title: Abiogenesis

text: Life consists of reproduction with (heritable) variations. NASA defines life as "a self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution." Such a system is complex; the last universal common ancestor (LUCA), presumably a single-celled organism which lived some 4 billion years ago, already had hundreds of genes encoded in the DNA genetic code that is universal today. That in turn implies a suite of cellular machinery including messenger RNA, transfer RNAs, and ribosomes to translate the code into proteins. Those proteins included enzymes to operate its anaerobic respiration via the Wood–Ljungdahl metabolic pathway, and a DNA polymerase to replicate its genetic material.


title: Abiogenesis

text: The challenge for abiogenesis (origin of life) researchers is to explain how such a complex and tightly-interlinked system could develop by evolutionary steps, as at first sight all its parts are necessary to enable it to function. For example, a cell, whether the LUCA or in a modern organism, copies its DNA with the DNA polymerase enzyme, which is in turn produced by translating the DNA polymerase gene in the DNA. Neither the enzyme nor the DNA can be produced without the other. The evolutionary process could have involved molecular self-replication, self-assembly such as of cell membranes, and autocatalysis.


title: Abiogenesis

text: The precursors to the development of a living cell like the LUCA are clear enough, if disputed in their details: a habitable world is formed with a supply of minerals and liquid water. Prebiotic synthesis creates a range of simple organic compounds, which are assembled into polymers such as proteins and RNA. The process after the LUCA, too, is readily understood: Darwinian evolution caused the development of a wide range of species with varied forms and biochemical capabilities. The derivation of living things such as the LUCA from simple components, however, is far from understood.


title: Abiogenesis

text: Although Earth remains the only place where life is known, the science of astrobiology seeks evidence of life on other planets. The 2015 NASA strategy on the origin of life aimed to solve the puzzle by identifying interactions, intermediary structures and functions, energy sources, and environmental factors that contributed to the diversity, selection, and replication of evolvable macromolecular systems, and mapping the chemical landscape of potential primordial informational polymers. The advent of polymers that could replicate, store genetic information, and exhibit properties subject to selection was, it suggested, most likely a critical step in the emergence of prebiotic chemical evolution. Those polymers derived, in turn, from simple organic compounds such as nucleobases, amino acids and sugars that could have been formed by reactions in the environment. A successful theory of the origin of life must explain how all these chemicals came into being.


title: Abiogenesis

text: One ancient view of the origin of life, from Aristotle until the 19th century, is of spontaneous generation. This theory held that "lower" animals were generated by decaying organic substances, and that life arose by chance. This was questioned from the 17th century, in works like Thomas Browne's "Pseudodoxia Epidemica". In 1665, Robert Hooke published the first drawings of a microorganism. In 1676, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek drew and described microorganisms, probably protozoa and bacteria. Van Leeuwenhoek disagreed with spontaneous generation, and by the 1680s convinced himself, using experiments ranging from sealed and open meat incubation and the close study of insect reproduction, that the theory was incorrect. In 1668 Francesco Redi showed that no maggots appeared in meat when flies were prevented from laying eggs. By the middle of the 19th century, spontaneous generation was considered disproven.


title: Abiogenesis

text: Another ancient idea dating back to Anaxagoras in the 5th century BC is panspermia, the idea that life exists throughout the universe, distributed by meteoroids, asteroids, comets and planetoids. It does not attempt to explain how life originated in itself, but shifts the origin of life on Earth to another heavenly body. The advantage is that life is not required to have formed on each planet it occurs on, but rather in a more limited set of locations (potentially even a single location), and then spread about the galaxy to other star systems via cometary or meteorite impact.


title: Abiogenesis

text: The idea that life originated from non-living matter in slow stages appeared in Herbert Spencer's 1864–1867 book "Principles of Biology", and in William Turner Thiselton-Dyer's 1879 paper "On spontaneous generation and evolution". On 1 February 1871 Charles Darwin wrote about these publications to Joseph Hooker, and set out his own speculation, suggesting that the original spark of life may have begun in a "warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, light, heat, electricity, , present, that a compound was chemically formed ready to undergo still more complex changes." Darwin went on to explain that "at the present day such matter would be instantly devoured or absorbed, which would not have been the case before living creatures were formed."


title: Abiogenesis

text: Alexander Oparin in 1924 and J. B. S. Haldane in 1929 proposed that the first molecules constituting the earliest cells slowly self-organized from a primordial soup, and this theory is called the Oparin–Haldane hypothesis. Haldane suggested that the Earth's prebiotic oceans consisted of a "hot dilute soup" in which organic compounds could have formed. J. D. Bernal showed that such mechanisms could form most of the necessary molecules for life from inorganic precursors. In 1967, he suggested three "stages": the origin of biological monomers; the origin of biological polymers; and the evolution from molecules to cells.


title: Abiogenesis

text: In 1952, Stanley Miller and Harold Urey carried out a chemical experiment to demonstrate how organic molecules could have formed spontaneously from inorganic precursors under prebiotic conditions like those posited by the Oparin–Haldane hypothesis. It used a highly reducing (lacking oxygen) mixture of gases—methane, ammonia, and hydrogen, as well as water vapor—to form simple organic monomers such as amino acids. Bernal said of the Miller–Urey experiment that "it is not enough to explain the formation of such molecules, what is necessary, is a physical-chemical explanation of the origins of these molecules that suggests the presence of suitable sources and sinks for free energy." However, current scientific consensus describes the primitive atmosphere as weakly reducing or neutral, diminishing the amount and variety of amino acids that could be produced. The addition of iron and carbonate minerals, present in early oceans, however produces a diverse array of amino acids. Later work has focused on two other potential reducing environments: outer space and deep-sea hydrothermal vents.


title: Abiogenesis

text: Soon after the Big Bang, which occurred roughly 14 Gya, the only chemical elements present in the universe were hydrogen, helium, and lithium, the three lightest atoms in the periodic table. These elements gradually came together to form stars. These early stars were massive and short-lived, producing all the heavier elements through stellar nucleosynthesis. Carbon, currently the fourth most abundant chemical element in the universe (after hydrogen, helium and oxygen), was formed mainly in white dwarf stars, particularly those bigger than twice the mass of the sun. As these stars reached the end of their lifecycles, they ejected these heavier elements, among them carbon and oxygen, throughout the universe. These heavier elements allowed for the formation of new objects, including rocky planets and other bodies. According to the nebular hypothesis, the formation and evolution of the Solar System began 4.6 Gya with the gravitational collapse of a small part of a giant molecular cloud. Most of the collapsing mass collected in the center, forming the Sun, while the rest flattened into a protoplanetary disk out of which the planets, moons, asteroids, and other small Solar System bodies formed.


title: Abiogenesis

text: The Earth was formed 4.54 Gya. The Hadean Earth (from its formation until 4 Gya) was at first inhospitable to any living organisms. During its formation, the Earth lost a significant part of its initial mass, and consequentially lacked the gravity to hold molecular hydrogen and the bulk of the original inert gases. The atmosphere consisted largely of water vapor, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide, with smaller amounts of carbon monoxide, hydrogen, and sulfur compounds. The solution of carbon dioxide in water is thought to have made the seas slightly acidic, with a pH of about 5.5. The Hadean atmosphere has been characterized as a "gigantic, productive outdoor chemical laboratory," similar to volcanic gases today which still support some abiotic chemistry.


title: Abiogenesis

text: Oceans may have appeared as soon as 200 million years after the Earth formed, in a near-boiling (100 C) reducing environment, as the pH of 5.8 rose rapidly towards neutral. This scenario has found support from the dating of 4.404 Gya zircon crystals from metamorphosed quartzite of Mount Narryer in Western Australia. Despite the likely increased volcanism, the Earth may have been a water world between 4.4 and 4.3 Gya, with little if any continental crust, a turbulent atmosphere, and a hydrosphere subject to intense ultraviolet light from a T Tauri stage Sun, from cosmic radiation, and from continued asteroid and comet impacts.


title: Abiogenesis

text: The Late Heavy Bombardment hypothesis posits that the Hadean environment between 4.28 and 3.8 Gya was highly hazardous to life. Following the Nice model, changes in the orbits of the giant planets may have bombarded the Earth with asteroids and comets that pockmarked the Moon and inner planets. Frequent collisions would have made photosynthesis unviable. The periods between such devastating events give time windows for the possible origin of life in early environments. If the deep marine hydrothermal setting was the site for the origin of life, then abiogenesis could have happened as early as 4.0-4.2 Gya. If the site was at the surface of the Earth, abiogenesis could have occurred only between 3.7 and 4.0 Gya. However, new lunar surveys and samples have led scientists, including an architect of the Nice model, to deemphasize the significance of the Late Heavy Bombardment.


title: Abiogenesis

text: If life evolved in the ocean at depths of more than ten meters, it would have been shielded both from late impacts and the then high levels of ultraviolet radiation from the sun. Geothermically heated oceanic crust could have yielded far more organic compounds through deep hydrothermal vents than the Miller–Urey experiments indicated. The available energy is maximized at 100–150 °C, the temperatures at which hyperthermophilic bacteria and thermoacidophilic archaea live. These modern organisms may be among the closest surviving relatives of the LUCA.


title: Abiogenesis

text: Life existed on Earth more than 3.5 Gya, during the Eoarchean when sufficient crust had solidified following the molten Hadean. The earliest physical evidence of life so far found consists of microfossils in the Nuvvuagittuq Greenstone Belt of Northern Quebec, in banded iron formation rocks at least 3.77 and possibly 4.28 Gya. The micro-organisms lived within hydrothermal vent precipitates, soon after the 4.4 Gya formation of oceans during the Hadean. The microbes resembled modern hydrothermal vent bacteria, supporting the view that abiogenesis began in such an environment.


title: Abiogenesis

text: Biogenic graphite has been found in 3.7 Gya metasedimentary rocks from southwestern Greenland and in microbial mat fossils from 3.49 Gya Western Australian sandstone. Evidence of early life in rocks from Akilia Island, near the Isua supracrustal belt in southwestern Greenland, dating to 3.7 Gya, have shown biogenic carbon isotopes. In other parts of the Isua supracrustal belt, graphite inclusions trapped within garnet crystals are connected to the other elements of life: oxygen, nitrogen, and possibly phosphorus in the form of phosphate, providing further evidence for life 3.7 Gya. In the Pilbara region of Western Australia, compelling evidence of early life was found in pyrite-bearing sandstone in a fossilized beach, with rounded tubular cells that oxidized sulfur by photosynthesis in the absence of oxygen. Zircons from Western Australia imply that life existed on Earth at least 4.1 Gya.


title: Abiogenesis

text: The Pilbara region of Western Australia contains the Dresser Formation with rocks 3.48 Gya, including layered structures called stromatolites. Their modern counterparts are created by photosynthetic micro-organisms including cyanobacteria. These lie within undeformed hydrothermal-sedimentary strata; their texture indicates a biogenic origin. Parts of the Dresser formation preserve hot springs on land, but other regions seem to have been shallow seas.


title: Abiogenesis

text: All chemical elements except for hydrogen and helium derive from stellar nucleosynthesis. The basic chemical ingredients of life – the carbon-hydrogen molecule (CH), the carbon-hydrogen positive ion (CH+) and the carbon ion (C+) – were produced by ultraviolet light from stars. Complex molecules, including organic molecules, form naturally both in space and on planets. Organic molecules on the early Earth could have had either terrestrial origins, with organic molecule synthesis driven by impact shocks or by other energy sources, such as ultraviolet light, redox coupling, or electrical discharges; or extraterrestrial origins (), with organic molecules formed in interstellar dust clouds raining down on to the planet.


title: Abiogenesis

text: An organic compound is a chemical whose molecules contain carbon. Carbon is abundant in the Sun, stars, comets, and in the atmospheres of most planets. Organic compounds are relatively common in space, formed by "factories of complex molecular synthesis" which occur in molecular clouds and circumstellar envelopes, and chemically evolve after reactions are initiated mostly by ionizing radiation. Purine and pyrimidine nucleobases including guanine, adenine, cytosine, uracil and thymine have been found in meteorites. These could have provided the materials for DNA and RNA to form on the early Earth. The amino acid glycine was found in material ejected from comet Wild 2; it had earlier been detected in meteorites. Comets are encrusted with dark material, thought to be a tar-like organic substance formed from simple carbon compounds under ionizing radiation. A rain of material from comets could have brought such complex organic molecules to Earth. It is estimated that during the Late Heavy Bombardment, meteorites may have delivered up to five million tons of organic prebiotic elements to Earth per year.


title: Abiogenesis

text: Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) are the most common and abundant polyatomic molecules in the observable universe, and are a major store of carbon. They seem to have formed shortly after the Big Bang, and are associated with new stars and exoplanets. They are a likely constituent of Earth's primordial sea. PAHs have been detected in nebulae, and in the interstellar medium, in comets, and in meteorites.


title: Abiogenesis

text: The PAH world hypothesis posits PAHs as precursors to the RNA world. A star, HH 46-IR, resembling the sun early in its life, is surrounded by a disk of material which contains molecules including cyanide compounds, hydrocarbons, and carbon monoxide. PAHs in the interstellar medium can be transformed through hydrogenation, oxygenation, and hydroxylation to more complex organic compounds used in living cells.


title: Abiogenesis

text: The majority of organic compounds introduced on Earth by interstellar dust particles have helped to form complex molecules, thanks to their peculiar surface-catalytic activities. Studies of the C/C isotopic ratios of organic compounds in the Murchison meteorite suggest that the RNA component uracil and related molecules, including xanthine, were formed extraterrestrially. NASA studies of meteorites suggest that all four DNA nucleobases (adenine, guanine and related organic molecules) have been formed in outer space. The cosmic dust permeating the universe contains complex organics ("amorphous organic solids with a mixed aromatic–aliphatic structure") that could be created rapidly by stars. Glycolaldehyde, a sugar molecule and RNA precursor, has been detected in regions of space including around protostars and on meteorites.


title: Abiogenesis

text: As early as the 1860s, experiments demonstrated that biologically relevant molecules can be produced from interaction of simple carbon sources with abundant inorganic catalysts. The spontaneous formation of complex polymers from abiotically generated monomers under the conditions posited by the "soup" theory is not straightforward. Besides the necessary basic organic monomers, compounds that would have prohibited the formation of polymers were also formed in high concentration during the Miller–Urey and Joan Oró experiments. Biology uses essentially 20 amino acids for its coded protein enzymes, representing a very small subset of the structurally possible products. Since life tends to use whatever is available, an explanation is needed for why the set used is so small.


title: Abiogenesis

text: Alexander Butlerov showed in 1861 that the formose reaction created sugars including tetroses, pentoses, and hexoses when formaldehyde is heated under basic conditions with divalent metal ions like calcium. R. Breslow proposed that the reaction was autocatalytic in 1959.


title: Abiogenesis

text: Nucleobases like guanine and adenine can be synthesized from simple carbon and nitrogen sources like hydrogen cyanide (HCN) and ammonia. Formamide produces all four ribonucleotides when warmed with terrestrial minerals. Formamide is ubiquitous in the Universe, produced by the reaction of water and HCN. It can be concentrated by the evaporation of water. HCN is poisonous only to aerobic organisms (eukaryotes and aerobic bacteria), which did not yet exist. It can play roles in other chemical processes such as the synthesis of the amino acid glycine.


title: Abiogenesis

text: DNA and RNA components including uracil, cytosine and thymine can be synthesized under outer space conditions, using starting chemicals such as pyrimidine found in meteorites. Pyrimidine may have been formed in red giant stars or in interstellar dust and gas clouds. All four RNA-bases may be synthesized from formamide in high-energy density events like extraterrestrial impacts.


title: Abiogenesis

text: Other pathways for synthesizing bases from inorganic materials have been reported. Freezing temperatures are advantageous for the synthesis of purines, due to the concentrating effect for key precursors such as hydrogen cyanide. However, while adenine and guanine require freezing conditions for synthesis, cytosine and uracil may require boiling temperatures. Seven different amino acids and eleven types of nucleobases formed in ice when ammonia and cyanide were left in a freezer for 25 years. S-triazines (alternative nucleobases), pyrimidines including cytosine and uracil, and adenine can be synthesized by subjecting a urea solution to freeze-thaw cycles under a reductive atmosphere, with spark discharges as an energy source. The explanation given for the unusual speed of these reactions at such a low temperature is eutectic freezing, which crowds impurities in microscopic pockets of liquid within the ice, causing the molecules to collide more often.


title: Abiogenesis

text: The lipid world theory postulates that the first self-replicating object was lipid-like. Phospholipids form lipid bilayers in water while under agitation—the same structure as in cell membranes. These molecules were not present on early Earth, but other amphiphilic long-chain molecules also form membranes. These bodies may expand by insertion of additional lipids, and may spontaneously split into two offspring of similar size and composition. The main idea is that the molecular composition of the lipid bodies is a preliminary to information storage, and that evolution led to the appearance of polymers like RNA that store information. Studies on vesicles from amphiphiles that might have existed in the prebiotic world have so far been limited to systems of one or two types of amphiphiles.


title: Abiogenesis

text: A lipid bilayer membrane could be composed of a huge number of combinations of arrangements of amphiphiles. The best of these would have favored the constitution of a hypercycle, actually a positive feedback composed of two mutual catalysts represented by a membrane site and a specific compound trapped in the vesicle. Such site/compound pairs are transmissible to the daughter vesicles leading to the emergence of distinct lineages of vesicles, which would have allowed Darwinian natural selection.


title: Abiogenesis

text: A protocell is a self-organized, self-ordered, spherical collection of lipids proposed as a stepping-stone to the origin of life. The theory of classical irreversible thermodynamics treats self-assembly under a generalized chemical potential within the framework of dissipative systems.


title: Abiogenesis

text: A central question in evolution is how simple protocells first arose and differed in reproductive contribution to the following generation, thus driving the evolution of life. A functional protocell has (as of 2014) not yet been achieved in a laboratory setting. Self-assembled vesicles are essential components of primitive cells. The second law of thermodynamics requires that the universe move in a direction in which entropy increases, yet life is distinguished by its great degree of organization. Therefore, a boundary is needed to separate life processes from non-living matter. Irene Chen and Jack W. Szostak suggest that elementary protocells can give rise to cellular behaviors including primitive forms of differential reproduction, competition, and energy storage. Competition for membrane molecules would favor stabilized membranes, suggesting a selective advantage for the evolution of cross-linked fatty acids and even the phospholipids of today. Such micro-encapsulation would allow for metabolism within the membrane and the exchange of small molecules, while retaining large biomolecules inside. Such a membrane is needed for a cell to create its own electrochemical gradient to store energy by pumping ions across the membrane.


title: Abiogenesis

text: Life requires a loss of entropy, or disorder, when molecules organize themselves into living matter. The emergence of life and increased complexity does not contradict the second law of thermodynamics, which states that overall entropy never decreases, since a living organism creates order in some places (e.g. its living body) at the expense of an increase of entropy elsewhere (e.g. heat and waste production).


title: Abiogenesis

text: Multiple sources of energy were available for chemical reactions on the early Earth. Heat from geothermal processes is a standard energy source for chemistry. Other examples include sunlight, lightning, atmospheric entries of micro-meteorites, and implosion of bubbles in sea and ocean waves. This has been confirmed by experiments and simulations.


title: Abiogenesis

text: Unfavorable reactions can be driven by highly favorable ones, as in the case of iron-sulfur chemistry. For example, this was probably important for carbon fixation. Carbon fixation by reaction of CO with HS via iron-sulfur chemistry is favorable, and occurs at neutral pH and 100 °C. Iron-sulfur surfaces, which are abundant near hydrothermal vents, can drive the production of small amounts of amino acids and other biomolecules.


title: Abiogenesis

text: In 1961, Peter Mitchell proposed chemiosmosis as a cell's primary system of energy conversion. The mechanism, now ubiquitous in living cells, powers energy conversion in micro-organisms and in the mitochondria of eukaryotes, making it a likely candidate for early life. Mitochondria produce adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the energy currency of the cell used to drive cellular processes such as chemical syntheses. The mechanism of ATP synthesis involves a closed membrane in which the ATP synthase enzyme is embedded. The energy required to release strongly-bound ATP has its origin in protons that move across the membrane. In modern cells, those proton movements are caused by the pumping of ions across the membrane, maintaining an electrochemical gradient. In the first organisms, the gradient could have been provided by the difference in chemical composition between the flow from a hydrothermal vent and the surrounding seawater, or perhaps meteoric quinones that were conducive to the development of chemiosmotic energy across lipid membranes if at a terrestrial origin.


title: Abiogenesis

text: The RNA world hypothesis describes an early Earth with self-replicating and catalytic RNA but no DNA or proteins. Many researchers concur that an RNA world must have preceded the DNA-based life that now dominates. However, RNA-based life may not have been the first to exist. Another model echoes Darwin's "warm little pond" with cycles of wetting and drying.


title: Abiogenesis

text: RNA is central to the translation process. Small RNAs can catalyze all the chemical groups and information transfers required for life. RNA both expresses and maintains genetic information in modern organisms; and the chemical components of RNA are easily synthesized under the conditions that approximated the early Earth, which were very different from those that prevail today. The structure of the ribozyme has been called the "smoking gun", with a central core of RNA and no amino acid side chains within 18 Å of the active site that catalyzes peptide bond formation.


title: Abiogenesis

text: The concept of the RNA world was proposed in 1962 by Alexander Rich, and the term was coined by Walter Gilbert in 1986. There were initial difficulties in the explanation of the abiotic synthesis of the nucleotides cytosine and uracil. Subsequent research has shown possible routes of synthesis; for example, formamide produces all four ribonucleotides and other biological molecules when warmed in the presence of various terrestrial minerals.


title: Abiogenesis

text: RNA replicase can function as both code and catalyst for further RNA replication, i.e. it can be autocatalytic. Jack Szostak has shown that certain catalytic RNAs can join smaller RNA sequences together, creating the potential for self-replication. The RNA replication systems, which include two ribozymes that catalyze each other's synthesis, showed a doubling time of the product of about one hour, and were subject to Darwinian natural selection under the experimental conditions. If such conditions were present on early Earth, then natural selection would favor the proliferation of such autocatalytic sets, to which further functionalities could be added. Self-assembly of RNA may occur spontaneously in hydrothermal vents. A preliminary form of tRNA could have assembled into such a replicator molecule.


title: Abiogenesis

text: Possible precursors to protein synthesis include the synthesis of short peptide cofactors or the self-catalysing duplication of RNA. It is likely that the ancestral ribosome was composed entirely of RNA, although some roles have since been taken over by proteins. Major remaining questions on this topic include identifying the selective force for the evolution of the ribosome and determining how the genetic code arose.


title: Abiogenesis

text: Eugene Koonin has argued that "no compelling scenarios currently exist for the origin of replication and translation, the key processes that together comprise the core of biological systems and the apparent pre-requisite of biological evolution. The RNA World concept might offer the best chance for the resolution of this conundrum but so far cannot adequately account for the emergence of an efficient RNA replicase or the translation system."


title: Abiogenesis

text: Starting with the work of Carl Woese from 1977 onwards, genomics studies have placed the last universal common ancestor (LUCA) of all modern life-forms between Bacteria and a clade formed by Archaea and Eukaryota in the phylogenetic tree of life. It lived over 4 Gya. A minority of studies have placed the LUCA in Bacteria, proposing that Archaea and Eukaryota are evolutionarily derived from within Eubacteria; Thomas Cavalier-Smith suggested that the phenotypically diverse bacterial phylum Chloroflexota contained the LUCA.


title: Abiogenesis

text: In 2016, a set of 355 genes likely present in the LUCA was identified. A total of 6.1 million prokaryotic genes from Bacteria and Archaea were sequenced, identifying 355 protein clusters from amongst 286,514 protein clusters that were probably common to the LUCA. The results suggest that the LUCA was anaerobic with a Wood–Ljungdahl pathway, nitrogen- and carbon-fixing, thermophilic. Its cofactors suggest dependence upon an environment rich in hydrogen, carbon dioxide, iron, and transition metals. Its genetic material was probably DNA, requiring the 4-nucleotide genetic code, messenger RNA, transfer RNAs, and ribosomes to translate the code into proteins such as enzymes. LUCA likely inhabited an anaerobic hydrothermal vent setting in a geochemically active environment. It was evidently already a complex organism, and must have had precursors; it was not the first living thing. The physiology of LUCA has been in dispute.


title: Abiogenesis

text: Leslie Orgel argued that early translation machinery for the genetic code would be susceptible to error catastrophe. Geoffrey Hoffmann however showed that such machinery can be stable in function against "Orgel's paradox".


title: Abiogenesis

text: Early micro-fossils may have come from a hot world of gases such as methane, ammonia, carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulphide, toxic to much current life. Analysis of the tree of life places thermophilic and hyperthermophilic bacteria and archaea closest to the root, suggesting that life may have evolved in a hot environment. The deep sea or alkaline hydrothermal vent theory posits that life began at submarine hydrothermal vents. Martin and Russell have suggested "that life evolved in structured iron monosulphide precipitates in a seepage site hydrothermal mound at a redox, pH, and temperature gradient between sulphide-rich hydrothermal fluid and iron(II)-containing waters of the Hadean ocean floor. The naturally arising, three-dimensional compartmentation observed within fossilized seepage-site metal sulphide precipitates indicates that these inorganic compartments were the precursors of cell walls and membranes found in free-living prokaryotes. The known capability of FeS and NiS to catalyze the synthesis of the acetyl-methylsulphide from carbon monoxide and methylsulphide, constituents of hydrothermal fluid, indicates that pre-biotic syntheses occurred at the inner surfaces of these metal-sulphide-walled compartments".


title: Abiogenesis

text: These form where hydrogen-rich fluids emerge from below the sea floor, as a result of serpentinization of ultra-mafic olivine with seawater and a pH interface with carbon dioxide-rich ocean water. The vents form a sustained chemical energy source derived from redox reactions, in which electron donors (molecular hydrogen) react with electron acceptors (carbon dioxide); see Iron–sulfur world theory. These are exothermic reactions.


title: Abiogenesis

text: Russell demonstrated that alkaline vents created an abiogenic proton motive force chemiosmotic gradient, ideal for abiogenesis. Their microscopic compartments "provide a natural means of concentrating organic molecules," composed of iron-sulfur minerals such as mackinawite, endowed these mineral cells with the catalytic properties envisaged by Günter Wächtershäuser. This movement of ions across the membrane depends on a combination of two factors:


title: Abiogenesis

text: These two gradients taken together can be expressed as an electrochemical gradient, providing energy for abiogenic synthesis. The proton motive force can be described as the measure of the potential energy stored as a combination of proton and voltage gradients across a membrane (differences in proton concentration and electrical potential).


title: Abiogenesis

text: The surfaces of mineral particles inside deep-ocean hydrothermal vents have catalytic properties similar to those of enzymes and can create simple organic molecules, such as methanol (CHOH), formic, acetic and pyruvic acids out of the dissolved CO in the water, if driven by an applied voltage or by reaction with H or HS.


title: Abiogenesis

text: The research reported by Martin in 2016 supports the thesis that life arose at hydrothermal vents, that spontaneous chemistry in the Earth's crust driven by rock–water interactions at disequilibrium thermodynamically underpinned life's origin and that the founding lineages of the archaea and bacteria were H-dependent autotrophs that used CO as their terminal acceptor in energy metabolism. Martin suggests, based upon this evidence, that the LUCA "may have depended heavily on the geothermal energy of the vent to survive". Pores at deep sea hydrothermal vents are suggested to have been occupied


title: Abiogenesis

text: Mulkidjanian and co-authors think that marine environments did not provide the ionic balance and composition universally found in cells, or the ions required by essential proteins and ribozymes, especially with respect to high K/Na ratio, Mn, Zn and phosphate concentrations. They argue that the only environments that mimic the needed conditions on Earth are hot springs similar to ones at Kamchatka. Mineral deposits in these environments under an anoxic atmosphere would have suitable pH (while current pools in an oxygenated atmosphere would not), contain precipitates of photocatalytic sulfide minerals that absorb harmful ultraviolet radiation, have wet-dry cycles that concentrate substrate solutions to concentrations amenable to spontaneous formation of biopolymers created both by chemical reactions in the hydrothermal environment, and by exposure to UV light during transport from vents to adjacent pools that would promote the formation of biomolecules. The hypothesized pre-biotic environments are similar to hydrothermal vents, with additional components that help explain peculiarities of the LUCA.


title: Abiogenesis

text: A phylogenomic and geochemical analysis of proteins plausibly traced to the LUCA shows that the ionic composition of its intracellular fluid is identical at hot springs. The LUCA likely was dependent upon synthesized organic matter for its growth. Experiments show that RNA-like polymers can be synthesized in multiple wet-dry cycles and exposure to UV light. These polymers became encapsulated in vesicles after condensation, which would not happen in saltwater conditions because of the high concentrations of ionic solutes. A potential source of biomolecules at hot springs was transport by interplanetary dust particles, extraterrestrial projectiles, or atmospheric or geochemical synthesis. Hot spring fields could have been abundant at volcanic landmasses during the Hadean.


title: Abiogenesis

text: The clay hypothesis was proposed by Graham Cairns-Smith in 1985. It postulates that complex organic molecules arose gradually on pre-existing, non-organic replication surfaces of silicate crystals in contact with an aqueous solution. The clay mineral montmorillonite has been shown to catalyze the polymerization of RNA in aqueous solution from nucleotide monomers, and the formation of membranes from lipids. In 1998, Hyman Hartman proposed that "the first organisms were self-replicating iron-rich clays which fixed carbon dioxide into oxalic acid and other dicarboxylic acids. This system of replicating clays and their metabolic phenotype then evolved into the sulfide rich region of the hot spring acquiring the ability to fix nitrogen. Finally phosphate was incorporated into the evolving system which allowed the synthesis of nucleotides and phospholipids."


title: Abiogenesis

text: In the 1980s, Günter Wächtershäuser and Karl Popper postulated the Iron–sulfur world hypothesis for the evolution of pre-biotic chemical pathways. It traces today's biochemistry to primordial reactions which synthesize organic building blocks from gases. Wächtershäuser systems have a built-in source of energy: iron sulfides such as pyrite. The energy released by oxidising these metal sulfides can support synthesis of organic molecules. Such systems may have evolved into autocatalytic sets constituting self-replicating, metabolically active entities predating modern life forms. Experiments with sulfides in an aqueous environment at 100 °C produced a small yield of dipeptides (0.4% to 12.4%) and a smaller yield of tripeptides (0.10%). However, under the same conditions, dipeptides were quickly broken down.


title: Abiogenesis

text: Several models postulate a primitive metabolism, allowing RNA replication to emerge later. The centrality of the Krebs cycle (citric acid cycle) to energy production in aerobic organisms, and in drawing in carbon dioxide and hydrogen ions in biosynthesis of complex organic chemicals, suggests that it was one of the first parts of the metabolism to evolve. Concordantly, geochemists Jack W. Szostak and Kate Adamala demonstrated that non-enzymatic RNA replication in primitive protocells is only possibly in the presence of weak cation chelators like citric acid. This provides further evidence for the central role of citric acid in primordial metabolism.


title: Abiogenesis

text: Russell has proposed that "the purpose of life is to hydrogenate carbon dioxide" (as part of a "metabolism-first," rather than a "genetics-first," scenario). The physicist Jeremy England has argued from general thermodynamic considerations that life was inevitable. An early version of this idea was Oparin's 1924 proposal for self-replicating vesicles. In the 1980s and 1990s came Wächtershäuser's iron–sulfur world theory and Christian de Duve's thioester models. More abstract and theoretical arguments for metabolism without genes include Freeman Dyson's mathematical model and Stuart Kauffman's collectively autocatalytic sets in the 1980s. Kauffman's work has been criticized for ignoring the role of energy in driving biochemical reactions in cells.


title: Abiogenesis

text: A multistep biochemical pathway like the Krebs cycle did not just self-organize on the surface of a mineral; it must have been preceded by simpler pathways. The Wood–Ljungdahl pathway is compatible with self-organization on a metal sulfide surface. Its key enzyme unit, carbon monoxide dehydrogenase/acetyl-CoA synthase, contains mixed nickel-iron-sulfur clusters in its reaction centers and catalyzes the formation of acetyl-CoA. However, prebiotic thiolated and thioester compounds are thermodynamically and kinetically unlikely to accumulate in the presumed prebiotic conditions of hydrothermal vents. One possibility is that cysteine and homocysteine may have reacted with nitriles from the Stecker reaction, forming catalytic thiol-rich polypeptides.


title: Abiogenesis

text: Armen Mulkidjanian's zinc world (Zn-world) hypothesis extends Wächtershäuser's pyrite hypothesis. The Zn-world theory proposes that hydrothermal fluids rich in HS interacting with cold primordial ocean (or Darwin's "warm little pond") water precipitated metal sulfide particles. Oceanic hydrothermal systems have a zonal structure reflected in ancient volcanogenic massive sulfide ore deposits. They reach many kilometers in diameter and date back to the Archean. Most abundant are pyrite (FeS), chalcopyrite (CuFeS), and sphalerite (ZnS), with additions of galena (PbS) and alabandite (MnS). ZnS and MnS have a unique ability to store radiation energy, e.g. from ultraviolet light. When replicating molecules were originating, the primordial atmospheric pressure was high enough (>100 bar) to precipitate near the Earth's surface, and ultraviolet irradiation was 10 to 100 times more intense than now; hence the photosynthetic properties mediated by ZnS provided the right energy conditions for the synthesis of informational and metabolic molecules and the selection of photostable nucleobases.


title: Abiogenesis

text: The Zn-world theory has been filled out with evidence for the ionic constitution of the interior of the first proto-cells. In 1926, the Canadian biochemist Archibald Macallum noted the resemblance of body fluids such as blood and lymph to seawater; however, the inorganic composition of all cells differ from that of modern seawater, which led Mulkidjanian and colleagues to reconstruct the "hatcheries" of the first cells combining geochemical analysis with phylogenomic scrutiny of the inorganic ion requirements of modern cells. The authors conclude that ubiquitous, and by inference primordial, proteins and functional systems show affinity to and functional requirement for K, Zn, Mn, and . Geochemical reconstruction shows that this ionic composition could not have existed in the ocean but is compatible with inland geothermal systems. In the oxygen-depleted, CO-dominated primordial atmosphere, the chemistry of water condensates near geothermal fields would resemble the internal milieu of modern cells. Therefore, precellular evolution may have taken place in shallow "Darwin ponds" lined with porous silicate minerals mixed with metal sulfides and enriched in K, Zn, and phosphorus compounds.


title: Abiogenesis

text: Homochirality is the geometric uniformity of materials composed of chiral (non-mirror-symmetric) units. Living organisms use molecules that have the same chirality (handedness): with almost no exceptions, amino acids are left-handed while nucleotides and sugars are right-handed. Chiral molecules can be synthesized, but in the absence of a chiral source or a chiral catalyst, they are formed in a 50/50 (racemic) mixture of both forms. Known mechanisms for the production of non-racemic mixtures from racemic starting materials include: asymmetric physical laws, such as the electroweak interaction; asymmetric environments, such as those caused by circularly polarized light, quartz crystals, or the Earth's rotation, statistical fluctuations during racemic synthesis, and spontaneous symmetry breaking. Once established, chirality would be selected for. A small bias (enantiomeric excess) in the population can be amplified into a large one by asymmetric autocatalysis, such as in the Soai reaction. In asymmetric autocatalysis, the catalyst is a chiral molecule, which means that a chiral molecule is catalyzing its own production. An initial enantiomeric excess, such as can be produced by polarized light, then allows the more abundant enantiomer to outcompete the other. Homochirality may have started in outer space, as on the Murchison meteorite the amino acid L-alanine is more than twice as frequent as its D form, and L-glutamic acid is more than three times as abundant as its D counterpart. Amino acids from meteorites show a left-handed bias, whereas sugars show a predominantly right-handed bias, as found in living organisms, suggesting an abiogenic origin of these compounds.


title: Roselyn Sánchez

text: Roselyn Milagros Sánchez Rodríguez (born April 2, 1973) is a Puerto Rican singer-songwriter, dancer, model, actress, producer, and writer. On television, she is best known for her roles as Elena Delgado on the CBS police procedural "Without a Trace" (2005–09), as Carmen Luna on the Lifetime comedy-drama "Devious Maids" (2013–16), and as Elena Roarke on the new Fantasy Island (2021–present). In film, Sánchez has appeared in "Rush Hour 2" (2001), "Boat Trip" (2002), "The Game Plan" (2007), and "Act of Valor" (2012).


title: Roselyn Sánchez

text: Sánchez was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and is the youngest of four siblings, having three older brothers. She received her primary education in San Juan. At a young age, she showed an interest in both dancing and acting and would put on shows for her family. Sánchez enrolled in the University of Puerto Rico, where like her father and brothers she was to study marketing. However, after three years she left the course. In 1991, at the age of 18, Sánchez moved to New York City, where she took classes in dancing, acting and singing. She returned to Puerto Rico and, in 1992, she made her movie debut, having landed a small part as an island girl in the movie "Captain Ron", which was partly filmed in Puerto Rico.


title: Roselyn Sánchez

text: In Puerto Rico, Sánchez gained public attention as a dancer and as co-host of a variety show called "Qué Vacilón". At that time, in 1993, Sánchez won the Miss Puerto Rico Petite contest and, in 1994, she won the international title of Miss American Petite, bringing her international fame. Sánchez has been named in numerous annual lists of beautiful women including "Maxim Magazine"s "Hot 100" in 2001, 2002 and 2006; AskMen.com's "Top 99 Most Desirable Women" in 2005 and 2006; and "FHM"s "100 Sexiest Women" in 2005 and 2006.


title: Roselyn Sánchez

text: In 2001, Sánchez was cast as Isabella Molina, an undercover United States Secret Service agent who was Jackie Chan's love interest in the hit movie "Rush Hour 2". In 2003, she played the role of Lorena in the movie "Chasing Papi", starring alongside Jaci Velasquez and Sofia Vergara. Sánchez has acted in some 20 movies, including as Maria in "Edison" and as Karen Lopez in "Underclassman". She starred in the Puerto Rican film "Cayo", released in 2005.


title: Roselyn Sánchez

text: In 2003, her first musical recording, "Borinqueña", was released. The album's first single, "Amor Amor", gained a lot of attention as well as a Latin Grammy nomination for Best Music Video. She appeared in Craig David's music videos "Hidden Agenda" and "Personal", and in the Fabolous video for the song "Make Me Better".


title: Roselyn Sánchez

text: In the fall of 2005, Sánchez joined the cast of the CBS television series "Without a Trace", where she played Agent Elena Delgado to 2009. She composed the musical "Yellow", about a singer/dancer/actress who leaves Puerto Rico to hit the big time in New York, in which she played the principal part. The movie was filmed in 2005 and released in 2007. Also in 2007, she acted as Monique, the ballet teacher, in "The Game Plan", and in 2009, starred in "The Perfect Sleep", a neo-noir drama, co-starring Patrick Bauchau, Tony Amendola, Isaac Singleton, and Peter Lucas. In 2011, Sánchez made a guest appearance on TNT's "Rizzoli & Isles", playing villainous attorney Valerie Delgado.


title: Roselyn Sánchez

text: In 2012, Sánchez was cast opposite Ana Ortiz of ABC comedy-drama pilot "Devious Maids", created by Marc Cherry. On May 14, 2012, the pilot was not picked to series by ABC for the 2012–13 United States network schedule. However, on June 22, 2012, Lifetime picked up the pilot with a thirteen-episode order. The series premiered June 23, 2013 on Lifetime.


title: Roselyn Sánchez

text: From August 9, 1998, to April 15, 2001, Sanchez was married to English actor, former boxer, and former model Gary Stretch. After her divorce, she started a relationship with Puerto Rican salsa singer Víctor Manuelle. In December 2005, she announced that she had ended their relationship.


title: Roselyn Sánchez

text: Sanchez became engaged to actor Eric Winter in December 2007 after two years of dating and they married on 29 November 2008, in San Juan, Puerto Rico. They have two children together: a daughter, Sebella (born January 2012), and a son, Dylan (born November 2017).


title: Roselyn Sánchez

text: Sánchez is the spokesperson of the Fundación de Niños San Jorge, which assists sick children from poor families.


title: Pan (god)

text: In ancient Greek religion and mythology, Pan (; ) is the god of the wild, shepherds and flocks, rustic music and impromptus, and companion of the nymphs. He has the hindquarters, legs, and horns of a goat, in the same manner as a faun or satyr. With his homeland in rustic Arcadia, he is also recognized as the god of fields, groves, wooded glens, and often affiliated with sex; because of this, Pan is connected to fertility and the season of spring.


title: Pan (god)

text: In Roman religion and myth, Pan's counterpart was Faunus, a nature god who was the father of Bona Dea, sometimes identified as Fauna; he was also closely associated with Sylvanus, due to their similar relationships with woodlands. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Pan became a significant figure in the Romantic movement of western Europe and also in the 20th-century Neopagan movement.


title: Pan (god)

text: Many modern scholars consider Pan to be derived from the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European god "*Péh₂usōn", whom they believe to have been an important pastoral deity ("*Péh₂usōn" shares an origin with the modern English word "pasture"). The Rigvedic god Pushan is believed to be a cognate of Pan. The connection between Pan and Pushan was first identified in 1924 by the German scholar Hermann Collitz. The familiar form of the name Pan is contracted from earlier "Πάων", derived from the root *"peh₂-" (guard, watch over). According to Edwin L. Brown, the name "Pan" is probably a cognate with the Greek word ὀπάων "companion".


title: Pan (god)

text: In his earliest appearance in literature, Pindar's Pythian Ode iii. 78, Pan is associated with a mother goddess, perhaps Rhea or Cybele; Pindar refers to maidens worshipping Cybele and Pan near the poet's house in Boeotia.


title: Pan (god)

text: The worship of Pan began in Arcadia which was always the principal seat of his worship. Arcadia was a district of mountain people, culturally separated from other Greeks. Arcadian hunters used to scourge the statue of the god if they had been disappointed in the chase.


title: Pan (god)

text: Being a rustic god, Pan was not worshipped in temples or other built edifices, but in natural settings, usually caves or grottoes such as the one on the north slope of the Acropolis of Athens. These are often referred to as the Cave of Pan. The only exceptions are the Temple of Pan on the Neda River gorge in the southwestern Peloponnese – the ruins of which survive to this day – and the Temple of Pan at Apollonopolis Magna in ancient Egypt. In the 4th century BC Pan was depicted on the coinage of Pantikapaion.


title: Pan (god)

text: The parentage of Pan is unclear; generally he is the son of Hermes and a wood nymph, either Dryope or Penelope of Mantineia in Arcadia. In some early sources such as Pindar, his father is Apollo and mother Penelope. Apollodorus records two distinct divinities named Pan; one who was the son of Hermes and Penelope, and the other who had Zeus and a nymph named Hybris for his parents, and was the mentor of Apollo. Pausanias records the story that Penelope had in fact been unfaithful to her husband, who banished her to Mantineia upon his return. Other sources (Duris of Samos; the Vergilian commentator Servius) report that Penelope slept with all 108 suitors in Odysseus' absence, and gave birth to Pan as a result. According to Robert Graves, his mother was called Oeneis, a nymph who consorted with Hermes.


title: Pan (god)

text: This myth reflects the folk etymology that equates Pan's name (Πάν) with the Greek word for "all" (πᾶν).


title: Pan (god)

text: In the mystery cults of the highly syncretic Hellenistic era, Pan is made cognate with Phanes/Protogonos, Zeus, Dionysus and Eros.


title: Pan (god)

text: Accounts of Pan's genealogy are so varied that it must lie buried deep in mythic time. Like other nature spirits, Pan appears to be older than the Olympians, if it is true that he gave Artemis her hunting dogs and taught the secret of prophecy to Apollo. Pan might be multiplied as the Pans (Burkert 1985, III.3.2; Ruck and Staples, 1994, p. 132) or the "Paniskoi". Kerenyi (p. 174) notes from scholia that Aeschylus in "Rhesus" distinguished between two Pans, one the son of Zeus and twin of Arcas, and one a son of Cronus. "In the retinue of Dionysos, or in depictions of wild landscapes, there appeared not only a great Pan, but also little Pans, Paniskoi, who played the same part as the Satyrs".


title: Pan (god)

text: Herodotus wrote that according to Egyptian chronology, Pan was the most ancient of the gods; but according to the version in which Pan was the son of Hermes and Penelope, he was born only eight hundred years before Herodotus, and thus after the Trojan war. Herodotus concluded that that would be when the Greeks first learnt the name of Pan.


title: Pan (god)

text: The goat-god Aegipan was nurtured by Amalthea with the infant Zeus in Crete. In Zeus' battle with Typhon, Aegipan and Hermes stole back Zeus' "sinews" that Typhon had hidden away in the Corycian Cave. Pan aided his foster-brother in the battle with the Titans by letting out a horrible screech and scattering them in terror. According to some traditions, Aegipan was the son of Pan, rather than his father. The constellation Capricornus is traditionally depicted as a sea-goat, a goat with a fish's tail (see "Goatlike" Aigaion called Briareos, one of the Hecatonchires). A myth reported as "Egyptian" in Hyginus's "Poetic Astronomy" (which would seem to be invented to justify a connection of Pan with Capricorn) says that when Aegipan—that is Pan in his goat-god aspect—was attacked by the monster Typhon, he dived into the river Nile; the parts above the water remained a goat, but those under the water transformed into a fish.


title: Pan (god)

text: Pan is famous for his sexual prowess and is often depicted with a phallus. Diogenes of Sinope, speaking in jest, related a myth of Pan learning masturbation from his father, Hermes, and teaching the habit to shepherds.


title: Pan (god)

text: One of the famous myths of Pan involves the origin of his pan flute, fashioned from lengths of hollow reed. Syrinx was a lovely wood-nymph of Arcadia, daughter of Ladon, the river-god. As she was returning from the hunt one day, Pan met her. To escape from his importunities, the fair nymph ran away and didn't stop to hear his compliments. He pursued from Mount Lycaeum until she came to her sisters who immediately changed her into a reed. When the air blew through the reeds, it produced a plaintive melody. The god, still infatuated, took some of the reeds, because he could not identify which reed she became, and cut seven pieces (or according to some versions, nine), joined them side by side in gradually decreasing lengths, and formed the musical instrument bearing the name of his beloved Syrinx. Henceforth, Pan was seldom seen without it.


title: Pan (god)

text: Echo was a nymph who was a great singer and dancer and scorned the love of any man. This angered Pan, a lecherous god, and he instructed his followers to kill her. Echo was torn to pieces and spread all over Earth. The goddess of the Earth, Gaia, received the pieces of Echo, whose voice remains repeating the last words of others. In some versions, Echo and Pan had two children: Iambe and Iynx. In other versions, Pan had fallen in love with Echo, but she scorned the love of any man but was enraptured by Narcissus. As Echo was cursed by Hera to only be able to repeat words that had been said by someone else, she could not speak for herself. She followed Narcissus to a pool, where he fell in love with his own reflection and changed into a narcissus flower. Echo wasted away, but her voice could still be heard in caves and other such similar places.


title: Pan (god)

text: Pan also loved a nymph named Pitys, who was turned into a pine tree to escape him. In another version, Pan and the north wind god Boreas clashed over the lovely Pitys. Boreas uprooted all the trees to impress her, but Pan laughed and Pitys chose him. Boreas then chased her and threw her off a cliff resulting in her death. Gaia pitied Pitys and turned her into a pine tree.


title: Pan (god)

text: According to some traditions, Pan taught Daphnis, a rustic son of Hermes, how to play the pan-pipes, and also fell in love with him.


title: Pan (god)

text: Disturbed in his secluded afternoon naps, Pan's angry shout inspired panic ("panikon deima") in lonely places. Following the Titans' assault on Olympus, Pan claimed credit for the victory of the gods because he had frightened the attackers. In the Battle of Marathon (490 BC), it is said that Pan favored the Athenians and so inspired panic in the hearts of their enemies, the Persians.


title: Pan (god)

text: In two late Roman sources, Hyginus and Ovid, Pan is substituted for the satyr Marsyas in the theme of a musical competition ("agon"), and the punishment by flaying is omitted.


title: Pan (god)

text: Pan once had the audacity to compare his music with that of Apollo, and to challenge Apollo, the god of the lyre, to a trial of skill. Tmolus, the mountain-god, was chosen to umpire. Pan blew on his pipes and gave great satisfaction with his rustic melody to himself and to his faithful follower, Midas, who happened to be present. Then Apollo struck the strings of his lyre. Tmolus at once awarded the victory to Apollo, and all but Midas agreed with the judgment. Midas dissented and questioned the justice of the award. Apollo would not suffer such a depraved pair of ears any longer and turned Midas' ears into those of a donkey.


title: Pan (god)

text: Pan could be multiplied into a swarm of Pans, and even be given individual names, as in Nonnus' "Dionysiaca", where the god Pan had twelve sons that helped Dionysus in his war against the Indians. Their names were Kelaineus, Argennon, Aigikoros, Eugeneios, Omester, Daphoenus, Phobos, Philamnos, Xanthos, Glaukos, Argos, and Phorbas.


title: Pan (god)

text: Two other Pans were Agreus and Nomios. Both were the sons of Hermes, Agreus' mother being the nymph Sose, a prophetess: he inherited his mother's gift of prophecy, and was also a skilled hunter. Nomios' mother was Penelope (not the same as the wife of Odysseus). He was an excellent shepherd, seducer of nymphs, and musician upon the shepherd's pipes. Most of the mythological stories about Pan are actually about Nomios, not the god Pan. Although, Agreus and Nomios could have been two different aspects of the prime Pan, reflecting his dual nature as both a wise prophet and a lustful beast.


title: Pan (god)

text: Aegipan, literally "goat-Pan," was a Pan who was fully goatlike, rather than half-goat and half-man. When the Olympians fled from the monstrous giant Typhoeus and hid themselves in animal form, Aegipan assumed the form of a fish-tailed goat. Later he came to the aid of Zeus in his battle with Typhoeus, by stealing back Zeus' stolen sinews. As a reward the king of the gods placed him amongst the stars as the Constellation Capricorn. The mother of Aegipan, Aix (the goat), was perhaps associated with the constellation Capra.


title: Pan (god)

text: Sybarios was an Italian Pan who was worshipped in the Greek colony of Sybaris in Italy. The Sybarite Pan was conceived when a Sybarite shepherd boy named Krathis copulated with a pretty she-goat amongst his herds.


title: Pan (god)

text: According to the Greek historian Plutarch (in "De defectu oraculorum", "The Obsolescence of Oracles"), Pan is the only Greek god who actually dies. During the reign of Tiberius (AD 14–37), the news of Pan's death came to one Thamus, a sailor on his way to Italy by way of the Greek island of Paxi. A divine voice hailed him across the salt water, "Thamus, are you there? When you reach Palodes, take care to proclaim that the great god Pan is dead." Which Thamus did, and the news was greeted from shore with groans and laments.


title: Pan (god)

text: Christian apologists, including Eusebius of Caesarea, have long made much of Plutarch's story of the death of Pan. Due to the word "all" in Greek also being "pan," a pun was made that "all demons" had perished.


title: Pan (god)

text: In Rabelais' "Fourth Book of Pantagruel" (16th century), the Giant Pantagruel, after recollecting the tale as told by Plutarch, opines that the announcement was actually about the death of Jesus Christ, which did take place at about the same time (towards the end of Tiberius' reign), noting the aptness of the name: "for he may lawfully be said in the Greek tongue to be Pan, since he is our all. For all that we are, all that we live, all that we have, all that we hope, is him, by him, from him, and in him." In this interpretation, Rabelais was following Guillaume Postel in his "De orbis terrae concordia".


title: Pan (god)

text: The 19th-century visionary Anne Catherine Emmerich, in a twist echoed nowhere else, claims that the phrase "the Great Pan" was actually a demonic epithet for Jesus Christ, and that "Thamus, or Tramus" was a watchman in the port of Nicaea, who, at the time of the other spectacular events surrounding Christ's death, was then commissioned to spread this message, which was later garbled "in repetition."


title: Pan (god)

text: In modern times, G. K. Chesterton has repeated and amplified the significance of the "death" of Pan, suggesting that with the "death" of Pan came the advent of theology. To this effect, Chesterton claimed, "It is said truly in a sense that Pan died because Christ was born. It is almost as true in another sense that men knew that Christ was born because Pan was already dead. A void was made by the vanishing world of the whole mythology of mankind, which would have asphyxiated like a vacuum if it had not been filled with theology." It was interpreted with concurrent meanings in all four modes of medieval "exegesis": literally as historical fact, and allegorically as the death of the ancient order at the coming of the new.


title: Pan (god)

text: In more modern times, some have suggested a possible naturalistic explanation for the myth. For example, Robert Graves ("The Greek Myths") reported a suggestion that had been made by Salomon Reinach and expanded by James S. Van Teslaar that the sailors actually heard the excited shouts of the worshipers of Tammuz, (, "All-great Tammuz is dead!"), and misinterpreted them as a message directed to an Egyptian sailor named 'Thamus': "Great Pan is Dead!" Van Teslaar explains, "[i]n its true form the phrase would have probably carried no meaning to those on board who must have been unfamiliar with the worship of Tammuz which was a transplanted, and for those parts, therefore, an exotic custom." Certainly, when Pausanias toured Greece about a century after Plutarch, he found Pan's shrines, sacred caves and sacred mountains still very much frequented. However, a naturalistic explanation might not be needed. For example, William Hansen has shown that the story is quite similar to a class of widely known tales known as "Fairies Send a Message."


title: Pan (god)

text: The cry "Great Pan is dead" has appealed to poets, such as John Milton, in his ecstatic celebration of Christian peace, "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity" line 89, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.


title: Pan (god)

text: In the late 18th century, interest in Pan revived among liberal scholars. Richard Payne Knight discussed Pan in his "Discourse on the Worship of Priapus" (1786) as a symbol of creation expressed through sexuality. "Pan is represented pouring water upon the organ of generation; that is, invigorating the active creative power by the prolific element."


title: Pan (god)

text: In the English town of Painswick in Gloucestershire, a group of 18th-century gentry, led by Benjamin Hyett, organised an annual procession dedicated to Pan, during which a statue of the deity was held aloft, and people shouted "Highgates! Highgates!" Hyett also erected temples and follies to Pan in the gardens of his house and a "Pan's lodge", located over Painswick Valley. The tradition died out in the 1830s, but was revived in 1885 by the new vicar, W. H. Seddon, who mistakenly believed that the festival had been ancient in origin. One of Seddon's successors, however, was less appreciative of the pagan festival and put an end to it in 1950, when he had Pan's statue buried.


title: Pan (god)

text: John Keats's "Endymion" opens with a festival dedicated to Pan where a stanzaic hymn is sung in praise of him. "Keats's account of Pan's activities is largely drawn from the Elizabethan poets. Douglas Bush notes, 'The goat-god, the tutelary divinity of shepherds, had long been allegorized on various levels, from Christ to "Universall Nature" (Sandys); here he becomes the symbol of the romantic imagination, of supra-mortal knowledge.


title: Pan (god)

text: In the late 19th century Pan became an increasingly common figure in literature and art. Patricia Merivale states that between 1890 and 1926 there was an "astonishing resurgence of interest in the Pan motif". He appears in poetry, in novels and children's books, and is referenced in the name of the character Peter Pan. In the Peter Pan stories, Peter represents a golden age of pre-civilisation in both the minds of very young children, before enculturation and education, and in the natural world outside the influence of humans. Peter Pan's character is both charming and selfish emphasizing our cultural confusion about whether human instincts are natural and good, or uncivilised and bad. J. M. Barrie describes Peter as ‘a betwixt and between’, part animal and part human, and uses this device to explore many issues of human and animal psychology within the Peter Pan stories.


title: Pan (god)

text: He is the eponymous "Piper at the Gates of Dawn" in the seventh chapter of Kenneth Grahame's "The Wind in the Willows" (1908). Grahame's Pan, unnamed but clearly recognisable, is a powerful but secretive nature-god, protector of animals, who casts a spell of forgetfulness on all those he helps. He makes a brief appearance to help the Rat and Mole recover the Otter's lost son Portly.


title: Pan (god)

text: Arthur Machen's 1894 novella "The Great God Pan" uses the god's name in a simile about the whole world being revealed as it really is: "seeing the Great God Pan". The novella is considered by many (including Stephen King) as being one of the greatest horror stories ever written.


title: Pan (god)

text: Pan entices villagers to listen to his pipes as if in a trance in Lord Dunsany's novel "The Blessing of Pan" published in 1927. Although the god does not appear within the story, his energy certainly invokes the younger folk of the village to revel in the summer twilight, and the vicar of the village is the only person worried about the revival of worship for the old pagan god.


title: Pan (god)

text: Pan is also featured as a prominent character in Tom Robbins' "Jitterbug Perfume" (1984). Aeronautical engineer and occultist Jack Parsons invoked Pan before test launches at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.


title: Pan (god)

text: The British writer and editor Mark Beech of Egaeus Press published in 2015 the limited-edition anthology "Soliloquy for Pan" which includes essays and poems such as "The Rebirthing of Pan" by Adrian Eckersley, "Pan's Pipes" by Robert Louis Stevenson, "Pan with Us" by Robert Frost, and "The Death of Pan" by Lord Dunsany. Some of the detailed illustrated depictions of Pan included in the volume are by the artists Giorgio Ghisi, Sir James Thornhill, Bernard Picart, Agostino Veneziano, Vincenzo Cartari, and Giovanni Battista Tiepolo.


title: Pan (god)

text: Pan's goatish image recalls conventional faun-like depictions of Satan. The similarities between conventional representations of Pan and the Devil were observed by the occultists Aleister Crowley and Anton Szandor LaVey, the latter of whom said in "The Satanic Bible":


title: Pan (god)

text: In 1933, the Egyptologist Margaret Murray published the book, "The God of the Witches", in which she theorised that Pan was merely one form of a horned god who was worshipped across Europe by a witch-cult. This theory influenced the Neopagan notion of the Horned God, as an archetype of male virility and sexuality. In Wicca, the archetype of the Horned God is highly important, as represented by such deities as the Celtic Cernunnos, Hindu Pashupati, and Greek Pan.


title: Pan (god)

text: A modern account of several purported meetings with Pan is given by Robert Ogilvie Crombie in "The Findhorn Garden" (Harper & Row, 1975) and "The Magic of Findhorn" (Harper & Row, 1975). Crombie claimed to have met Pan many times at various locations in Scotland, including Edinburgh, on the island of Iona and at the Findhorn Foundation.


title: Blue Ivy Carter

text: Blue Ivy Carter (born January 7, 2012) is an American singer. She is the first-born daughter of musicians Beyoncé and Jay-Z. Two days after her birth, "Time" dubbed Carter "the most famous baby in the world." That same day, her vocals were featured on the song "Glory", by her father Jay-Z, which earned her a Guinness World Record for being the youngest person to have a charted song on any "Billboard" chart. She has been the subject of depictions in media, including impersonations on "Saturday Night Live" and "RuPaul's Drag Race".


title: Blue Ivy Carter

text: In 2020, she was featured on "Brown Skin Girl", a single by her mother Beyoncé, alongside Wizkid and Saint Jhn. The song won her accolades including an NAACP Image Award; the BET Her Award, making her the youngest winner of a BET Award; and a Grammy Award for Best Music Video for the same song, which earned her another Guinness World Record for being the youngest individually credited Grammy Award winner, and the second youngest overall.


title: Blue Ivy Carter

text: On August 28, 2011, Beyoncé's pregnancy was announced during her performance of "Love On Top" at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards. She finished the performance by unbuttoning her blazer and rubbing her stomach to confirm the pregnancy. Blue Ivy Carter was born on January 7, 2012, to Beyoncé and Jay-Z at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, New York. CBS wrote Carter was "Arguably the world's most famous baby, aside from Prince George and North West", the eldest child of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West. Two days after her birth, "Time" dubbed Carter "the most famous baby in the world." Since her birth, her parents have "worked to secure trademarks of their daughter's name for everything, including books, shampoos, video games, and more." Beyoncé argued Carter is a "cultural icon" during the trademark process. Through her mother, Carter is a granddaughter of Tina Knowles and Mathew Knowles as well as a niece of singer Solange Knowles. Media attention has been focused on Carter from birth because of her famous parents and extended family. In 2018, Carter attended first grade at the Center for Early Education, a private school in West Hollywood, California.


title: Blue Ivy Carter

text: Dubbed the "New Princess of Pop" by "Rolling Stone", Carter was featured gurgling and crying on her father's single "Glory", a song released to celebrate her two days after her birth. Because of "Glory", Carter is the youngest person to ever chart on the "Billboard" charts.


title: Blue Ivy Carter

text: In 2015, Carter appeared as part of the choir on the Coldplay song "Up&Up" from their album "A Head Full of Dreams".


title: Blue Ivy Carter

text: In 2020, Carter sang on the track "Brown Skin Girl", earning accolades and awards for the performance. She was the youngest recipient of a BET Award when she received the BET Her Award. She was also awarded the Soul Train Music Award for The Ashford & Simpson Songwriter's Award, as well as the prize for Outstanding Duo, Group or Collaboration at the 2020 NAACP Image Award ceremony.


title: Blue Ivy Carter

text: In November 2020, Carter narrated Matthew A. Cherry's book "Hair Love" about an African American father doing his daughter's hair for the first time. "Variety" posited "there's a chance she could contend for a Grammy nomination for spoken word."


title: Blue Ivy Carter

text: In 2012, Hvar, Croatia named Carter an honorary citizen. Before Carter's birth, her parents had visited the town, where Beyoncé had first considered naming her Blue Ivy.


title: Blue Ivy Carter

text: In August 2014, Carter joined her father Jay-Z onstage at the MTV Video Music Awards, where they presented Beyoncé with the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award. Carter has continued to attend music award ceremonies with her parents, including the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards, where she made headlines for the cost of the clothing she wore.


title: Blue Ivy Carter

text: In January 2020, just before Carter's eighth birthday, rapper Megan Thee Stallion posted photos to her Instagram and Twitter of her, Beyoncé, and Carter. "Vanity Fair" writer K. Austin Collins and "Harper's Bazaar" web editor Violet Lucca criticized Carter's appearance. Both apologized and deleted their posts after backlash.


title: Blue Ivy Carter

text: In February 2012, "Saturday Night Live" parodied a baby Carter being sung to by Justin Timberlake playing Bon Iver. In January 2013, "Saturday Night Live" aired a parody of Carter and Beyoncé, where Carter's crib was "lined with one of Diana Ross's finest wigs."


title: Blue Ivy Carter

text: In 2018, Carter was the subject of an impersonation by drag queen The Vixen on the Snatch Game episode on Season 10 of "RuPaul's Drag Race". "Into" stated the characterization rested on "brat... without pushing Blue into more nuanced territory."


title: Finding Dory

text: Finding Dory is a 2016 American computer-animated comedy-drama adventure film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. Directed by Andrew Stanton, produced by Lindsey Collins and written by Stanton and Victoria Strouse, it is the sequel/spin-off to "Finding Nemo" (2003) and features the returning voices of Ellen DeGeneres and Albert Brooks, with Hayden Rolence (replacing Alexander Gould), Ed O'Neill, Kaitlin Olson, Ty Burrell, Diane Keaton, and Eugene Levy joining the cast. The film focuses on the amnesiac fish Dory (DeGeneres), who journeys to be reunited with her parents (Keaton and Levy).


title: Finding Dory

text: Disney planned to make a sequel to "Finding Nemo" since 2005, tasking its new studio Circle 7 Animation after disagreements with Pixar. While it never went into production, a script was uploaded to the official Raindance Film Festival website that includes elements of the unmade script. Disney's acquisition of Pixar in early 2006 led to the cancellation of Circle 7's version of the film. A Pixar-made sequel was announced in April 2013. The fictional Marine Life Institute depicted extensively in the film is based on the production team's research trips to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the Marine Mammal Center and the Vancouver Aquarium. Thomas Newman returned to compose the score.


title: Finding Dory

text: "Finding Dory" premiered at the El Capitan Theatre in Los Angeles on June 8, 2016, and was released in theaters in the United States on June 17. It was acclaimed by critics, garnering praise for its animation, emotional weight, voice acting and humor. It earned $1.029 billion worldwide, and became the third-highest-grossing film of 2016. At the time of its release, it was the 22nd-highest-grossing film of all time, and the fourth-highest-grossing animated film of all time during its theatrical run. "Finding Dory" set numerous box office records, including the biggest opening for an animated film in North America, and the highest-grossing animated film in North America.


title: Finding Dory

text: Dory, the regal blue tang, gets separated from her parents, Jenny and Charlie, as a child. As she grows up, Dory attempts to search for them, but gradually forgets them due to her short-term memory loss. Later, she joins Marlin the clownfish, looking for Nemo.


title: Finding Dory

text: One year after meeting Marlin and Nemo, Dory is living with them in their reef. One day, Dory has a flashback and remembers her parents. She decides to look for them, but her memory problem is an obstacle. She suddenly remembers that they lived at the "Jewel of Morro Bay, California" across the ocean when Nemo mentions the name.


title: Finding Dory

text: Marlin and Nemo accompany Dory on her journey. With the help of Crush, their sea turtle friend, they ride the California Current to California. Upon arrival, they explore a shipwreck full of lost cargo, where Dory accidentally awakens a giant Humboldt squid, who pursues them and almost devours Nemo. They manage to trap the squid in a large shipping container, and Marlin berates Dory for endangering them. Her feelings hurt, Dory travels to the surface to seek help where she is captured by staff members from the trio's nearby destination, the Marine Life Institute.


title: Finding Dory

text: Dory is placed in quarantine and tagged. There she meets a grouchy seven-legged octopus named Hank. Dory's tag marks her for transfer to an aquarium in Cleveland, Ohio. Hank, who fears being released back into the ocean, agrees to help Dory find her parents in exchange for her tag. In one exhibit, Dory encounters her childhood friend Destiny, a nearsighted whale shark, who used to communicate with Dory through pipes, and Bailey, a beluga whale, who mistakenly believes he has lost his ability to echolocate. Dory subsequently has flashbacks of life with her parents and struggles to recall details. She finally remembers how she was separated from her parents: she overheard her mother crying one night, left to retrieve a shell to cheer her up, and was pulled away by an undertow current out into the ocean.


title: Finding Dory

text: Marlin and Nemo attempt to rescue Dory. With the help of two lazy California sea lions named Fluke and Rudder and a common loon named Becky, they manage to get into the institute and find her in the pipe system. Other blue tangs tell them that Dory's parents escaped from the institute a long time ago to search for her and never came back, leaving Dory to believe that they have died. Hank retrieves Dory from the tank, accidentally leaving Marlin and Nemo behind. He is then apprehended by one of the employees and unintentionally drops Dory into the drain, flushing her out to the ocean. While wandering aimlessly, she comes across a trail of shells; remembering that when she was young, her parents had set out a similar trail to help her find her way back home, she follows it. At the end of the trail, Dory finds an empty brain coral with multiple shell trails leading to it. As she turns to leave, her parents arrive. They tell her they spent years laying down the trails for her to follow in the hopes that she would eventually find them.


title: Finding Dory

text: Marlin, Nemo, and Hank end up in the truck taking various aquatic creatures to Cleveland. Destiny and Bailey escape from their exhibit to help Dory rescue them. Once onboard the truck, Dory persuades Hank to return to the sea with her, and together, they hijack the truck and drive it over busy highways, creating havoc, before crashing it into the sea, freeing all the fish. Dory, along with her parents and new friends, returns to the reef with Marlin and Nemo. Hank begins to adapt a happy lifestyle in the ocean and also becomes a teacher for Nemo's school.


title: Finding Dory

text: In a post-credits scene, the Tank Gang (from "Finding Nemo"), still trapped inside their (now covered in algae) plastic bags, reach California one year after floating across the Pacific Ocean, where they are picked up by staff members from the Marine Life Institute.


title: Finding Dory

text: Prior to work on "Finding Dory", Disney had planned to make a "Finding Nemo" sequel without Pixar's involvement, through Circle 7 Animation, a studio Disney announced in 2005 with the intention to make sequels to Pixar properties. However, due to the 2006 acquisition of Pixar by Disney, Circle 7 was shut down by Disney without ever having produced a film. Although it never went into production, a script for the Circle 7 version was uploaded to the official Raindance Film Festival website. Elements of the unmade script included the introduction of Nemo's long-lost twin brother, Remy, and a storyline wherein Marlin is caught and must be saved.


title: Finding Dory

text: In July 2012, Andrew Stanton was announced as the director of a "Finding Nemo" sequel, with Victoria Strouse writing the script. That same month, Stanton examined the veracity of the news involving the potential sequel. That August, Ellen DeGeneres had entered negotiations to reprise her role of Dory, and in September, the film was confirmed by Stanton, saying: "What was immediately on the list was writing a second "Carter" movie. When that went away, everything slid up. I know I'll be accused by more sarcastic people that it's a reaction to "Carter" not doing well, but only in its timing, but not in its conceit." In February 2013, it was confirmed by the press that Albert Brooks would reprise the role of Marlin in the sequel.


title: Finding Dory

text: In April 2013, Disney announced the sequel, "Finding Dory", confirming that DeGeneres and Brooks would be reprising their roles as Dory and Marlin, respectively. Following a long campaign for a sequel on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show", DeGeneres stated:


title: Finding Dory

text: In a July 2013 interview with "Los Angeles Times", Stanton spoke of the sequel's origin: "There was polite inquiry from Disney [about a "Finding Nemo" sequel]. I was always 'No sequels, no sequels.' But I had to get on board from a VP standpoint. [Sequels] are part of the necessity of our staying afloat, but we don't want to have to go there for those reasons. We want to go there creatively, so we said [to Disney], 'Can you give us the timeline about when we release them? Because we'd like to release something we actually want to make, and we might not come up with it the year you want it.


title: Finding Dory

text: In a 2016 interview, Stanton stated how the film's story came to be; "I don't watch my films that often after they're done because I have to watch them so many times before they come out. So about 2010 when we were getting "Finding Nemo" ready for the 10-year re-release in 3D, it was interesting to watch again after all that time. Something kind of got lodged in the back of my brain and started to sort of stew. I started to think about how easily Dory could get lost and not find Marlin and Nemo again. She basically was in the same state that she was when Marlin found her. I didn't know where she was from. I knew that she had spent most of her youth wandering the ocean alone, and I wanted to know that she could find her new family, if she ever got lost again. It's almost like the parental side of me was worried." Stanton additionally stated: "I knew if I ever said "Finding Dory" or mentioned a sequel to "Finding Nemo" out loud, I'd be done, [T]here would be no way I'd be able to put that horse back in the barn. So I kept it very quiet until I knew I had a story that I thought would hold, and that was in early 2012. So I pitched it to John Lasseter and he was all into it. Then I got a writer, and once we had a treatment that we kind of liked, I felt comfortable calling Ellen."


title: Finding Dory

text: Stanton selected Victoria Strouse to write the screenplay. She later said, "It was always collaborative with Andrew, but really the screenwriting was me. Of course, Andrew would do passes, and he and I would brainstorm a lot together and then we would bring it to the group of story artists. People would weigh in and share ideas." She pointed to Dory's forgetfulness as a challenge when writing the script, adding, "You don't realize until you sit down to write a character who can't remember things how integral memory is to absolutely everything we do, and that's what creates a narrative that people can follow. When a main character can't self-reflect and can't tell a story, that character is very difficult to design because she can't really lead. To get her to be able to lead and to get an audience to be able to trust her was the hardest thing to do."


title: Finding Dory

text: The fictional Marine Life Institute depicted extensively in the film is based on the production team's research trips to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the Marine Mammal Center and the Vancouver Aquarium.


title: Finding Dory

text: The film's ending was revised after Pixar executives viewed "Blackfish", a 2013 documentary film which focuses on the dangers of keeping orca whales in captivity. Initially, some of the characters were to end up in a SeaWorld-like marine park, but the revision gave them an option to leave.


title: Finding Dory

text: Angus MacLane was one of the first people to whom Stanton revealed his idea for the sequel. Together, with Bob Peterson, they discussed about different ideas for places Dory would visit during her journey — one of those ideas was the touch pool sequence. Later, during the "Brave" (2012) wrap party, Stanton invited MacLane to join him in his first co-directing duty. Stanton described MacLane's role as a "jack of all trades", particularly utilizing his experience in animation and story, as well as in production, having created a few short films himself.


title: Finding Dory

text: In August 2015, at Disney's D23 Expo, it was announced that Hayden Rolence would voice Nemo, replacing Alexander Gould from the first film, whose voice had deepened since reaching adulthood (Gould voiced a minor character in the sequel instead). At the D23 expo they also announced that Ed O'Neill would be the voice of Hank.


title: Finding Dory

text: To make the light more realistic, RenderMan was completely re-engineered, its biggest change in 25 years.


title: Finding Dory

text: The film's soundtrack was composed by Thomas Newman and released on June 17, 2016. Louis Armstrong's version of "What a Wonderful World" is played during the scene in which fish are released into the ocean as the truck Dory and Hank are driving crashes into the water. On May 20, 2016, Sia performed a cover of Nat King Cole's "Unforgettable" on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" following an announcement that it would be featured in the film.


title: Finding Dory

text: "Finding Dory" premiered on June 8, 2016, at the El Capitan Theatre in Los Angeles. The film was originally scheduled for general release on November 25, 2015, but it was pushed back to June 17, 2016. In theaters, "Finding Dory" was accompanied by a short film, "Piper" (2016). The film was re-released for Labor Day Weekend on September 2.


title: Finding Dory

text: Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment released "Finding Dory" for digital release on October 25, 2016, and on Blu-ray (2D and 3D) and DVD on November 15. Physical copies contain behind-the-scenes featurettes, audio commentary, deleted scenes, and two shorts: "Piper" and "Marine Life Interviews"; it featured interviews with the inhabitants of the Marine Life Institute about their encounters with Dory. "Finding Dory" was released on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray on September 10, 2019.


title: Finding Dory

text: "Finding Dory" earned $486.3 million in the United States and Canada and $542.3 million in other countries, for a worldwide total of $1.029 billion. It was the third-highest-grossing film of 2016, the 22nd-highest-grossing film of all time, and the fourth-highest-grossing animated film of all time. It had a worldwide opening of $185.7 million, which is the sixth-biggest of all time for an animated film, and an IMAX global opening of $6.4 million. On August 16, it earned $900million in ticket sales, and on October 9, it passed the $1billion threshold. "Deadline Hollywood" calculated the film's net profit as $296.6 million, accounting for production budgets, marketing, talent participations, and other costs; box office grosses and home media revenues placed it fourth on their list of 2016's "Most Valuable Blockbusters".


title: Finding Dory

text: The film was released with "Central Intelligence" on June 17, 2016, in 4,305 theaters: 3,200 in 3D, approximately 100 in IMAX, and 425 in premium large format. "Finding Dory" earned $55million on its first day, including $9.2million from Thursday night previews—a record for both Pixar and any animated film. It was Fandango's top pre-selling animated film of all time, outselling the previous record-holder, "Minions" (2015). The film debuted earning $135.1million, a record for the highest opening weekend for an animated film, which was 93.8% above "Finding Nemo"s $70.3 million debut. "Finding Dory" also had the second-highest June opening weekend, behind "Jurassic World". It further broke the record for the biggest PLF and Cinemark XD opening for an animated film with $10.4 million and $2.6 million, respectively. In IMAX, it made $5 million from 211 theaters, the third-best animated IMAX opening behind "Zootopia" ($5.2 million) and "Toy Story 3" ($8.4 million).


title: Finding Dory

text: Following its record-breaking openings, it scored the biggest Monday for Pixar by grossing $19.6 million (breaking "Toy Story 3"s $15.6 million) and the best Monday in June for an animated film. However, among all animated films, it is ranked second—behind 2004's "Shrek 2", which made $23.4 million on its first Monday, and it is also the biggest Tuesday for an animated film with $23.2 million, besting "Minions" $16.8 million. It jumped 18.5% over its Monday gross, a rare achievement for a film. It crossed the $200 million mark in its first seven days, becoming the first (and fastest) animated film to pass this milestone in just a week. It fell only 46% in its second weekend earning $73 million to record the biggest second weekend for an animated film (breaking "Shrek 2"s $72.2 million previous record), the biggest for Disney and 2016 (surpassing ""s $72.6 million), and the eighth-biggest second weekend gross of all time overall. This was despite facing stiff competition from newcomer "". It crossed $300 million in 12 days—a new record for an animated film, surpassing the previous record held by "Shrek 2" and "Toy Story 3" (both of which took 18 days), and became the second animated film of 2016 (after "Zootopia"), the fourth Disney film of 2016, and the sixth overall film of the year to cross the milestone. It continued to dominate the box office for the third straight weekend, despite competitions from three new wide releases—"The Legend of Tarzan", "", and fellow Disney release "The BFG"—after witnessing a 42% decline to $41.8 million in three days and $51.4 million in four days, respectively, during the Independence Day holiday frame. This made it the second time in two years and just the third time since 1992, the July 4 holiday box office was topped by a film in its third weekend of release. It broke another record as it passed the $400 million mark in 21 days, which is the fastest for an animated film, the fastest of 2016, the fastest for the studio, and the fifth-fastest of all time overall. Moreover, it became the second film of 2016 (after "Captain America: Civil War"), the fifth animated film, the ninth film for the studio, and the twenty-fourth film overall to pass the milestone. On the following day (July 8), it became the highest-grossing film of the year in the United States and Canada. It dropped out of the top ten in its eighth week.


title: Finding Dory

text: Although the film was finally overtaken by "The Secret Life of Pets" (and "The Legend of Tarzan" in second place) in its fourth weekend, it nevertheless passed "The Lion King" to become the highest-grossing Disney animated film of all time in the same weekend, surpassing the latter which held the record for 15 non-consecutive years. In just 30 days, it overtook "Shrek 2" ($441.2 million) to become the highest-grossing animated film of all time, breaking the latter's record of 12 years. Four days later, on July 20, it became the first-ever animated film in cinematic history to cross the $450 million mark. As with its predecessor "Finding Nemo", the studio expanded the theater count for the film during Labor Day Weekend from 345 to 2,075.


title: Finding Dory

text: Worldwide, "Finding Dory" received a staggered release in a span of four months from June to September, with Germany being the last country. This was done in order to take advantage of key holidays and competitive dates around the world. It made an estimated $50.7million in its opening weekend in 29 countries. In its second weekend, it added $38.7 million from 37 markets, falling in third place behind "Independence Day: Resurgence" and "Now You See Me 2". In the same weekend along with its $73 million take in North America, the film helped Pixar cross the $10 billion mark worldwide since "Toy Story" (1995). By its fourth weekend, the animated film helped Disney push past the $3 billion mark internationally and $5 billion globally.


title: Finding Dory

text: It had the biggest opening for an animated film in Brazil ($7.1 million) and the Netherlands ($2.1 million), and the biggest of all time for a Disney animated or Pixar film in Australia ($7.7 million), the Philippines ($2.1 million), Singapore ($1.3 million), India ($1 million), Indonesia, Peru and Central America, and in Russia it opened with $3.2 million, and the second-biggest in the United Kingdom and Ireland ($10.7 million), Mexico ($9.4 million) and Argentina ($3.5 million), and Colombia ($2.1 million), behind "Monsters University". In the UK and Ireland, the film recorded the second-biggest animated opening of the year with £8.1 million ($10.7 million) from 580 theaters, behind only "The Secret Life of Pets". However, if previews are excluded, "Finding Dory" is ahead. Moreover, it also posted the second-biggest Disney/Pixar opening, behind only "Toy Story 3" (fourth-biggest if previews are included), and the seventh-biggest animated opening of all time overall based on pure Friday-to-Sunday gross alone. It added an additional 43 theaters in its second weekend, after which it added another £3.98 million ($5.1 million) at the weekend, thereby passing the £20 million mark in just 10 days (among Pixar films, only "Toy Story 3" reached £20 million faster). It made an impressive £8.15 million during weekdays, from Monday to Thursday resulting in a £2.03 million daily-average gross. According to "The Guardian", this was because of the school holidays that prevailed on the weekdays. Otherwise, family films earn the vast majority of their takings on Saturday and Sunday, and showtimes typically reduce on weekdays. It returned to the top of the box office in its fourth weekend and went on to become the highest-grossing film of the summer that year. In Brazil, in addition to recording the biggest Disney/Pixar opening ever, almost twice the previous record held by "The Good Dinosaur", it also set a new record for an all-time animated opening, on par with "Minions" in local currency. In South Korea, it had the biggest opening for a Pixar film with $7.1 million, which is also the second-biggest for a Disney animated film, behind "Frozen". In Japan, the film had a two-day weekend opening of $7 million on Saturday and Sunday from 511 screens on 571,000 admissions. For the entire three-day holiday weekend, including Marine Day on Monday July 18, the film earned $11 million on 922,000 admissions. This made it the top western release of the weekend and the biggest foreign opening-weekend in the country of that year. It had further number-one openings in Spain ($4.9 million), France ($4.7 million), Hong Kong ($1.9 million; $2.8 million including previews), Taiwan ($1.9 million), Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. It topped the box office in the Netherlands for three and in Spain and Australia for four consecutive weekends. In Italy, it scored the biggest animated opening of the year with $5.8 million.


title: Finding Dory

text: In China, where Pixar films have been struggling to find broad audiences and accrue lucrative revenues, the film was projected to make around $30 million in its opening weekend. The film ended up grossing $17.7 million—the highest Pixar opening in the country's history—debuting in second place behind "Warcraft". It surpassed "Monsters University" in just seven days to become the biggest Pixar film there with $38.1 million. It opened in Germany—its last market—on September 29, where the film delivered a robust opening of $8.4 million, the biggest for any film of 2016 in the country. The film continued to benefit from German Unity Day on October 3. It went on to top the box office there for three straight weekends, tying with "Inferno" in its third weekend.


title: Finding Dory

text: It is now the highest-grossing Disney animated or Pixar film in Australia (where it is also the second-highest-grossing animated film of all time behind "Shrek 2"), Bolivia, Brazil, Central America, Colombia, India, Indonesia, New Zealand, Peru, the Philippines, and Trinidad. It also became the second-highest-grossing Pixar release of all time in South Korea behind "Inside Out". Elsewhere, the film's top international markets were Japan ($66 million), followed by the UK ($56.3 million), China ($38.1 million), Australia ($36.3 million), and Brazil ($34.5 million).


title: Finding Dory

text: On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, "Finding Dory" holds an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of . Its critical consensus reads, "Funny, poignant, and thought-provoking, "Finding Dory" delivers a beautifully animated adventure that adds another entertaining chapter to its predecessor's classic story." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned "Finding Dory" a score of 77 out of 100 based on 48 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale, and PostTrak reported a 91% overall positive score and an 81% "definite recommend" among kids.