well we should
very quickly but I
say to SA
is really really really sure
thing no two years ago you as you may know
I wrote a book called a short history of nearly everything which is my attempt
to understand the world in the universe around it and how they got
both got to be the way they are was I put didn't work
how we went from there be nothing at all to there being something and then how
little that something eventually turned into a house
the one in the case a particularly fascinating
was how scientists figure things out how do they know where the curtains were 300
million years ago
or how hard it is on the surface of the Sun what goes on at the heart of the G
know what was happening in the universe in its first three minutes hadn't even
know that the universe
had first 38 minutes and hasn't just been there forever
had his anybody ever figure these things out and so the book became for me a
friend request
to find out not only what we know but how we what we need
and so for about four years I did almost nothing to try to understand
science and its achievements I travel to eleven countries on five continents
but lost not some boxing journals and transcripts and monographs
and asked enormous amounts really dumb questions incredibly kind and patient
experts from a variety of disciplines I didn't have any particular outcome in
mind
no axe to grind or anything like that I was just trying to pack
and empty mind with this much interesting information is it good
but in doing the book I found myself being drawn
can been drawn again and again to certain inescapable
conclusions about the universe and
we live in our part in it including for really remarkable facts
I think they may be the foremost remarkable fact there are
and I would like to show those with you briefly now to hear what happened to
they are for most remarkable packs I'm first
you exist your life it's really quite
move this thing to be able to say you stop and think about it
you to be here now trillions and trillions in 15 ans had some time to
come together to make
the movies to the universe Adams it never got together
quite this way before and they never will again these
Adams came to earth from all over they could be anything
but for some reason they decided for a few tens years to be you
as pretty extraordinary you ask me know why Adams do this
is apostle be new is not gratify experience for them
and Adam doesn't even know you there it doesn't even know it's there
Adams in mind these particles think after all they don't know anything
yet somehow for the link your existence these tiny devoted particles will engage
in
all the delicate cooperative efforts necessary to keep you coming
to meet you to give you form in shape and that you enjoy this
the rare supreme the agreeable condition known as long this is really hard to
explain because
there's nothing special about the atoms that make you a human being or any other
living thing
is an assortment of almost embarrassing the mundane components
principally carbon hydrogen oxygen nitrogen
this is the same stock you'd find in a pile after
only thing special about the happens that make you
is that they make you that is of course the miracle
mine but have been applied in adams is only part of the good fortune that got
you here
to Guildhall on quite a lovely evening 2010
you've also been incredibly lucky geologically ancestry
statistically speaking you shouldn't be here number should
survival on it is surprisingly hard work it is a curious back to bar existence
we come from the planet it is very good producing
even better extinguished with all the buildings and spaces
organism that have sprung up existed on Earth in its long productive history
99.99 percent are no longer here
they're gone gone for ever remarkable fact
is that the normal condition for species on Earth is to be
extinct average species on this planet last for only about four million years
if you wish to last longer has been most assuredly to
the new Miss continue the be creative you must be prepared to change
everything that defines you
shape size color physiology diet metabolism
everything introduce a repeatedly in the right sequence precisely the right
historical moments
for us to be here now it has been necessary for our ancestors to make all
kinds
wholesale adjustment all the random none of them inevitable reading this
so the logical everyone necessary to get us here today
so we've been very lucky in that way too but even that's not enough you've also
got nearly four billion years
reproductive good fortune behind you as an individual
consider the fact that for you to be here now everyone in your ancestors on
both sides since the dawn of time
has been attractive enough to find a mate robust enough to reproduce
and sufficiently blessed by Peyton circumstance to live long enough to do
so
not wanted your forebears in nearly four billion years
either side was squashed devoured stranded
stormed stuck fast pipped by more glamorous suitor
spurned or otherwise deflected from its my life's quest to delivering the tiny
charger genetic material
to the right partner at the right moment to perpetuate the only possible sequence
hereditary combinations that could result eventually
astoundingly an all too briefly in you
I don't wish to belabor the point but life is too damn lucky thing we stop to
think about it
your existence is America you really shouldn't added a pass to you don't
rejoice
having which brings me to my second amazing fact like doesn't happen
anywhere else in the universe as far as we know and that really is
on the adams is so freezing congenial the come together to form living things
on earth
seem entirely disinclined to do it must do so elsewhere of course the evidence
isn't
all in unit so far astronomers have found only a few dozen or so
planets beyond our own solar system added the $10 billion trillion or so
that it ought to insist
so we can proudly claim to have scoured every corner you
was but it is certainly the case is the only life has turned up so far
and very possibly ever will is found on this one single
unprepossessing blue planet in the Solar System two-thirds of the way out from
the center of the Milky Way
Mets not much in a great big univers particularly when you consider
all that life on that small blue planet is found almost exclusively
in a frail with water atmosphere around the surface
you imagine earth from down to the size of a standard desktop
in the atmosphere is only about the thickness to consider points
and the partisan atmosphere that supports life the bias fears it is known
is only a small part that most of the it is too cold but dry
lofty and vineyard for most types of life humans
even with the advantage of clothing and shelter can manage to live on only about
12 percent
roots landscape other animals are restricted for this still
in consequence most diverse life is confined to an exceedingly modest range
just 1.4 percent both land area contains more than half its biodiversity
I can't think the better reason than that to be worried about global warming
which brings me to my third in nortnik
amazing fact that we live on a planet that we don't really know there may be
no detectable life in the universe but there is such an abundance over
here on our own planet we don't actually know how much there is
we don't even remotely no I think quite amazing
even more amazing we don't even know what we know no one has ever managed to
call it the total number of known living things
on the planet most estimates for the number name species
living things put it put a figure out about one and half million
that's really on the gas as for the number unnamed yet to be identified
species living things
we were even more clueless it may be tends to do is in the hundreds of
millions
recorded one extraordinary estimate perhaps as much as 97 percent
all that this on the road and indices is still to be discovered