Deep Time and Fossil Records

P.S.

An image to consider when thinking about emergent systems, cultural systems and deep time.

“Diaspora,” by my colleague Phil George, Australian artist, www.phillipgeorge.net

Respectfully,

M. A.

Systems, Sustainability and Deep Time

Greetings Group,

Everynow and then I get some juicy essays from the online discussion group to which I belong regarding the study of evolution (formed out of the U. of Wisconsin). Below is a great piece that might offer another way to think about emergent systems and sustainability from the standpoint of Deep Time.

The article was written in response to anti-evolutionist campaigns put forth by those invested in a creationist model of cosmology and biology. The author’s name has been excluded for some reason, by is said to have been “penned” by a geologist who sent the text to a colleague in Evolutionary Studies at U of Wiscon, who then posted the text to the online group.

Do hope this stimulates imagination and problem solving.

Good to meet everyone. Look forward to returning to navigate body and brain systems with you.

zoom zoom!

M. A.

DEEP TIME AND EVOLUTION

Anti-evolutionists focus so strongly on the idea
that life is too complicated not to have been
created they seem to have little time for other
sorts of evidence. Until they get their thoughts
around “deep time” they will never understand
evolution. Deep time is formidable, 4.5 billion
years for our earth and solar system and about
14 billion years for the universe.

When one has been brought up on biblical time, a
bit more than 6000 years by Bishop Usher’s
tally, deep time can be nearly incomprehensible.
But, the people who study tree rings have
developed a continuous record much beyond 10,000
years and are still counting. That connects our
modern calendar to archaeologic time. Carbon-14
time goes back to 40,000 years, to include the
last stages of Neanderthal life. C-14 time has
two branches because its production rate in the
upper atmosphere has not been uniform over time.
The younger part is calibrated against tree
rings so accuracy there is a good as analytical
precision permits. The older part may be a bit
fuzzy in absolute ages but relative ages are as
accurate as the atomic analyses.

Ice cores have been taken from central Greenland
and Antarctica that are more than a mile long
(deep) and contain more than 100,000 countable
annual layers of ice accumulation. This is the
young end of geologic time, and near the
appearance of modern humans. Bubbles of air
trapped in those layers have been analyzed to
yield a chronology of the atmosphere’s contents
of CO2 and methane.

Fossils too old for C-14 usually cannot be dated
directly but the rocks they are found in can be
dated by more than thirty geochemical methods
that connect archeologic time with geologic
time. In principle, uranium-lead dating can work
back to ages greater than 20 billion years but
nothing has been found on earth older than about
3.9 billion. However, meteorites and moon rocks
date at 4.5 billion, connecting geologic time
with the astronomical.

Evidence of single-cell life has been found in
rocks as old as 3.4 billion years so we may
infer that some form of replicative activity was
going on before then. Photosynthesis developed
somewhat before 2 billion years ago. The earth’s
atmosphere then was mainly nitrogen and CO2 with
negligible oxygen. By converting CO2 and water
to insoluble minerals and oxygen the atmosphere
began to evolve. Life is the intricate
choreography of molecules at the level of the
cell and for the next 1.5 billion years the
dance of single-cell life was increasingly
refined. Forms that could use oxygen as an
energy source developed, complementing older
forms that produced oxygen, yielding an enduring
cycle. By 700 million years ago single-cell life
was so workable that multi-cellular forms
developed. First were algae that connected
individual cells as a string, a one-dimensional
life form. In the next 100 million years
three-dimensional life forms developed into most
of the structures of plants and animals we have
today. Plants colonized the land areas. During
the Carboniferous periods, 345 to 280 million
years ago, they extracted most of the remaining
CO2 from the atmosphere, locking it into coal
deposits around the world, completing the main
evolution of our modern atmosphere with 20
percent oxygen and 0.3 percent CO2.

The earth’s surface continues to evolve. The
Atlantic Ocean has been opening for about 60
million years, based on the ages of oldest rocks
at its margins. Oldest sediments on the ocean
floor are younger as one approaches the
mid-Atlantic ridge where fresh volcanic rocks
erupt. Crustal spreading in one area is
complemented by crustal shortening in others.
Some plate edges are subducted beneath adjacent
plates with concomitant extrusion to form
volcanic mountain ranges such as the Cascades
and the Andes. Others collide and result in
uplift, as the Rockies and the Himalayas.
Profoundly, the rocks on top of Mt. Everest
include marine limestone. The earth’s age of
4500 million years allows for a series of up to
70 counterparts of the Atlantic Ocean. Parts of
the crust have been recycled via erosion
followed by subduction, not a few times, but
many. There seems not to be any original,
unaltered crust left.

Most of our insight about evolution derives from
the fossil record. In the past 0.0001 million
years we have learned intricate details about
the molecular dances in cells and found that
structures of DNA in living species amplify the
fossil record. Deep time is a key part of
evolution.

Mossnets x Radical Intersections

The following images come out of trying to visualize how nature makes it’s way back into these communities in behaviors, structure and culture. I’d like to share this set of images as a way to visualize nature finding it’s way back into these communities in the structural, as well as social and cultural realms. These are photos along the Arroyo Seco in Pasadena.

The rock wall held together by cement is the vision of or current situation with a structure largely defined by the materials of it’s construction, functioning but somewhat inflexible.

In some places along the wall the moss grows out of the cement and branches out to eventually cover the cement portions, leaving islands of stone peeking through. How does this growth of a living colony over a manmade solution function as a methodology for re-designing communities and social interaction? Does it scale up to communities such as the ones in our exercise? Can this vision be seen as a way to re-imagine the growth of these communities over time? Can it happen quickly?

This image is of a work by Gordon Matta Clark and one of his intercuts in to a suburban home on the east coast. I share this image as a way to spark imagination about the possibility of radical intersections in the communities. Can we strip away pieces to reveal or allow new growth to occur. What form does this take or how does it re-define pre-exisiting ones?

The Importance of Instilling Values in the Community

by Mari Nakano, Justin Gier, Jonathan Jarvis

Instilling proper values and ideas about sustainability is just as important as a successful sustainable infrastructure. Without the mentality to live in a fashion that is protecting the community, the community will most likely fall apart and not maintain it’s original goals. Therefore, it is important to consider the various ways in which one can instill such values into the community without it being considered a form of brainwash.

Our group looked into how the socio-cultural can contribute to creating a sustainable tract-home style community. I focused on the possible roles of youth, and I also researched models of existing eco-communities. There are a lot of ideas that we can pull from the articles on these links.

Education
Green Schools Initiative
Having a green school can allow sustainable education to naturally happen

The Eco Literacy Project
This project was founded by Fritjof Capra. It talks about how to incorporate healthier lifestyles (particularly around food) in the school.

Youth Leadership
This link is an example of how youth leadership can play a role in the environment. This site also talks about making eco-projects part of the graduation requirement.

Transportation & Other Things We Should Consider
Green Cities and the End of the Age of Oil
This is a good article that gives us things we can consider when building our own

Models of Existing Eco-Cities
Green Affordable Housing Initiative
Sustainable environments are possible for everyone – not just the rich.

Audubon International
Scroll to the middle of this article and read Audubon’s International’s Principles of Sustainability.

New Urbanism and CoHousing
Check out examples of eco-communities and homes. They talk about “co-housing” which is this idea of having to work on parts of the community together or have to contribute to communal activities. This article also touches upon building on the natural landscape, which is something we talked about in class last week.

I also included some points that I found would be helpful or worth considering for our project:
• making things accessible within walking distance to lower fuel emissions.
• designing the architecture of the home to be more energy efficient/ sustainable
• Supporting initiatives that can push/ support the idea of green building practices.
• Instilling conscious values into the youth – particularly through school curriculum or school graduation requirements
• Biomass: “releasing solar energy stored in plants and organic matter by burning agricultural waste and other organic matter to generate power.” This could really legitimize the idea of burning cities.
• Friendly Competitions: i.e. Competition for Most Eco-Friendly City of the Year. Can be city to city or neighbor to neighbor.
• How can “outsiders” (those not living in the community) contribute to sustaining and protecting the community? How can they benefit the community? How do they benefit by helping?

Re: Project 1: A Look At the Socio-Cultural

The “Socio-Cultural” group decided to take a look at how social and cultural aspects could play a role in a sustainable community. Our main focuses will be on: school systems and curriculum integration into the community, services for the community, creation spaces and community centers, youth leadership, voting systems, sharing/bartering/farmer’s market models and festivals, events and holidays focused on sustainability issues. Our posts will be up in the “Socio-Cultural” category of our blog.

Life inside a cell

For those of you who weren’t at the Summit Keynote two weeks ago, this talk contains a portion of  an animation that was developed for Harvard medical students to further their understanding of what the activity within a single cell looks like..

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/147

An exploration of DNA-computing

Visuals generated for abstract systems

Here is something that I stumbled on that is similar to the poem-texts Katherine Hayles presented during her lecture.

New ads are created for Messagelabs, an internet security company, that use an algorithm (based on the actual code from a computer virus) to generate a 3D virtual representation.

http://www.nextnature.net/?p=1953#more-1953

-Yana

Earth-Sheltered Housing?

I still think this might be of some interest if we are thinking about developing a fire proof community from scratch:

These are some links to various sites about underground living\building:

http://www.undergroundhousing.com/

Also, a site discussing this kind of solution ( and others) for housing on Mars (maybe not so relevant for L.A at this point, but amusing at any rate..):

http://www.iit.edu/~mars/housing_report.html

And, a pdf covering some of the specifics surrounding earth-sheltered building methods:

http://www.uaf.edu/ces/publications/freepubs/EEM-01359.pdf

(Cat)

Underground Home, Above-Ground House?

Thinking about the way people use their homes reminded me of Philip Johnson’s ‘Glass House’, and the Glass House got me thinking about the underground houses idea we talked about briefly in class. If it’s true that people use their houses mainly as places to have dinner and sleep after work then perhaps the majority of these functions could be accomplished underground. If it’s also true that one of the main functions of a suburban home is to act as a showpiece, then perhaps the Glass House combined with underground rooms could provide an interesting way of dealing with these issues. A ramp leading down into the earth could provide access to the garage which would lead to the kitchen, dining room, bedrooms, offices, etc. The small above-ground footprint would be reserved for the living/family room, and could function as the place for the family to show off their lifestyle through the large glass walls. On top of this the community would be built without walls between property, and the growth of native plants would be encouraged around the property. Hopefully, having less of the actual house above ground means a reduced risk of homes catching fire. -andy