Luca
It's a universal question: what (or who) is the origin of life on our planet? Only recently, I read in our daily newspaper that, once again, a group of scientists had renewed the theory that life on Earth must have been brought to our planet from the outside, be it aliens from another solar system or a meteor. A thesis that writers and filmmakers have taken up. In the Alien franchise, for instance, a universe was constructed where life was brought to Earth by the so-called "Engineers" (who, apparently, were so disappointed by the result they sent the Aliens to "undo" their creation).
Other, more credible (or at least more profound) theories state that there was a "Last Universal Common Ancestor", LUCA, from which all life on Earth developed. The meteor theory isn't that far off, either, because it is possible that one of the numerous meteors that crashed on our planet in its early aeons brought along primitive (or more developed?) forms of life.
Another universal "thing" is the spiral, a shape that is found in animals, plants, storms or water swirls, to name only a very few (and not to forget our very DNA, the double helix), and that is also described by the Fibonacci sequence that mathematically defines the "golden ratio". So one of my first ideas for the theme was to combine a piece of the spiralled jewellery ("Bouillon") wire with the metal pencil holder "coil" that is also a spiral of sorts.
Which brings us back to the "Engineers" from Alien. In a world of metal life forms, the bigger coil would be an "Engineer", while the Bouillon wire represented the first step in the creation of a new life form, starting with a double helix. In this little scene, the Engineer is checking the first "production line" of double helices, and it seems that "he" (or she) is happy with the upper part of the DNA strand, but a little sceptical about the lower, stretched part. In a human world, this employee might now call for his supervisor, and the question would be: "Boss, what do we do about this stretched part? Our schedule is a little tight; we are supposed to finish this production line today, but I think we should start again?" And the supervisor might reply: "Yesterday. Our deadline was yesterday. I don't want to be exposed to our manager's fury because we're late again, and neither do you, so this will have to do. Get going!" Sounds familiar?
HMM, Everyone!
Luca
It's a universal question: what (or who) is the origin of life on our planet? Only recently, I read in our daily newspaper that, once again, a group of scientists had renewed the theory that life on Earth must have been brought to our planet from the outside, be it aliens from another solar system or a meteor. A thesis that writers and filmmakers have taken up. In the Alien franchise, for instance, a universe was constructed where life was brought to Earth by the so-called "Engineers" (who, apparently, were so disappointed by the result they sent the Aliens to "undo" their creation).
Other, more credible (or at least more profound) theories state that there was a "Last Universal Common Ancestor", LUCA, from which all life on Earth developed. The meteor theory isn't that far off, either, because it is possible that one of the numerous meteors that crashed on our planet in its early aeons brought along primitive (or more developed?) forms of life.
Another universal "thing" is the spiral, a shape that is found in animals, plants, storms or water swirls, to name only a very few (and not to forget our very DNA, the double helix), and that is also described by the Fibonacci sequence that mathematically defines the "golden ratio". So one of my first ideas for the theme was to combine a piece of the spiralled jewellery ("Bouillon") wire with the metal pencil holder "coil" that is also a spiral of sorts.
Which brings us back to the "Engineers" from Alien. In a world of metal life forms, the bigger coil would be an "Engineer", while the Bouillon wire represented the first step in the creation of a new life form, starting with a double helix. In this little scene, the Engineer is checking the first "production line" of double helices, and it seems that "he" (or she) is happy with the upper part of the DNA strand, but a little sceptical about the lower, stretched part. In a human world, this employee might now call for his supervisor, and the question would be: "Boss, what do we do about this stretched part? Our schedule is a little tight; we are supposed to finish this production line today, but I think we should start again?" And the supervisor might reply: "Yesterday. Our deadline was yesterday. I don't want to be exposed to our manager's fury because we're late again, and neither do you, so this will have to do. Get going!" Sounds familiar?
HMM, Everyone!