Dan Levitt
Appearances
Something You Should Know
Why We Forget & The Amazing Story of Your Body’s Atoms - SYSK Choice
All of the atoms in your body started at the very beginning of time. 13.8 billion years ago, we had the Big Bang. Protons, electrons, and ultimately neutrons came out of that. They formed all of the atoms within your body. But there was a long epic journey from there to here, obviously. They went through the sun, where new elements were created.
Something You Should Know
Why We Forget & The Amazing Story of Your Body’s Atoms - SYSK Choice
They were in a huge molecular cloud and unbelievable collisions that created our solar system and Earth. They were in the Earth when life formed. And ultimately, through plants colonizing the continents and evolution, they found their way to us. So it's an unbelievably epic story.
Something You Should Know
Why We Forget & The Amazing Story of Your Body’s Atoms - SYSK Choice
What we're made of is almost exclusively stuff that's made from plants. All of the molecules that we're made of came from plants through actually 80% of your mass came from the air, from carbon dioxide in the air that plants transformed with sunlight and water into sugar. Another 10% of your mass came from hydrogen. which also photosynthesis turned into sugar.
Something You Should Know
Why We Forget & The Amazing Story of Your Body’s Atoms - SYSK Choice
Plants then created not only the sugars, but they extracted minerals from the earth. And together, they created the carbohydrates, the proteins, the vitamins that are in us. So we really, if plants were not here and photosynthesizing organisms would not be here, we would not be here.
Something You Should Know
Why We Forget & The Amazing Story of Your Body’s Atoms - SYSK Choice
Different pieces of it have been discovered at various times. Some were discovered in the 1700s when we first discovered that there was such a thing as photosynthesis. How the molecules in our body... that came from the Big Bang create life within ourselves, that's something that we've been discovering from the 1950s through the 1970s.
Something You Should Know
Why We Forget & The Amazing Story of Your Body’s Atoms - SYSK Choice
So different parts of the story have come to the fore at different times.
Something You Should Know
Why We Forget & The Amazing Story of Your Body’s Atoms - SYSK Choice
98% of the cells in our body are reintroduced every 10 years, which is kind of wild because we're less like a person and more like a flame, right, where the molecules are constantly cycling in and out. When you break it down, though, it makes a certain amount of sense. Over 50% of us is water, right? Of course, we're drinking water and excreting water all the time.
Something You Should Know
Why We Forget & The Amazing Story of Your Body’s Atoms - SYSK Choice
We're constantly replacing the cells in our body. In fact, like intestinal cells, we replace them in the stomach lining every couple of days.
Something You Should Know
Why We Forget & The Amazing Story of Your Body’s Atoms - SYSK Choice
uh red blood cells every couple months and then we're constantly also within ourselves we're constantly not just repairing mechanisms but we're also breaking down uh organelles and other structures within the cells and creating new ones just because there's we there there's going to be damage to them and so we're constantly regenerating
Something You Should Know
Why We Forget & The Amazing Story of Your Body’s Atoms - SYSK Choice
uh the systems within our body and so in a sense right we are um uh we're not the same person that we were 10 years ago or however long ago and yet in another sense of course we still are which makes you wonder if we regenerate all these cells on a regular basis why do we die because you would think we'd be a new person
Something You Should Know
Why We Forget & The Amazing Story of Your Body’s Atoms - SYSK Choice
We die because ultimately you can repair a car for a certain amount of time, but ultimately things are going to go wrong that really can't be repaired. In our case, one of the reasons is cancer, is genetic mutations that build up. And although our cells have incredible, incredible mechanisms for fixing mutations, There are some that they can't fix.
Something You Should Know
Why We Forget & The Amazing Story of Your Body’s Atoms - SYSK Choice
And sometimes cells become cancerous, and they replicate nonstop. That's what cancer is. So that's not, of course, the only reason that we die. Other things in our body break down. But ultimately, we're not able to regenerate all of the cells in our body that could be damaged forever. There are limits.
Something You Should Know
Why We Forget & The Amazing Story of Your Body’s Atoms - SYSK Choice
We are completely, of course, dependent on oxygen because our energy comes from taking the energy that's stored in sugars and combining it with the oxygen to liberate energy. That's what the mitochondria in our cells do. Your average cell contains about 2,000 mitochondria. And their job, among others, is to produce energy. But they can't do it without oxygen.
Something You Should Know
Why We Forget & The Amazing Story of Your Body’s Atoms - SYSK Choice
So that's why we consume about two-thirds of a pint of oxygen a day. That oxygen goes into our body. The hemoglobin distributes it throughout the body to all the cells within our body. And that oxygen is what allows ourselves to create energy. Without it, we wouldn't be here.
Something You Should Know
Why We Forget & The Amazing Story of Your Body’s Atoms - SYSK Choice
The thing that I think is especially incredible
Something You Should Know
Why We Forget & The Amazing Story of Your Body’s Atoms - SYSK Choice
is that we are here because of oxygen that was created by life when the earth force formed billions of years ago there was no oxygen in the earth's atmosphere the only reason we have oxygen is because single-celled organisms bacteria came along they learned how to photosynthesize and as a result of photosynthesis they began putting oxygen into the atmosphere
Something You Should Know
Why We Forget & The Amazing Story of Your Body’s Atoms - SYSK Choice
So at the beginning of Earth's history, there was nothing. Now we have 21% oxygen. And it was only after life put oxygen into the atmosphere that other kinds of cells could evolve and structures within cells could evolve that could take that oxygen and create energy more efficiently. So the interesting thing is, without that oxygen in the atmosphere, Earth still would have had lots of bacteria.
Something You Should Know
Why We Forget & The Amazing Story of Your Body’s Atoms - SYSK Choice
But the more complex cells that animals and plants are made of, that we're made of, those would not have evolved. And that all depends on the presence of oxygen from some of the first organisms on the planet.
Something You Should Know
Why We Forget & The Amazing Story of Your Body’s Atoms - SYSK Choice
There's a lot of speculation that there could be all kinds of other kinds of life in distant worlds that we can't even conceive of. But there are also scientists who think that oxygen is uniquely the molecule that can release enough energy to create more complex cells.
Something You Should Know
Why We Forget & The Amazing Story of Your Body’s Atoms - SYSK Choice
So there are quite a number of scientists who think that if we find a distant planet somewhere out in the universe that has life, it may have single-celled organisms. But it probably won't have active intelligent organisms unless there's some form of photosynthesis there that also put oxygen in the atmosphere and allowed those organisms to create energy much more efficiently.
Something You Should Know
Why We Forget & The Amazing Story of Your Body’s Atoms - SYSK Choice
And that's why the astrobiologist David Catling said to me, he said, if the old science fiction movies were right, that if aliens ever came to Earth, they'd feel right at home because they'd step out and they could breathe in the oxygen.
Something You Should Know
Why We Forget & The Amazing Story of Your Body’s Atoms - SYSK Choice
Right, but his belief and others is that we are made of eukaryotic cells, which are more complex than single-celled organisms. And they depend for their energy on mitochondria, which take oxygen from the air and liberate energy from sugars. And he and others believe that uniquely, oxygen is probably the only molecule in the universe that can do that.
Something You Should Know
Why We Forget & The Amazing Story of Your Body’s Atoms - SYSK Choice
And therefore, that if we have large active creatures that are intelligent like us, his belief is that they will depend on oxygen
Something You Should Know
Why We Forget & The Amazing Story of Your Body’s Atoms - SYSK Choice
In the 1920s, we thought that the universe was static. It took a Catholic priest, of all people, to convince Albert Einstein of the implications of his own theory, that there was a theory that we now know of as the Big Bang, that there was an origin to the universe. Einstein didn't want to believe it because it smacked too much of religion, right?
Something You Should Know
Why We Forget & The Amazing Story of Your Body’s Atoms - SYSK Choice
That, you know, of the Bible, which says that God created the world from light. And so that was the start of a huge, huge, obviously, change in our understanding of who we are and how we got here. When you look at images from the James Webb telescope, and we look for distant worlds and look back into the ancient, look for ancient stars.
Something You Should Know
Why We Forget & The Amazing Story of Your Body’s Atoms - SYSK Choice
That all came from LaMaitre and Einstein's theory of the Big Bang.
Something You Should Know
Why We Forget & The Amazing Story of Your Body’s Atoms - SYSK Choice
One of the most interesting stories is of a wonderful scientist by the name of Lynn Margulis, who was an unbelievable scientist. rebel who was long derided as being a bit of a kook, but really changed the way we think about how complex life on Earth evolved. She came up with a theory that the only reason why we have mitochondria in our cells is because one time way far back,
Something You Should Know
Why We Forget & The Amazing Story of Your Body’s Atoms - SYSK Choice
There was one cell that ate a bacteria, and the union was the kind of complex cells that we are made of. And for years, she was ridiculed for that. Her theory essentially was that there were bacteria that became very good at using oxygen to create energy from sugar. One day, one single cell, a larger, a different type of cell, ate that bacteria.
Something You Should Know
Why We Forget & The Amazing Story of Your Body’s Atoms - SYSK Choice
But instead of digesting it, right, they came to an accommodation. And that bacteria, ultimately, its descendants evolved into the mitochondria in our body. In fact, you know, we have... like an average of 2,000 mitochondria in our cells. And if you were to lay out flat all the mitochondria in your body, they would cover two basketball courts.
Something You Should Know
Why We Forget & The Amazing Story of Your Body’s Atoms - SYSK Choice
So this was considered a kooky, completely kooky theory because It just seemed weird, absolutely strange. And why would evolution do such a weird thing? So Margulis was really out in the wilderness for years and years. But she was lucky because in the 1970s, the technology came along to analyze DNA.
Something You Should Know
Why We Forget & The Amazing Story of Your Body’s Atoms - SYSK Choice
And when scientists analyzed the DNA of some particular bacteria and some DNA that was discovered in our mitochondria in our cells, they found they actually were related. And she was right. It's really an amazing, inspirational story.
Something You Should Know
Why We Forget & The Amazing Story of Your Body’s Atoms - SYSK Choice
In fact, one of the interesting things about Margulis is that she really changed the way we look at ourselves, in a sense, because she liked to say that we're really just overgrown colonies of single-celled organisms. You have in your body 30 trillion cells. Much of the basic biochemistry in those cells was invented by bacteria and single-cell organisms.
Something You Should Know
Why We Forget & The Amazing Story of Your Body’s Atoms - SYSK Choice
Margulis liked to say that we're just overgrown colonies. Other people might say we're actually just germs.
Something You Should Know
Why We Forget & The Amazing Story of Your Body’s Atoms - SYSK Choice
Sometimes when I look at all the incredible things that could have happened to create the circumstances for us to be here, I think it's so unlikely. But at other times, I think because of the way the universe was structured from the beginning for who knows and who knows why, it was almost inevitable. We had the Big Bang. We had electrons and protons and neutrons. They formed hydrogen.
Something You Should Know
Why We Forget & The Amazing Story of Your Body’s Atoms - SYSK Choice
The hydrogen formed stars. The stars, because of the way the nuclear particles' energies worked out, they formed the elements that were made of. Those elements created clouds that created solar systems and planets. And along the way, there are so many unlikely things that happened. But at the same time, there are organic molecules throughout the entire universe.
Something You Should Know
Why We Forget & The Amazing Story of Your Body’s Atoms - SYSK Choice
The universe is littered with organic molecules. So it's really hard to say, given how huge the universe is, whether it's really completely unlucky and we are one of the kind, or whether there's life in many other places and even intelligent life in many other places.
Something You Should Know
Why We Forget & The Amazing Story of Your Body’s Atoms - SYSK Choice
One of the things that I've come to realize is how unbelievably complex single-celled organisms are. And our bodies are made of 30 trillion cells. Each one of those cells is made of 100 trillion atoms. If each atom was the width of a dollar bill, that would extend to the moon and back 27 times. We are incredibly complex creatures.
Something You Should Know
Why We Forget & The Amazing Story of Your Body’s Atoms - SYSK Choice
And so now there's a strange way in which when I look around at people, sometimes I think, wow, you are unbelievably complex and amazing. And that really fills me with a bit of gratitude and it fills me with awe to see not just that we're here and how lucky we are, but how much we share together.
Something You Should Know
Why We Forget & The Amazing Story of Your Body’s Atoms - SYSK Choice
98% of the cells in our body are reintroduced every 10 years, which is kind of wild because we're less like a person and more like a flame, right, where the molecules are constantly cycling in and out.