Timeline Covered in the Performance

In the first 3 minutes of the universe after the big bang, helium and hydrogen formed, and the universe began to cool down. In the first billion years to follow, the gases were brought together by their own gravity to form galaxies and stars, much like we come together with our peers and loved ones to form community and family. The same gravity that brings matter together can cause stars to collapse on themselves, yielding a supernova, an explosion that launches stardust away from where it once was. This constant tension between attraction and repulsion governs the dynamics of our universe to this day.

Image credit: Jeff Filippini’s presentation, Feb 2022

Our solar system formed from a cloud of interstellar dust, which swirled into forming our Sun and other celestial bodies, including our planet Earth. The Earth formed a stage for violent transformations. Magma solidified at the surface to form the crust; active volcanoes punctured the crust and released greenhouse gases into the atmosphere; as the earth cooled, clouds formed, and soon water was filling most of the surface. All of those processes were mediated by the transformation of energy, which allowed elements to break and form, rocks to erode and metamorphosize, water to vaporize and condense – an inexorable exchange of matter and energy that continues to transform our planet.

Image credit: Fouke & Murphy (2016). The art of Yellowstone Science

The early atmosphere and ocean were rich in water, carbon, and nitrogen compounds, which eventually took part in chemical reactions that produced organic molecules. Under specific pressures, temperatures, and chemical concentrations of other elements, the same carbon that forms hard diamonds and brittle graphene can gather to form the building blocks of life on earth – protein. This rich soup that was the primitive ocean was the place of birth of the first forms of life on earth. Protein, mediated by different chemical processes, started to come together and perform simple tasks. Life emerges from the collective action of those mechanisms.

Image credit: Fibrinogen, the Protein Building Block of a Blood Clot - Eric Lee, 2009

A new process to give the cells energy appeared: photosynthesis. The cell receives photons from the sun, removes CO2 from the atmosphere, and absorbs water; from the carbon, it makes sugar to fuel the cell, while the water will go through reactions that extract the oxygen from H2O and release oxygen gas into the atmosphere. The same cells absorb oxygen from the atmosphere to allow reactions that process sugar and extract energy from it in the form of ATP – cell respiration. This constant process of giving, receiving, and transforming also shaped the earth’s geological history by increasing the concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere.

Image credit: "Interplay of Light and Life from Atoms to Cells" by Melih Sener, Donna Cox and group https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRZIpwY-pTs

The concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere had increased drastically, allowing new forms of life to form, such as the eukaryotes. Eukaryotic cells have a nucleus enclosed with an envelope, and typically contain other organelles. Each organelle performs a function in the cell, which is only possible because inside those organelles there are proteins being synthesized, transformed, and transported by different chemical processes. The functionality of the organelles emerges from the collective action of those processes like factories that can only produce goods because the workers act together, each one with their own task. And together, the organelles make the life of the cell possible, like a cohesive conglomerate of cells gives rise to our own life, and a cohesive conglomerate of people forms a society.

Our cells are eukaryotic cells that hold DNA, molecules formed from nucleo-bases adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G), and thymine (T). Inside the nucleus, DNA gets transcribed to RNA, which is transported out of the nucleus and into another organelle called ribosome, where it will give instructions for protein synthesis. The protein, attached to a membrane of the cell called endoplasmic reticulum, will go to the golgi complex, where it will be packaged and sent to the parts of the cell where it needs to be. All of this is possible because of the underlying cogs of the machine, now running smoothly to build and distribute the building blocks of life.

Image credit: Protein binding to methylated DNA - Ilia Solov'yov and Chris Chipot, 2013, retrieved from https://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Gallery/Science-New/images/proteins-DNA-RNA/2013-calendar-Methylated-

The earliest multi-cellular life started to emerge. 0.8 billion years ago came the earliest plants, followed by the earliest animals about 1.3 billion years ago.

2.5 million years ago the Homo habilis, one of the first species of the genus Homo, appears. 

Image credit: https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/cellular-microscopic/photosynthesis.htm

Today, we as animals and humans continue to manifest the tensions, transformations, and dynamics that characterize all of life and nature. We do more than coexist with each other: we interact, exchange goods, ideas, and experiences; we learn and we teach; we come together and celebrate, we fall apart and clash; we form communities, political parties; we form divisions and build walls. All in motion, all in flow. Society and its dynamics emerge from the presence and work of each individual, who is the result of the collective action of their cells, which in turn only work because of even smaller organelles – all in constant transformation and interaction with the environment, also ever changing.

Image credit: https://uofi.app.box.com/file/918719043743