pigeon bones are displayed in Charles Darwin's former home Down House, Kent, southern England February 12, 2009. REUTERS/Tal Cohen/File PhotoWASHINGTON, Oct 16 - When British naturalist Charles Darwin sketched out his theory of evolution in the 1859 book "On the Origin of Species" - proposing that biological species change over time through the acquisition of traits that favor survival and reproduction - it provoked a revolution in scientific thought.
"We see evolution as a universal process that applies to numerous systems, both living and nonliving, that increase in diversity and patterning through time," said Carnegie Institution for Science mineralogist and astrobiologist Robert Hazen, a co-author of the scientific paper describing the law in the journal
In stars, for instance, just two elements - hydrogen and helium - were the main ingredients in the first stellar generation following the Big Bang about 13.8 billion years ago that initiated the universe. "Imagine a system of atoms or molecules that can exist in countless trillions of different arrangements or configurations," Hazen said. "Only a small fraction of all possible configurations will 'work' - that is, they will have some useful degree of function. So, nature just prefers those functional configurations."