These days the new book of Dry them Azgad - "Life Begins Here", which deals with the unsolved and fascinating question and the adventure journey of human reason, in an effort to decipher nature's best-kept secret: when and where life was born from inanimate matter and how it all began
The happiness to live
The following sentence may upset many, but if you think about it, the difference between a person and a flea is much smaller than the similarity between them. Here is a test that may clarify this statement: if we have before us a man, a flea and a stone, which of the three is the exception? The opposite life in both man and flea is such a dominant factor that, compared to an inanimate object, they seem almost family members, and all intellectual, cultural and other differences between them are dwarfed.
Man and the flea, both will try for their lives if necessary, both feel and cherish the happiness of living, what the French call Joie de vivre, the very being, the quiet existence of the basic life processes. Absorption, emission, processing, division, culture, passing on messages - and a part of yourself - to future generations. The difference between them stands out mainly in view of the fact that the flea is satisfied, perhaps, with the happiness of living as it is, but the human tries to understand the world, to decipher the laws that drive what happens around him, including the question of the questions: How was life created?
The Big Bang, the beginning of the known universe, created space and time and converted energy flows into large amounts of inert matter. Gradually, matter organized itself into galactic structures, stars ignited with nuclear energy and began to produce more and more complex materials. Planets were formed and began to move around stars - but all this took place in the realm of the still. At some point, roughly 11 billion years after the Big Bang, and less than four billion years before these words were written by a living organism, the most significant and mysterious event in the history of the universe occurred: inanimate matter organized itself into a structure that was characterized by a new, unexpected property, the extent of which is unclear Obliged - if at all - by the laws of physics: life. How did it happen? where? why? What, really, is the difference between a certain amount of atoms of different kinds, and between those atoms themselves, which make up a living being, not to mention a certain person, our favorite.
In the absence of answers, the questions add to the cost. Would the appearance of life have taken place - given inert matter and enough time - in any case? Everywhere? And if the answer is yes, what exactly happened there? Or, in other words, how did life emerge from inanimate matter?
Generations of scientists, philosophers and writers have tried - and are still trying - to decipher this riddle. Sometimes, in order to understand what happened in the past and the deep meanings of a certain phenomenon, one can try to imagine future events. This is, more or less, one of the traditional fields of activity of science fiction (SFI). This is the framework in which, in 1941, Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985 Sturgeon) published Theodore) You are one of the best stories of the Madbhav of all time: "El Bez'er Anfin". The hero of the story, James Kidder, succeeds in developing molecular systems that are able to reproduce themselves independently - this is the feature that characterizes the phenomenon of life. Kidar's new artificial molecular systems were, therefore, a kind of synthetic alternative to the flora and fauna on Earth, based on the self-replicating ability of DNA and RNA - but Kidar "designed" for them a completely new system of information coding and metabolism , which was designed to carry out various chemical processes much faster than the life processes in organisms known to us on Earth. Metabolism is - among other things - the engine of evolution. Kidder's new creatures flooded new mutations at a dizzying rate and submitted them to the "advancement committees" of natural selection, which created a rapid evolution that led the primitive single-celled creatures, within a few years, to the ability to overtake man. In Sturgeon's story, the new creatures were content with being different and being able to protect themselves from the madness of humans. In that sense, the story has a happy ending.
Kidder created another life and thus acquired, as Sturgeon described it, too much power. To the new creatures he was God. Creator of the world, there is no other besides Him. And when they said, or thought or believed that "everything is written", they meant Kidar's chemical formulas.
The plot of "The God in Little Enfin" takes place on a small island in the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Massachusetts. Not far from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, where, already in the 90s of the last century, chemist Julius Rebek (1944) built a molecular system capable of replicating itself. Since then, several other ideas have been proposed regarding systems that are capable of replicating themselves, but no one has yet been able to rise to the level of "Al Bez'er Anfin".
Not many research groups in the world dare to face this challenge and define it as their main field of activity. Scientific conferences are held on the subject from time to time, but at least some of them are closed to the media. Most of the scientists who deal with the subject do so as an additional project to their "normal" research work. The preoccupation with attempts to create life is seen to a considerable extent as a kind of nonsense, or "strangeness", or, worse than that, "childishness"; Things that are not really useful to a research scientist when his case is brought before academic promotion committees or research grant adjudication committees.
Do not try
The words Don't try - engraved on the tombstone of the poet and writer Charles Bukowski (1920-1994 Charles Bukowski), express well the message of the world of science to those who try to trace the origin of life. Everyone agrees that this is one of the central and profound questions we face. But most scientists believe that we still do not have the ability and tools necessary to really deal with it. And in the meantime, don't question the miraculous of you. Fishing rod. This is a task that awaits future generations. Just like Bukowski, who once wrote to his girlfriend: "You wait, and if nothing happens, you wait some more." This book brings the stories of brave scientists, who are not willing to wait, who are not afraid to try and take risks to explore the wonderful of us, to reach the source, the starting point of the root, to understand where we really came from.
About the book: Life Begins Here - the never-ending search for the last common ancestor
By Hibshem Azgad, Yedioth Books Publishing
Is the difference between a person and a flea smaller than the similarity between them? How, when and where was life born from inanimate matter? Will we ever meet aliens? What is the purpose of life and does it have meaning? Who is the common ancestor of all creatures and plants? Generations of scientists try to crack the riddle of the origin of life, to understand how it all began - and fail again and again. This book describes in a language equal to every soul the adventure journey of human reason, in an effort to decipher nature's best kept secret.
A mystery of this magnitude may only be solved in a thousand years - or next week.
Prof. Aharon Chachanover, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, Technion, Israel: "The mystery of the origin of life is perhaps even more fascinating than the mystery of the creation of the universe. How simple molecules joined the complex, and especially how they created functional assemblies - nucleic acids and proteins - that transmit information from generation to generation while playing the most wonderful of symphonies - that of life. This mystery is far from being solved even today. Bishem Azgad skillfully describes, in a fascinating and rare combination of science, philosophy, history and art, the many theories some of which have brought us almost to the brink of solving the mystery, but admits in the end that Mother Nature is still hiding her greatest secrets from us. Scientists do not make predictions - but perhaps the solution to this mystery will never be revealed".
Michal Rovner, artist, recipient of the A.M.T. Prize (Art, Science and Culture): "The desire to observe, decipher and express different dimensions of existence has been present in artistic work since the dawn of mankind. At the same time, from the beginning of science, curiosity expresses an ambition to understand and map the world and the phenomenon of life. in his unique writing, Bishem Azgad creates fascinating compositions and original perspectives on the inspiring synergy in the meeting between the fields of science and art".
Prof. Daniel Segera, Boston University, United States: "Scientists enjoy the great privilege of repeatedly embarking on exciting journeys into the unknown, which sometimes lead us to surprising and fascinating discoveries. The insights that emerge from the studies are, at times, so deep, and evoke such intense emotions, as those accompanying an act of art. In the study of the origins of life - one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in science - feelings of wonder and humility are added to all of this. The stories, the reflections, The understandings and images that Azgad Porash presents to us in this book are a wonderful and rare way for the general public to experience the sense of wonder, as well as the intellectual and artistic beauty that accompany the ongoing research journey to the source of life".
