hello my name is Tom Chi and ever since
I was a young child I was determined to
understand how the entire universe
worked
and that fascination led me to my first
job at age 15 I did Astrophysical
research with the harvard-smithsonian
Observatory and active galactic nuclei
now years after being a scientist
national physicist I slowly kind of
matured out of that and entered the
world of people it actually turns out
that the world of people is way harder
to understand than the than the entire
universe but I stayed with it and in the
process of being a technologist a
inventor and a entrepreneur I've learned
a lot about people and what I'm going to
talk to you today is a little bit of
what I've learned because as I learn
about people I get very interested in
the gaps that still remain for us as
human beings and us as a civilization
relative to the challenges that are in
front of us and one of those gaps that
I've seen is around this concept and the
concept is a really simple one it's the
concept that everything is connected
you've probably heard this many many
times in fact it's it's an element of
almost every spiritual tradition of
humankind throughout all of history but
whenever I hear people talk and mention
this phrase that we are all connected
they do so in a way where it's as if
it's something they wish that they could
believe was true that it's something
that's abstract that it's esoteric that
it's a thing that that is unprovable but
they but they just really wish the
universe was like that and today I'm
here to describe that everything really
is connected and not in some abstract
esoteric way but in a very concrete
direct understandable way and I'm going
to do that with three different stories
a story of the heart a story of the
breath and a story of the mind so let's
begin so all of you in this audience
today your hearts are beating right at
this moment and the reason that your
hearts beat is because you need to move
this molecule through your blood called
hemoglobin and hemoglobin carries this
smaller molecule that's called heme a/b
which is what we see over here now if
the heart of heme a B is a single atom
of iron so in a way at the heart of our
heart is this little iron atom and this
is actually really a central part of the
hemoglobin molecule because this is the
thing that allows us to bind oxygen and
move that through our circulatory system
but one thing that you may not know is
that the only way that iron is created
in the universe is through supernovas
and through supermassive black hole
supermassive stars so the universe
started with basically no iron at all
hydrogen helium and only through the
process of these stars forming exploding
forming and exploding was iron able to
be created that now courses through each
one of our veins but the story doesn't
really end there because we're why the
Stars keep forming actually after a
supernova happens it may be a long time
before those gases come back together to
form a star so in order to go understand
how this works we need to understand why
stars would form and even though there's
a couple different ways that stars form
one of the most robust is this process
galactic collisions and these are images
from the Hubble Space Telescope and they
show through a series of panels which
are actually different galaxies because
this process takes like a half a billion
to a billion years different galaxies
what the process of a galactic collision
would look like so across the top you
get the galaxies slowly coming together
and in the bottom three frames you see
them smashing into each other and their
interstellar gas is mixing and in the
process of doing that they set on fire
with with new star formation across the
entire galaxy and whatever remains after
the collision
now even here is not the end of the
story because why in the world would
galaxies collide this doesn't seem like
a thing that should just happen for no
reason so to understand this we're going
to need to scoot back way way more and
here were at the level of seeing about a
hundred thousand galaxies so last slide
two galaxies this slide a hundred
thousand galaxies every one of these
dots here is a galaxy that is in our
super cluster and we're that red dot
over there where it says you are here
and these these glowing lines are not
galaxies these glowing lines are the
trajectories that these galaxies are
going to take through gravity over the
coming billions of years in this
beautiful gravitational dance of all
these galaxies swirling together in a
gravitational structure that we call
Laniakea which in hawaiian means the
immeasurable heaven and it's this
process the gravitational dance of a
hundred thousand galaxies swirling
together which drive the process of
galaxies colliding which drive massive
star formation which drive the process
of creating the iron that courses
through each one of our veins with every
heartbeat and in this way every one of
our heartbeats is connected now we're
going to move to a second story and this
story is about breath and taking a deep
breath is one of the most simple ways to
connect with our own bodies a deeply
grounded calming breath but taking a
deep breath was not something that was
possible on this earth three billion
years ago on this slide we have the
composition of the atmosphere of the
earth during that time period we had
about the same amount of nitrogen but we
had almost no oxygen at all so you would
be taking a breath in vain three billion
years ago and we actually had a huge
amount of carbon dioxide and the net
effect was a almost inhabitable planet
the only organisms that could exist that
time were single-celled organisms inside
of stromatolites and in other closed
spaces now luckily for us one of those
organisms that was alive at this time
with something called a cyanobacteria
and that's a picture of it in the
background and this organism has the
special trick that we call
photosynthesis the ability to go take
energy from the Sun and transform carbon
dioxide into oxygen and over the course
of billions of years so starting from
two-and-a-half billion of to two and
half billion years ago
little by little these bacteria spread
across the planet and converted all that
carbon dioxide in the air into the
oxygen that we now have and it was a
very slow process first they had to
saturate the Seas then they had to
saturate the oxygen that the earth would
absorb and only then finally could
oxygen begin to build up in the
atmosphere so you see just after about
900 million years ago oxygen starts to
build up in the atmosphere and about 600
million years ago something really
amazing happens the ozone layer forms
from the oxygen that has been released
in the atmosphere and it sounds like a
small deal like we talked about the
ozone a couple decades ago but it
actually turns out that before the ozone
layer existed earth was not really able
to sustain complex multicellular life we
had single-celled organisms we had a
couple simple multicellular organisms
but we didn't really have anything like
you or me
and shortly after the ozone layer came
into place the earth was able to sustain
complex multicellular life there was a
Cambrian explosion of life in the seas
and the first plants got onto land in
fact there was actually no life on land
ahead of that another way to go see this
is this is kind of a chart of pretty
much most of the animals that you guys
are familiar with and right at the
bottom and thyme is the formation of the
ozone layer like nothing that you are
familiar with today could exist without
the contributions of these tiny
organisms over those billions of years
and where are they now well actually
they never really left us the direct
descendants of the cyanobacteria were
eventually captured by plants and
they're now called chloroplasts so this
is a zoom in of a plant leaf and we
probably
eat some of these guys today we're tons
of little chloroplasts are still trapped
in a contributing photosynthesis and
making energy for the plants that
continue to be the other half of our
lungs on earth and in this way our
breaths are very deeply United every out
breath is mirrored by the in-breath of a
plant and their out-breath is mirrored
by our in-breath and I'm going to take a
little side here for a moment with this
story because imagine for a moment and
this is a thought experiment
imagine you were one of these little
organisms 2 billion years ago you might
be born you live a couple weeks you die
and you kind of feel like well nothing
really changed I mean I had no purpose
in this life like the world I came to is
exactly the same as the world that I
left but what you wouldn't have
understood is that every breath that you
took contributed to the possibility of
countless lives after you lives that you
would never see lives that we are all
part of today and it's worth thinking
that maybe the meaning of our lives are
actually not even within the scope of
our understanding because it's true
every one of these organisms it may also
be true of us last story of connection
is the story of the mind and this is not
our minds are all connected in some
psychic way or some scientifically
unexplainable way I'm going to explain
the connection of the mind through the
simple story of this instrument this is
a piano and I have actually a good
relationship with pianos thanks mom
she gave me piano lessons very early I
think you have two creation but a
beautiful thing about this instrument is
it is so nuanced and so textured and so
complex and so much beauty can be
created from it that people can make an
entire career they can make an entire
lifetime out of playing this instrument
professional musicians concert pianists
get to know this instrument
deeply intimately and through it they're
able to create with sound in a way that
that just dazzles us and and and
challenges us and deepens us but if you
were to look into the mind of a concert
pianist and you used all like the the
modern ways of imaging it an interesting
thing that you would see is how much of
their brain is actually dedicated to
this instrument the ability to
coordinate ten fingers the ability to to
work the pedal the the feeling of the
sound the understanding of music theory
all these things are represented as
different patterns and structures in the
brain and now that you have that thought
in your mind recognize that this
beautiful pattern and structure of
thought in the brain was not possible
even just a couple hundred years ago
because the piano was not invented until
the Year 1700 this beautiful pattern of
thought in the brain didn't exist 5,000
years ago and in this way the skill of
the piano the relationship to the piano
the beauty that comes from it was not a
thinkable thought until very very
recently in human history and the
invention the piano itself was not an
independent thought it required a depth
of mechanical engineering it required
the the history of stringed instruments
it required so many patterns and
structures of thought that led to the
possibility of its invention and then
the possibility of the mastery of its
play and it leads me to a concept I'd
like to share with you guys which I call
the pallet of being because all of us
are born into this life having available
to us the experiences of humanity that
has come so far and where we typically
are only able to paint with the patterns
of thoughts and the ways of being that
existed before so if the piano and the
way of playing it is a way of being this
is a way of being that didn't exist for
people 5,000 years ago it was a color in
the palette of being that you couldn't
paint with nowadays if you're born you
can actually learn the skill nowadays if
you're born you can learn to be a
computer's I
just another color that was not
available just a couple hundred years
ago and our lives are really beautiful
for the following reason were born into
this life we have the ability to go make
this unique painting with the colors of
being that are around us at the point of
our birth but in the process of life we
also have the unique opportunity to
create a new color and that might come
from the invention of a new thing a
self-driving car a piano a computer it
might come from the way that you express
yourself as a human being it might come
from a piece of artwork that you create
each one of these ways of being these
things that we put out into the world
through the creative process of mixing
together all the other things that
existed at the point that we were born
allow us to expand the palette of being
for all of the society after us and this
leads me to a very simple way to go
frame everything that we've talked about
today because I think a lot of us
understand that we exist in one of the
in this kind of marvelous universe but
we think about this universe as we're
this tiny unimportant thing that there's
this massive physical universe and
inside of it there's the biosphere and
inside of that that's society and inside
of us we're just one person out of seven
billion people and how can we matter and
we think about this as like a container
relationship where all the goodness
comes from the outside to the inside and
there's nothing really special about us
but the palette of being says the
opposite it says that the way that we
are in our lives the way that we affect
our friends and our family begin to
change the way that that they are able
to paint in the future begins to change
the way that communities then affect
society the way that society could then
affect its relationship to the biosphere
and the way that the biosphere could
then affect the physical planet and the
universe itself and if it's a possible
thing for say oh cyanobacteria to
completely transform the physical
environment of our planet it is
absolutely a possible thing for us to do
the same thing
and it leads to a really important
question for the way that we're going to
do that the manner in which we're going
to do that because we've been given this
amazing gift of consciousness and
because of this gift we have the ability
to deeply understand our connectedness
in the way that we haven't seen other
animals having the the opportunity to do
so and because we can deeply understand
our connect miss we're the ones that
have the decision on how we're going to
go use that knowledge how we're going to
go use it to build our societies and to
shape our lives I think the reason that
all the spiritual traditions have got
this concept of of we are all connected
inside of it is because this the
societies that actually deeply adopt
this idea are the ones that over time
deepen their level of consideration
deepen their level of expression deepen
their level of understanding for each
other and this is the reason that this
idea pops up over and over at the core
of spiritual traditions and I hope
through this talk you see that the
reason that it appears at the core of
science is it's actually something that
is just literally true of the physical
universe at every single level of
organization and every single
manifestation of matter energy and life
so I'd like us all to to come together
with this knowledge and understand
through this this this truth about how
the universe is that because our hearts
our breath and our mind are connected in
this way we need to challenge ourselves
to understand what it means to live from
this truth thank you
you