000 years ago was not significantly smaller than our own.
Wallace then went on to correlate capacity with intellectual
capability7, deducing that stone-age man was in no way in
ferior to ourselves in intellectual potential. Since the primi
tive circumstances of stone-age man must surely have
suppressed most really complex intellectual activities, this is
hard to account for. Some modem scientists have reached a
227
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
N E A N D E R TA L C R O -M A G N O N M ODERN
The brain o f Cro-M agnon man 35,000 years ago was very similar to modem
man’s, while that o f Neandertal man up to 100,000 years ago was actually larger.
Ic e A g e art
As the last Ice Age
reached its climax, cave-
dwellers in Europe were
creating exquisite rock-
paintings. Mysteriously
avoiding any portrayal of
the human form, the
painters instead left
outlines of the hands
(right) that painted these
masterpieces. So
accomplished are the
paintings of animals in the
Altamira cave in Spain
(far right) that art experts
in the nineteenth century
refused to believe that they
were produced by
prehistoric man, asserting
instead that they were the
work o f a contemporary
artist. The skill o f these Ice
Age painters is yet another
example o f a human
ability that has little
relevance in the struggle
for survival.
228
WHAT IS INTELLIGENCE UP TO?
T h e coop erative
species
Even in the most fertile
parts o f the world where
the pressure to live
cooperatively is lcnv,
hitmans are found in
complex social groups
complete with their own
traditions arid hierarchies.
The cultural
characteristics o f these
people from a N ew
Quinea tribe are unlikely
to have been selected
naturally by conditions in
the tivpical forest. Instead,
their culture springs fi'om a
unique human attribute,
the intellectual capacity to
ponder matters beyond
simple physical needs.
230
WHAT IS INTELLIGENCE UP TO?
expedition. Mathematical powers, for example, are o f little M yth and magic
In the Asmat tribe o f New
consequence on a mountain compared to the ability to Quinea, mi id head-dresses
balance yourself on an awkward step in the ascent o f a rock are used on ceremonial
wall, as I discovered long ago to my cost. occasions in just the same
way as elaborate costumes
Indeed, the mathematical powers of some particularly are used in mote
gifted individuals go enormously outside the purely utilitarian “advanced” societies.
Throughout the human
needs o f life under hard physical circumstances. The qualities species great efforts are
conferred on us by natural selection on the other hand are o f lavished on activities
which, biologically
necessity rather uniform from one individual to another. Not
speaking, are practically
many of us can run 100 yards in less than 10 seconds, while in useless.
our prime there are few o f us who need more than 12 seconds
to run such a distance. Qualities conferred by natural selec-
tion generally only vary to within a few percent, whereas
qualities like mathematics, that from the point o f view of
natural selection we have no right to possess, are hugely
231
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
232
WHAT IS INTELLIGENCE UP TO?
233
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
T h e urge to build
For thousands oj years, Abdul Abbas in
man has built structures Alexandria (right), and
which are not designed to the cathedral at Bayeux
meet any physical need. (far right) all required a
The extraordinary scale vast commitment of
and artistry of these nianpcnuer over many
buildings underlines the years to be completed. In
human urge to step beyond than three widely different
the routine requirements of religions have m ade their
life. The Pyramids niark in a surprisingly
(above), the mosque of similar way.
234
WHAT IS INTELLIGENCE UP TO?
and the new? Take a look at our religious impulses from this
point o f view. Stripped of the many fanciful adornments with
which religion has become traditionally surrounded, does it
not amount to an instruction within us that expressed rather
simply might read as follows: You are derived trom some-
thing “out there” in the sky. Seek it, and you will find much
more than you expect.
235
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
236
w h a t is i n t e l l i g e n c e u p t o ?
237
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
238
WHAT IS INTELLIGENCE UP TO?
239
10
THE
INTELLIGENT
UNIVERSE
The restless species • The intervention
of intelligence • A window of opportunity • Forwards and
backwards in time • Mankind reaches
its final challenge
Humans are restless probing creatures, difficult to satisfy.
Give us our heart’s desire and it will hardly be five minutes
before we are thinking o f something else we would like to
have. Age matters little, it is the same for a child as for an
adult. The situation is not much different in science either, at
any rate so far as my own experience goes. Once I understand
the solution to one problem, I soon find myself looking
around for another to puzzle about.
Enthusiasts for the Darwinian evolutionary theory would
no doubt claim that our restlessness aids survival, because it
could be reckoned an advantage to search for your next meal
before you really need it. But there are plenty' of exceptions to
this argument. The businessman with a large fortune, for
example, although he does not need to search for his next
meal, or his next thousand meals, will spend a great deal of
effort in trying to increase his wealth, despite the fact that he
may lose all that he has in the process.
But the strange aspect o f this restlessness is that it centres
around those mental characteristics which, as we saw in the
last chapter, did not arise from evolution. O ur restlessness, in
Our planet has been a vehicle for the development o f life for nearly four billion years.
Hoiv much longer will its precious cargo survive?
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
243
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
A chain of intelligence
In the last chapter we encountered the idea o f an intelligence
far too remote both in space and time for us to have any direct
contact with it. O ur relation with that intelligence comes, not
through direct overt communication, but through our own
minds’ pre-programmed condition. The same was true for
the still more remote intelligence o f Chapter 8. Yet I keep
244
■■■■■■IBBHBBHMHnHBHHBHHBHHKffl THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
245
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
Loops in time
A t first sight, communication from future to past seems to
lead to logical inconsistency. O n the one hand, we have events
behaving statistically according to the normal past-to-future
time-sense, the situation as most everyday situations are con
cerned. Because some o f these past-to-future situations have a
gross almost brutal quality about them, as when a person
walks under a bus, we have the mistaken impression that
cause and effect goes only from past to future.
Tire less recognizable individual quantum events controlled
from the future, as when we make up our minds to do one
thing rather than another, can also have a major influence,
however. These future-to-past situations are so subtle com
pared to something like a road accident that they tend to pass
us by almost unnoticed. Yet as with the words “n o” and
“stop” o f the observer who watches the Rubik cube being
turned by the blindfolded person, their influence can
systematically build up to have a dominating effect on the
world.
Can cause and effect work both ways in time? W ould
inconsistencies not arise in such a two-way system? If we
continue thinking of both time-senses separately, the answer
would be yes, we would arrive at impossible inconsistencies.
T o avoid inconsistencies, both time-senses must be linked
into a consistent kind o f loop. Properly speaking one should
think in terms o f loops in time, not in terms o f cause and
effect. Cause and effect becomes a convenient description
only in special situations involving localities in the Universe,
246
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
247
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
248
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
249
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
250
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
251
in space 86-7
INDEX viral attacks 116
Comets,
Bennett 50
Beagle, H M S 31 composition 7 2 -3 ,8 7
Bees, evaporation 78-9, 88
Page numbers in bold type evolution 43 Kohoutek 75
indicate a photograph or food dance 40 M rkos 87
illustration. Beetles 43 orbits 76-81, 80
Big bang theory 167-87, 172, W est 74
184, 214, 237 Computer programs 124-7, 239
A Biosphere 73
Birds 43, 9 1 ,1 1 7 ,2 0 9 ,2 1 0
Consciousness 207-8
Cosmic rays 193,195
ADP16 Black holes 125 Craters 51, 52
Algae 64, 66 Blood 13,33, 121-2 Creation 29, 166, 237-8
Am ino acids, Blyth, Edward 29-30 Crick, Francis 23, 158
in meteorites 61 Brain 202-3, 204, 216, 227, 228 Cristispira 113
in primordial soup 19, 22-3 Bruno, Giordano 163 Crookes, W illiam 144
in proteins 12,13, 15, 33, 35-6, Bunyan, John 235 Curie, Pierre and Marie 192
224-5 Burbidge, John and Margaret 173
structure 15 Butterflies 35, 119
synthesis 18, 20-21
A m oeba 112, 113, 119
D
252
■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ H H H i INDEX
E
Improvement, in organisms 36,
Microfossils 128
Fowler, William 173, 176, 219 Industrialism 26, 27, 32
Earth, Fungi 58, 122 see also Microfungi Infectivity 129-33, 135-6
age 28-9 Insects 41, 43, 91, 120, 121,123
colonization 140 Instinct 209-10, 245
early conditions 20-1, 63, 250
geological history 28-9, 63-70,
G Io 78
Ionosphere 96
Galapagos Islands 90, 120
66, 160 Iridium 55
position in solar system 148
Galaxies, Iron 63-9, 66
colonization 147-55
formation 184, 185, 223, 237
present conditions 223, 250
water reserves 48-9, 107
East Pacific Rise 90
Ecosphere 148
M13 141, 161
M81 167 2
M82 162 Jupiter 77, 78, 80, 8 8 , 148, 154
recession 164-71, 169
Eddington, Arthur 204
W hirlpool 166
Einstein, AJbert 93, 168, 171,
201-2 see also Milky Way K
Gamma rays 96
Eldredge, Neil 45
Electromagnetic spectrum 96 Kelvin, Lord 158
Gamow, George 172-3, 176 King-coconut 122
Gauss, Carl 232, 233
Electrons 191-3, 198-201, 200,
219, 223 Kulik, L. A. 51,53
Gell-Mann, Murray 194
L
Elements, formation 172^4, 176,
Genes,
addition 116, 117, 122, 124
177,218
Enzymes,
Lamarckism 27, 28
assembly 48, 109, 115
assembly 17-22, 225
function 15, 16
bacterial 112
Lamarck, Jean Baptiste de 27, 32
cosmic 119, 141, 218
Epicycles 186 Leeuwenhoek, Van 25
Epidemics 131, 134-7, 136
human 229
Leucine 15
Erosion 65, 221 Light 93, 96
viral 112
Escherichia coli 113 Little big bangs 179, 184
see also Pseudogenes
Euglena 115
Genetic engineering 122
Lodge, Oliver 144
Europa 78
Genius 232
Qlobigerina 113
Loghem, Van 129
Evolution, Lungfish 119
Glucose 16
Glucose-6'phosphate 16
chemical 23 Lyell, Charles 29-30, 32
of consciousness 207-8 Lysenko, S. V. 101
Gould, Stephen Jay 45
cosmic 109-37, 244, 250
Darwinian 25, 30-41, 40, 44-5,
Graphite 85-6
48, 109, 220
Gunflint chert 58, 62-3
M
and disease 127-8, 137
H
Magrassi, F. 130
early theories 26-30
Mammals 41, 66, 73, 121, 151
by jumps 4 3 - 7 , 45, 124-5, 128, Man,
226 Haemoglobin 13, 33 ancestral 227, 228
neo-Darwinian 44—7, 45, 110 Heliozoans 113 behaviour 203-6
transitions 41, 43 Herodotus 146 chromosi >mes 227
Exosphere 96 Holbrook crater 52, 53 consciousness 207
Explosions 183, 184 Hooker, Joseph 30 DNA 119
Eyes 123 Hooke, Robert 25-6, 31 enzymes 16
Horses 41 eye 123
Hot springs 90-1
F Hubble, Edwin 164, 165
instinct 210
moral sense 233
Faraday, Michael 93 Humason, Milton 165 mutations 33, 34
Fermi, Enrico 139-40, 143 Hutton, James 28-9, 221 proteins 35
253
INDEX
Mars, and Darwinism 30-2, 40, 48, Primordial soup 18-23, 20-1, 49,
canyons 105 110, 124, 243 67, 70, 237
and comets 71, 80 directive effect 36, 37, 4 0 -1 ,4 7 Principle o f Uniformity 29, 221
position 148 in man 231, 233 Proteins,
river channels 104, 107 Nebulae, assembly 1 2 , 1 3 , 17, 19, 22, 33,
tests for life 102, 103-5 Crab 175 110
Matthew, Patrick 244 Horsehead 84 bacterial 112
Maxwell, James Clerk 36, 37, 93, Lagoon 170 information content 208-9
212 M 13 141, 161 size 113
Maxwell’s demon 36, 37 Neo-Darwinism 32 structure 1 2 , 13-14, 21, 35
Maxwell’s equations 212 Neptune 69, 71, 76, 77 viral 116
Mayflies 43 Neutrinos 185-6,191-3 see also Enzymes
Mercury 71, 78, 148 Neutrons 191-5, 218-19, 223 Protons 191-6, 218-19, 223
Mesons 195 Newton, Isaac 96, 144, 163, 171 Protozoa 66, 112, 113
Meteorites, Pseudogenes 119
Ivuna 58-9 Pseudomonas 97, 159
Murchison 59, 60, 61-2, 67, 81 O Ptolemy 186
Orgeuil 57-9, 61, 81 Punctuated equilibria 45
origin 80, 81 Octopus 121, 123
M eteor showers 56, 57 O hno, S. 229
M icrococcus radiophilus 94, 95, Olbers, Heinrich 163-5
97 ,1 5 9 Omega W est reactor 94-5 Q.
Microfossils 58-63, 60-1 Orchid, bee 38 Quantum physics 197-205, 200,
Microfungi 58, 112, 113 Orgel, Leslie 159 212,246
Microorganisms, Origin of Species, The 25, 30, 32, Quarks 194-7
in comets 81 41 ,2 4 9 Quasars 176, 178
contamination 60-1 Ostrich people 34 Quebec crater lakes 52, 53
and disease 129-37 Ozone layer 100 Quinine 122
extinctions 53
falling to Earth 88-90, 89,
99 -1 0 3 ,1 01, 109
in high atmosphere 99-103, 101
P R
in hot springs 90-1
Panspermia 158-60 Radiation,
Paramecium 113 dangerous effects 94—7, 100,
proteins 35
Parasites, 159,219
gamma rays 96
radiation resistant 94-7
life cycle 40
reproduction 73
sleeping sickness 113 infra-red 96
light 96, 199
in space 158-9, 223,239
Particles, subatomic 189,
varieties 111-12, 113
Milky W ay 75, 83-5, 84, 141,
1 9 1 -2 0 0 ,1 9 6 ,2 0 0 ,2 1 8 -1 9 ,2 2 5 Maxwell’s equations 212
Pedomicrobium 60, 62-3, 65, 67, microwave 96, 179-83, 185
170, 180 7 1 ,1 0 6 , 113 quantum 197-8
Miller, Stanley 18, 20, 21
M oon 68, 69, 70-1, 80, 98
Penicillin 122 from quasars 178
Penzias, A m o 179-81, 180 radio 96
Pflug, Hans 59, 60-2, 67 ultraviolet 96
Morphine 122
Moths, peppered 46
X-rays 96, 159-219
Mozart, Wolfgang 232
Phoenicians 147
Radiolarians 108
Mutations 32-6, 33-5, 44
Photosynthesis 64-7
Pitcher plants 39 Radiotelescopes 142
Planck curve 183 Rain 133-4, 135
Plankton 6 4 , 114 Ratcliffe, J. A. 192
N Plants, Red beds 64
Nagy, Bart 58-9, 63 photosynthesis 64 Red-shift, 164-6, 168, 169
Narlikar, Jayant 186 proteins 35 Religions 214, 233-9, 249
N A SA 100, 154, 183 seeds 98 Reptiles 4 1 ,4 3 , 55, 121
Natural selection, structure 38, 39 Retinol 123
in cosmic evolution 143 Pollination 38 Ribosomes 13, 33
and creation 29 Predictions 92-3 RN A 13, 33
254
INDEX
Rubik cube 10, 12, 16,189, 243, Surveyor III 97 Venus 71, 78, 88, 148, 153
246 Synchrotrons 196 Viking experiments 102, 103-5
Russell, Bertrand 220 Viroids 112, 117
Rutherford, Ernest 192 Viruses,
T addition of genes 116, 127-8
Tayler, R .J. 175 falling through atmosphere 56,
129-37
S Telescopes,
Kitt Peak 150 hepatitis A 131
Sagan, Carl 140 M ount W ilson 165 influenza 113, 134
Saturn 77-8, 88 , 148, 154 radio- 142 in meteorites 61
Schmidt, Maarten 176 in search lor life 151, 153 poliomyelitis 113
Schrodinger, Erwin 197 space 157 replication 19, 112, 115, 116,
S E T I 140-1,158 Thiopedia 113 117, 125
Shakespeare, William 232 Time-sense 211-13, 246 Tipula 113
Sheep 35, 40 Troposphere 96, 98, 133 T4 bacteriophage 113, 116
Shells 43, 206 Tunguska event 51, 53, 55-6 Voyager missions 77, 154
W
Shooting stars 55, 88
Slipher, V . M . 164-5
Snails 40, 45-6 U
Solar prominences 195 Wagoner, Robert 176
Solar system 69-72, 76, 78-9, 80, U FO s 143-6, 145,146, 160 Wald, George 250
148,191 Universe, Wallace, Alfred Russel 30, 31,
Space shuttle 139 age 166 227, 232-3, 242, 250-1
Space travel 139-40, 146-57, evolution 222, 224 W ater 48-9, 85, 104, 107, 133,
156, 157 expansion 164-87 134, 140
Species 29, 30, 32,36, 124 origin 166-87, 172, 184, 189, W atson, James 158
Spiders 40, 43, 119 214 Wickramasinghe, Chandra 85,
Spiritualism 144 structure 164, 181 130
Steady state theory 168-76, 172, Uranus 69, 71, 76, 77 W ilson, Robert 179-81, 180
181-2, 186-7 Urey, Harold 18, 20, 58 W oolley, Richard 157
Stratosphere 96, 99, 100
Streptococcus mitis 98
Sugars 16, 18
V X
Sun, Valles Marineris 105
X-rays 93-5, 96, 159
and comets 71, 73, 76, 78-9, 81 Variation,
nuclear reactions 173, 177, 219 in biochemicals 35-6
and search for life 153
Sunspots 92
in organisms 29-30, 32-3, 36,
3 7 -9 ,4 1 ,4 6 ,4 8
_____ Y_
Supemovae 125, 173, 174, 175 in fossil record 43 Yeast 112, 113
255
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A u th o r’s ackn ow led gm en ts Davis/US Geological Survey 71 NASA Harvard College Observatory 196t CERN,
It is a great pleasure to thank my wife for 72 W illiam Hartough/Professor Geneva 196b CERN 199 David Parker/
her help in putting together the text of this Delsemme, University of Toledo 74 Jack SPL 202 Mazziotta/SPL 203 London
book, especially in relation to the research Harvey/Association of Universities for Scientific Fotos 206t Adam W oolfit/
and development of the ideas. I also wish Research in Astronom y 75 NASA/SPL 77 Susan Griggs Agency 206b Heather
to thank the staff at Dorling Kindersley for Lick Observatory 78 N A SA 79 D r E. I. Angel/Biofotos 208 British Leather
the care they have taken in clarifying parts Robson/SPL 82 NASA/SPL 84t Hale M anufacturers’ Research Association 210
of the text, and in relating the text to the Observatories/SPL 84b Lund Observatory Heather Angel/Biofotos 211 Michael
illustrations, which, as a person who 86~7(all) D r Tony Brain/SPL 88 Space Gore/Nature Photographers Ltd 213
consistendy graced the bottom of his Frontiers 90 Stephen M ills/Oxford Chris W arren/Vision International 216
school class in artwork, I can only stand Scientific Films 91 Michael Freeman/ SPL 219(both) Harvard College
back and admire. Bruce Colem an Ltd 94 D r M urray, Observatory 221 David W rigglesworth/
University of W estern O ntario 95 Los Oxford Scientifc Films 222t Heilman/
D orling K in dersley Lim ited would like Alamos National Laboratory 96 The Zefa 222b D r Stanley Awramik, Dept, of
to thank Angela M urphy, w ho was W arden and Fellows of New College, Geological Sciences, UCSB 227(both)
responsible for gathering together the Oxford 97 NASA/SPL 99 D on Brownlee, D r Joy Delhanty, University College,
illustrations from a remarkable variety of University of W ashington 101 National London 228 Ronald Sheridan 229 Dr
sources, and also the following people for Centre for Atmospheric Research (USA)/ Hell/Zefa 230 Bill and Claire Leimbach/
their assistance: M ike M arten, and the SPL 102 N A SA 104 NASA 105 N A SA / Robert Harding Associates 231 Maureen
staff at the Science Photo Library; Sue SPL 106 NASA/SPL 108 M anfred Kage/ Mackenzie/Robert Harding Associates
Burt, Val Hansen, Steve Parker, Pat Oxford Scientific Films 111 Dr 232t M . Droeshout/National Portrait
Samuels and Joanna Godfrey W ood. Gopalmurti/SPL 114 Peter Parks/Oxford Gallery 232b Fotomas Index 233 Mansell
Scientific Films 115bl Eric Grave/SPL Collection 234 Ronald Sheridan 234-5
P ictu re credits 115br Biophoto Associates/SPL 116 Dr Zefa 235 Ronald Sheridan 240 Farl
Abbreviations: b bottom , c centre, 1 left, Lee D. Simon/SPL 118 James Bell/SPL Scott/SPL
r right, t top; SPL Science Photo Library. 119 N. A. Callow/Natural History
Photographic Agency 1201 A nthony Illustrations
F ro n t cov er 1Peter Parks/Oxford Bannister/NHPA 120-1 Peter W ard/ All illustrations by Oxford Illustrators,
Scientific Films r D r F. Espenak/SPL Bruce Colem an Ltd 12 l r Seaphot 1221 D r except pages 45, 61, 80, 89,141, 169, 172,
B a c k co v er Daily Telegraph Colour R. L. Brinster 122r J. B. G urdon 1231 184 by Robert Bums
Library 5 Royal Observatory, Edinburgh SPL 123bl Jane Burton/Bruce Coleman
Fron tisp iece Dr Jean Lorre/SPL 10 Philip Ltd 123r M. Tweedie/NHPA 126 Alain Typesetting
Dowell 14 T. L. Blundell/SPL 15 David Com post/Bruce Coleman Ltd 127 Alain Advanced Filmsetters (Glasgow) Limited
Parker/SPL 20 Professor Stanley Miller, Com post/Bruce Colem an Ltd 131 D r
University of California at San Diego 21 E. H. Cook/SPL 132 N orm an O. Tomalin/ R eproduction
T. L. Blundell/SPL 22 Ralph W etm ore/ Bruce Colem an Ltd 134 D r R. Reprocolor Llovet S.A., Barcelona, Spain
SPL 24 M artin D ohm 27 Mansell Dourm ashkin/SPL 135 Ralph W etm ore/
Collection 281 BBC H ulton Picture SPL 138 NASA/SPL 140 BBC 1411
Library 2 8t Mansell Collection 28b Anne National A stronom y and Ionosphere
Ronan Picture Library 3 0 Ullstein Center, Cornell University/NSF 141r
Bilderdienst 3 0 John W allace 31 Royal Frank Drake/NAIC 142 Robert P. C arr/
Geographical Society, London 3 4 Barritt/ Bruce Colem an Ltd 145t Fortean Picture
Frank Spooner Agency 3 5 Fortean Picture Library 145b Gianpetro Monguzzi/
Library 35 British M useum (Natural Fortean Picture Library 146t Ella Louise
History) 37 BBC H ulton Picture Library Fortune/Fortean Picture Library 146b
381 Sean M orris/Oxford Scientific Films Rene Dahinden/Fortean Picture Library
38r Heather Angel/Biofotos 39 Adrian 149 NASA 150 D r F. Espenak/SPL 151
W arren/Ardea 42 D r Jaeger/M useum fur NASA/SPL 152 Royal Observatory,
Naturkunde, Berlin 43 S. C. Bisserot/ Edinburgh/SPL 154 NASA/SPL 156
Nature Photographers 4 4 London Anne Ronan Picture Library 157 Kobal
Scientific Fotos 4 6 t Heather Angel/ Collection 1581 Svensk Pressfoto 158r
Biofotos 46b M. Tweedie/Natural History Francis Crick, Salk Institute 161 U S Naval
Photographic Agency 4 9 NASA/SPL 50 O bservatory/NASA 162 D r Jean Lorre/
D r F. Espenak/SPL 52t Bruce Coleman/ SPL 165 J. R. Eyerman/Time-Lite/
Bruce Colem an Ltd 52b Earth Physics Colorific! 166t US Naval Observatory/
Branch, Departm ent of Energy, Mines SPL 166b SPL 167 D r Jean Lorre/SPL
and Resources, Canada 53 L. Kulik/ 170t U S Naval Observatory 170b Lick
Sovfoto, New York 55 W alter Alvarez/ Observatory 174 D r J. Dickel/SPL 175
SPL 56 Pearson/M ilon/SPL 57 Royal US Naval Observatory/SPL 178 D r D. H.
Astronomical Society 59 Georg Fischer/ Roberts/SPL 180 Bell Laboratories, New
Visum, Hamburg 6 0 -1 Hans Dieter Ptlug Jersey 182 D r Jean Burgess/SPL 188
65 Jerg Kroener/NHPA 67 Kim Taylor/ CERN/SPL 1921 Ullstein Bilderdienst
Bruce Coleman Ltd 68 Hale Observatory/ 192r Cavendish Laboratory, University of
SPL 70 l(all) D on W ilhelms and Don Cambridge 194 Jean Collombet/SPL 195
256
After teaching and research at Cambridge, Fred
H oyle became Plumian Professor of Astronomy and
Experimental Philosophy in 1958, and founded the
Cambridge Institute of Theoretical Astronomy in
1967. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in
1957, an Honorary Member of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1964, and in 1969
he was elected an associate member of the American
National Academy of Sciences - the highest U .S .
honor for non-Am erican scientists. He was knighted
in 1972, and in 1974 was awarded a Royal Medal by
the Queen in recognition of his contribution to
theoretical physics and cosmology.
Printed in Italy