Fire, Cells, and Circuits: Life, Evolution, and the Cambrian Explosion

Quick Note on Time
Just so people know, this event series is based on East Coast time (Boston/NY, etc.). So the start time is 7:30 p.m. EST, but 4:30 p.m. Pacific. I know that is not ideal for some of our friends across the country and around the globe. Fortunately, our events go long…very long, usually until about 1am Est. So folks are welcome to join whenever they can; we understand the time zone issues. Over the next few months, I will try to find better ways to get people up to speed whenever they come in, so everyone can feel included when they arrive.

Description
After life gets started, something remarkable happens. Diversity accelerates. Forms proliferate. Complexity compounds. Evolution explodes.

In this session, we explore how evolutionary dynamics change once living systems cross key thresholds, leading to bursts of innovation such as the Cambrian explosion.

We’ll look at how variation, selection, developmental constraints, and environmental feedback interact to produce rapid diversification, not as a miracle, but as a consequence of underlying processes.

This chapter focuses less on the origin of life itself and more on how life, once established, reshapes the planet and expands its own possibilities at an accelerating pace.

As part of the Cells arc, this event helps explain why evolution sometimes moves slowly, and why at other times it seems to explode.