Introduction

Chapter 1: The Big Bang and the Early Universe

1 Everything in the universe is interconnected | 2 Natural phenomena are the interactions of electrons, protons, and photons | 3 Atomic bonds and matter | 4 Molecules are a rare form | 5 The actions of atoms are the actions of electrons | 6 Electrons, the lightest particles that make up matter | 7 The flow and breathing of electrons | 8 The microscopic world is the world of probability | 9 The interactions of electrons, protons, and photons | 10 The microscopic world and quantum mechanics | 11 The emission of photons and lasers | 12 Bosons and the four forces that make up the universe | 13 The principle of charge neutralization | 14 The origin of solar energy | 15 Nuclear fusion and the birth of elements | 16 The life of a star and the fate of the sun

Chapter 2: The Birth of the Earth and Plate Tectonic Movement

1 Earth was formed by the collision of asteroids | 2 Emergence of the granite continents | 3 Superplumes and changes in the surface environment | 4 Protons and acidified Earth's soil | 5 Formation of the supercontinent Pangaea | 6 Division of geologic eras and supercontinents | 7 Geological events of the Cenozoic Era | 8 Climate change and the Milankovitch cycle | 9 Earth's great ice ages | 10 Fluctuating Earth's climate | 11 How are rocks formed? | 12 Coevolution of minerals and organisms | 13 Protons and soil fertilization

Chapter 3: The Evolution of Life

1 The Birth of Metabolism, Respiration, and Photosynthesis | 2 Mitochondria and Eukaryotic Cells | 3 Organisms That Acquired Nitrogen Atoms | 4 Viruses and Bacteria | 5 Eukaryotic Cell Strategies | 6 Life Processes: Molecular Transformation Processes | 7 The First Oxygen Revolution and the Evolution of Eukaryotic Cells | 8 The Second Oxygen Revolution and the Evolution of Multicellular Organisms | 9 The Cambrian Explosion | 10 Corals Create Continents | 11 The Age of Marine Invertebrates | 12 Fish Take to the Land | 13 The Evolution of Mesozoic Dinosaurs and Mammals | 14 Mammals Enter the Night World | 15 The Age of Mammals | 16 Primates Adapting to Tropical Rainforests | 17 Climate and the Evolution of Humans

Chapter 4: The Evolution of Humans and Consciousness

1 Early human evolution and social intelligence | 2 Language and the socialization of Homo sapiens | 3 The volume of the cerebral neocortex determines | 4 The leap forward in human survival | 5 Visual thinking and verbal thinking | 6 The brain tries to connect everything | 7 Brain structure and human evolution | 8 The brain and the birth of consciousness | 9 The world emerges from consciousness

Going out words
Search

From stars and wind to flowers and language,
Discover a unified perspective that explains the universe, the Earth, life, and humanity.

The challenge of integrated science encompassing space, Earth, life, and consciousness.
Dr. Park Moon-ho, who is dedicated to the science movement with the motto of 'popularizing science', has compiled the core of his lectures on '13.7 billion years of evolution of the universe' and 'special brain science' that he has been giving for 14 years in 'Park Moon-ho's World of Natural Science (Park Ja-se)' and organized the big history from the Big Bang to the virtual world of humans.
Without going into difficult scientific knowledge, it explains the long history of natural phenomena, from the beginning of the universe to the birth of Earth and life, the co-evolution of minerals and organisms, and the emergence of human consciousness, from the perspective of the interactions of electrons, photons, and protons.

From the Big Bang to the emergence of the virtual world of humanity, a 13.8 billion-year history of the universe in one volume.

“The process in which photons that make up starlight are absorbed by electrons and protons are emitted outside the cell is the very phenomenon of life.
Electrons, protons, and photons are the particles that make up nature.
Nature is nothing more than an infinite superposition of interactions between electrons, protons, and photons.
All phenomena in nature, except gravity, are the various interactions of electrons, protons, and photons.
This book attempts to explain the universe, the Earth, life, and consciousness through the actions of electrons, protons, and photons.” (p. 7)

As the author states in the preface, all natural phenomena in the universe converge on the interactions of electrons, protons, and photons.
The universe expanded rapidly after the Big Bang, passing through a bubble of quantum probability time, and the subsequent birth of stars, formation of galaxies, and creation of planets are all similar.
The sun was formed 4.6 billion years ago by the gravitational contraction of an interstellar giant molecular cloud, and the Earth was formed 4.5 billion years ago by the collision of giant planetesimals.
Within 100 million years of Earth's formation, it had differentiated into an atmosphere, oceans, crust, mantle, and core.
Since then, the Earth has continued to experience plate tectonics, in which continents are formed and then broken up through convection.
During the Paleozoic era, the process of forming a supercontinent toward Pangaea was the main event, while during the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras, the process of Pangaea splitting and forming the current continental form was the main event.
Two billion years ago, when the concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere increased to 1 percent during the first oxygen revolution, approximately 3,000 new minerals emerged through surface oxidation.


Life emerged about 4 billion years ago, but at that time only prokaryotic cells existed that did not breathe oxygen.
Prokaryotic cells generate energy through oxidation-reduction respiration, which involves acquiring electrons and releasing electrons.
2 billion years ago, the first oxygen revolution brought about an increase in oxygen molecules, leading to the emergence of oxygen-breathing bacteria, which evolved into mitochondria as they coexisted within host cells.
In addition to the intracellular symbiosis of mitochondria, host cells with a nuclear membrane become eukaryotic.


Photosynthesis in plants is an oxidation process in which electrons are released from chlorophyll as it absorbs photons, and respiration in animals is a reaction in which oxygen molecules are reduced to water molecules.
Ultimately, respiration and photosynthesis are both oxidation and reduction reactions caused by the movement of protons accompanied by the movement of electrons, with only the direction of movement of oxygen molecules and water molecules being different.
About 700 million years ago, during the Neoproterozoic era, the second oxygen revolution occurred, leading to the emergence of multicellular life.
This second oxygen revolution, which increased the concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere to 20 percent, marked the beginning of the Cambrian period of the Paleozoic Era 540 million years ago.
This became the second driving force behind the evolution of life, making Earth a planet teeming with life.


Human ancestors evolved in Africa.
Australopithecus afarensis, 3.5 million years ago, walked upright, and Homo habilis, 2.5 million years ago, used tools.
Homo ergaster, which evolved from Homo erectus, used fire to cook food about 1.2 million years ago, reducing the energy consumed for digestion.
Protein intake doubled the size of the cerebral neocortex.
Homo sapiens emerged in Africa about 200,000 years ago, migrated north about 60,000 years ago, into Europe about 45,000 years ago, and into East Asia about 40,000 years ago, reaching Siberia.

The human brain has created a new universe called language.
If the universe exists in space and time, language exists in relationships.
The emergence of language is a leap forward through symbols.
Language, which exists only in the relationships between humans, is another nature within nature that does not exist in physical nature.
Humans evolved into intelligent beings who trace the origins of the universe and themselves thanks to the greatly expanded function of the cerebral neocortex, which created memories and concepts.

The most effective way to learn about the evolution of the 13.8 billion-year universe

This book presents a wide range of specialized knowledge from a variety of fields.
It contains knowledge from almost every field of science, from basic physics to electromagnetism, organic and inorganic chemistry, geology, mineralogy, biology, evolutionary biology, and neuroscience.
That is because it contains the entire history of 13.8 billion years, starting from the Big Bang, the birth of the universe, to modern human language and virtual worlds.

In the book, the author explains the process of reaching the symbol of humanity from the universe in four stages: universe, earth, life, and humanity.
A perspective that can be applied to stars, Earth, life, and humans at this time is that the interaction of electrons, photons, and protons is at the basis of all these natural phenomena.
The author proposes three ways to study natural phenomena from this integrated perspective.

First, trace the origin.
All natural phenomena, including the universe, stars, the Earth, and humans, must have an origin.
All we have to do is study all the biochemical initial conditions that lead to atoms and electrons, cells, animals, mammals, and humans.

Second, it is about thinking about space and time.
Nature is a performance unfolding on a stage called time and space.
We must understand that time and space are not separate entities, but rather a dynamic relationship in which energy and matter determine each other.
The interrelationship between space-time and energy is the universe itself.
Third, discover patterns.
The core of biochemistry is the pattern of changes in molecules within cells during oxidation-reduction processes.
Evolution is the pattern of change in molecules, cells, and individuals in space and time.
Nature is the changing patterns of matter and energy unfolding in time and space.
We think that the pattern of atomic arrangement that occurs at the synapse of a nerve cell is changing.
A pattern is an arrangement of atoms, molecules, and objects.
The number of arrangement patterns of entities in nature is entropy.
The property that tends to follow the pattern with the highest probability is natural phenomena.

Presenting a new paradigm for learning through the lens of persistent pursuit and integration.

Dr. Park Moon-ho's research and writing have one consistent characteristic.
After mastering the basic theories of various fields, it is necessary to find a single principle that permeates all of that knowledge.
And to put it in the simplest and most concise language.
The result is a literary yet scientific sentence: “The study of natural science is the process of discovering the interrelationships between electrons, protons, and photons in stars, rocks, and flowers.”
This can also be said to be in line with the life of Dr. Park Moon-ho, who lives with the brain of a scientist and the heart of a poet.

The author's research and activities are close to asceticism.
No one forced me to, but I formed a study group of my own and willingly jumped into a difficult specialized field.
So, I have been giving lectures for 14 years under the title, ‘13.8 Billion Years of Universe Evolution.’
What he pursues is not the ‘popularization of science’ that introduces science in a soft way, but the ‘scientification of the public.’
The goal is to raise the level of public awareness by spreading rigorous science.

And the study method he emphasizes for this is repetition.
Studying a new field of study means learning a new language, and becoming familiar with a new language requires repetition.
“New terms and concepts become easier to understand if you read and write them repeatedly.
“When the foundation is solid, knowledge will accelerate.” This means that even if it is difficult to understand at first, if you study repeatedly until you become familiar with it, the moment of understanding will come.


The author is actively writing and lecturing in the field of brain science, and has completed a trilogy on brain science, starting with “The Brain, the Emergence of Thought,” “Reading Everything About Brain Science in Pictures,” and “Dr. Park Moon-ho’s Study of Brain Science.”
Afterwards, he began to describe the long history of the universe through a scientific lens, and in 2019, he published “How Life Works,” which summarized the “life” section.
Now, as a culmination of that work, I have compiled the core of the lectures on "13.7 Billion Years of Universe Evolution" and "Special Brain Science" that have continued for 14 years, to compile a new Big History that stretches from the Big Bang to the virtual world of humanity.