Fate had arranged

One day I was looking through a low-power binocular microscope at a newly arrived batch of adult Drosophila immobilized with a little ether, and was busily separating the different varieties with a camel’s-hair brush. To my astonishment, I came upon something very different: not a small variation such as red eyes instead of white, or neck bristles instead of no neck bristles. This was another, and very well-functioning, kind of creature with much more prominent wings and long feathery antennae. Fate had arranged, I concluded, that an example of a major evolutionary change in a single generation, the very thing Muller had said could never happen, should take place in his own laboratory.

The females

To learn the practical side of genetics, I spent many months working with fruit flies, Drosophila melanogaster tiny benign beings with two wings and big eyes. We kept them in pint milk bottles. We would cross two varieties to see what new forms emerged from the rearrangement of the parental genes, and from natural and induced mutations. The females would deposit their eggs on a kind of molasses the technicians placed inside the bottles; the bottles were stoppered; and we would wait two weeks for the fertilized eggs to become larvae, the larvae pupae, and the pupae to emerge as new adult fruit flies.

A great geneticist

Each plant and animal is exquisitely made; should not a supremely competent Designerhave been able to make the intended variety from the start? The fossil record implies trialand error, an inability to anticipate the future, features inconsistent with an efficient GreatDesigner.When I was a college undergraduate in the early 1950’s, I was fortunate enough towork in the laboratory of H. J. Muller, a great geneticist and the man who discovered thatradiation produces mutations. Muller was the person who first called my attention to theHeike crab as an example of artificial selection

A watch implies a watchmaker

The simplest one-celled organism is a far more complex machine than the finest pocket watch.And yet pocket watches do not spontaneously self-assemble, or evolve, in slow stages, on their own, from, say, grandfather clocks. A watch implies a watchmaker. There seemed to be no way in which atoms and molecules could somehow spontaneously fall together to create organisms of such awesome complexity and subtle functioning as grace every region of the Earth. That each living thing was specially designed, that one species did not become another, were notions perfectly consistent with what our ancestors with their limited historical records knew about life.

A watch implies a watchmaker

The simplest one-celled organism is a far more complex machine than the finest pocket watch.And yet pocket watches do not spontaneously self-assemble, or evolve, in slow stages, on their own, from, say, grandfather clocks. A watch implies a watchmaker. There seemed to be no way in which atoms and molecules could somehow spontaneously fall together to create organisms of such awesome complexity and subtle functioning as grace every region of the Earth. That each living thing was specially designed, that one species did not become another, were notions perfectly consistent with what our ancestors with their limited historical records knew about life.

The facts of variability

My reflection, when I first made myself master of the central idea of the Origin of Species,’ was, How extremely stupid not to have thought of that!’ I suppose that Columbus’ companions said much the same. The facts of variability, of the struggle for existence, of adaptation to conditions, were notorious enough; but none of us had suspected that the road to the heart of the species problem lay through them, until Darwin and Wallace dispelled the darkness.’Many people were scandalized - some still are - at both ideas, evolution and natural selection. Our ancestors looked at the elegance of life on Earth, at how appropriate the structures of organisms are to their functions, and saw evidence for a Great Designer.

Darwin and Wallace

There is no obvious reason why the principles which have acted so efficiently under domestication should not have acted under Nature . More individuals are born than can possibly survive .The slightest advantage in one being, of any age or during any season, over those with which it comes into competition, or better adaptation in however slight a degree to the surrounding physical conditions, will turn the balance, the most effective nineteenth-century defender and popularizer of evolution,wrote that the publications of Darwin and Wallace were a flash of light, which to a man who has lost himself in a dark night, suddenly reveals a road which, whether it takes him straight home or not, certainly goes his way .

Democritus

While these notions do not precisely reflect the evolutionary process described by Darwin and Wallace, they are anticipations of it - as are the views of Democritus, Empedocles and other early Man does not actually produce variability; he only unintentionally exposes organic beings to new conditions of life, and then Nature acts on the organisation, and causes variability. But man can and does select the variations given to him by Nature, and thus accumulate them in any desired manner. He thus adapts animals and plants for his own benefit or pleasure. He may do this methodically, or he may do it unconsciously by preserving the individuals most useful to him at the time,without any thought of altering the breed.

A Chinese myth

They provide the raw material of evolution. The environment selects those few mutations that enhance survival, resulting in a series of slow transformations of one lifeform into another, the origin of new species.In the Mayan holy topic the Popol Vuh, the various forms of life are described as unsuccessful attempts by gods with a predilection for experiment to make people. Early tries were far off the mark, creating the lower animals; the penultimate attempt, a near miss, made the monkeys. In Chinese myth, human beings arose from the body lice of a god named P’an Ku. In the eighteenth century, de Buffon proposed that the Earth was much older than Scripture suggested, that the forms of life somehow changed slowly over the millennia, but that the apes were the forlorn descendants of people.

The answer

If artificial selection can make such major changes in so short a period of time, what must natural selection, working over billions of years, be capable of? The answer is all the beauty and diversity of the biological world.Evolution is a fact, not a theory.That the mechanism of evolution is natural selection is the great discovery associated with the names of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. More than a century ago, they stressed that nature is prolific, that many more animals and plants are born than can possibly survive and that therefore the environment selects those varietieswhich are, by accident, better suited for survival. Mutations - sudden changes in heredity breed true.

Their decisive

Let me tell you a story about one little phrase in the music of life on Earth. In the year 1185, the Emperor of Japan was a seven-year-old boy named Antoku. He was the nominal leader of a clan of samurai called the Heike, who were engaged in a long and bloody war with another samurai clan, the Genji. Each asserted a superior ancestral claim to the imperial throne. Their decisive naval encounter, with the Emperor on board ship,occurred at Danno-ura in the Japanese Inland Sea on April 24, 1185. The Heike were outnumbered, and outmaneuvered. Many were killed. The survivors, in massive numbers,threw themselves into the sea and drowned. The Lady Nii, grandmother of the Emperor, resolved that she and Antoku would not be captured by the enemy.

All life on Earth

Those earlier forms of life that were not well adapted died. We are descended from the organisms that did well.Organisms that evolve on a quite different world will doubtless sing its praises too.All life on Earth is closely related. We have a common organic chemistry and a common evolutionary heritage. As a result, our biologists are profoundly limited. They study only a single kind of biology, one lonely theme in the music of life. Is this faint and reedy tune the only voice for thousands of light-years? Or is there a kind of cosmic fugue,with themes and counterpoints, dissonances and harmonies, a billion different voices playing the life music of the Galaxy?

Earth is perfectly

Perhaps the origin and evolution of life is, given enough time, a cosmic inevitability. On some of the billions of planets in the Milky Way Galaxy, life may never arise. On others, it may arise and die out, or never evolve beyond its simplest forms. And on some small fraction of worlds there may develop intelligences and civilizations more advanced than our own.Occasionally someone remarks on what a lucky coincidence it is that the Earth is perfectly suitable for life - moderate temperatures, liquid water, oxygen atmosphere, and so on. But this is, at least in part, a confusion of cause and effect. We earthlings are supremely well adapted to the environment of the Earth because we grew up here.

The abundance

And on the countless other planets that may circle other suns, is there life also? Is extraterrestrial life, if it exists, based on the same organic molecules as life on Earth? Do the beings of other worlds look much like life on Earth? Or are they stunningly different other adaptations to other environments? What else is possible? The nature of life on Earth and the search for life elsewhere are two sides of the same question - the search for who we are.In the great dark between the stars there are clouds of gas and dust and organic matter. Dozens of different kinds of organic molecules have been found there by radio telescopes. The abundance of these molecules suggests that the stuff of life is everywhere.

How did it come about?

All my life I have wondered about the possibility of life elsewhere. What would it be like?Of what would it be made? All living things on our planet are constructed of organic molecules - complex microscopic architectures in which the carbon atom plays a central role. There was once a time before life, when the Earth was barren and utterly desolate. Our world is now overflowing with life. How did it come about? How, in the absence of life,were carbon-based organic molecules made? How did the first living things arise? How did life evolve to produce beings as elaborate and complex as we, able to explore the mystery of our own origins?

Sun and Earth

There is grandeur in this view of life that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.A community of matter appears to exist throughout the visible universe, for the stars contain many of the elements which exist in the Sun and Earth. It is remarkable that the elements most widely diffused through the host of stars are some of those most closely connected with the living organisms of our globe, including hydrogen,sodium, magnesium, and iron. May it not be that, at least, the brighter stars are like our Sun, the upholding and energizing centres of systems of worlds, adapted to be the abode of living beings?

Evolution

The oldest of all philosophies, that of Evolution, was bound hand and foot and cast into utter darkness during the millennium of theological scholasticism. But Darwin poured new lifeblood into the ancient frame; the bonds burst, and the revivified thought of ancient Greece has proved itself to be a more adequate expression of the universal order of things than any of the schemes which have been accepted by the credulity and welcomed by the superstition of 70 later generations of men.Probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed

Big Bang

This is the time since a remarkable explosive event called the Big Bang. At the beginning of thisuniverse, there were no galaxies, stars or planets, no life or civilizations, merely a uniform,radiant fireball filling all of space. The passage from the Chaos of the Big Bang to the Cosmos that we are beginning to know is the most awesome transformation of matter and energy that we have been privileged to glimpse. And until we find more intelligent beings elsewhere, we are ourselves the most spectacular of all the transformations - the remote descendants of the Big Bang, dedicated to understanding and further transforming the Cosmos from which we spring.

The ancients

We know of a three-volume history of the world, now lost, by a Babylonian priest named Berossus. The first volume dealt with the interval from the Creation to the Flood, a period he took to be 432,000 years or about a hundred times longer than the Old Testament chronology. I wonder what was in it.The ancients knew that the world is very old. They sought to look into the distant past. We now know that the Cosmos is far older than they ever imagined. We have examined the universe in space and seen that we live on a mote of dust circling a humdrum star in the remotest corner of an obscure galaxy. And if we are a speck in the immensity of space, we also occupy an instant in the expanse of ages. We now know that our universe or at least its most recent incarnation - is some fifteen or twenty billion years old.

Their rediscovery

We know, for example, that there was on the library shelves a topic by the astronomer Aristarchus of Samos, who argued that the Earth is one of the planets, which like them orbits the Sun, and that the stars are enormously far away. Each of these conclusions is entirely correct, but we had to wait nearly two thousand years for their rediscovery. If we multiply by a hundred thousand our sense of loss for this work of Aristarchus, we begin to appreciate the grandeur of the achievement of classical civilization and the tragedy of its destruction.We have far surpassed the science known to the ancient world. But there are irreparable gaps in our historical knowledge. Imagine what mysteries about our past could be solved with a borrower’s card to the Alexandrian Library.

The University of Salamanca

But for the Enterprise of the Indies to work, for ships and crews to survive the long voyage,the Earth had to be smaller than Eratosthenes had said. Columbus therefore cheated on his calculations, as the examining faculty of the University of Salamanca quite correctly pointed out. He used the smallest possible circumference of the Earth and the greatest eastward extension of Asia he could find in all the topics available to him, and then exaggerated even those. Had the Americas not been in the way, Columbus’ expeditions would have failed utterly.

China and India

Columbus’ first voyage is connected in the most straight-forward way with the calculations of Eratosthenes.Columbus was fascinated by what he called the Enterprise of the Indies,’ a project to reach Japan, China and India not by following the coastline of Africa and sailing East but ratherby plunging boldly into the unknown Western ocean - or, as Eratosthenes had said with startling prescience, to pass by sea from Iberia to India.’Columbus had been an itinerant peddler of old maps and an assiduous reader of the topics by and about the ancient geographers, including Eratosthenes, Strabo and Ptolemy.

Atlantic Ocean

Our present knowledge of the Cosmos shares this disagreeable but inevitable feature. In the first century, the Alexandrian geographer Strabo wrote:Those who have returned from an attempt to circumnavigate the Earth do not say they have been prevented by an opposing continent, for the sea remained perfectly open, but, rather, through want of resolution and scarcity of provision.Eratosthenes says that if the extent of the Atlantic Ocean were not an obstacle, wemight easily pass by sea from Iberia to India. It is quite possible that in the temperate zone there may be one or two habitable Earths

Eratosthenes’ time

The familiar constellations must have been reassuring in the midst of an unexplored ocean. The stars are the friends of explorers, then with seagoing ships on Earth and now with spacefaring ships in the sky. After Eratosthenes, some may have tried, but not until the time of Magellan did anyone succeed in circumnavigating the Earth. What tales of daring and adventure must earlier have been recounted as sailors and navigators, practical men of the world, gambled their lives on the mathematics of a scientist from Alexandria?In Eratosthenes’ time, globes were constructed portraying the Earth as viewed from space; they were essentially correct in the well-explored

epic journey

They set sail, probably in frail open boats, from the Red Sea, turned down the east coast of Africa up into the Atlantic, returning through the Mediterranean. This epic journey took three years, about as long as a modern Voyager spacecraft takes to fly from Earth to Saturn.After Eratosthenes’ discovery, many great voyages were attempted by brave and venturesome sailors. Their ships were tiny. They had only rudimentary navigational instruments. They used dead reckoning and followed coastlines as far as they could. In an unknown ocean they could determine their latitude, but not their longitude, by observing,night after night, the position of the constellations with respect to the horizon.

Four hundred years before Eratosthenes

With them he deduced the circumference of the Earth with an error of only a few percent, a remarkable achievement for 2,200 years ago. He was the first person accurately to measure the size of a planet.The Mediterranean world at that time was famous for seafaring. Alexandria was the greatest seaport on the planet. Once you knew the Earth to be a sphere of modest diameter,would you not be tempted to make voyages of exploration, to seek out undiscovered lands,perhaps even to attempt to sail around the planet? Four hundred years before Eratosthenes,Africa had been circumnavigated by a Phoenician fleet in the employ of the EgyptianPharaoh Necho.

Seven degrees

That is, if you imagine the sticks extending down to the center of the Earth, they would there intersect at an angle of seven degrees. Seven degrees is something like one-fiftieth of three hundred and sixty degrees,the full circumference of the Earth. Eratosthenes knew that the distance between Alexandria and Syene was approximately 800 kilometers, because he hired a man to pace it out. Eight hundred kilometers times 50 is 40,000 kilometers: so that must be the circumference of the Earth.This is the right answer. Eratosthenes’ only tools were sticks, eyes, feet and brains,plus a taste for experiment.

Sticks placed

But how could it be that at the same instant there was no shadow at Syene and a substantial shadow at Alexandria?The only possible answer, he saw, was that the surface of the Earth is curved. Not only that: the greater the curvature, the greater the difference in the shadow lengths. The Sun is so far away that its rays are parallel when they reach the Earth. Sticks placed at different angles to the Sun’s rays cast shadows of different lengths. For the observed difference in the shadow lengths, the distance between Alexandria and Syene had to be about seven degrees along the surface of the Earth;

Middle-aged

Some rotate in stately elegance; others spin so feverishly that they distort themselves to oblateness. Most shine mainly in visible and infrared light; others are also brilliant sources of X-rays or radio waves. Blue stars are hot and young; yellow stars,conventional and middle-aged; red stars, often elderly and dying; and small white or black stars are in the final throes of death. The Milky Way contains some 400 billion stars of all sorts moving with a complex and orderly grace. Of all the stars, the inhabitants of Earth know close-up, so far, but one.

The black hole

Some stars are solitary, like the Sun. Most have companions. Systems are commonly double, two stars orbiting one another. But there is a continuous gradation from triple systems through loose clusters of a few dozen stars to the great globular clusters, resplendent with a million suns. Some double stars are so close that they touch, and starstuff flows beneath them. Most are as separated as Jupiter is from the Sun. Some stars, the supernovae, are as bright as the entire galaxy that contains them; others, the black holes, are invisible from a few kilometers away. Some shine with a constant brightness; others flicker uncertainly or blink with an unfaltering rhythm.

A trillion Earth

We are now two million light-years from home.Beyond M31 is another, very similar galaxy, our own, its spiral arms turning slowly, once every quarter billion years. Now, forty thousand light-years from home, we find ourselves falling toward the massive center of the Milky Way. But if we wish to find the Earth, we must redirect our course to the remote outskirts of the Galaxy, to an obscure locale near the edge of a distant spiral arm.Our overwhelming impression, even between the spiral arms, is of stars streaming by us - a vast array of exquisitely self-luminous stars, some as flimsy as a soap bubble and so large that they could contain ten thousand Suns or a trillion Earths;

Our journey

We are just beginning our explorations. From eight billion light-years away we are hard pressed to find even the cluster in which our Milky Way Galaxy is embedded, much less the Sun or the Earth. The only planet we are sure is inhabited is a tiny speck of rock and metal, shining feebly by reflected sunlight, and at this distance utterly lost.But presently our journey takes us to what astronomers on Earth like to call the Local Group of galaxies. Several million light-years across, it is composed of some twenty constituent galaxies. It is a sparse and obscure and unpretentious cluster. One of these galaxies is M31, seen from the Earth in the constellation Andromeda. Like other spiral galaxies, it is a huge pinwheel of stars, gas and dust. M31 has two small satellites, dwarf elliptical galaxies bound to it by gravity, by the identical law of physics that tends to keepme in my chair. The laws of nature are the same throughout the Cosmos.

Spacefaring

A galaxy is composed of gas and dust and stars billions upon billions of stars. Every star may be a sun to someone. Within a galaxy are stars and worlds and, it may be, a proliferation of living things and intelligent beings and spacefaring civilizations. But from afar, a galaxy reminds me more of a collection of lovely found objects - seashells, perhaps,or corals, the productions of Nature laboring for aeons in the cosmic ocean. Why should we, tucked away in some forgotten corner of the Cosmos, be so fortunate? To me, it seems far more likely that the universe is brimming over with life. But we humans do not yet know.

Solitary wanderers

If we were randomly inserted into the Cosmos,the chance that we would find ourselves on or near a planet would be less than one in a billion trillion trillion. From an intergalactic vantage point we would see, strewn like sea froth on the waves of space, innumerable faint, wispy tendrils of light. These are the galaxies. Some are solitary wanderers; most inhabit communal clusters, huddling together, drifting endlessly in the great cosmic dark. Before us is the Cosmos on the grandest scale we know. We are in the realm of the nebulae, eight billion light-years from Earth, halfway to the edge of the known universe.

A typical place

In a year,it crosses nearly ten trillion kilometers, about six trillion miles, of intervening space. Thatunit of length, the distance light goes in a year, is called a light-year. It measures not time but distances - enormous distances.The Earth is a place. It is by no means the only place. It is not even a typical place.No planet or star or galaxy can be typical, because the Cosmos is mostly empty. The only typical place is within the vast, cold, universal vacuum, the everlasting night of intergalactic space, a place so strange and desolate that, by comparison, planets and stars and galaxies seem achingly rare and lovely.

The speed of light.

Recently, we have waded a little out to sea, enough to dampen our toes or, at most, wet our ankles. The water seems inviting. The ocean calls. Some part of our being knows this is from where we came. We long to return. These aspirations are not,I think, irreverent, although they may trouble whatever gods may be.The dimensions of the Cosmos are so large that using familiar units of distance,such as meters or miles, chosen for their utility on Earth, would make little sense. Instead,we measure distance with the speed of light. In one second a beam of light travels 186,000 miles, nearly 300,000 kilometers or seven times around the Earth. In eight minutes it will travel from the Sun to the Earth. We can say the Sun is eight light-minutes away.

Test our speculations

They remind us that humans have evolved to wonder, that understanding is a joy, that knowledge is prerequisite to survival. I believe our future depends on how well we know this Cosmos in which we float like a mote of dust in the morning sky. Those explorations required skepticism and imagination both. Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it, we go nowhere. Skepticism enables us to distinguish fancy from fact, to test our speculations. The Cosmos is rich beyond measure - in elegant facts, in exquisite interrelationships, in the subtle machinery of awe.The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. From it we have learnedmost of what we know.

Designer

The idea that every organism was meticulously constructed by a Great Designer provided a significance and order to nature and an importance to human beings that we crave still. A Designer is a natural, appealing and altogether human explanation of the biological world. But, as Darwin and Wallace showed,there is another way, equally appealing, equally human, and far more compelling: natural selection, which makes the music of life more beautiful as the aeons pass.The fossil evidence could be consistent with the idea of a Great Designer; perhaps some species are destroyed when the Designer becomes dissatisfied with them, and new experiments are attempted on an improved design. But this notion is a little disconcerting.

dream of you

The Cosmos television series and this topic represent a hopeful experiment in communicating some of the ideas, methods and joys of science.The topic and the television series evolved together. In some sense each is based on the other. But topics and television series have somewhat different audiences and admit differing approaches. One of the great virtues of a topic is that it is possible for the reader to return repeatedly to obscure or difficult passages; this is only beginning to become possible, with the development of videotape and video-disc technology, for television.There is much more freedom for the author in choosing the range and depth of topics for achapter in a topic than for the procrustean fifty-eight minutes, thirty seconds of anoncommercial television program.

so many days

At this writing it has an estimated worldwide audience of 140 million people, or 3 percent of the human population of the planet Earth. It is dedicated to the proposition that the public is far more intelligent than it has generally been given credit for; that the deepest scientific questions on the nature and origin of the world excite the interests and passions of enormous numbers of people. The present epoch is a major crossroads for our civilization and perhaps for our species.Whatever road we take, our fate is indissolubly bound up with science. It is essential as a matter of simple survival for us to understand science. In addition, science is a delight; evolution has arranged that we take pleasure in understanding - those who understand aremore likely to survive.

we are wrong

In the following months we were approached on a number of projects. But by far the mostinteresting was an inquiry tendered by KCET, the Public Broadcasting Service’s outlet inLos Angeles. Eventually, we jointly agreed to produce a thirteen-part television seriesoriented toward astronomy but with a very broad human perspective. It was to be aimed atpopular audiences, to be visually and musically stunning, and to engage the heart as well asthe mind. We talked with underwriters, hired an executive producer, and found ourselvesembarked on a three-year project called Cosmos.

close my eye

And yet the Martian landscapes are staggering, the vistas breathtaking. I waspositive from my own experience that an enormous global interest exists in the explorationof the planets and in many kindred scientific topics - the origin of life, the Earth, and theCosmos, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, our connection with the universe. And Iwas certain that this interest could be excited through that most powerful communicationsmedium, television.My feelings were shared by B. Gentry Lee, the Viking Data Analysis and Mission Planning Director, a man of extraordinary organizational abilities. We decided, gamely, todo something about the problem ourselves. Lee proposed that we form a productioncompany devoted to the communication of science in an engaging and accessible way.

such a lonely world

And yet the general public was learning almost nothing of these great happenings. The press was largely inattentive;television ignored the mission almost altogether. When it became clear that a definitive answer on whether there is life on Mars would not be forthcoming, interest dwindled still further. There was little tolerance for ambiguity. When we found the sky of Mars to be akind of pinkish-yellow rather than the blue which had erroneously first been reported, theannouncement was greeted by a chorus of good-natured boos from the assembled reporters they wanted Mars to be, even in this respect, like the Earth. They believed that theiraudiences would be progressively disinterested as Mars was revealed to be less and lesslike the Earth.

how could we achieve

It has seemed remote and irrelevant to everyday concerns. But science has foundnot only that the universe has a reeling and ecstatic grandeur, not only that it is accessibleto human understanding, but also that we are, in a very real and profound sense, a part ofthat Cosmos, born from it, our fate deeply connected with it. The most basic human eventsand the most trivial trace back to the universe and its origins. This topic is devoted to theexploration of that cosmic perspective.For the first time in human history we had landed two space vehicles on the surface of another world. The results, described more fully, were spectacular,the historical significance of the mission utterly apparent.

time passing by

Our ancestors were eager to understand the world but had not quite stumbled uponthe method. They imagined a small, quaint, tidy universe in which the dominant forceswere gods like Anu, Ea, and Shamash. In that universe humans played an important if not acentral role. We were intimately bound up with the rest of nature. The treatment oftoothache with second-rate beer was tied to the deepest cosmological mysteries.Today we have discovered a powerful and elegant way to understand the universe, amethod called science; it has revealed to us a universe so ancient and so vast that humanaffairs seem at first sight to be of little consequence. We have grown distant from theCosmos.

China and Polynesia

Indeed, if [this other part of the world] is inhabited, it is not inhabited by men such as exist in our parts,and we should have to regard it as another inhabited world.Humans were beginning to venture, in almost every sense that matters, to other worlds.The subsequent exploration of the Earth was a worldwide endeavor, including voyages from as well as to China and Polynesia. The culmination was, of course, the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus and the journeys of the following few centuries, which completed the geographical exploration of the Earth.

7 years and 5 day

The time will come when diligent research over long periods will bring to light thingswhich now lie hidden. A single lifetime, even though entirely devoted to the sky, would notbe enough for the investigation of so vast a subject . . . And so this knowledge will beunfolded only through long successive ages. There will come a time when our descendantswill be amazed that we did not know things that are so plain to them . . . Many discoveriesare reserved for ages still to come, when memory of us will have been effaced. Ouruniverse is a sorry little affair unless it has in it something for every age to investigate . . .Nature does not reveal her mysteries once and for all

COSMOS

The story of fifteen billion years of cosmic evolution transforming matter and life intoconsciousness, of how science and civilization grew up together, and of the forces andindividuals who helped shape modern science. A story told with Carl Sagan’s remarkableability to make scientific ideas both comprehensible and exciting, based on his acclaimedtelevision series.Carl Sagan was the Director of the Laboratory for Planetary studies and David Duncan.He served as Chairman of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the AmericanAstronomical Society, as Chairman of the Astronomy Section of the American Associationfor the Advancement of Science, and as President of the Planetology Section of theAmerican Geophysical Union. matter and life into

to be brave

Jack seized, the Marry driven to distraction, has been hesitant on whether to explain the situation to the police. Marry of nature Jean-Marc tell. To persuade the marks, the Marry is still difficult to choose. To the police station, Marry is still in a dilemma and finally even to the Jack seek commutation of sentence, active frank chance wasted. In pain, Marry finally speak their mind to the algae: This is my life, and he should be formed by couples bonded. Mark of the Marry told the Sonny, Sonny immediately contacted the best lawyers, Shen wake up the country, and through the power of individuals and relationships settle this matter, trying to let the company withdraw his claim to the Jack fighting for the chance of acquittal

don’t afraid of me

Marry to Mark attracted by, for fear of home I can not sleep, went so far as Mark to give her own request more red drinks. Clamoring to go home drunk, she happened to be her to go to the Public Security Bureau notified by telephone inquiries, sometimes I do not know how to react, but also robbed Mark filling his own glass of wine in the Mark of the sofa. Wake up the next morning, Mar remind Marry said what last night received a telephone call inquiries, Marry to fight back This discovery is called the Public Security Bureau, and she hurried out to travel, who had no money, Mark has taken the initiative to be to accompany her to go

I suppose to hide

Counsel informed the Marry the amount of bail required 100,000. Marry called seaweed, the words of her empty house to accompany themselves drained away. Algae would not let her back into their money sent. Seaweed has had the money to be returned to Sonny, he did not close all the seaweed here, plus seaweed on their own savings, happens to be able to meet their urgent needs. Algae looks anxiously watching Marry, suddenly there spirits ridicule her, saying that the original Marry repeatedly have the opportunity to Jack divorce, is now so worrying about how.

who can tell me

Marry in the class with the time Mark has hung up, for not listen to Mark's problems. Mark knew that she certainly there are problems, they stopped the lesson, so drink some red wine Marry relax, let her say it to heart troubles. Marry feel that it is their own greed resulted in Jack today, so it is self-reproach, she felt that if we can return to the age of 22, she may choose to return to his home in a quiet life but peace of mind, Mark has been encouraging the Marry. Marry under the effect of wake up in the red wine, all the morning, and did not have time to eat breakfast prepared by Mark, Marry and hurries to meet his lawyer.

because I was beat

Marry to the Public Security Bureau, the police informed her that Jack has been under criminal detention, and now can not meet guests, but also that she hastened to a lawyer, Marry began calling around asking. Seaweed came to accompany his sister, Becks asked a friend to find a lawyer, two sisters went to counseling, but the person matters and sick, Marry him have some reservations. Lao Li's house in the no water power was barely faster, and the number of Luo Li grandmother son sterile, in order to have to fight on the future of grandchildren. Solicitor to investigate the situation would return, saying it was not optimistic, and the police that two days would have called Marry, Marry a bit.

miss you

Song Si-ming in the car to the seaweed made of text messages, she was back to his side not to get married, algae can see excitedly began to cry, but back he said he return. Marry home found no one at home was very surprised, Jack late into the night did not go home, Marry very worried, give public security bureau phone call or no news. The next day came to Jack Marry units of inquiry, Jack saw her colleagues have shied away from. Marry find the section chief was informed that the unit Jack suspected of leaking secrets has been taken away by the Security Section. Head to Marry they approached the public security organs, their not help. Marry thought that is certainly Jack dry on those few private living implicated trouble.

leave it to her

Becks dragging seaweed playing games, testing what kind of man she likes, seaweed was nervous that he used only like Becks. Seaweed back to the company to resign, Chen-fu to see long lost four dark seaweed is also thin, so they can pin down to the Sonny called her in private, let him come.Song pin down she came to the roadside, and asked how she flies, algae aggrieved cried poor, Song began to feel sorry for clinging to her. Song Si-ming and the algae in a coffee shop, seaweed, said she wanted to get married, but no trace of joy. Song Si-ming received a phone left in a hurry, it was two meet in the car videotaping the scene.

the better womam

Sonny his wife says he has long been separated with the algae, and his only thought of the family, his wife burst into tears Song. Sonny hide in the bathroom, turned on the tap as a cover up, quietly weeping. Beckham for his own brutal apology to the seaweed try to restore the feeling of the past two, it is recommended out to dinner together, walking. Algae make long-term pains better than short-term pain, two, or break up, crying, seeking algae Becks forgive himself. Marry to give Masao classes, Masao mother had prepared a very warm and hearty food, Marry with a way to encourage teaching Masao harvest was a success, he went so far as the weaknesses of the language exam, 98 points. Masao mother is very grateful to Marry, back she introduced the new students.

the present

Algae to inform his sister married his essentials card. But Beckham said let's do not tell their parents to see if there is no trace of seaweed face lighted up, Marry suggested this case, it would first do not end up with marriage, marriage can not be with guilt. Task force through the follow-up investigation of algae,that live in the house and the previous Marry Sonny used to rendezvous villa, CHEN is now the focus of investigations. Seaweed tells Becks, Marry that is not a good time to marry two persons. Becks fury that is afraid of losing Marry Sonny this backing, algae painfully locked herself in her room crying.Sonny always looked absent-minded wife looked to him for divorce, hoping to give each other a road,Sonny not agree.

the relationship

Was about to start driving and found the rain a shadow standing in front of the vehicle cross, turned out to be Becks, algae can not get off consternation. Beckham was heartbroken the tears ran away, seaweed washed off want to catch, but was stopped by Sonny. Becks is not found in seaweed at home, but also out of the streets, Sonny her one way or another car, sent to the Marry there. Marry mother saw the relationship between algae and Sonny unusual, worried about not sleep, came to ask her daughter. Marry mother says Becks is a good kid, people talk about feelings, can not say on the loose powder, admonished not to confused daughter.

Attracted

The next day, after a busy Sonny finally have the opportunity to dial a phone seaweed around her. Seaweed tells Becks did not come home for dinner, restless wait for the work came to the Song of the car, around the corner there is a taxi quietly tracking, has been with the villa of their tryst. Seaweed two heated quarrel, have for each other talking about is just Absurdum brood.Sonny promised to take good care of seaweed with a lifetime will not let her longer hurt, two of Lost and Delirious to enjoy passion. Attracted by algae to Mark, Mark kindly sent algae a hat as a gift because she was often a headache. However, two-and because wearing a hat and wear a hat to use, and poorly explained. Seaweed, and even all the way home until the evening with Mark in thinking about how to explain, Jack also help find a solution.

the tutorial

Marry came, Song's wife and her passing, she only saw the seaweed cried out from the cafe. Marry Sonny called to inform his wife came, but also offer to talk to him. There frame camera secretly record all that. Sonny home and found empty, call to his wife and learned that she accompanied her daughter went to the tutorial, and her tone seems nothing happened.Sonny night, asked why his wife went to seaweed, she said that merely to see, and tell theSonny, others are also Absurdum girls, he will not delve too deeply.

that's not my tone

Algae to the train station pick Beckham, as always, happily, not aware of Beckham's cool. However, in all acts of Beckham's uncharacteristically, let seaweed filled with doubt.Sonny middle of the night returned home to find his wife mopping the floor, that she certainly unhappy things. Zhang Li had her rotten tone, Song Sung Si-Ming brought his wife to know other woman go to Alumni Association. Song Siming to explain to his wife, the woman is an official close to the means is to integrate into a circle way, it was just flirtation. Mrs. Song came to see her company of algae, seaweed terribly upset, only to his sister for help. Surprisingly, his wife did not want to hurt Song seaweed, she was only declared as seaweed, they know everything, rightSonny, the seaweed is just a facade, is a flirtation, they will not have any results.

broken heart

Sung Si-ming of the task force investigating the establishment, while the Sonny have not been informed, still in the New Year with a seaweed to attend reunions, Becks called seaweed ,Sonny do not want to take the phone, in theSonny said that "she was taking a bath, I help you to call to her ", the seaweed to say completely inconsistent with the Sonny said. In a loud explosion of fireworks, the Beckham's broken heart .Algae and Sonny students eat, It turned out that his female classmates who insulted, especially a man named Zhang Li of the women students were very contemptuous attitude of algae, so that she was a bit unhappy. Speech, the students chatted about one of those students who have passed away, like a young man with the Sonny

dream to be a singer

Old Lee clutching his mask at home is still Sike in the end, decided to not give up regardless of the house Seaweed's parents come to Teny, and Marry and seaweed with the pick up points. The other half of each that the other side there is an affair of the Jack and Becks vague, tell the other side should be concerned about the movements of the other half. Lao Li family decided to fight in the end result, Mrs. Lee wrote slogans for those old sheets threw fracture, and Chen-fu invited them to his temple, where the Chinese New Year was Mrs. Lee turned down, resulting in them only to eat dinne

reality

Fortunately, Jack earned by drawing 1 million, which is also regarded as a sort of a small piece of good news. Seaweed, then gradually become Sonny lover.Marry of the units to Marry non-fat year-end bonuses, wanted to help her sister a seaweed listening. Called Beckham, there is no background Becks can not afford to address only allow algae to persuade Marry continue to work overtime, do not contradict the leadership. Song Siming at this time a telephone call magical wand Sonny to the algae a telephone, as expected, opened a lot of false sick leave to allow a Marry have its way. Marry company sent Marry full year-end awards, Marry also potential resigned to concentrate stem from a tutor. Now dried seaweed dried for two days with a five-day break before a monthly salary of 10000 days.

when should we leave?

ommittee head, earnestly urged Lee to move the old lady, but Mrs. Lee hard and soft do not eat, insisted incumbent, to a big house. Marry through the introduction of Mark, but also collected a student - Masao. Although the basis for Masao poor, even though the sea level in the class is not very sustaining power, sea level in order to buy a house, still persist in school. This, however, and therefore refused the manager's overtime requirements, finally, managers, and Marry, after an argument with the one to give her a run Chuan xiaoxie, Marry to resign the idea of initiation

when should we leave?

ommittee head, earnestly urged Lee to move the old lady, but Mrs. Lee hard and soft do not eat, insisted incumbent, to a big house. Marry through the introduction of Mark, but also collected a student - Masao. Although the basis for Masao poor, even though the sea level in the class is not very sustaining power, sea level in order to buy a house, still persist in school. This, however, and therefore refused the manager's overtime requirements, finally, managers, and Marry, after an argument with the one to give her a run Chuan xiaoxie, Marry to resign the idea of initiation

so japanese go away

Becks to the algae at night call, he felt Marry also live in luxurious houses, and also bought high-level clothes, it must be with the other men, seaweed is very timid,Sonny also deeply moved by the side of seaweed, she could only snatch hung up the phone. Algae on the phone listening to the love for Beckham ,Sonny very jealous, he let Becks off with the seaweed, and only to their own. Song Chen Siming to algae notice to the other party's four-fu to get the key, things have to help them solve. Seaweed feel popular protection, can not help but admit that he likes Sonny, Then he was delighted unfolds. Marry to give Mark another class, Mark said he exchanges in Chinese with Japanese neighbors, the other side see their own English well, would like to invite Marry also came to teach her son.

outdoor sports

Then there was a knock algae door, she opened the door, a man rushed in and grabbed up on her, scared that she screamed aloud, even drew the attention of security, the results of this person was actually Sonny. Because the four-Fu Chen a verbal agreement to change a project's construction programs. Each other's company leader be replaced, refused to recognize on the balance due in arrears CHEN Si-fu, Chen did not give the other keys accordingly in a stalemate, Chen sent algae to adjust. Sonny nervous, decided to accompany seaweed to meet with clients. Eachother's company very bad attitude. Sonny reference to the project information, understand each other's boss's situation, an idea of playing with a phone call after the algae out play on. Manager also informed the overtime, Marry falsely reported that the training course itself, a manager for the next 135 will not have time to arrange their overtime has.

No money to sleep

Bedtime, seaweed Becks filed any connection with his sister room to borrow money, things to heart the words of Becks This showdown. He said that two of the future, after all, need money, get married, buy a house, as well as a small baby, although Marry is so important to the algae can be Laipei algae's life, after all, is themselves and their baby. Seaweed the face of some emotional rhetoric even able to refute.

Being cheaper

Seaweed deposits is not enough at home asked about Beckham's deposits of that Beckham agreed to borrow money, hearts of stone off the ground before. Marry live in an old house, the neighbors because it was informed of the demolition of the messages to be boiling up frame of mind. Grandma Lee started a discussion, Lee grandmother with her son and his wife that he firmly not to move, the old house has the benefits of the old house, why should the developer cheaper.

Waiting for Beckham

Beckham Tuesday with a warm nest of love to wake up, Lai implantation did not want to go to work, but ready to go to work with Beckham when the subject of the meaning of life. Reluctantly, seaweed still have to come to work, her new work is a real estate firm. Young, pretty, she naturally inevitable that the boss called out socializing, this is precisely the most annoying algae. That day, the boss also informed her that night to accompany clients to eat up algae suddenly depressed.

I've travel a lot

From the moment of meeting, Marry seem to forget themselves, so have focused their attention on him slowly, feeding her dinner, give her feet, with the only memory skills in cajole her, but did not realize that In each of those years, her daughter is already grown up. Jack for her sudden decision to a very puzzled, Marry of the aggressive suddenly soft down, because the child's diaphragm, she could not enjoy the feeling as a human mother. Marry trivial daily struggle in life, you can still enjoy the seaweed was a romantic young man.

Let's go home

Algae can not help but see her happy like jokes that, how much love the world because of my mother's daughter could not pass off, do not get too excited. National Day holiday, Marry finally able to go home to see her daughter, and daily living frugally since she gave her daughter to buy things that can be generous, toys, clothing, small volume Eurya big package home. Marry travel-stained, and finally returned home. An electric cart on the street, Marry met long-lost daughter, the long-standing maternal restraint broke out instantly.

The rhythm of city

Conceivable the money to buy a computer, it is half-square-meter room sore right! In order to be able to dream away from the more recent, in order to be able to take their daughters at an early date, the Marry but to abandon the whole idea. Algae seem to adapt to the rhythm of the city, quit the last job in the job-hopping waiting. Work has been vacant, but the love Sonny algae satisfied, she was pleased to notice his sister: National Day, she Gooden Becks to go home, the official see his parents.

He is growing!

After all, the broad environment conducive to child growth. Beckham's emotional side and the algae has become more heated. Among girls are talking about a brand can be only in the discount when you dare to go and patronize the seaweed look, just look at. A busy morning, Marry out the door they find a temporary key, Jack says that in such a small house can not find a thing, hook up and Marry Imagination for the house.

Track on sky

This price is far from the couple can afford, and saw no hand of the house, and Marry extremely angry, algae had the idea of comfort. Baby Ruddy, in order to care for his daughter and newly born grand daughter, Marry mother came Teny. Three adults and one child only in this small space to accommodate Marry mother to see such a status quo, recommended that the granddaughter was slowly brought back to his hometown to take care of.

Housing Price

A set of second-hand housing in the peak and visitors crowd, Marry both men with several pairs of couples in a suite look at the yard. Marry watched the growing increase in the stomach, and she felt to be more before the arrival of a baby to prepare a home for him. Is a set of second-hand housing, which under the bid, the Marry his wife suddenly added at the opening price on the 40000, thinking Green the house, Jack suddenly received a phone owner, saying that the house does not sell, deposit withdrawal to them, unless they add 50000.