Word: earthly
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...probably autocatalysis-the process by which a substance, as soon as a little of it is formed, speeds the formation of more of itself. This process is common in organic chemistry. Many molecules important to life are autocatalytic, and in the soupy ocean and suffocating atmosphere of the young earth their concentration would tend to increase. The porphyrins, for example, which are related to the hemoglobin of animal blood and the chlorophyll of green plants, are autocatalysts...
...thickly on the floor. But they arrange themselves more neatly than cards do. Their edges tend to stick together, and thus the molecules build up into orderly stacks. The porphyrins do this, and so do the components of DNA (deoxyriboenucleic acid), the heredity-carrying substance that dominates life on earth...
...such processes produced life on earth, then in all likelihood they produced life on other planets. Dr. Calvin accepts the reasoning of modern astronomers that in the visible universe there are probably 100 million other planets with well-organized life on them. Such life may range all the way from "precellular" micro-organisms to sentient beings who speak a language. Since the life of man on earth occupies only the small span of 1,000,000 years out of the accepted time span of 5 billion years for the universe as a whole, it seems obvious to Dr. Calvin that...
Cosmic Influence. The kind of life that exists on earth, Dr. Calvin points out, has reached a critical stage. The highest product of its evolutionary chain-man-is on the point of learning how to navigate space and spread beyond the earth. "There is no reason to suppose that life, and man as its representative, will not transform any planet on which he lands, in the same way, or even in a more profound way than he has transformed the surface of the earth. It might suit him to change the orbit of the moon, and it seems within...
...Wild Woods. In a formal homily before his coronation, John said: "In these days of great mystery and trepidation . . . we strain to hear the voices of the earth . . ." Newsmen soon found that the Pope's ear was surprisingly well attuned to these voices. In a precedent-breaking press conference in which he talked off-the-cuff in French, John spoke frankly of himself as "moi-méme," apologized for not using the traditional papal "we" with "I'm not used to it yet." He went on to say that in the excitement of the past week...