Imperial rising...come on Imperial!

Discover the top 100 universities in the world from the THE - QS World University Rankings.

2007 Rank	2006 Rank	School Name	Country
Source: QS Quacquarelli Symonds (www.topuniversities.com) Copyright © 2004-2007 QS Quacquarelli Symonds Ltd. Click here for copyright and limitations on use.
1	1	HARVARD University	United States
2=	2	University of CAMBRIDGE	United Kingdom
2=	3	University of OXFORD	United Kingdom
2=	4	YALE University	United States
5	9	IMPERIAL College London	United Kingdom
6	10	PRINCETON University	United States
7=	7	CALIFORNIA Institute of Technology (Calt...	United States
7=	11	University of CHICAGO	United States
9	25	UCL (University College London)	United Kingdom
10	4	MASSACHUSETTS Institute of Technology (M...	United States
11	12	COLUMBIA University	United States
12	21	MCGILL University	Canada
13	13	DUKE University	United States
14	26	University of PENNSYLVANIA	United States
15	23	JOHNS HOPKINS University	United States
16	16	AUSTRALIAN National University	Australia
17	19	University of TOKYO	Japan
18	33	University of HONG KONG	Hong Kong
19	6	STANFORD University	United States
20=	35	CARNEGIE MELLON University	United States
20=	15	CORNELL University	United States
22	8	University of California, BERKELEY	United States
23	33	University of EDINBURGH	United Kingdom
24	46	KING'S College London	United Kingdom
25	29	KYOTO University	Japan
26	18	École Normale Supérieure, PARIS	France
27	22	The University of MELBOURNE	Australia
28	37	ÉCOLE POLYTECHNIQUE	France
29	42	NORTHWESTERN University	United States
30	40	University of MANCHESTER	United Kingdom
31	35	The University of SYDNEY	Australia
32	54	BROWN University	United States
33=	50	University of BRITISH COLUMBIA	Canada
33=	19	National University of SINGAPORE(NUS)	Singapore
33=	45	University of QUEENSLAND	Australia
36	14	PEKING University	China
37	64	University of BRISTOL	United Kingdom
38=	29	University of MICHIGAN	United States
38=	50	The CHINESE University of Hong Kong	Hong Kong
40	28	TSINGHUA University	China
41	31	University of CALIFORNIA, Los Angeles (U...	United States
42	24	ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of T...	Switzerland
43	38	MONASH University	Australia
44	41	University of NEW SOUTH WALES	Australia
45	27	University of TORONTO	Canada
46	70	OSAKA University	Japan
47	66	BOSTON University	United States
48	69	University of AMSTERDAM	Netherlands
49	43	NEW YORK University (NYU)	United States
50	46	The University of AUCKLAND	New Zealand
51=	32	University of TEXAS at Austin	United States
51=	63	SEOUL National University	Korea, South
53=	58	HONG KONG University of Science & Techno...	Hong Kong
53=	78	TRINITY College Dublin	Ireland
55=	79	University of WISCONSIN-Madison	United States
55=	84	University of WASHINGTON	United States
57	73	University of WARWICK	United Kingdom
58	44	University of CALIFORNIA, San Diego	United States
59	17	LONDON School of Economics and Political...	United Kingdom
60	58	HEIDELBERG Universität	Germany
61	96	Katholieke Universiteit LEUVEN	Belgium
62	105	University of ADELAIDE	Australia
63	86	DELFT University of Technology	Netherlands
64	111	The University of WESTERN AUSTRALIA	Australia
65=	90	University of BIRMINGHAM	United Kingdom
65=	98	Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München	Germany
67	82	Technische Universität MÜNCHEN	Germany
68	102	University of SHEFFIELD	United Kingdom
69	61	NANYANG Technological University	Singapore
70	85	University of NOTTINGHAM	United Kingdom
71=	111	UPPSALA University	Sweden
71=	61	DARTMOUTH College	United States
73	77	University of ILLINOIS	United States
74=	56	EMORY University	United States
74=	124	University of YORK	United Kingdom
76	109	University of ST ANDREWS	United Kingdom
77=	127	PURDUE University	United States
77=	88	University of PITTSBURGH	United States
79	111	University of MARYLAND	United States
80=	141	University of SOUTHAMPTON	United Kingdom
80=	121	University of LEEDS	United Kingdom
82	53	VANDERBILT University	United States
83	81	University of GLASGOW	United Kingdom
84	90	LEIDEN University	Netherlands
85=	87	University of VIENNA	Austria
85=	116	FUDAN University	China
85=	60	CASE WESTERN RESERVE University	United States
88	176	QUEEN'S University	Canada
89	95	UTRECHT University	Netherlands
90=	99	PENNSYLVANIA STATE University	United States
90=	118	TOKYO Institute of Technology	Japan
92	102	RICE University	United States
93=	181	Université de Montréal	Canada
93=	54	University of COPENHAGEN	Denmark
95	48	University of ROCHESTER	United States
96	170	University of CALIFORNIA, Davis	United States
97=	145	GEORGIA Institute of Technology	United States
97=	133	University of ALBERTA	Canada
99	141	CARDIFF University	United Kingdom
100	116	University of HELSINKI	Finland

Shhh! The biggest idea ever!

Charles Darwin had a big idea, arguably the biggest and best idea ever. And like all the best ideas it is beguilingly simple. In fact, it is so staggeringly elementary, so blindingly obvious, so amazingly ‘dud-duh why didn’t I think of that?’, that although others before him had had inklings of the truth, nobody thought to look for it in the right place. Darwin had 5 years to look for it; and he did so as the official naturalist onboard HMS Beagle - a sailing vessel that spent 5 years travelling the globe from Brazil to Tierra del Fuego - and from the Galapagos to the Malay Archipelago. When he arrived back in England Darwin sat on his idea for 20 years before finally telling the world about it. Why? Because he was scared. He knew it would change everything.

Darwin’s big idea is that of evolution by natural selection published in On the Origin of Species, that gave biology its guiding principle, a governing law that helps the rest make sense. Understanding its cold, beautiful logic is a must. If you want to understand life this is the place to start.

Natural selection's explanatory power is not just about life on this planet: it is the only theory so far suggested that could explain life on any planet. If life exists anywhere else in the universe then some version of evolution by natural selection will almost certainly turn out to underpin its existence. Darwin's theory works equally well no matter how strange and weird and wonderful that extraterrestrial life may be - and my tentative guess is that it will be weird beyond our wildest imaginings.

But what makes natural selection so special? A powerful idea assumes little to explain much. It does lots of explanatory 'heavy lifting', while expending little in the way of assumptions or postulations. It gives you plenty of bangs for your explanatory buck. Its Explanation Ratio - what it explains, divided by what it needs to assume in order to do the explaining - is enormous.

If any reader knows of any idea that has a larger explanation ratio than Darwin's, then I wanna hear it. Darwin's big idea explains all of life and its consequences, and that means everything that possesses more than minimal complexity – that includes you, and me, and the cat next door. It explains flowers and the bees that buzz about them. It explains mushrooms and HIV and athletes-foot-fungus. It even explains accountants. Now that’s what I call explaining! All this explaining is equal to the numerator of the explanation ratio, and it is huge.

Yet the denominator (the number at the bottom of the fraction) in the explanatory equation is spectacularly small and simple. The denominator is: natural selection, the non-random survival of genes in gene pools (to put it in neo-Darwinian terms rather than Darwin's own).

You can winnow Darwin's big idea down to a single sentence (again, this is a modern way of putting it, not quite Darwin's): 'Given sufficient time, the non-random survival of hereditary entities will generate complexity, diversity, beauty, and an illusion of design so persuasive that it is almost impossible to distinguish from deliberate intelligent design'. We don't need to add mutation to our assumptions. Mutational 'bucks' are provided free. 'Given sufficient time' is not a problem either - except for human minds struggling to take on board the terrifying magnitude of geological time. Look around you, the illusion of design is everywhere in the living world. So powerful is this illusion, so soft and comfortable and beguiling is the cotton wool over our eyes, that the spell of the illusion was only recently lifted 150 years ago today. Yes, 2009 is the 150th anniversary of Darwin's big idea - And our eyes are still accustomising to the brilliant new view.

It is mainly its power to simulate the illusion of design that makes Darwin's big idea seem threatening to a certain kind of mind. The same power constitutes the most formidable barrier to understanding it. People are naturally incredulous that anything so simple could explain so much. To a naive observer of the wondrous complexity of life, it just must have been intelligently designed.

But intelligent design is the polar opposite of a powerful theory: its explanation ratio is pathetically titchy. The numerator is the same as Darwin's: everything we know about life and its prodigious complexity. But the denominator, far from Darwin's slim and minimalist simplicity, is at least as big as the numerator itself: an unexplained intelligence, a ‘designer’ big enough to be capable of designing all the complexity we are trying to explain in the first place!

I'll end on a subtler legacy of Darwin's big idea. Darwin raises our consciousness to the sinewy power of science to explain the large and complex in terms of the small and simple. In biology we were fooled for centuries into thinking that extravagant complexity in nature needs an extravagantly complex explanation. Darwin triumphantly dispelled that delusion.

There remain deep questions in physics and cosmology that await their Darwin. Why are the laws of physics the way they are? Why are there laws at all? Why is there a universe at all? Why is there anything? Once again, the lure of 'design' is tempting. But we have the cautionary tale of Darwin before us. We've been through all that before. Darwin emboldens us - difficult as it is - to seek genuine explanations: explanations that explain more than they postulate. Darwin’s big idea is with us for good. There’s nothing quite like it to tear that wool from our eyes!

_____

Coming soon...Life Trips

What is it like to be a spider threading a web or an eagle in flight? What is it like being a whale in depths or a pollen grain wafting above the earth? What is it like to be in love if you're a 200,000 year old human ancestor? Do you know love? Do you understand what it is? What is it like to be a drop of water recycling for a million years or a pebble burnished mercilessly by the tides? What is it like to be Homo erectus struggling to untangle the mystery of the moon? Is the moon far? If I climb that mountain can I touch it with my hands? What are these stars that dazzle me at night - are they fires from distant worlds? Where did she go, will I ever see her again? What is life? What is this? What is that? What is it all for?

L'art de BookWorming

Panoramic Karakoramic Highway - Pakistan

left-hand-side

right-hand-side

Crystal air views - misty morning dews - sleeping bag wet - slept all night - under starry canopy - meteor streaks venting - impossible things thought. Yawnings release me - tired muscles ache - i sleep & think of you - rustling warily - in my dream. Wake-up to - delicious ice cold - fresh mountain stream - breakfast of sip - of water only. Breakfast of water - and gulp of  morning air - i dream of - ice cold milk - drenched over cornflakes. A place like this - or cornflakes? I choose cornflakes - i hate my stomach - leave it behind - i wish i had. Mutinous sac of acid - spoiler of view - tormenter of me - causer of misery - wanter of cornflakes - which one's? Kelloggs!

Currently listening to... Album: 'Journal for Plague Lovers'

Song no 9 :  Doors closing slowly

The shadow is the cross ok - judgement must be willing today

Silence is not sacrifice - crucifixion is the easy life

[Video: Vagabond Productions (C)2009]

Song no 4 : This joke sport severed

This joke sport severed - I endeavoured

To find a place - where I became untethered

[Video: Vagabond Productions (C)2009]

JOURNAL FOR PLAGUE LOVERS by 'The Manic street preachers' - press Reviews:

Q - 'Simply a phenomenal rock record' *****

Uncut - 'A brave compelling record, stands shoulder to shoulder with The Manics best' ****

Sunday Times Culture - 'Great riff follows great riff.  A triumphant album' CD OF THE WEEK *****

Mojo - 'A band aligning with its purest impulses - A triumph' *****

The Fly - 'The Manic Street Preachers have re established themselves as one of the most important bands of our generation' **** ½

Maxim's Album Of The Month - 'The Welsh legends have well and truly found their voice again - This is essential'

Attitude - 'Stands up on its own as an angry, violent, unique piece of art'

Kerrang! - 'This is a record that HAD to be made, and it's an essential buy' KKKK

Independent On Sunday - 'The album of 2009 hands down no contest'

Clash Magazine - 'The spirits have lifted, the future is clear, welcome back Manic Street Preachers' 10/10

Observer Music Monthly - 'Not just a dignified salute to an absent friend but a cracking album in its own right' *****

The Guardian - 'A passionate rock album that honours the past, yet is very much of the present' *****

____

Eating The Sun

Here's what happened today. What really happened...

Dawn broke first over the Pacific. Because the international dateline bisects the largest ocean that's where the dawn always breaks first - planting its first kiss over the Pacific and perhaps on the prows of a few container ships. Then the dawn made landfall in the north a few hours later, sweeping a fiery multi-hued arc over the icy tundra, and at the end of the world to the south, it broke like a wave crashing against the mountains of New Zealand. Soon, effortlessly, it glided westwards; filling the rice paddies of the Philippines and the depths of the South China Sea. It touched-down in Thailand on the faces of the drivers sleeping in their tuk tuks. And everytime the sunlight hit something green - something truly green, not something painted green or dyed green: something with greenness that grew - the most amazing miracle on the planet began - anew. 

When the light of dawn shone on the greenness, the greenness smiled and welcomed it, and comprehended it, and put it to use. The greenness thrived and drank, nay gobbled up the dawn. The greenness was chlorophyll, a pigment. It was arranged such that the sunlight's energy bounced from one chlorophyll to the next like a frog across lily pads before reaching the subtle trap at the centre, the three billion year old trap where the light of the sun becomes the stuff of the earth. The stuff of life, the stuff of frogs, the stuff of you and me - even the stuff of love (if you want to stretch the metaphor to breaking point). As the trap's jaws snapped shut on the sunlight, the spring that powered those jaws pulled electrons from a nearby water molecule, breaking it up into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen was used along with the stream of electrons to turn carbon dioxide into organic matter. The oxygen was discarded as waste into the air to be breathed in by us. In every plant reached by the dawn this extraordinary three billion year old mechanism came into life millions of times over. The carbon dioxide to which these electrons were channelled was turned first into sugar and then all sorts of other molecules. Some of these were used to thicken the plant stems, others to lengthen the leaves, to enrich the soil and to colour the flowers still held tight in their buds. Light made life: that is what photosynthesis means.

If the light was to stop, on this day or any other, so would everything you care about. It has happened before. The dawn stopped in the time of the dinosaurs ending their reign. It can happen again. The manufacture of life from light is not the only thing going on as our dawn sweeps over Asia. For every leaf that greets the dawn there's an ant that eyes the leaf; for the growing grass there are hungry calves, and for the fattening calves there are hungry men; for the sugar-swollen root there's a sugar-sucking fungus. For growth there's decay. For life, there is death. By the time the dawn has reached America, most of the people on the earth have woken and gone to work; some in the far east have retired for the night. During their working day, almost all of those who can see will have seen something green. In built up London (My World) I can count well over five hundred trees from my trip to Canary Wharf. We might not give a conscious thought to the omnipresent green, but at some level we will enjoy it. We will flock to it in parks on summer days and relax under its cool sun-dappled shade. The greenness of life is so important to us that our eyes are tuned to discriminate among its various hues more precisely than the shades of any other colour. The green, we know without thinking, is good.

But we don't just enjoy seeing the green. It shapes the possibilities of our lives. More than two billion of us will have tended to the eaters of the sun in some way today. We will have hoed the soil for them, fed the sun eaters fertilizer, cared for them, kept em warm, kept them watered. We will have picked their fruits, dug up their roots, fed them to our livestock and ourselves. We will have made their carcasses into fabrics and furniture and firewood. We will have tended to some of them for their beauty and for their smell. It is not We who rule the world. They do: the sun eaters are our true masters. How little we know it.

And even if we ignore these plants, these eaters of the sun completely, by locking ourselves away in concrete-steel jungles, we will still rely on yesterday's sun eaters. Everyday we burn thirty million tonnes of fossil fuel to generate our electricity and drive our cars and warm our homes. And all that power and warmth comes from sunlight eaten long ago - energy trapped in coal and oil. This planet is covered not in dust, or lava, or ice like the other lifeless planets in the solar system. It is covered in tiny photosynthetic machines, vibrant whirring electron transport chains embedded in membranes, that trap the sun and eat it. This is the most wonderful trick ever invented. And it was invented soon after life first emerged on earth. These machines are more numerous than the sands of the sea or the stars of the sky. But they are also short lived. The hard work of taking light and funnelling it into chemical reactions takes its toll on their bodies and mechanisms. Plants spend a significant amount of energy keeping their photosynthetic machinery in good repair, and in winter, when light levels drop, the factories in which photosynthesis takes place (the leaves) are no longer worth the repair bill and so are shed in their trillions. Cost cutting. You trample over these dead crispy factories in autumn. But the idea behind the machines, the idea written down in their DNA and broken out fresh each spring, is not so fragile. It is always there, the idea lives on. Bodies perish, but the idea and the design live forever.

Who would have thought this universe would give birth to creatures green and seemingly simple. Who would have thought life could be so creative. Who would have thought the nuclear-powered sun could be harnessed and subdued. Look! they are all around you. Do you not see? Pay a little more attention to these greens. Our bodies may be made of stardust but our lives are powered by starlight eaten by the sun eaters.

_____

The Origin of Life (part III)

If there can be said to exist a single formula; like the age-old secret of alchemists, a formula that makes all of life possible, then it is the following:

C02 + H2O  ---------  C6H12O6 + O2

Carbon dioxide + Water -------- Glucose (organic molecule) + Oxygen

It doesn’t look like much does it? It's rather unimpressive isn't it? How can such a simple formula hold the key to life? But it does! It makes you feel like a god just knowing it. A god surveying creation before him (or her). But enough of the purple prose. Time for some real science. But before we begin: A plea. I implore you to be patient. The science that follows will be tricky. I have tried my best to strip away any superfluousness, any excess fat, to simplify, to distill, so that what remains is the essence. But to truly understand will require a wee effort on your part. But the rewards; if I may be so bold to say, will be worth it. At the end of it all, if I can make you feel like a genius, if I can make you feel like a crazy lord of time surveying his dominion, than I will have succeeded. Let there be light!

We've already discussed that plants carry out the above reaction by harnessing solar energy during photosynthesis. We mentioned that photosynthesis is a hugely complex process involving numerous enzymes, proteins, electron carriers and an intricate membrane network. To reiterate: the first life on earth could not possibly have photosynthesised. Photosynthesis evolved much later. So, the question remains: How did the first life combine hydrogen with carbon dioxide to build the organic molecules necessary for it to exist?

I hinted that the ocean floor holds the key. Deep down below the surface; projecting from the sea bed like chimneys are hot water vents. These are like fissures or pimples on the earth’s skin where newly exposed rock, from deep within the bowels of the earth, reacts with sea water. It must be understood that water doesn’t just mix and percolate with the rock; it chemically reacts with it. The amount of water bound chemically to the rock in this way is astonishing. It is believed that it is equivalent to the entire volume of water in the oceans. As the sea floor expands from the movements of plate tectonics; these rocks which contain bound water, are ultimately plunged beneath a colliding plate. In what is known in geological parlance as a subduction zone.

Eventually, on the other side of the conveyor belt that powers the movement of the continents these rocks reach the surface of the sea bed. This is where the vents come in. The sea water that was once bound with the rocks is released again through the vents; but not as water (H2O) but as bubbling hydrogen gas.

At the turn of the millennium, scientists aboard the submersible Atlantis stumbled across just one of these vent systems spewing forth hydrogen gas. This vent system was nicknamed the 'lost city' and it had delicate finger like projections made of carbonate that reached up into the inky blackness. These projections gave the lost city a Gothic church look.

The projecting fingers themselves are porous, containing a maze of microscopic compartments like a bee hive. The compartments are 1/12mm in diameter (the same size as an average cell) and are teeming with life. The compartments are the home to colonies of industrious bacteria. The bacteria themselves provide the food source for other larger organisms that thrive in the vents. They are the 'producers' in this underwater food chain but the the key thing is that the entire ecosystem is supported by the reaction of hydrogen gas (H2) with carbon dioxide (CO2). Whereas on the surface this reaction has an initial energy requiring step in which hydrogen first has to be torn from water, but here, the reaction requires no such initial stage. Raw hydrogen bubbling from the ground as a gas is a rare gift on our planet, and life is normally obliged to seek out occult supplies, bound in tight molecular grip to other atoms, as in water or hydrogen sulphide. The reaction occurs painfully slowly, but from the view of thermodynamics it is a free lunch. In fact is is better then a free lunch. You see, not only does the reaction of hydrogen and carbon dioxide occur spontaneously but it also releases energy as a result - energy that can be used to power other reactions. It's like walking into a restaurant, having a meal, and then being paid for it! - the ultimate free lunch. It takes such a free lunch to get life going on a planet. These vents fit the bill as a hatchery for life on earth. They generate organic molecules. They have porous compartments, which can concentrate any organic molecules formed, making the assembly of polymers (long chained molecules) like RNA (Ribonucleic acid - simpler cousin of the more famous Deoxyribonucleic acid DNA). The vents are long lived; the lost city itself has been venting for at least 40,000 years. The walls of the vents contain iron-sulphur minerals which can act as catalysts to speed up and promote the reactions further.

But I hear the whispers of naysayers. I know what you're thinking: such vents are all very well, but how did life progress from such natural reactors to the complex, marvelous tapestry of invention and ingenuity that we see around us? The answer, of course, is unknown but there are clues within all of us. A clue to the past. Yes, within each of us is a 'smoking gun', an ancient remnant of the origin of life itself. All life on earth without exception has within it a set of deeply conserved biochemical reactions, like a living fossil, but not a fossil of bones, nay a fossil of biochemistry. The same reactions that occured at the dawn of life, also occur in the underwater vents and also occur inside your body! Amazing huh? From Bacteria to Penguin. From woolly Mammoth to Chimpanzee we all contain a clue to our primordial past. Don't believe me? I'll show you. We now turn to these for the next step in our wonderful story.

All life on earth shares certain qualities. All living things are composed of cells (with the exception of viruses). All cells in all living things on earth have genes made of DNA; all DNA codes for proteins by means of a universal genetic code. All living things also share the same energy currency, known as ATP. This chemical is like a £10 note, used to 'pay' for all kinds of work that needs to be done to keep life alive. We can infer that all living things inherited these qualities from the first remote common ancestor. All life today also shares a common core of biochemical reactions, at the heart of which is a little cycle of reactions that is the bane of many a biochemistry student: the Krebs cycle! The Krebs cycle occupies hallowed ground in biochemistry - but for me it was something to be rote learned for exams and then quietly forgotten. Yet, within this ancient and dusty cycle of reactions lies the answer to the meaning of life - or, if not that, then at least how it got started!

(The Krebs Cycle - a pain in the ass for all biochemistry students)

I don’t expect you to understand the details. The main things to take are:

• The main purpose of the Krebs cycle is respiration i.e. to generate energy
• At the top you can see a chemical called Pyruvate which is shunted into our cycle
  
• ATP (the cellular currency of energy) is generated as the wheel turns. The ATP is then used to power life.
• Carbon dioxide and water are produced as waste products of this cycle.

What has any of this got to do with anything you're wondering? Let me explain. At the top of the cycle is a chemical called Pyruvate. Where does Pyruvate come from?

Don't worry about the details (!). All you need to do is look at the top left and read out the name of the first chemical you see...exactly, glucose. And the last chemical at the bottom...pyruvate.

So glucose is absorbed into the body and is converted into Pyruvate via the above series of reactions. Pyruvate in turn is shunted into the Krebs cycle thereby generating energy and releasing carbon dioxide and water as waste products. This is your basic respiration you learnt at school. But wait a minute! Isn’t this the opposite of the reaction we want? Aren’t we trying to combine carbon dioxide (CO2) and water (H20) to make glucose? Aren't these cycle of reactions breaking down glucose to generate C02 and H20. Yes, true but if you look at the cycle again you'll see double arrows between the reactants. This means that the Krebs cycle is reversible. It can run backwards.

Here is a simple version of the cycle to explain my point:

Glucose enters at the top to be broken down into water, carbon dioxide and ATP. If we run it in reverse we can combine water and carbon dioxide, and with the input of some energy, make glucose!

And he said: 'Let there be life, and life sprawled forth from the vents'

Normally the Krebs cycle is used in respiration to break down glucose. But it can also run in reverse to make glucose and other organic molecules. The reversal of this cycle is common in primitive bacteria - especially those found living in hydrothermal vents. It is clearly a primitive way of converting carbon dioxide and water into the building blocks of life. The other amazing thing about the cycle is that it can spin of its own accord. It is thermodynamically stable. In other words it was not invented by living things, it is chemistry that already existed before life emerged. Life simply took the naturally occurring reactions occurring in the ocean vents and made them its own. When life emerged it 'conducted' a score that already existed! Once the Krebs cycle got spinning, side reactions would have been inevitable, giving amino acids and proteins. How much of the core metabolism of life on earth arose spontaneously, and how much is a later product of genes and proteins is an interesting question and quite beyond the scope of this post. But I would hazard a guess that if you were to set up the Krebs cycle in a test tube, give it a spark of energy, and a wollop of inspiration, a whole bunch of proteins and nucleic acids would be synthesised spontaneously. It is a thermodynamic inevitability.

This paints an extraordinary portrait of the first life on earth - our first ancestor. She wasn't some free living, pulsating, moving, throbbing cell but a rocky labyrinth of mineral cells, lined with catalytic walls of iron, sulphur and nickel. The first life was a porous rock that generated complex molecules and energy right up to the formation of proteins and DNA itself. If this doesn’t shake you and evaporate the anaesthetic of familiarity that hovers above you in your daily life, then I don’t know what will. Do you feel like a genius now?

We now turn to DNA and cells. How did they arise from this queer and wonderful ancestor of ours. This rocky labyrinth of mineral cells...

Open your eyes (Snow patrol)