## Metadata - Author: [[Mary Evelyn Tucker and Brian Thomas Swimme]] - Full Title: Journey of the Universe - Category: #books ## Highlights - Even a century ago we knew only about one galaxy in the entire universe: our own Milky Way. Over the course of the twentieth century we discovered nearly a hundred billion galaxies. ([Location 227](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0058GLUGE&location=227)) - The fascinating discovery is that the creativity of the universe is not evenly distributed but is concentrated in particular places. At the level of galaxies, creativity is concentrated in the spirals. But within a spiral galaxy there are particular places where creativity is more intense than in other places. ([Location 298](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0058GLUGE&location=298)) - The essence of the universe story is this: the stars are our ancestors. Out of them, everything comes forth. ([Location 339](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0058GLUGE&location=339)) - The power of gravitational attraction within a star presses toward total collapse of the star. The power of nuclear fusion, where protons and neutrons fuse together and release energy in the center of the star, aims at expansion: matter is literally pushed outward, the opposite of collapse. If either of these powers comes to dominate, the star’s life ends. The star exists only because these two powers are kept in creative tension for billions of years. ([Location 354](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0058GLUGE&location=354)) - The supernova is the most spectacular display of destruction and creation in the universe. What are we to make of this, as our very existence—indeed, the very existence of life—depends upon it? Does it suggest that the universe, in order to create a single atom of carbon, requires the destruction of an entire star? ([Location 399](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0058GLUGE&location=399)) - Our planet’s average temperature was thought to be a fortunate consequence of being just the right distance from the Sun—ninety-three million miles. Thanks to the twentieth century discovery of nuclear fusion and the structure of stars, however, we now know that over the past four billion years our Sun has increased its temperature by nearly 25 percent. The astonishing implication of this is that Earth has adapted itself so as to remain in the narrow band that enables life to flourish. ([Location 621](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0058GLUGE&location=621)) - DNA is life’s way of storing the information of the most significant changes that have taken place in evolution. ([Location 949](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0058GLUGE&location=949)) - We live on a different planet now, where not biology but symbolic consciousness is the determining factor for evolution. Cultural selection has overwhelmed natural selection. That is, the survival of species and of entire ecosystems now depends primarily on human activities. We are faced with a challenge no previous humans even contemplated: How are we to make decisions that will benefit an entire planet for the next several millennia? ([Location 1071](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0058GLUGE&location=1071)) - The deep truth about matter, which neither Descartes nor Newton realized, is that, over the course of four billion years, molten rocks transformed themselves into monarch butterflies, blue herons, and the exalted music of Mozart. Ignorant of this stupendous process, we fell into the fantasy that our role here was to reengineer inert matter. ([Location 1120](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0058GLUGE&location=1120)) - Our human role is to deepen our consciousness in resonance with the dynamics of the fourteen-billion-year creative event in which we find ourselves. ([Location 1211](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0058GLUGE&location=1211))