Human Universe (31 page)

Why protect agricultural seeds? The answer is that biodiversity is a very good thing. Life on Earth forms a tangled web, a great genetic database distributed across hundreds of thousands of extant species of animals, plants, insects and countless single-celled organisms. The more species there are, the more data there is in the database, and the more chance the whole biosphere has of responding to challenges, be they from disease, natural or human-induced climate change, loss of natural habitat or whatever. This is obvious. If there are genes somewhere in the great database of life that allow wheat to grow with less water, and the climate becomes more arid, then those genes will be valuable to us. If we lose particular genes, then we lose them for good. Today, fewer than 150 species of crop are used in modern agriculture, and 12 of these deliver the majority of the world’s non-meat food supply. There is diversity in the form of different varieties, of course; there are estimated to be more than 100,000 varieties of rice. But the overwhelming majority of crop species used throughout human history are no longer cultivated. They are stored, however, in seed vaults, ready for use if needed. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is a back-up; our insurance policy, ensuring that even if countries lose their seed vaults through natural disasters, war or simple neglect, then irreplaceable parts of the great genetic database of life will not be lost with them.

The Norwegian government owns the seed vault, but the depositors own the seeds. A charitable trust, the Global Crop Diversity Trust, meets most of the operating costs through an endowment fund. Cary Fowler was the executive director of the Trust during the establishment of the seed vault. He was a pleasure to speak to when we filmed in Svalbard – a dreamer, yes, but a dreamer who gets things done.

‘Those of us in my field, we live in a world of wounds,’ said Fowler. ‘We see the injuries, we see the loss of diversity, the extinction, and at a certain point, enough is enough, and you try to figure out what can we do that’s not just stop-gap? That really is long term and that puts an end to the problem of crop diversity. Because we know that we are going to need this crop diversity in the future, it’s the biological foundation of agriculture. We’ll need it as long as we have agriculture.’ Which is as long as civilisation exists, I added. Fowler nodded. ‘After that, we won’t be bothered, will we!’

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is built, effectively, for eternity, or at least for tens of thousands of years. It is supported by practically all the governments of the world, and is a genuine investment in our future based on sound science and an understanding of the potential challenges and risks that we may face as a single, global civilisation. It’s not big, flashy or expensive, but it’s important and, perhaps as importantly, somebody actually did it. I find that inspiring.

So where does all this leave us? All I can do is give you my view. I want to be honest. We didn’t set out to make a love letter to the human race when we started filming
Human Universe
. We set out to make a cosmology series, documenting our ascent into insignificance. Things changed gradually as we chatted, debated, experienced, photographed and argued our way around the world, and we realised that, for all our irrational, unscientific, superstitious, tribal, nationalistic, myopic ignorance, we are the most meaningful thing the universe has to offer as far as we know, and when all is said and done, that’s a significant thing to be. It is surely true that there is no absolute
meaning
or
value
to our existence when set against the limitless stars. We are allowed to exist by the laws of nature and in that sense we have no more value than the stars themselves. And yet there is self-evidently meaning in the universe because my own existence, the existence of those I love, and the existence of the entire human race means something to me. I think this because I have had the remarkable luxury of spending my time in education. I teach, I am taught, I research and I learn. I have been fortunate. I believe powerfully that we who have the power should strive to extend the gift of education to everyone. Education is the most important investment a developed society can make, and the most effective way of nurturing a developing one. The young will one day be the decision makers, the taxpayers, the voters, the explorers, the scientists, the artists and the musicians. They will protect and enhance our way of life, and make our lives worth living. They will learn about our fragility, our outrageously fortunate existence and our indescribable significance as an isolated island of meaning in a sea of infinite stars, and they will make better decisions than my generation because of that knowledge. They will ensure that our universe remains a human one.

What a piece of work is a Man. So certain, so vulnerable, so ingenious, so small, so bold, so loving, so violent, so full of promise, so unaware of his fragile significance. Someone asked me what they thought was a deep question: What are we made of? Up quarks, down quarks and electrons, I answered. That’s what a Man is. Humanity is more than that. Our civilisation is the most complex emergent phenomenon in the known universe. It is the sum of our literature, our music, our technology, our art, our philosophy, our history, our science, our
knowledge
. I have a recording of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony conducted by Bruno Walter made on the eve of the Anschluss. It is suffused with threat. Walter and the Vienna Philharmonic knew what was coming. Hope fades with the last vanishing note, which Mahler marked ‘
ersterbend
’ – ‘dying’ – in the manuscript. It is Mahler’s farewell to life, presaging Old Europe’s farewell to peace. None of this depth is present in the physical score itself; those black ink dots on white paper can be digitised using a scanner and stored in a few kilobytes on a mobile phone. The fathomless power of the recording emerges from a finite collection of bits because the performance contains the sum total of the fears, dreams, concerns and anxieties of a hundred lives, played out against a backdrop of a million more. The personal history of each of the musicians, the conductor and the composer, and indeed the history of civilisation, hangs upon the supporting framework of the notes, resulting in a work of infinite complexity and power, because each human being is possessed of infinite faculties, emergent from a finite number of quarks and electrons. Our existence is a ridiculous affront to common sense, beyond any reasonable expectation of the possible based on the simplicity of the laws of nature, and our civilisation is the combination of seven billion individual affronts. This is what my smiling seems to say: Man certainly does delight me. Our existence is necessarily temporary and our spatial reach finite, and this makes us all the more precious. Mahler’s great farewell to life can also be read as a call to value life with all your heart, to use it wisely and to enjoy it while you can.

p1 © NASA/Science Photo Library; p2 © Sheila Terry/Science Photo Library; p3 © BBC; p4 © ESA and the Planck Collaboration; p5 Courtesy of The Carnegie Observatories; p6 © NASA/JPL; p7 top © Jerry R. Ehman; p7 bottom © Benjamin Crowell; pp8–9 bottom © Lionel Bret/Look at Sciences/Science Photo Library; p9 top left © Didier Descouens; p9 top right © Roger Harris/Science Photo Library; pp10, 11 © Brian Cox; p12 © NASA/Rex Features; p13 © Ted Kinsman/Kenneth Libbrecht/Science Photo Library; p14 top © Philippe Plailly/Science Photo Library; pp14–15 bottom © National Geographic Image Collection/Alamy; p15 top © CERN/Science Photo Library; p16 © age fotostock Spain, S. L./Alamy.

This famous image (‘Earthrise’) was taken by US astronauts on board the Apollo 8 spacecraft on 24 December 1968 as they orbited the Moon. The photograph has become iconic for its depiction of the beauty and fragility of the Earth.

This bas-relief shows Giordano Bruno (1548–1610) being burned at the stake for his heretical and revolutionary ideas, among which was his belief that the universe is infinite and contained numerous habitable worlds.

In the great vacuum chamber at Plum Brook Station we re-created Galileo’s simple experiment by dropping a heavy object (bowling ball) and some lighter ones (feathers) to see which falls faster.

This snapshot of half of our universe reveals the oldest lights within it. The tiny temperature fluctuations that ripple through the skies reveal the presence of the stars and galaxies of today and for the future.

Edwin Hubble’s glass plate from the Hooker telescope very clearly reveals his excitement at his discovery that one of the novae he thought he had previously located was in fact a variable. VAR! marks the spot.