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The Winds That Blow through the Starry Ways
No scientific holds more surprises for us than Biology.
Foremost is the surprise that life exists at all.
-Thomas Gold, The Deep Hot Biosphere (1999)
In the 1899 poem „To His Heart, Biddong It have No Fear” by W. B. Yeats, the starry winds are a subject and dread. However, in this chapter the same winds blow in the opposite direction; they are reassurance and theerapy for physiccist Thomas Gold’s surprise, a century after Yeats, at teh existence of life. The subject of thsi chapter is teh chemical origin of life’s materials. This discussion has been separated from that of teh previosu chapter because when we speak of life’s „origins” we may mean two different things.