
National Geographic: Rhythms of Life
- Year:
- 1995
- 28 Views
From the first dawn of creation
to the end of time
our world, our lives,
a celestial cadence
of light and dark
of ebb and flow
of heat and cold
all set into motion by the epic
dance of the sun, moon, and earth.
These are the rhythms of life itself.
Before there could be day or night
before there was a spring or fall
a star, our sun,
had to flare into life.
From the seething stuff of stars,
over time, the planets of
Four billion years ago, or more,
one such place was born
the planet called, Earth,
our home.
But for nearly a billion years,
it would be a home inhospitable
to any form of life
a red and angry globe
a churning mass of fire, poison gas,
and molten rock
At the core of the planet
raged an inferno.
For thousands upon thousands
of centuries,
this infant planet suffered the
violent pains of growth and change,
as it formed and reformed itself.
From the very beginning,
But a night and day
not like any we know now.
Fueled by the forces of creation,
its daily cycle,
spinning five times as fast
as it does today.
A few brief hours of starlight.
Day followed night at a dizzying pace.
Earth and sun were not alone
in their orbits.
But cosmic visitors
rarely came to stay
until one cataclysmic encounter
transformed the heavens
and earth forever.
One theory tells of a cosmic accident
a huge asteroid
on a collision course.
It may have been the birth of the moon
and so many of
the rhythms of life.
But first, the moon would have been
a cloud of fragments,
circling the planet like
the rings of Saturn
a huge, barren satellite.
Too small to hold a
protective atmosphere,
the moon itself has long been
bombarded by debris ever since.
Without wind or rain
to smooth the scars,
its face bears everlasting witness to
the violent nature of outer space.
On the earth below,
an atmosphere was brewing from endless
clouds of poison gasses
and water vapor,
expelled from beneath the crust.
Closer to the sun, the precious water
might have boiled away.
On a colder planet it would be
locked into eternal ice.
But on the earth,
water vapor condensed
falling back as rain upon the land.
And so the first oceans were born.
Over millions of years,
the seas rose to flood the earth.
But these were not the cool,
life-giving waters we know today.
The primal atmosphere provided
little protection.
It had no blanket of ozone
to filter out lethal radiation.
Virtually unobstructed,
the sun's unforgiving rays seared
whatever they touched.
Much closer than now,
the moon also played a violent part,
tugging at the seas with a force
countless times greater than today.
The first tides were mountains
of water, miles high.
Torn by sun and moon, the surface
waters offered no hope for life.
Still, there was sanctuary below.
In the ocean, the first building
blocks of life amino acids emerged.
They incubated in water heated by
the planet's internal fires
and fed on a bubbling broth
of nutrients
straight from the heart of the earth.
But even the ocean's depths were not
safe from a cataclysmic universe.
with the debris of genesis,
asteroid strikes may have vaporized
the oceans, laying the seabed bare.
More than once, life on earth
may have been snuffed out.
Yet the fire and rains of creation
kept their hold on earth,
and the oceans rose again.
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"National Geographic: Rhythms of Life" Scripts.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2021. Web. 18 Jan. 2021. <https://www.scripts.com/script/national_geographic:_rhythms_of_life_14562>.