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Understand the nature of this force, we must explore life in its most fundamental level, look at two key events in the history of the earth, so that the writing of these lines may be. The first time in nearly 4 billion years ago, when life emerged. The second power much longer. All living creatures have a swimming pool in Earth's oceans for the past three and a half billion years ago mammals resulted in a family of bipeds, primates, and their ranks from the thinking ape men. Since then, tens of thousands of years, man has broken the hearts of the many mysteries of the universe's workings.           This Wonderment of Life     Starlight glistens on a spaceship's silvery hull as it cruises, unseen and unmanned, amongst the planets of a distant solar system. Guided by the encoded instructions of an alien civilization it glides past dark, rocky planetary outposts and bloated gas giants until it reaches its goal, and swings into the orbit of an inner planet. A probe is released. Retrorockets fire that adjust the probe's trajectory, easing it slightly from the mother-ship's geostationary orbit and turning its heat-resistant nose towards the ground. The grip of the planet's gravity drags the probe inwards, through ever-decreasing orbits. Faster and faster it spins until, plunging through clouds, it finally emerges under a leaden sky. A parachute is released to halt the headlong dive, and the craft slowly descends to land on a rock-strewn landscape.   Minutes later, a metallic lid is drawn back, exposing a camera lens, and pictures are beamed back to the mother-ship. The camera pans across the rocky scene. The same rubble-strewn landscape is everywhere — rocks of all shapes and sizes lie sunken into fine grey sand. The air is still. Nothing moves. The camera scans the monotonous surface stretching in all directions towards the horizon — grey rocks, some precariously balanced atop others, others lie shattered, blasted by the forces of alien weather. The camera pans again, and then one rock, in shape and colour much like any other, spreads its wings and soars into the sky. The mother-ship sends a signal backward through the vastness of space, towards the distant home of the spaceship's makers: LIFE!   The planet is, of course, Earth and the rock a bird, perhaps a rock pigeon, lost in barren desert. The story illustrates the wonder we should feel at the most remarkable phenomenon in the known universe — life. Our telescopes and space-probes return images of the universe's many marvels — the twisted braids of Saturn's rings, Neptune's moon Miranda's scarred and shattered surface, the birth of stars within the Crab Nebula. Extraordinary as these are, they pale before the astonishing nature of life itself. And yet, all life forms are essentially rocks — made of the same materials, obeying the same laws, as the rocks, stone and sand that surround us. We are rocks that run and swim, climb and leap; that hear, touch and see; rocks that can look out into the vastness and grasp for an understanding of ourselves and the universe that made us.   ... [W]hat animates living organisms[?] What is, in the words of Dylan Thomas, 'The force that through green fuse drives the flower'? To understand the nature of this force, we must explore life at its most fundamental level, examining the two key events in Earth's history that made the act of writing these lines possible. The first took place nearly four billion years ago, when life emerged. The second took much longer. Living creatures had been swimming in Earth's oceans for three and a half billion years before the mammals gave rise to a family of bipeds, the primates, and from their ranks emerged the thinking ape, man. Since that time, several million years ago, the mind of man has unravelled many mysteries concerning the universe's workings. We watch the sun setting every evening and are confident of its rise the next day, because we know its rising and setting are caused by Earth spinning on its axis. We can look up into the night sky and know that each star is a sun like our own. Scientists can calculate the energy released from the fusion of hydrogen nuclei inside our sun, or use powerful telescopes to witness the birth of galaxies that existed billions of years ago. Remarkably, however, the two key events that made our own existence possible — the emergence first of life and then of consciousness — still remain mysterious. Although we know now a great deal concerning both the workings of living cells and (though far less) the human brain, the spontaneous appearance of both phenomena remains a puzzle.   ... [W]hat is life? What is the force that through the green fuse drives the flower?         — Johnjoe McFadden, Quantum Evolution: How Physics' Weirdest Theory Explains Life's Biggest Mystery                       Indexes/15