Origin (57 page)

The view above the ocean now plunged beneath the waves, magnifying down into a single drop of water, where a turbulent swirl of virtual atoms and molecules were bonding and breaking apart.

“Sadly,” Edmond said, reappearing on-screen, “a simulation confronted by this many possible permutations requires a massive level of processing power—far beyond the capability of any computer on earth.” His eyes again twinkled with excitement. “That is … any computer except
one
.”

A pipe organ rang out, playing the famous opening trill to Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor along with a stunning wide-angle photograph of Edmond’s massive two-story computer.

“E-Wave,” Ambra whispered, speaking for the first time in many minutes.

Langdon stared at the screen.
Of course … it’s brilliant.

Accompanied by the dramatic organ soundtrack, Edmond launched into a fervent video tour of his supercomputer, finally unveiling his “quantum cube.” The pipe organ climaxed with a thunderous chord; Edmond was literally “pulling out all the stops.”

“The bottom line,” he concluded, “is that E-Wave is capable of re-creating the Miller-Urey experiment in virtual reality, with startling accuracy. I cannot model the
entire
primordial ocean, of course, so I created the same five-liter closed system that Miller and Urey used.”

A virtual flask of chemicals now appeared. The view of the liquid
became magnified and remagnified until it reached the atomic level—showing atoms bouncing around in the heated mixture, bonding and rebonding, under the influences of temperature, electricity, and physical motion.

“This model incorporates everything we have learned about the primordial soup since the days of the Miller-Urey experiment—including the probable presence of hydroxyl radicals from electrified steam and carbonyl sulfides from volcanic activity, as well as the impact of ‘reducing atmosphere’ theories.”

The virtual liquid on-screen continued to roil, and clusters of atoms began to form.

“Now let’s fast-forward the process …,” Edmond said excitedly, and the video surged ahead in a blur, showing the formation of increasingly complex compounds. “After one week, we start to see the same amino acids that Miller and Urey saw.” The image blurred again, moving faster now. “And then … at about the fifty-year mark, we start to see hints of the building blocks of RNA.”

The liquid kept churning, faster and faster.

“And so I let it run!” Edmond shouted, his voice rising in intensity.

The molecules on-screen continued to bond, the complexity of the structures increasing as the program fast-forwarded centuries, millennia, millions of years. As the images raced ahead with blinding speed, Edmond called out joyfully, “And guess what eventually appeared inside this flask?”

Langdon and Ambra leaned forward with excitement.

Edmond’s exuberant expression suddenly deflated. “Absolutely
nothing
,” he said. “No life. No spontaneous chemical reaction. No moment of Creation. Just a jumbled mix of lifeless chemicals.” He let out a heavy sigh. “I could draw only one logical conclusion.” He stared dolefully into the camera. “Creating life … requires
God
.”

Langdon stared in shock.
What is he saying?

After a moment, a faint grin crept across Edmond’s face. “Or,” he said, “perhaps I had missed one key ingredient in the recipe.”

AMBRA VIDAL SAT
mesmerized, imagining the millions of people around the globe who, right now, just like her, were fully engrossed in Edmond’s presentation.

“So, what ingredient was I missing?” Edmond asked. “Why did my primordial soup refuse to produce life? I had no idea—so I did what all successful scientists do. I asked somebody smarter than I am!”

A scholarly bespectacled woman appeared: Dr. Constance Gerhard, biochemist, Stanford University. “How can we create
life
?” The scientist laughed, shaking her head. “We can’t! That’s the point. When it comes to the process of creation—crossing that threshold where inanimate chemicals form living things—all of our science goes out the window. There is no mechanism in chemistry to explain how that happens. In fact, the very
notion
of cells organizing themselves into life-forms seems to be in direct conflict with the law of entropy!”

“
Entropy
,” Edmond repeated, now appearing on a beautiful beach. “Entropy is just a fancy way of saying:
things fall apart.
In scientific language, we say ‘an organized system inevitably deteriorates.’” He snapped his fingers and an intricate sand castle appeared at his feet. “I’ve just organized millions of sand grains into a castle. Let’s see how the universe feels about that.” Seconds later, a wave came in and washed away the castle. “Yup, the universe located my
organized
grains of sand and
disorganized
them, spreading them over the beach. This is entropy at work. Waves never crash onto beaches and deposit sand in the shape of a sand castle. Entropy dissolves structure. Sand castles never spontaneously appear in the universe, they only disappear.”

Edmond snapped his fingers again and reappeared in an elegant kitchen. “When you heat coffee,” he said, pulling a steaming cup from a microwave, “you focus heat energy into a mug. If you leave that mug on the counter for an hour, the heat dissipates into the room and spreads itself out evenly, like grains of sand on a beach. Entropy again. And
the process is
irreversible
. No matter how long you wait, the universe will never magically reheat your coffee.” Edmond smiled. “Nor will it unscramble a broken egg or rebuild an eroded sand castle.”

Ambra recalled once seeing an art installation called
Entropy
—a line of old cement blocks, each more crumbled than the last, slowly disintegrating into a pile of rubble.

Dr. Gerhard, the spectacled scientist, reappeared. “We live in an
entropic
universe,” she said, “a world whose physical laws
randomize
, not organize. So the question is this: How can lifeless chemicals magically organize themselves into complex life-forms? I’ve never been a religious person, but I have to admit, the existence of life is the
only
scientific mystery that has ever persuaded me to consider the idea of a Creator.”

Edmond materialized, shaking his head. “I find it unnerving when smart people use the word ‘Creator’ …” He gave a good-natured shrug. “They do it, I know, because science simply has no good explanation for the beginnings of life. But trust me, if you’re looking for some kind of invisible force that creates order in a chaotic universe, there are far simpler answers than
God.
”

Edmond held out a paper plate on which splinters of iron filings had been scattered. He then produced a large magnet and held it beneath the plate. Instantly, the filings leaped into an organized arc, aligning perfectly with one another. “An invisible force just organized these filings. Was it God? No … it was electromagnetism.”

Edmond now appeared beside a large trampoline. On its taut surface were scattered hundreds of marbles. “A random mess of marbles,” he stated, “but if I do this …” He hoisted a bowling ball onto the trampoline’s rim and rolled it onto the elastic fabric. Its weight created a deep indentation, and immediately the scattered marbles raced into the depression, forming a circle around the bowling ball. “The organizing hand of God?” Edmond paused. “No, again … it was just gravity.”

He now appeared in close-up. “As it turns out,
life
is not the only example of the universe creating order. Nonliving molecules organize themselves all the time into complex structures.”

A montage of images materialized—a tornado vortex, a snowflake, a rippled riverbed, a quartz crystal, the rings of Saturn.

“As you can see, sometimes the universe does organize matter—which seems to be the exact opposite of entropy.” Edmond sighed. “So which is it? Does the universe prefer order? Or chaos?”

Edmond reappeared, now walking down a pathway toward the famed
dome of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “According to most physicists, the answer is
chaos
. Entropy is indeed king, and the universe is constantly disintegrating toward disorder. Kind of a depressing message.” Edmond paused and turned with a grin. “But today I’ve come to meet the bright young physicist who believes there is a
twist
… a twist that may hold the key to how life began.”

Jeremy England?

Langdon was startled to recognize the name of the physicist Edmond was now describing. The thirtysomething MIT professor was currently the toast of Boston academia, having caused a global stir in a new field called quantum biology.

Coincidentally, Jeremy England and Robert Langdon shared the same prep school alma mater—Phillips Exeter Academy—and Langdon had first learned of the young physicist in the school’s alumni magazine, in an article titled “Dissipation-Driven Adaptive Organization.” Although Langdon had only skimmed the story and barely understood it, he recalled being intrigued to learn that his fellow “Exie” was both a brilliant physicist and also deeply religious—an Orthodox Jew.

Langdon began to understand why Edmond had been so interested in England’s work.

On-screen, another man appeared, identified as NYU physicist Alexander Grosberg. “Our big hope,” Grosberg said, “is that Jeremy England has identified the underlying physical principle driving the origin and evolution of life.”

Langdon sat up a bit straighter upon hearing that, as did Ambra.

Another face appeared. “If England can demonstrate his theory to be true,” said Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Edward J. Larson, “his name would be remembered forever. He could be the next Darwin.”

My God.
Langdon had known Jeremy England was making waves, but this sounded more like tsunamis.

Carl Franck, a physicist from Cornell, added, “Every thirty years or so we experience these gigantic steps forward … and this might be it.”

A series of headlines flashed across the screen in rapid succession:

The list of headlines continued, joined now by snippets from major scientific journals, all of which seemed to proclaim the same message: if Jeremy England could
prove
his new theory, the implications would be earth-shattering—not just for science but for religion as well.

Langdon eyed the final headline on the wall—from the online magazine
Salon
, January 3, 2015.

The screen refreshed, and Edmond reappeared, striding purposefully along the hallway of a university science facility. “So what is this gigantic step forward that has so terrified Creationists?”

Edmond beamed as he paused outside a door marked:
ENGLAND LAB@MITPHYSICS
.

“Let’s go inside—and ask the man himself.”

THE YOUNG MAN
who now appeared on Edmond’s display wall was physicist Jeremy England. He was tall and very thin, with an unkempt beard and a quietly bemused smile. He stood before a blackboard filled with mathematical equations.

“First,” England said, his tone friendly and unassuming, “let me just say that this theory is not
proven
, it’s just an idea.” He gave a modest shrug. “Although, I admit, if we can ever prove that it’s true, the implications are far-reaching.”

For the next three minutes, the physicist outlined his new idea, which—like most paradigm-altering concepts—was unexpectedly simple.

Jeremy England’s theory, if Langdon understood it correctly, was that the universe functioned with a singular directive. One goal.

To spread energy.

In the simplest terms, when the universe found areas of
focused
energy, it spread that energy out. The classic example, as Kirsch had mentioned, was the cup of hot coffee on the counter; it always cooled, dispersing its heat to the other molecules in the room in accordance with the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

Langdon suddenly understood why Edmond had asked him about the world’s Creation myths—all of which contained imagery of energy and light spreading out infinitely and illuminating the darkness.

England believed that there was a twist, however, which related to
how
the universe spread energy.

“We know the universe promotes entropy and disorder,” England said, “so we may be surprised to see so many examples of molecules
organizing
themselves.”

On the screen, several images that had appeared earlier now returned—a tornado vortex, a rippled riverbed, a snowflake.

“All of these,” England said, “are examples of ‘dissipative structures’—
collections of molecules that have arranged themselves in structures that help a system disperse its energy more efficiently.”

England quickly illustrated how tornadoes were nature’s way of dispelling a concentrated area of high pressure by converting it into a rotational force that eventually exhausted itself. The same held true for rippled riverbeds, which intercepted the energy of fast-moving currents and dissipated it. Snowflakes dispersed the sun’s energy by forming multifaceted structures that reflected light chaotically outward in all directions.

“Simply stated,” England continued, “matter self-organizes in an effort to better disperse energy.” He smiled. “Nature—in an effort to promote
disorder
—creates little pockets of
order
. These pockets are structures that escalate the chaos of a system, and they thereby increase entropy.”

Langdon had never thought of it until now, but England was right; the examples were everywhere. Langdon pictured a thundercloud. When the cloud became organized by a static electric charge, the universe created a bolt of lightning. In other words, the laws of physics created mechanisms to disperse energy. The lightning bolt dissipated the cloud’s energy into the earth, spreading it out, thereby increasing the overall entropy of the system.