Journal 9: October 27th

I enjoyed the movie we watched in class because it went into more detail about the scientific origins of life. It's strange how sometimes classes during a semester will intersect and cover some of the same material. In Biology 10 this week I read about Stanley Miller's project in 1953 that helped confirm the theory of how life began.

"Stanley Miller observed that modern biological macromolecules (DNA, protein, carbohydrates, and so on) are all composed of elements that were present in abundance on the early Earth. He designed a closed system to simulate such conditions that could produce biologically important organic molecules from inorganic ingredients. A warmed flask of water simulated the primordial sea. An "atmosphere" - in the form of gases added to a reaction chamber - contained hydrogen gas (H2), methane (CH4), ammonia (NH3), and water vapor (H2O). After the apparatus had run for a week, an abundance of organic molecules essential for life, including amino acids, the monomers of proteins, had collected in the "sea". These laboratory simulations of the primeval Earth have produced all 20 amino acids, several sugars, lipids, nucleotides, and even ATP" - from Essential Biology, Second Edition.

This made me question whether this information makes me believe more or less in "God" or a creator, and also what time means and how we are trapped within it. It also made me simultaneously feel a sense of responsibility and sadness about being born at a time where humans are destroying so much of the work nature has done and potentially living at the end of time on earth. At the same time, it could be just the end of HUMANS on earth and maybe a new evolution would occur from the prokaryotic archaea, who could withstand global warming/nuclear war/2012/etc.etc.etc.

How do you think the world will end?