In The Big Bang and the Birth of Culture, we talked about the beginning of culture long before what anthropologists had previously assumed.

In Supersynchrony And The Evolution Of Mass Culture, we talked about how even the most primitive components of the universe had a sort of retained memory; the culture of quarks, if you will. The universe had the beginnings of culture and kept them as it evolved because it wasn't stored in the cosmic train, it was stored in the rails.

Now we get into how that retained memory and supersynchrony really kicked things into overdrive.

In a random universe, we would have expected a million new forms of atoms or more. But this is a cosmos with railroad constraints, a cosmos where supersynchrony and manic mass production reign. Hence the number of new forms of atom-cores was pathetically tiny by the standard of six-monkey-at-six-typewriter randomness. And thanks to manic mass production, the number of precise duplicates of these four new atomic nuclei was vast.

Once again we had the primitive precursors of culture. Carbon, which was crunched together in the heart of the first generation of dying stars(44), is a collective, a team, a tight-knit social gathering of 18 to 20 protons, neutrons, and electrons(45). And it has a primal form of tradition and memory. You can run a carbon particle-team through a host of natural catastrophes, and the atom will go through only three minor changes. Those changes are called isotopes. But the carbon atom’s basic identity, its coherence as a society with its own distinct characteristics, will stubbornly remain the same.

Carbon will insist on remaining carbon. This is so close to culture and tradition that it’s scary. Which raises the big question once again: when did culture begin?

When did evolution go from supersynchrony to the rise of collective tradition, collective innovation, collective differentiation, and the collective process that carries a group treasury of habits, attitudes, technology, and instructional stories from one generation to another down the line of time?

Protons and carbon had a strange semblance of memory. So did stars and galaxies. Stars worked in pretty much the same way generation after generation. New galaxies assembled in forms that aped their elders. And there was something akin to tradition in the way that the first seven forms of atoms—hydrogen, helium, lithium, iron, carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen— continued to appear in era after era of cosmic change. There was even collective innovation, collective creativity.

The second generation of stars, stars like ours, had new forms of atomic nuclei to chew on. And using those nuclei, they attained new powers. Inventive first-(46) and second-generation star-deaths mashed together roughly 85 new forms of atomic nuclei, 85 new elements from scandium and titanium to potassium and platinum(47). So why isn’t this culture?

Because the maintenance of old ways was only a semblance of tradition and memory. It was a precursor, but not the real thing. The maintenance of identity and of old ways of doing things—things like the particle-munch in the heart of a star and the evolution of spiral arms of galaxies—was a product of the cosmos’ forces, formulas, processes, and shapes.

It was the persistence of the natural equivalent of railway tracks—the laws of the universe—the cosmos’ rigid constraints. Supersynchrony and manic mass production weren’t culture. They weren’t really memory. Then what’s the difference between the persistence of the laws of nature and memory? And why does nature have laws, anyway?

A railroad train follows the same precise path thousands of other trains have taken. Why? Because the rails restrict its movement. The memory is not in the train, it’s in the tracks. But the form of memory that would generate culture is a guidance system inside the train itself. It’s an accumulation of lessons learned from experiences that have worked and experiences that haven’t. And culture is something more.

It’s a story, a vision, a worldview that dictates a future path, a future path that may be utterly new, utterly old, utterly right, or utterly wrong. A culture is a memory that imagines futures and makes them real. It’s an internal record of the past that steers us into the unknown of the next minute, the next decade, and the next century.

The story of the cosmos’ next move toward culture calls for a new field of study, one that lies in the gap between cosmology, theoretical physics, astronomy and astrochemistry. Astrophysics has a specialization—a very small one—called nucleocosmochronology.

Nucleocosmochronology is dedicated to fixing the dates for the rise of the 92 natural atomic nuclei and to pinning down key dates in the evolution of the cosmos(48). It helps folks like me, multi-disciplinary theorists, paleopsychologists, the makers of cosmic time lines, and the tellers of the cosmos’ stories. It promises to help us understand when the nuclei of critical atoms like chlorine, calcium, sodium, potassium, and phosphorus first appeared.

There’s need for another science to complement nucleocosmochronology. It’s moleculocosmochronology, a study that establishes the dates at which the first molecules appeared(49). Like the quark trios that make protons and neutrons, and like atoms, galaxies, and stars, a molecule is a social group, a coalition of atoms with its own distinct identity. One of the most common molecules found in space, for example, is hydrogen cyanide(50).

Hydrogen cyanide is an atomic trio, an atomic three musketeers. It's a tightly-knit lineup of one hydrogen atom, one carbon atom and one nitrogen atom. The carbon atom at hydrogen cyanide’s center holds the hydrogen atom to one of its sides and locks the nitrogen atom to its other side, as if it had linked elbows with each of its two partners to hold them together as an unstoppable team. But astrochemists and molecular astrophysicists haven’t yet pinned down the date of hydrogen cyanide’s first appearance in this cosmos(51).

When the number of atoms in a molecule climbs higher, our ignorance becomes worse. As Jan M. Hollis of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD said in 2004, “At present …there is no accepted theory addressing how interstellar molecules containing more than 5 atoms are formed.”(52)

We do know this. Carbon was the great seductress, hostess, and mix-mistress of the new element brigade(53). And carbon’s talent for introducing atoms to each other then hosting them as they gelled in stable families resulted in yet more supersynchrony. The result defied belief.

It was the manic mass production of biomolecules.

These carbon-based atom-teams arose in hot clouds of interstellar gas(54), in cold clouds of interstellar gas(55), in spicules of interstellar ice(56), in the shrouds of dying stars(57), in comets(58), in meteorites(59) and in just about everything in between.(60)

Today, ten percent of the volume of interstellar ice grains is composed of biomolecules(61). As of 2000, we’d detected 120 forms(63) of molecules in space(64). One hundred of them were organic(65). A mere 120 early molecules in a universe of six-monkey-and-six-typewriter randomness does not compute. The number should be in the billions. But one thing we know for sure. Manic mass production and a loose supersynchrony once again ruled. The cosmos was still hurtling down the narrow railroad tracks of cosmic destiny.

Biomolecules in space included carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methanol, ammonia polyols, dihydroxyacetones, glycerols, sugar acids, and sugar alcohols(66)(all of which swarm together in a lipid sack when exposed to water…more about the critical importance of these lipid sacks to culture later)(67). And these molecules were all over the place.

The dates of molecular evolution may remain obscure, but the emergence and complexification of molecules set the stage for culture. They set the stage for the Big Burp—the emergence of REALLY complicated molecules. And they set the stage for those really big molecules’ progeny, living creatures like you and me.

The date of the Big Burp was far earlier than you might imagine. It was less than ten billion years ABB (after the Big Bang)(68), just a tad more than two-thirds of the way into this cosmos’ existence.

Supersynchrony suggests that the Big Burp happened on planets scattered across the length and breadth of the universe(69). Manic mass production hints at the very same thing. But the only planet we are sure the Big Burp occurred on is ours, Mama Earth.

In the Big Burp, sociality went big time in a whole new way. First, this planet began its own gravitational social gathering process, its kidnap, capture, recruitment, and massing of matter from the shards of a newly-ignited sun.(70) Then came the second stage of moleculogenesis(71). Massive teams of molecules in the deeply buried water slicks, underground water pockets, above-ground puddles, and seas of this early world wove the walls of the lipid envelopes we met a second ago, envelopes surrounding a roped-off pool of water, a microscopic inner sea.

What clues hint that these envelopes were among the first mega-projects produced by the Big Burp, produced by the second-stage of moleculogenesis? Take a chunk of the Murchison meteorite. Grind it up. It contains the simple biochemicals found all over the cosmos, simple molecules wrapped around the great atomic introducer, seducer, and recruiter: carbon.

Slip the powdered bits of the Murchison meteorite into water, and the social gathering of simple biomolecules begins. Your water is rapidly filled with tiny bubbles, sacks of water surrounded by a 360-degree mesh, water balloons held together by the waterproof envelope of an interwoven(72) molecular mega-community.(73) We call that self-woven bag—that microscopic capsule of molecular fabric— a “membrane”. And membranes—bio-envelopes—produced protective play-pens for more molecular socializing. Far, far more.

A mere 9.9 billion years after the Big Bang, the molecular sociality of the Big Burp took advantage of membranes and went whole hog into moleculologenic overdrive, spitting out molecules that were enormous—chain-ganging as many as 62 million atoms into a single molecular strand.(74)

Supersynchrony and manic mass production also went into overdrive, apparently producing the same massive atomic communities—the same mega-molecules—all over this planet’s face. And those massive atom-teams soon formed their own social alliances…alliances driven by something very new, culture. Culture began when these mega-teams of atoms developed internal memory,(75) braided new strategies into their molecular strands, kept the strategies that worked, reproduced them in multitudes, and discarded or packed away in the cold storage of “junk DNA” the strategies that failed.

It sometimes took storing five failed strategies to construct the mega-strategy from which a new breakthrough would be made.(76)

These huge new atom communities were RNA and DNA. RNA and DNA were social as could be. They used membranes as fortifications, no-go zones, corrals within which RNA, DNA, and their membrane-weaving partners could maintain a specialized mini-sea, a Jell-O or Gatorade rich in vitamins, organic molecules, enzymes,(77) sugars, carbohydrates, fatty acids,(78) and proteins.(79)

The Big Burp had produced cells.

NOTES:

(44) For more detail on how a dying star produces heavy elements like iron and carbon, see: Stephen James O'Meara. Deep-Sky Companions: The Caldwell Objects. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003: p. 130.

(45) The Carbon Atom. Math and Science Activity Center—edinformatics.com. Retrieved February 5, 2008, from the World Wide Web
http://www.edinformatics.com/math_science/c_atom.htm

(46) David Arnett and Grant Bazan. Nucleosynthesis in Stars: Recent Developments. Science, Volume 276, Number 5317 Issue of 30 May 1997: pp. 1359-1362.

(47) For the standard view of nucleogenesis in second generation stars, see Henri Boffin and Douglas Pierce-Price. Fusion in the Universe: we are all stardust. Science in School. Retrieved February 5, 2008, from the World Wide Web
http://www.scienceinschool.org/2007/issue4/fusion/. Henri Boffin and Douglas Pierce-Price are with the European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere, Garching, Germany.

(48) "Nucleocosmochronology is a good way to determine the time at which stars and galaxies were formed…" Peter Coles, Francesco Lucchin. Cosmology: The Origin and Evolution of Cosmic Structure. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2002: p. 84. "In effect, nucleocosmochronology is a way of dating the creation of the heavy elements" Richard M. West. Highlights of Astronomy, International Astronomical Union General Assembly, International Astronomical Union. Published 1983, Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel Publishing Company: p. 243. Donald D. Clayton. Galactic Chemical Evolution and Nucleocosmochronology: A Standard Model. In Nucleosynthesis : Challenges and New Developments. Edited by W. David Arnett and James W. Truran. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985: p.65.

(49) The best approximation to moleculocosmochronology we have is Astrochemistry and Molecular Astrophysics—two fields that search for molecules in space, theorize about how those molecules formed, but don’t pin down when. See: David Curtis, Juhan Sonin, Yi-Jeng Kuan, and Lewis E. Snyder. What is Astrochemistry? Expo/Science & Industry/Whispers From the Cosmos. Cyberia. National Center for Supercomputer Applications at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. 1995. Retrieved February 5, 2008, from the World Wide Web http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Cyberia/Bima/astrochem.html. Also see: Centre for Astronomy, NUI Galway. Star Formation & Astrochemistry Group. National University of Ireland, Galway. Retrieved February 5, 2008, from the World Wide Web
http://astro.nuigalway.ie/research/starformation.html#astrochemistry For a good example of Astrochemistry, see: Lucy M. Ziurys. The chemistry in circumstellar envelopes of evolved stars: Following the origin of the elements to the origin of life. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, August 15, 2006, vol. 109, no.33. Retrieved February 5, 2008, from the World Wide Web
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/103/33/12274.pdf

(50) For the possible role hydrogen cyanide may have played in the evolution of life, see the following articles. Keep in mind that the chemical term for hydrogen cyanide is HCN: Clifford Matthews. The HCN World: Establishing Protein-Nucleic Acid Life via Hydrogen Cyanide Polymers. In Cellular Origin and Life in Extreme Habitats and Astrobiology (2004), 6 (Origins : Genesis, Evolution and Diversity of Life): pp. 121-135. Retrieved September 25, 2007, from the World Wide Web: http://books.google.com/books?id=937NljkEbgYC&pg=PA123&dq=%22The+HCN+Wor....

(49) See also A. Brack. The Chemistry of Life’s Origins. In Cellular Origin and Life in Extreme Habitats and Astrobiology (2004), 6 (Origins : Genesis, Evolution and Diversity of Life): p. 64.

(50) For a sense of how central the study of hydrogen cyanide in space has been to fields from star birth to the evolution of DNA, see: W.M. Keck Observatory. Precursor to Proteins and DNA Found in Stellar Disk. Press release, December 20, 2005.
Retrieved September 25, 2007, from the World Wide Web http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=18569. European Space Agency. New results from ESA's Infrared Space Observatory, ISO, show that toxic compounds exist deep in the interior of star-forming clouds. October 12, 2001.
Retrieved September 25, 2007, from the World Wide Web
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/comet_poison_011012.html. F. Lahuis, E.F. van Dishoeck. ISO-SWS spectroscopy of gas-phase C_2H_2 and HCN toward massive young stellar objects. Astronomy and Astrophysics, v. 355, 2000: pp.699-712. A. M. S. Boonman, R. Stark, F. F. S. van der Tak, E. F. van Dishoeck, P. B. van der Wal, F. Schäfer, G. de Lange, and W. M. Laauwen. Highly Abundant HCN in the Inner Hot Envelope of GL 2591: Probing the Birth of a Hot Core? The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 553, 2001, part 2: pp. L63–L67. P.F. Goldsmith, W.D. Langer, J. Ellder, E. Kollberg, W. Irvine. Determination of the HNC to HCN abundance ratio in giant molecular clouds. Astrophysical Journal, Part 1, vol. 249, Oct. 15, 1981: pp. 524-531. Abstract retrieved September 25, 2007, from the World Wide Web
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1981ApJ...249..524G. Keisaku Ishii, Asami Tajima, Tetsuya Taketsugu, and Koichi Yamashita. Theoretical Elucidation of the Unusually High [HNC]/[HCN] Abundance Ratio in Interstellar Space: Two-dimensional and Two-State Quantum Wave Packet Dynamics Study on the Branching Ratio of the Dissociative Recombination Reaction HCNH+ + e- rarr HNC/HCN + H. The Astrophysical Journal, volume 636, 2006, part 1, pp. 927–931. And for a summary in plain English of the importance of many of these peer-reviewed articles, see: Peter N. Spotts. How comets may have 'seeded' life on Earth. USATODAY.com. September 7, 2005.
Retrieved September 25, 2007, from the World Wide Web
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2005-09-07-comet-earth-life_x....

(51) Clifford Matthews. The HCN World: Establishing Protein-Nucleic Acid Life via Hydrogen Cyanide Polymers. In Cellular Origin and Life in Extreme Habitats and Astrobiology (2004), 6 (Origins: Genesis, Evolution and Diversity of Life): pp. 121-135. Retrieved September 25, 2007, from the World Wide Web: http://books.google.com/books?id=937NljkEbgYC&pg=PA123&dq=%22The+HCN+Wor.... For a full copy of Matthews “HCN World”, see: http://www.springerlink.com/content/l550537256x24ln4/fulltext.pdf.

(52) National Radio Astronomy Observatory. Scientists Discover Two New Interstellar Molecules: Point to Probable Pathways for Chemical Evolution in Space. Press release, June 21, 2004. Retrieved February 5, 2008, from the World Wide Web
http://www.nrao.edu/pr/2004/GBTMolecules/.

(53) Norman R. Pace. The universal nature of biochemistry. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Vol. 98, No. 3, Jan. 30, 2001: pp. 805-808. Retrieved August 17, 2007, from the World Wide Web
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/98/3/805.

(54) Shen-Yuan Liu. Complex molecules in galactic dust cores: Biologically interesting molecules and dust chemistry. Thesis (PhD). University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign, Source DAI-B 60/12, p. 6152, Jun 2000. Abstract retrieved June 11, 2002, from the World Wide Web http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2000PhDT........16L.

(55) Alexandra Goho. Space Invaders: The stuff of life has far-flung origins. Science News, May 1, 2004; Vol. 165, No. 18
Retrieved from the World Wide Web May 06, 2004 http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20040501/bob9.asp.

(56) David F. Blake, Peter Jenniskens. The Ice Of Life. Scientific American, August 2001, Vol. 285 Issue 2: pp. 44-50.

(57) Carbon-copy is an almost literal term. Carbon monoxide—CO—is one of the most abundant molecules produced by nova self-destruction. It appears within a mere 100 days of a nova’s explosion. Formic acid (HCOOH) and methyl formate (HCOOH3), two other carbon compounds, also pop up frequently in interstellar clouds of molecules, especially in hot regions where the atom-assemblies are packed together heavily, forming what’s called a “hot core.” See: Astronomers Find Carbon Monoxide Gas In Supernova Debris. Dartmouth News. Retrieved February 5, 2008, from the World Wide Web http://www.dartmouth.edu/pages/news/releases/jan99/nova.html. Shen-Yuan Liu. Complex molecules in galactic dust cores: Biologically interesting molecules and dust chemistry. Thesis (PhD). University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign, Source DAI-B 60/12, p. 6152, Jun 2000. Abstract retrieved February 5, 2008, from the World Wide Web http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2000PhDT........16L.)

(58) David F. Blake, Peter Jenniskens. The Ice of Life. Scientific American, August 2001, Vol. 285, Issue 2.
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(59) Francois Raulin. Prebiotic chemistry in the solar system. In ESA, Formation of Stars and Planets, and the Evolution of the Solar System: pp. 151-157 (SEE N91-18922 10-90). Abstract retrieved February 5, 2008, from the World Wide Web http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1990ESASP.315..151R.

(60) Max P. Bernstein, Scott A. Sandford and Louis J. Allamandola. "Life's Far-Flung Raw Materials." Scientific American, July 1999.

(61) David F. Blake, Peter Jenniskens. The Ice of Life. Scientific American, August 2001, Vol. 285, Issue 2.

(62) Shen-Yuan Liu. Complex molecules in galactic dust cores: Biologically interesting molecules and dust chemistry. Thesis (PhD). University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign, Source DAI-B 60/12, p. 6152, Jun 2000. Retrieved June 11, 2002, from the World Wide Web http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect.

(63) Shen-Yuan Liu. Complex molecules in galactic dust cores: Biologically interesting molecules and dust chemistry. Thesis (PhD). University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign, Source DAI-B 60/12, p. 6152, Jun 2000. Abstract retrieved June 11, 2002, from the World Wide Web http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2000PhDT........16L.

(64) By 2002, the number of molecules we’d found in space had climbed to 130. Rachel Nowak. Amino acid found in deep space. New Scientist, July 18, 2002
Retrieved April 25, 2005, from the World Wide Web
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/space/astrobiology/dn2558

(65) David F. Blake, Peter Jenniskens. The Ice of Life. Scientific American, August 2001, Vol. 285, Issue 2.

(66) NASA's Ames Research Center. Scientists find clues that the path leading to the origin of life begins in deep space. Press release from The Astrochemistry Laboratory in the Astrophysics Branch (SSA) of the Space Sciences Division at NASA's Ames Research Center. Retrieved February 5, 2008, from the World Wide Web
http://www.astrochemistry.org/vesicle.html; Jason P. Dworkin, David W. Deamer. Scott A. Sandford, and Louis J. Allamandola. Self-assembling amphiphilic molecules: Synthesis in simulated interstellar/precometary ices. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Vol. 98, Issue 3, January 30, 2001: pp. 815-819. Retrieved February 5, 2008, from the World Wide Web
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/98/3/815

(67) NASA's Ames Research Center. Scientists find clues that the path leading to the origin of life begins in deep space. Press release from The Astrochemistry Laboratory in the Astrophysics Branch (SSA) of the Space Sciences Division at NASA's Ames Research Center. Retrieved February 5, 2008, from the World Wide Web
http://www.astrochemistry.org/vesicle.html; Jason P. Dworkin, David W. Deamer. Scott A. Sandford, and Louis J. Allamandola. Self-assembling amphiphilic molecules: Synthesis in simulated interstellar/precometary ices. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Vol. 98, Issue 3, January 30, 2001: pp. 815-819. Retrieved February 5, 2008, from the World Wide Web
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/98/3/815

(68) James F. Kasting. "Planetary Atmospheres: Warming Early Earth and Mars." Science, May 23, 1997: pp. 1213-1215. Heinrich D. Holland. "Evidence for Life on Earth More Than 3850 Million Years Ago." Science, January 3, 1997: pp. 38-39. Norman R. Pace "A Molecular View of Microbial Diversity and the Biosphere." Science, May 2, 1997: pp. 734-740. S.J. Mojzsis, G. Arrhenius, K.D. Mckeegan, T.M. Harrison, A.P. Nutman and C.R.L. Friend. "Evidence for life on Earth before 3,800 million years ago." Nature, November 7, 1996: pp. 55 - 59; NASA News Releases. "96-11-05 When Life Began On Earth." Press release. Retrieved December 1, 1996, from the World Wide Web
http://spacelink.msfc.nasa.gov/NASA.News/NASA.News.Releases/ Previous.News.Releases/96.News.Releases/96-11.News.Releases/ 96-11-05.When.Life.Began.On.Earth, January 1999. John M. Hayes. The earliest memories of life on Earth. Nature, November 7, 1996: pp. 21-22. Minik T. Rosing. 13C-Depleted Carbon Microparticles in >3700-Ma Sea-Floor Sedimentary Rocks from West Greenland. Science, January 29, 1999: Vol. 283. no. 5402, pp. 674 - 676. DOI: 10.1126/science.283.5402.674. Minik Rosing and Robert Frei. U-rich Archaean sea-floor sediments from Greenland – indications of >3700 Ma oxygenic photosynthesis. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Volume 217, Issues 3-4, January 15, 2004: pp. 237-244. Paul Rincon. Oldest evidence of photosynthesis. BBC News Online, December 17, 2003. Retrieved February 5, 2008, from the World Wide Web
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3321819.stm.

(69) Charles H. Lineweaver, Tamara M. Davis. Does the Rapid Appearance of Life on Earth Suggest that Life Is Common in the Universe? Astrobiology. 2002, 2(3): pp. 293-304. doi:10.1089/153110702762027871. Retrieved February 5, 2008, from the World Wide Web
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(70) Qingzhu Yin, S. B. Jacobsen, K. Yamashita, J. Blichert-Toft, P. Telouk & F. Albarede. A short timescale for terrestrial planet formation from Hf–W chronometry of meteorites. Nature , Vol 418, 29, August 2002: pp. 949-952. Retrieved February 5, 2008, from the World Wide Web
http://www.gps.caltech.edu/classes/ge133/reading/halfnium_core_nature.pdf. Claude J. Allègre, Gérard Manhès, Christa Göpel. The age of the Earth. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, vol. 59, Issue 8: pp.1445-1456. Abstract retrieved February 5, 2008, from the World Wide Web
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1995GeCoA..59.1445A. Wikipedia. Planetary Formation. Retrieved February 5, 2008, from the World Wide Web
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(71) L. Bada. The transition from abiotic to biotic chemistry: When and where? American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2001, abstract #U51A-11 Publication Date: December 2001. Abstract retrieved August 17, 2007, from the World Wide Web
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(72) For information on the peptiglycan weave of cellular membranes, see Franklin M. Harold. The Way of the Cell: Molecules, Organisms and the Order of Life. NY: Oxford University Press, 2001: pp. 100-109. Jan Sapp. Cytoplasmic Heretics. Perspectives In Biology And Medicine, Winter 1998: pp. 224-242.

(73) NASA's Ames Research Center. Scientists find clues that the path leading to the origin of life begins in deep space. Press release, The Astrochemistry Laboratory in the Astrophysics Branch (SSA) of the Space Sciences Division at NASA's Ames Research Center. Retrieved February 5, 2008, from the World Wide Web
http://www.astrochemistry.org/vesicle.html; Jason P. Dworkin, David W. Deamer. Scott A. Sandford, and Louis J. Allamandola. Self-assembling amphiphilic molecules: Synthesis in simulated interstellar/precometary ices. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Vol. 98, Issue 3, January 30, 2001: pp. 815-819. Retrieved February 5, 2008, from the World Wide Web
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/98/3/815. R. Cowen. Life's housing may come from space. Science News, February 3, 2001.
Retrieved from the World Wide Web May 30, 2003
http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m1200/5_159/71352457/print.jhtml.

(74) The figure of 62 million atoms is my extrapolation from information given by Margaret Jo Velardo, P.A., Ph.D. McKnight Brain Institute of the University of Florida. Re: atom teams=genes. Personal communication. February 22, 2003. Also posted to International Paleopsychology Project. For an idea of the scale of the first molecules to master the art of reproduction, try these numbers. A simple SV40 virus is a collective of atoms so simple that it can NOT reproduce. It depends on genomes to do its duplication for it. Yet this extremely primitive society of atoms has 326,400 atoms. A molecule that CAN reproduce—the genome of the bacteria E. Coli—has 300,800,000 atoms, over three hundred million atoms. The first self-reproducing molecules were almost certainly atom teams whose numbers were somewhere in between these two extremes. Sources: James K. Hardy. DNA and RNA Structure and Function. In Concepts of Biochemistry. University of Akron, 1998. Retrieved February 5, 2008, from the World Wide Web
http://ull.chemistry.uakron.edu/biochem/10/. R. Bennewitz, J. N. Crain, A. Kirakosian, J-L Lin, J. L. McChesney, D. Y. Petrovykh and F J Himpse. Atomic scale memory at a silicon surface. Nanotechnology 13, 2002: pp. 499-502. Institute of Physics Publishing. Retrieved February 5, 2008, from the World Wide Web http://uw.physics.wisc.edu/~himpsel/383_nano.pdf.

(75) For RNA and DNA as memory-libraries and as information-storing molecules, see: Stephen J. Freeland, Robin D. Knight, Laura F. Landweber. Molecular Evolution: Do Proteins Predate DNA? Science October 22, 1999, Vol. 286. no. 5440: pp. 690 - 692 DOI: 10.1126/science.286.5440.690
Retrieved August 19, 2007, from the World Wide Web http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/286/5440/690. Says Ronald Breaker of Yale University’s Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, “DNA [is] an ideal molecule for information storage and transfer.” Ronald R. Breaker. Making Catalytic DNAs. Science, December 15, 2000: Vol. 290. no. 5499: pp. 2095 – 2096. DOI: 10.1126/science.290.5499.2095. Nobel Prize-winning molecular biology pioneer Walter Gilbert, in his 1980 lecture to the Nobel Foundation, declared flat out that, “DNA is the information store.” [emphasis is mine.] Walter Gilbert. DNA sequencing and gene structure. Science, December 18, 1981: pp.1305-12. Retrieved February 5, 2008, from the World Wide Web
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/214/4527/1305.pdf

(76) re: “It sometimes took storing five failed strategies to construct the mega-strategy from which a breakthrough would be made.” This is a hypothesis. I’ve taken the liberty of extrapolating from the results of experiments like the following: B.G. Hall. Adaptive evolution that requires multiple spontaneous mutations. I. Mutations involving an insertion sequence. Genetics, December 1988: pp. 887-97; L.L. Parker, B.G. Hall. A fourth Escherichia coli gene system with the potential to evolve beta-glucoside utilization. Genetics, July 1988: pp. 485-90.

(77) Wikipedia. Cytoplasm. Retrieved February 5, 2008, from the World Wide Web
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytoplasm.

(78) Genevieve Thiers. What is cytoplasm? eSSORTMENT. Pagewise 2002. Retrieved February 5, 2008, from the World Wide Web
http://www.essortment.com/cytoplasm_rkkg.htm.

(79) The Gatorade inside a bacterial cell is not just rich in proteins. It’s rich in protein-makers— ribosomes, small protein assembly plants. Socially, this Gatorade is a very busy place. CELLSalive! Bacterial Cell Structure. Retrieved February 5, 2008, from the World Wide Web http://www.cellsalive.com/cells/bactcell.htm