WEBVTT

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First, a video.

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Yes, it is a scrambled egg.

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But as you look at it,

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I hope you'll begin to feel
just slightly uneasy.

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Because you may notice
that what's actually happening

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is that the egg is unscrambling itself.

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And you'll now see the yolk
and the white have separated.

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And now they're going to be
poured back into the egg.

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And we all know in our heart of hearts

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that this is not the way
the universe works.

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A scrambled egg is mush --
tasty mush -- but it's mush.

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An egg is a beautiful, sophisticated thing

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that can create even more
sophisticated things,

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such as chickens.

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And we know in our heart of hearts

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that the universe does not travel
from mush to complexity.

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In fact, this gut instinct

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is reflected in one of the most
fundamental laws of physics,

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the second law of thermodynamics,
or the law of entropy.

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What that says basically

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is that the general
tendency of the universe

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is to move from order and structure

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to lack of order, lack of structure --

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in fact, to mush.

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And that's why that video
feels a bit strange.

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And yet, look around us.

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What we see around us
is staggering complexity.

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Eric Beinhocker estimates
that in New York City alone,

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there are some 10 billion SKUs,
or distinct commodities, being traded.

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That's hundreds of times
as many species as there are on Earth.

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And they're being traded by a species
of almost seven billion individuals,

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who are linked by trade,
travel, and the Internet

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into a global system
of stupendous complexity.

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So here's a great puzzle:

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in a universe ruled
by the second law of thermodynamics,

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how is it possible

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to generate the sort
of complexity I've described,

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the sort of complexity
represented by you and me

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and the convention center?

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Well, the answer seems to be,

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the universe can create complexity,

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but with great difficulty.

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In pockets,

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there appear
what my colleague, Fred Spier,

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calls "Goldilocks conditions" --

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not too hot, not too cold,

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just right for the creation of complexity.

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And slightly more complex things appear.

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And where you have
slightly more complex things,

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you can get slightly more complex things.

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And in this way, complexity
builds stage by stage.

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Each stage is magical

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because it creates the impression
of something utterly new

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appearing almost out of nowhere
in the universe.

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We refer in big history to these moments
as threshold moments.

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And at each threshold,
the going gets tougher.

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The complex things get more fragile,

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more vulnerable;

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the Goldilocks conditions
get more stringent,

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and it's more difficult
to create complexity.

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Now, we, as extremely complex creatures,

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desperately need to know this story

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of how the universe creates complexity
despite the second law,

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and why complexity means
vulnerability and fragility.

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And that's the story
that we tell in big history.

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But to do it, you have do something

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that may, at first sight,
seem completely impossible.

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You have to survey the whole
history of the universe.

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So let's do it.

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(Laughter)

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Let's begin by winding the timeline back

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13.7 billion years,

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to the beginning of time.

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Around us, there's nothing.

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There's not even time or space.

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Imagine the darkest,
emptiest thing you can

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and cube it a gazillion times
and that's where we are.

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And then suddenly,

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bang!

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A universe appears, an entire universe.

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And we've crossed our first threshold.

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The universe is tiny;
it's smaller than an atom.

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It's incredibly hot.

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It contains everything
that's in today's universe,

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so you can imagine, it's busting.

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And it's expanding at incredible speed.

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And at first, it's just a blur,

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but very quickly distinct things
begin to appear in that blur.

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Within the first second,

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energy itself shatters
into distinct forces

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including electromagnetism and gravity.

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And energy does something
else quite magical:

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it congeals to form matter --

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quarks that will create protons

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and leptons that include electrons.

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And all of that happens
in the first second.

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Now we move forward 380,000 years.

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That's twice as long as humans
have been on this planet.

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And now simple atoms appear
of hydrogen and helium.

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Now I want to pause for a moment,

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380,000 years after the origins
of the universe,

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because we actually know quite a lot
about the universe at this stage.

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We know above all
that it was extremely simple.

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It consisted of huge clouds
of hydrogen and helium atoms,

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and they have no structure.

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They're really a sort of cosmic mush.

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But that's not completely true.

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Recent studies

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by satellites such as the WMAP satellite

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have shown that, in fact,

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there are just tiny differences
in that background.

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What you see here,

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the blue areas are about a thousandth
of a degree cooler

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than the red areas.

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These are tiny differences,

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but it was enough
for the universe to move on

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to the next stage of building complexity.

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And this is how it works.

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Gravity is more powerful
where there's more stuff.

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So where you get slightly denser areas,

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gravity starts compacting clouds
of hydrogen and helium atoms.

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So we can imagine the early universe
breaking up into a billion clouds.

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And each cloud is compacted,

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gravity gets more powerful
as density increases,

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the temperature begins to rise
at the center of each cloud,

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and then, at the center,

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the temperature crosses
the threshold temperature

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of 10 million degrees,

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protons start to fuse,

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there's a huge release of energy,

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and --

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bam!

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We have our first stars.

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From about 200 million years
after the Big Bang,

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stars begin to appear
all through the universe,

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billions of them.

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And the universe is now
significantly more interesting

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and more complex.

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Stars will create
the Goldilocks conditions

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for crossing two new thresholds.

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When very large stars die,

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they create temperatures so high

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that protons begin to fuse
in all sorts of exotic combinations,

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to form all the elements
of the periodic table.

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If, like me, you're wearing a gold ring,

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it was forged in a supernova explosion.

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So now the universe
is chemically more complex.

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And in a chemically more complex universe,

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it's possible to make more things.

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And what starts happening
is that, around young suns,

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young stars,

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all these elements combine,
they swirl around,

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the energy of the star stirs them around,

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they form particles, they form snowflakes,
they form little dust motes,

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they form rocks, they form asteroids,

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and eventually,
they form planets and moons.

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And that is how our
solar system was formed,

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four and a half billion years ago.

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Rocky planets like our Earth
are significantly more complex than stars

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because they contain
a much greater diversity of materials.

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So we've crossed a fourth
threshold of complexity.

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Now, the going gets tougher.

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The next stage introduces entities
that are significantly more fragile,

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significantly more vulnerable,

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but they're also much more creative

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and much more capable
of generating further complexity.

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I'm talking, of course,
about living organisms.

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Living organisms are created by chemistry.

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We are huge packages of chemicals.

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So, chemistry is dominated
by the electromagnetic force.

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That operates over smaller
scales than gravity,

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which explains why you and I
are smaller than stars or planets.

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Now, what are the ideal
conditions for chemistry?

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What are the Goldilocks conditions?

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Well, first, you need energy,

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but not too much.

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In the center of a star,
there's so much energy

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that any atoms that combine
will just get busted apart again.

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But not too little.

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In intergalactic space,

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there's so little energy
that atoms can't combine.

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What you want is just the right amount,

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and planets, it turns out, are just right,

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because they're close to stars,
but not too close.

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You also need a great diversity
of chemical elements,

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and you need liquids, such as water.

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Why?

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Well, in gases, atoms move
past each other so fast

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that they can't hitch up.

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In solids,

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atoms are stuck together, they can't move.

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In liquids,

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they can cruise and cuddle

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and link up to form molecules.

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Now, where do you find
such Goldilocks conditions?

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Well, planets are great,

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and our early Earth was almost perfect.

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It was just the right
distance from its star

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to contain huge oceans of liquid water.

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And deep beneath those oceans,

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at cracks in the Earth's crust,

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you've got heat seeping up
from inside the Earth,

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and you've got a great
diversity of elements.

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So at those deep oceanic vents,

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fantastic chemistry began to happen,

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and atoms combined in all sorts
of exotic combinations.

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But of course, life is more
than just exotic chemistry.

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How do you stabilize those huge molecules

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that seem to be viable?

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Well, it's here that life introduces
an entirely new trick.

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You don't stabilize the individual;

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you stabilize the template,

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the thing that carries information,

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and you allow the template to copy itself.

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And DNA, of course,
is the beautiful molecule

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that contains that information.

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You'll be familiar
with the double helix of DNA.

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Each rung contains information.

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So, DNA contains information
about how to make living organisms.

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And DNA also copies itself.

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So, it copies itself

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and scatters the templates
through the ocean.

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So the information spreads.

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Notice that information
has become part of our story.

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The real beauty of DNA though
is in its imperfections.

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As it copies itself,
once in every billion rungs,

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there tends to be an error.

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And what that means
is that DNA is, in effect, learning.

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It's accumulating new ways
of making living organisms

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because some of those errors work.

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So DNA's learning

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and it's building greater
diversity and greater complexity.

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And we can see this happening
over the last four billion years.

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For most of that time of life on Earth,

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living organisms have been
relatively simple --

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single cells.

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But they had great diversity,
and, inside, great complexity.

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Then from about 600
to 800 million years ago,

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multi-celled organisms appear.

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You get fungi, you get fish,

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you get plants,

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you get amphibia, you get reptiles,

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and then, of course,
you get the dinosaurs.

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And occasionally, there are disasters.

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Sixty-five million years ago,

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an asteroid landed on Earth

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near the Yucatan Peninsula,

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creating conditions equivalent
to those of a nuclear war,

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and the dinosaurs were wiped out.

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Terrible news for the dinosaurs,

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but great news
for our mammalian ancestors,

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who flourished

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in the niches left empty by the dinosaurs.

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And we human beings are part
of that creative evolutionary pulse

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that began 65 million years ago

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with the landing of an asteroid.

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Humans appeared about 200,000 years ago.

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And I believe we count
as a threshold in this great story.

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Let me explain why.

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We've seen that DNA learns in a sense,

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it accumulates information.

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But it is so slow.

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DNA accumulates information
through random errors,

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some of which just happen to work.

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But DNA had actually generated
a faster way of learning:

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it had produced organisms with brains,

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and those organisms
can learn in real time.

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They accumulate information, they learn.

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The sad thing is, when they die,

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the information dies with them.

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Now what makes humans different
is human language.

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We are blessed with a language,
a system of communication,

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so powerful and so precise

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that we can share what we've learned
with such precision

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that it can accumulate
in the collective memory.

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And that means

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it can outlast the individuals
who learned that information,

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and it can accumulate
from generation to generation.

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And that's why, as a species,
we're so creative and so powerful,

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and that's why we have a history.

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We seem to be the only species
in four billion years

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to have this gift.

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I call this ability collective learning.

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It's what makes us different.

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We can see it at work
in the earliest stages of human history.

00:13:57.948 --> 00:14:01.235
We evolved as a species
in the savanna lands of Africa,

00:14:01.259 --> 00:14:04.720
but then you see humans migrating
into new environments,

00:14:04.744 --> 00:14:06.894
into desert lands, into jungles,

00:14:06.918 --> 00:14:09.354
into the Ice Age tundra of Siberia --

00:14:09.378 --> 00:14:10.823
tough, tough environment --

00:14:10.846 --> 00:14:13.179
into the Americas, into Australasia.

00:14:13.203 --> 00:14:15.240
Each migration involved learning --

00:14:15.264 --> 00:14:17.747
learning new ways of exploiting
the environment,

00:14:17.772 --> 00:14:19.946
new ways of dealing
with their surroundings.

00:14:19.970 --> 00:14:21.786
Then 10,000 years ago,

00:14:21.809 --> 00:14:24.804
exploiting a sudden
change in global climate

00:14:24.828 --> 00:14:26.400
with the end of the last ice age,

00:14:26.424 --> 00:14:28.005
humans learned to farm.

00:14:28.623 --> 00:14:31.059
Farming was an energy bonanza.

00:14:31.082 --> 00:14:34.909
And exploiting that energy,
human populations multiplied.

00:14:34.933 --> 00:14:38.520
Human societies got larger,
denser, more interconnected.

00:14:39.100 --> 00:14:42.451
And then from about 500 years ago,

00:14:42.475 --> 00:14:44.514
humans began to link up globally

00:14:44.538 --> 00:14:46.919
through shipping, through trains,

00:14:46.943 --> 00:14:49.235
through telegraph, through the Internet,

00:14:49.259 --> 00:14:54.451
until now we seem to form
a single global brain

00:14:54.475 --> 00:14:56.606
of almost seven billion individuals.

00:14:56.630 --> 00:14:59.793
And that brain is learning at warp speed.

00:15:00.572 --> 00:15:03.144
And in the last 200 years,
something else has happened.

00:15:03.168 --> 00:15:05.834
We've stumbled on another energy bonanza

00:15:05.857 --> 00:15:06.984
in fossil fuels.

00:15:07.009 --> 00:15:09.711
So fossil fuels and collective
learning together

00:15:09.735 --> 00:15:13.259
explain the staggering complexity
we see around us.

00:15:16.504 --> 00:15:17.504
So --

00:15:18.668 --> 00:15:19.985
Here we are,

00:15:20.009 --> 00:15:21.533
back at the convention center.

00:15:21.557 --> 00:15:26.263
We've been on a journey,
a return journey, of 13.7 billion years.

00:15:26.966 --> 00:15:29.436
I hope you agree this is a powerful story.

00:15:29.460 --> 00:15:34.125
And it's a story in which humans
play an astonishing and creative role.

00:15:34.466 --> 00:15:36.681
But it also contains warnings.

00:15:37.474 --> 00:15:41.807
Collective learning is a very,
very powerful force,

00:15:41.831 --> 00:15:46.235
and it's not clear
that we humans are in charge of it.

00:15:47.123 --> 00:15:50.192
I remember very vividly
as a child growing up in England,

00:15:50.216 --> 00:15:52.235
living through the Cuban Missile Crisis.

00:15:52.846 --> 00:15:56.457
For a few days, the entire biosphere

00:15:56.481 --> 00:15:58.780
seemed to be on the verge of destruction.

00:15:59.474 --> 00:16:02.639
And the same weapons are still here,

00:16:02.663 --> 00:16:04.235
and they are still armed.

00:16:05.004 --> 00:16:08.235
If we avoid that trap,
others are waiting for us.

00:16:08.647 --> 00:16:11.236
We're burning fossil fuels at such a rate

00:16:11.259 --> 00:16:14.670
that we seem to be undermining
the Goldilocks conditions

00:16:14.695 --> 00:16:16.923
that made it possible
for human civilizations

00:16:16.947 --> 00:16:20.028
to flourish over the last 10,000 years.

00:16:20.633 --> 00:16:22.908
So what big history can do

00:16:22.932 --> 00:16:26.254
is show us the nature
of our complexity and fragility

00:16:26.278 --> 00:16:28.201
and the dangers that face us,

00:16:28.225 --> 00:16:31.806
but it can also show us
our power with collective learning.

00:16:32.586 --> 00:16:34.538
And now, finally --

00:16:35.657 --> 00:16:37.812
this is what I want.

00:16:39.447 --> 00:16:42.480
I want my grandson, Daniel,

00:16:42.504 --> 00:16:45.260
and his friends and his generation,

00:16:45.284 --> 00:16:47.077
throughout the world,

00:16:47.101 --> 00:16:49.942
to know the story of big history,

00:16:49.966 --> 00:16:52.004
and to know it so well

00:16:52.028 --> 00:16:55.695
that they understand
both the challenges that face us

00:16:55.719 --> 00:16:58.236
and the opportunities that face us.

00:16:58.259 --> 00:17:00.139
And that's why a group of us

00:17:00.163 --> 00:17:03.175
are building a free, online syllabus

00:17:03.200 --> 00:17:04.518
in big history

00:17:04.541 --> 00:17:06.692
for high-school students
throughout the world.

00:17:07.224 --> 00:17:09.660
We believe that big history

00:17:09.684 --> 00:17:12.235
will be a vital
intellectual tool for them,

00:17:12.259 --> 00:17:15.103
as Daniel and his generation

00:17:15.126 --> 00:17:17.474
face the huge challenges

00:17:17.499 --> 00:17:19.554
and also the huge opportunities

00:17:19.577 --> 00:17:23.032
ahead of them at this threshold moment

00:17:23.057 --> 00:17:26.236
in the history of our beautiful planet.

00:17:26.992 --> 00:17:28.540
I thank you for your attention.

00:17:28.565 --> 00:17:33.259
(Applause)