Origins: Rising Complexity by Rob Rey

Title:	Origins: Rising Complexity
Date Created:	9/2023
Copyright:	© Rob Rey
Genre:	Unpublished Art
Mediums:	Oils
Views:	34
Posted:	12/5/2024

Projects: Abend Gallery, Magic: The Gathering, Dungeons & Dragons, Upper Deck, Star Wars Trading Card Game, HEX Online Card Game

Location: Centennial, CO

We tend to think of evolution as a biological process of rising complexity that began with single-celled organisms here on earth, but the universe has been undergoing a cosmic evolution of growing complexity from the very beginning. Before there could be cells, there needed to be complex molecules and an array of elements to make them. The earliest known events of the universe generated only a few of the lightest elements: hydrogen, helium, and trace amounts of lithium. Until the first stars formed and began fusing protons and neutrons into larger nuclei the universe was devoid of heavier elements, including the carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen of which we are made. Other processes took these elements and bonded them into basic amino acids and other molecular building blocks of life as we know it. Biological evolution on our planet is thought to be nearly as old as the Earth, but the complexity that made it possible has been accumulating since time began.