Marvel Magic Case Files

Chapter 1012, Part 1008: The Pope and Faith Endure Forever (Second Update)

The conversation that took place at Fort Gundolfo included the Pope, Salomon, Hammurabi of the Praetorian Guard, and Father Moru, head of the Vatican's secret and military departments. Hammurabi followed at a distance, and Father Moru, who was responsible for supervising the Praetorian Guard, could only stay beside Hammurabi and could not hear the conversation between the Pope and Salomon. Francis already knew Salomon's identity from Father Moru, and there was evidence of a ceremony performed by a group of cardinals, so he did not question it much.

However, Salomon's conversation with the Pope was not as serious as Father Moru had imagined. The early part of the conversation focused mostly on football, music, and children in the slums. This relaxed and pleasant atmosphere did not disappear even when Salomon showed the Pope the results of the simulation of the Michael-Julie experiment by the Immortal City's supercomputer.

This is a very famous experiment, also known as the Soup of Life experiment.

Although Darwin proved that life is constantly evolving, he was unable to unravel the mystery of how the evolutionary process began. So in the 1950s, two chemists, Michael and Euler, conducted a bold experiment in the hope of solving this mystery, attempting to create life from inanimate chemical substances.

On March 8, 1953, The New York Times published an article titled "Looking Back Two Billion Years Ago," which had a profound impact, especially on the religious community. The article argued that if life had miraculously emerged from the test tubes of Micah and Yuri, it would conclude that we no longer needed a supernatural being to descend from the heavens and provide humanity with the fire of creation, proving that life is an inevitable product of natural law. Similarly, it would conclude that since life could spontaneously arise on Earth, life must also exist elsewhere in the universe.

However, Micah and Yuri's experiment failed.

Although several amino acids were produced in the test tube, it was far from the emergence of life. No matter how hard Mika and Yuri tried, life failed to spring from the tube. Long before the Chitauri arrived and proved the existence of extraterrestrial life, in 2007, Mika's test tube was rediscovered in a closet at the University of California, San Diego. Students reanalyzed the sample using more advanced methods, including liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry, and the results were astonishing. After reanalyzing the test tube, several important nucleobases were identified.

In other words, the amino acids in the test tube formed a base group.

This discovery was exhilarating. Life had evolved over billions of years, while those test tubes, left to languish in a closet for only fifty years, had changed. Fifty years of human exploration of life was but a blink of an eye in the grand scheme of evolution. Afterward, the interest in creating life in laboratories was rekindled. The Pope remembered this event when he was still the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and a Jesuit. "Evolution does not contradict God's creation. As early as 1950, Pius VII stated that evolution did not contradict doctrine. In 1996, Paul II also expressed his agreement with this view," the Pope said with a smile. "But you still haven't proven where life came from."

"That's why I brought up supercomputers." Salomon ran his fingers along the leaves in the flowerbed. "Humans can't travel back two billion years to see what's in a test tube, but mathematics can. We can build a model with all the parameters we need. We need to simulate all the parameters of the primordial ocean. The computer needs to understand motion, thermodynamics, gravity, and so on. Only in this way can the computer accurately simulate and reconstruct the relationships between every atom in the primordial ocean. Coincidentally, I have such a computer, and more than one, so I couldn't wait to start calculating and simulating."

"So what was the result?"

"Fifty years later, the basic materials of RNA appeared in the flask, which perfectly matches the Mikael-Yurie experiment. The simulation continued, and by the time the computer cooling pool boiled, tens of millions of years had passed, and the flask still only contained compounds and some messy mixtures."

The Pope raised an eyebrow in surprise. "No life?"

"No." Salomon readily admitted his defeat, seemingly unconcerned.

"This is truly unexpected." There was no schadenfreude in the Pope's words; on the contrary, his emotions were filled with regret.

"This is easy to understand. The second law of thermodynamics states that heat cannot be transferred from a colder body to a hotter body without causing other changes. In a closed system, all energy eventually becomes entropy."

"Can you inspire me?"

"Entropy breaks down structures; for example, hot water cools, and sandcastles crumble into loose sand. This is entropy, an irreversible process of energy transfer. How inanimate chemical substances self-organize into complex life forms is the greatest mystery of life. The laws of nature are random, not organized—that's undeniable, but that's not why we search for a creator." Salomon held out his hand, using a tablet to demonstrate regular phenomena in nature to the Pope. Examples included gravity, snowflakes, eddies, and quartz crystals. "The universe organizes matter, moving from disorder to order, which seems to be the opposite of entropy. Most physicists conclude that the universe is disordered, and the universe drives entropy and disorder."

The Pope spread his hands, signaling Salomon to continue.

"However, other facts prove that the universe operates according to a single instruction, with only one goal: to dissipate energy. Let's return to examples of self-organization in nature, such as tornadoes, snowflakes, and ripples. These are all dissipative structures—molecules self-organize within a structure to promote more efficient energy dissipation. Simply put, the purpose of matter organizing itself is to better dissipate energy. While the universe promotes disorder, it also creates small pieces of order. The disordered state of a system gradually escalates into a structure, and the ordered pieces increase entropy. To effectively create disorder, a certain degree of order is required."

Salomon created a mathematical symbol representing the Big Bang and entropy: an arrow pointing outwards in eight different directions from a central point. "Order arises from disorder, and entropy increases in this self-organizing way; this process doesn't need a God to kick it first. So I added an instruction to this computational model: the goal is to dissipate energy."

"So what was the result?"

Salomon displayed an animation with a timeline, showing the results of Mikael Yurie's experiment fifty years in advance. The compounds within this closed system continued to move, combining with each other, gradually evolving from basic protein chains into a honeycomb-like hexagon. These were nucleotides. The nucleotide chains then began to self-entwine, coiling into a helical structure. Finally, the helix gradually evolved into a double helix structure—this was the code for life, DNA.

"This is a very simple principle. If you want to dissipate more energy, the simplest way is to replicate yourself. Life is just the inevitable result of entropy, a means to increase entropy. The Battle of New York proved that extraterrestrial life exists, which proves that life can take root and sprout anywhere. Life is not something that the universe created and reproduced in order to dissipate energy; it is an inevitability within chance, a product of the spontaneous generation of physical laws."

"Then why don't you continue?" The Pope shrugged. "If you continue, that life in the flask might become a rock musician!"

"You're the most humorous pope I've ever met, Holy See," Salomon said with a laugh. "This work continues. In extraterrestrial civilizations, aliens have also created their own gods using similar methods. On Hala in the Large Magellanic Cloud, there's a supercomputer called the Supreme Intelligence, a life form existing within the computer. The creation process can be compared to the simulation I showed you. If we continued, the life in the flask wouldn't just be playing rock and roll. I changed the algorithm, using a logical deduction-like approach to accelerate the evolution of compounds. We created virtual life, a group of mathematically virtual prokaryotes. However, we couldn't continue here. To allow evolution, we had to increase the capacity, introduce more matter, calculate all the changes in the compounds, and the simulation of the brain also consumed a lot of resources."

At this point, Salomon's expression turned somewhat regretful. "Whether DNA mutates is like Schrödinger's cat; it's a compound in a quantum state. Even direct computation with qubits isn't enough—no quantum computer can run such a massive intelligent life form. All the computers on Earth combined couldn't do it, and my research team is still working on even more advanced methods. We have the technology and the theory, but we're still busy translating it into practical applications. Like the beginning of life, it's a step from 0 to 1, every step is."

“Father Moru is a devout man, and he strongly advocated for this conversation,” the Pope said, his hands behind his back. “I know your identity, the significance of your existence, and the outcome of the Mass in the Alps. Every era has its different themes, and the revelations you bring to each era are different. In the past, people believed in the Creator; now they believe in science. Although different, they are all things that humanity needed at the time. I know you came to see me to make this old man feel better.”

Before Salomon could continue, the Pope chuckled and patted his arm. "If I were the last Pope, that wouldn't matter. Whether crucified or slaying dragons, faith will always exist in this world, and even your 'Unified Truth' is no exception. Whatever the future holds for humanity, at least you are now walking among us, aren't you?"

Please vote for me!

(End of this chapter)