Earth Day

Earth Day is this coming Monday which inspired me to write this weeks post.

1970, less than one year after humans landed on the moon the 1st Earth Day was celebrated. Global consciousness elevated to where enough people could envision the earth as a place in the world rather than the world itself. While a recent holiday, I do feel it deserves to be embraced. Through phones, computer, cars, and planes we are all becoming globalized in ways that are liberating and challenging. We are all becoming exponentially more connected to each other. Whether this change brings prosperity or chaos is dependent on how we navigate this shift. It is no longer sufficient to tend to our tiny scrap of Earth. We are now being asked to expand our consciousness globally. So for this Earth Day, I like to meditate on how we are all indivisible from the earth.

Let us begin this meditation at our best speculation as to when life began. There are fossils dating back 3.8 billion years ago,  .8 billion years after we think the earth was formed. Perhaps life is older than what the fossil record currently shows. The fossil record (which is an incomplete science)  shows the first life was simple prokaryotic cells. These are bacteria and archaea (extremophiles) cells. At some point, another type of celled called eukaryotic formed. Depending on the methodology of speculation the development of eukaryotic cells can range from 2 - 3.5 billion years ago. These cells differentiate themselves from prokaryotic cells by having a walled off the nucleus and specialized organelles as well as membranes that separate the organelles of the cells. Many of these cells have mitochondria (which is theorized to at one time been an independent prokaryote cell)  to supply the cell's energy. About 800 million years ago we see fossil evidence of plants and about 500 million years ago the earliest as of yet found fossil of animals have been found.

As animals ( and I would say plants and fungus as well) evolve so does communication. Many animals form groups or at least cultivate an awareness of each other. Some animals will evolve the ability to share emotions. An awkward breed of primate will figure out how to translate complex thoughts first into sound, then into visual symbols. This primate will then discover how to convey all thought with 26 (ish depending on the culture) symbols each of which has no meaning of its own. This ability to store information alphabetically external to our brain saves us enough collective neuro bytes that we now have the surplus energy to turn our thoughts into electricity. The internet is born.  At present about half the global population has the ability to access this information maze.

If humans had an ability to sense a communication spectrum the same way we can sense a light spectrum and if we could view what we perceive on that spectrum on a time-lapse video of the earth from its inception to now what would we see? I think we would see the earth as a giant cell learning about itself.  It would mirror the metamorphosis from an unorganized prokaryote cell to a well regimented eukaryotic cell. This vision to me looks like a seed maturing into a plant. I envision the internet as the electrical flower, sending out signals to some cosmic bee that will pollinate the earth in some way my mind can’t fathom. Bees, after all, see in UV light to better see what flowers have been pollinated. Why would some creature on the next octave of existence not see the electromagnetic information we are creating in a similar way.

Of course, if we want to follow this metaphor we should acknowledge as plants flower they soon die or go dormant for the winter. Many scientists speculate we are experiencing the sixth mass extinction on the planet. It is perhaps becoming winter once again. This can be a ghastly thought, but we must remember with the timescale we are dealing with this could last another million years.

As we are potentially all dying off we are at the same time beginning to explore space. We have thousands of satellites in orbit. We have sent a dozen people to scout out the moon and landed vehicles on Mars.  Even more ambitious, I would argue in 1977 we sent voyagers 1 and 2 on a no return mission to space. In 2012 traveling at about 17 kilometers a second voyager 1 left what we think marks the end of our solar system.  Where will these voyages end? Is it possible to travel forever and not make contact with something? Is space so vast are these pods almost certain to never make contact with anything. Whatever the answer is these spacecraft are of the earth. With them travels billions of microscopic cell, some of which can lie dormant in space near indefinitely. The excitement about space travels bubbles and wanes, but when we are dealing with such large time scales I presume humans will send much more contaminated metal to deep space.  Some of it may someday land on planets, that can foster life .

From a certain perspective our whole space program, our whole understanding of physics and chemistry, our very existence may be nothing more than a delicate part in a giant Gaian strategy to spread her spores.

Anthony Bruni