MYSTERIES OF LIFE AND EXISTENCE — SNODGRASS 519 



verse. The important thing to realize is that, however it may have 

 begun, the universe is still composed of the elemental particles of 

 matter and that the energy with which these particles were originally 

 endowed is the source of all energies and activities, inanimate and 

 animate, later developed as the universe evolved. 



Gamow (1952), under the misleading title of the "creation" of the 

 universe, gives us a very good picture of its evolution from a vast, hot, 

 seething, gaseous mass of the primary particles of matter. Later, as 

 the mass began to cool and expand, protons, neutrons, and electrons 

 combined to form atoms, and atoms united into molecules. Cloudlike 

 condensations formed galaxies, condensations in the galaxies became 

 stars, and finally the planets were formed. It is wonderful what 

 atomic physics, mathematics, and imagination can do for astronomy, 

 but still it is disconcerting to find how much of it is theoretical. Urey 

 (1952), for example, lists five theories, beginning with that of La- 

 place, which have been proposed to explain the origin of the solar 

 planets. Of these theories he discredits all except the idea that the 

 sun was first surrounded by a vast cloud of dust which condensed 

 into the planets. However, we need not here be concerned with cosmic 

 theories ; they all have to come out with things as they are, the earth a 

 globe fitted for life, the other planets still to be investigated in this 

 respect. 



The earth at last, perhaps 3 billion years ago, acquired a solid rocky 

 crust, but still it was intensely hot, and volcanoes everywhere were 

 throwing out liquid matter from below. All was shrouded in dense 

 cloud masses. Given a billion years to cool, the clouds condensed into 

 torrential rains that filled depressions on the earth's surface and 

 formed the primitive oceans. (Never again until the time of Noah 

 was there such a rain as this.) The rain brought down chemicals from 

 the atmosphere, washed them out of the rocky hillsides, from the 

 volcanic lava, and poured them all into the standing waters. With the 

 clouds dispersed, sunshine floods the earth and ultraviolet radiation 

 penetrates the atmosphere. The stage is now set for the beginning of 

 life. 



The picture above presented of conditions on the earth before the 

 advent of life is that visualized by theorists on life's origin. However, 

 as generally in matters incapable of proof, different writers have 

 advanced quite different theories on the nature of the young world 

 (see Urey, 1952). 



THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 



Ideas concerning the beginning of life on the world are necessarily 

 theoretical, but the biochemists have worked out a theory that is now 

 generally approved or accepted. It is derived from the fact that the 

 basis of all life at present is the chemical interaction of organic sub- 



