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O, as origin

1. Author: Yannick Mahé, Gilles Macagno
2. Director: Yannick Mahé
3. Scientific Advisor: Marie-Christine Maurel
4. Editor: Yannick Mahé
5. Animation: Gilles Macagno
6. Music: Santangeli
7. Sound: Marie-Odile Dupont
8. Producer: Yannick Mahé
9. Production: SCEREN (CNDP)
10. France
11. 8 min.
12. 2008

The video O as Origin tells the funny story of Piccolina, a water molecule. 4 billion years ago she was in outer space, stuck in a big chunk of ice. Her ice cube had split from a comet and was racing through space. As billion of asteroids it orbited a bright star. Round and round, for a long time, asteroids were combining with one another into big blocks of ice and rocks... they combined into planets. And one of these big planets pulled Piccolina’s block, which landed on our planet. Here, as ice melted H2O molecules like Piccolina become liquid water, the elixir of life.
In water, Piccolina met molecules of all sorts, most of them made of carbon like methane, the famous CO2, and those made of carbon chains like the amino acids. Some were very complicated or extra long: they had formed on our planet or had come from space.
Soon she began to see more and more extravagant molecules, some really fantastic. Molecules were linking, combining and getting more and more complex.
Suddenly Piccolina was trapped inside a bubble of hydrophobes. She was not alone: all kinds of molecules were trapped with her, like amino acids, polymers, sugars. A cell was developing!
Very soon some big polymers started duplicating… the cell had split in two.
And that's how life began!