Meghan Rouillard, of LPAC's Basement Research team, has just completed a new translation of a paper by Vladimir Vernadsky, called "The Evolution of Species and Living Matter", from 1928. In this video, she reviews a central concept of this paper, called the biogenic migration of atoms, which refers to the transformation of material by life and the consequent restructuring of the environment. This process increases throughout evolution, in correlation with the upwards progression of species.

However, as Vernadsky shows, a new class of this action emerged with Man, who supersedes mere metabolism, achieving a far greater transformation of material and his environment with his powers of thought, of the type which would be manifested by great projects such as NAWAPA and the manned colonization of space.