This paper introduces the Primordial Hydrogen Continuum — a conceptual framework uniting cosmology, geochemistry, and evolutionary biology under a single physical principle: that hydrogen is the fundamental bridge between energy and structure.
From the earliest quantum asymmetry to the formation of stars, planets, and life, hydrogen serves not as a by-product of cosmic evolution, but as its organizing medium.
Building upon Dr. Vladimir Larin’s Primordially Hydridic Earth Hypothesis, this study reinterprets the Earth not as a depleted stone, but as a hydrogen-rich, self-regulating system — a planetary continuation of stellar metabolism. In this context, geological degassing represents the planet’s inner respiration, linking deep mantle processes to the biosphere and atmosphere across billions of years.
This framework provides a testable bridge between cosmology and geoscience, potentially verifiable through isotopic hydrogen ratios (³He/⁴He, D/H) and field studies of mantle degassing.
The Primordial Hydrogen Continuum describes a cyclic architecture:
Energy → Primordial Hydrogen → Stars → Earth → Life → Mind → Energy.
It positions hydrogen as the carrier of continuity between thermodynamics, geology, and consciousness — the same process expressed at different scales and speeds.
This framework may be empirically testable through deep hydrogen exploration, isotopic analysis, and mantle exhalation studies — bridging conceptual cosmological model with applied geoscience. The upcoming Hydrogen Age® exploration campaign in Spain aims to provide the first empirical validation of this continuum through field isotopic studies.
Statement of Implications
Recognizing hydrogen as the organizing principle of matter and mind redefines humanity’s role in the energetic ecosystem — marking the beginning of a new, self-aware phase of planetary thermodynamics.
The following sections trace this continuum from the quantum birth of hydrogen to the emergence of mind, forming an unbroken energetic lineage of the Universe becoming aware of itself.
Introduction
«The universe does not create hydrogen — it remembers itself through it»
For more than a century, planetary science and cosmology have treated hydrogen primarily as a product — the residue of formation, the fuel of stars, the trace gas of geologic reactions. Yet Dr. Vladimir Larin’s Primordially Hydridic Earth Hypothesis proposed a radically different view: that hydrogen is not an effect, but a foundation — the structural and energetic substrate of planetary evolution itself. According to this model, Earth formed as a hydrogen-saturated body, whose slow degassing through mantle and crust continues to shape its geodynamics, atmosphere, and biosphere. This reinterpretation challenges both the traditional cosmological and geochemical paradigms. In cosmology, it suggests that hydrogen’s role extends beyond stellar combustion — it serves as the connective medium between energy and form, matter and life. In geoscience, it implies that planetary activity, including volcanism and magnetic field generation, arises from a persistent internal flux rather than residual heat.
The Primordial Hydrogen Continuum builds upon this foundation, linking cosmogenesis, planetary evolution, and biological emergence into a single energetic lineage. It reframes hydrogen not merely as a chemical element, but as the memory of energy itself — a principle of organization that unites quantum asymmetry, geological respiration, and biological consciousness within one continuous cycle.
In this sense, the Primordial Hydrogen Continuum is not merely a theoretical construct but an observable planetary process. Deep hydrogen fluxes, isotopic gradients, and mantle exhalation patterns provide measurable evidence of this continuity — a living bridge between cosmology and geoscience. By framing hydrogen as both origin and vector of energy evolution, this concept opens a new era in planetary energetics: one where humanity, for the first time, begins to act not as a consumer of energy, but as its conscious expression.
Essay structure
I. Before the Beginning
II. From Energy to Matter
III. Stellar Architecture: The Birth of Elements
IV. The Hydridic Earth: When the Cosmos Solidified
V. Hydrogen and the Origins of Life
VI. Autopoiesis and Consciousness
VII. The Primordial Hydrogen Continuum: Energy, Matter, and Return to Source
VIII. Epilogue: The Role of Humanity in the Continuum
I. Before the Beginning
The universe did not begin with fire, but with balance. Before light or time existed, there was only a dense symmetry — an even field of potential energy, perfectly still, neither empty nor full. Modern physics calls it the quantum vacuum, yet even the word vacuum is misleading; it was not “nothing,” but a restless equilibrium, flickering with micro-fluctuations of energy and space. At some imperceptible instant, that equilibrium fractured. A quantum fluctuation broke symmetry — a pulse that failed to cancel itself out. From that imbalance, direction was born, and with direction came time.
“Entropy is how the universe learned to move.”
The newborn cosmos expanded in a billionth of a second; temperature soared above 10³² K, and density reached 10⁹⁴ g/cm³ — the pressure of existence itself. Energy, once uniform, began to differentiate: pure waves condensed into particles, and the first grammar of matter appeared. I see this moment not as creation, but as transition — the first conversion of symmetry into architecture. Energy didn’t arise; it merely changed its state, entering the long spiral we call existence. Every galaxy, atom, and human thought is a ripple of that first asymmetry, still unfolding its geometry billions of years later.
“Energy did not begin; it became aware that it could flow.”
Sources:
• Penrose, R. Cycles of Time: An Extraordinary New View of the Universe. Oxford University Press (2010).
• Guth, A. The Inflationary Universe. Perseus Books (1997).
• Prigogine, I. The End of Certainty: Time, Chaos, and the New Laws of Nature. Free Press (1997).
• Hawking, S. & Mlodinow, L. The Grand Design. Bantam Books (2010).
• Larin, V.N. The Primordially Hydridic Earth Hypothesis. Moscow: Nedra, 1980.
II. From Energy to Matter
As the newborn universe expanded, energy began to cool — not in the sense of temperature, but in complexity. Waves that once filled every direction started folding into themselves. In those folds, the first particles took shape — quarks, leptons, photons — the syllables of the future periodic table. At roughly one second of cosmic age, the density fell enough for protons and neutrons to combine. In the next three minutes, through a process we now call primordial nucleosynthesis, hydrogen was born — the first stable architecture of matter, the universe’s simplest form of order.
“Hydrogen was the first decision the universe ever made.”
To me, that moment marks the beginning of structure — when the universe realized that energy could last longer by holding itself together. Hydrogen was not just an atom; it was an idea — a way for energy to remember itself. Within that simplicity lay everything to come: stars, planets, life, thought. Hydrogen was not the end of chaos; it was chaos choosing rhythm.
“Matter is energy that has learned patience.”
As the universe expanded and cooled, hydrogen clouds grew vast enough for gravity to sculpt them into stars. And so began the great alchemy of existence: energy transforming into form, form collapsing into light, and light returning again to energy — an endless choreography in which stability itself became creative.
Sources:
• Weinberg, S. The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe. Basic Books (1977).
• Alpher, R.A., Bethe, H., & Gamow, G. The Origin of the Chemical Elements. Physical Review (1948).
• Kolb, E.W. & Turner, M.S. The Early Universe. Addison-Wesley (1990).
• Prigogine, I. The End of Certainty: Time, Chaos, and the New Laws of Nature. Free Press (1997).
• Larin, V.N. The Primordially Hydridic Earth Hypothesis. Moscow: Nedra, 1980.
III. Stellar Architecture: The Birth of Elements
Gravity was the first artist. It gathered the diffuse hydrogen clouds, compressing them into dense spheres where pressure and temperature soared high enough to ignite a new kind of order — fusion. At 15 million degrees Kelvin, hydrogen nuclei began to merge, forming helium and releasing light. Stars were born — not as decorations in the sky, but as engines of transformation, the true laboratories of existence.
“Stars are how hydrogen learns complexity.”
Inside those furnaces, simplicity was burned into richness. Helium became carbon, oxygen, silicon, iron — the alphabet of everything that would later breathe, shine, or think. Each star lived by a fragile balance: radiation pushing outward, gravity pulling inward. When that balance failed, collapse began. For the largest stars, the final act came with brutal beauty. Once iron accumulated in the core — an element that could no longer yield energy through fusion — the star imploded under its own weight. In less than a second, its core crushed, then rebounded outward with unimaginable force: a supernova, an explosion brighter than entire galaxies.
“Creation is not gentle. It comes with collapse.”
In that fraction of cosmic time, the periodic table expanded — gold, uranium, copper, silver, and every heavier element were forged in the chaos of the blast. What looked like destruction was, in truth, a redistribution of potential. I often think of these stellar deaths as a kind of cosmic recycling — matter returning to energy, energy returning to possibility. Every atom in our bodies was once flung from the heart of a dying star. Each of us is, quite literally, the memory of a supernova made stable.
“We are the ashes of stars that learned endurance.”
Sources:
• Eddington, A.S. The Internal Constitution of the Stars. Cambridge University Press (1926).
• Bethe, H.A. Energy Production in Stars. Physical Review (1939).
• Hoyle, F. Nucleosynthesis and the Origin of Elements. Astrophysical Journal Supplement (1954).
• Prigogine, I. The End of Certainty: Time, Chaos, and the New Laws of Nature. Free Press (1997).
• Larin, V.N. Our Earth: Its Origin, Structure and Evolution. Canada: Universal Publishers, 2005.
IV. The Hydridic Earth: When the Cosmos Solidified
When the stars scattered their ashes, they left behind not emptiness but ingredients. From the debris of countless supernovae, new worlds began to coalesce. Among them — a small, dense planet orbiting a modest yellow star, rich in metals, pressure, and memory. That planet would one day be called Earth. As molten matter cooled, heavier elements — iron, nickel, titanium — sank toward the center, while lighter silicates floated upward, forming the early crust and mineral scaffolding on which, much later — after the first hydrogen degassing — the atmosphere and oceans would emerge. But not all hydrogen escaped into space. A portion remained trapped within metallic lattices, bonded to the inner core’s minerals in the form of metal hydrides — tiny prisons of primordial hydrogen, waiting patiently for geological time to set them free.
“Earth’s heart still breathes hydrogen from the age of stars.”
Dr. Vladimir Larin’s Primordially Hydridic Earth Hypothesis suggested that our planet was born not as a dry stone, but as a hydrogen-saturated body — its mantle, a vast pressurized reservoir slowly exhaling over eons. According to this view, degassing is not a side effect of volcanism; it is volcanism — the inner respiration of a living planet.This hydrogen flux shaped everything: it created redox gradients that powered early chemistry, heated the crust, drove tectonics, and magnetized the core. Our continents drift not merely on molten rock, but on a slow, continuous exhalation of the cosmos itself.
“We walk upon a breathing planet.”
Sometimes I imagine Earth as a stabilized star — a frozen continuation of cosmic metabolism. The same reactions that once burned in the hearts of suns now whisper beneath our feet, fusing the story of the universe into geology.
Sources:
• Larin, V.N. The Primordially Hydridic Earth Hypothesis. Moscow: Nedra, 1980.
• Larin, V.N. Our Earth: Its Origin, Structure and Evolution. Canada: Universal Publishers, 2005.
• Gold, T. The Deep, Hot Biosphere: The Myth of Fossil Fuels. Springer (1999).
• Herndon, J.M. Whole-Earth Decompression Dynamics. Current Science (2006).
• Arndt, N.T., Nisbet, E.G. Processes on the Early Earth. Science (2012).
• Sleep, N.H. Geological and Geochemical Constraints on Early Earth Hydrogen Degassing. Astrobiology (2011).
V. Hydrogen and the Origins of Life
Hydrogen never stopped shaping the planet — it merely changed its stage. As it rose from the mantle through deep fractures, it met carbon and oxygen, sparking reactions that would one day define biology. The boundary between geochemistry and biochemistry blurred; rocks began to breathe chemistry. In hydrothermal systems — those mineral cathedrals beneath the ancient seas — hydrogen served as both fuel and also as architect. Its steady exhalation from the crust created strong redox gradients: natural batteries capable of driving synthesis far from equilibrium. Where most forms of energy dissipate, hydrogen persisted, feeding reactions that could organize themselves, replicate, evolve.
“Life was not a miracle; it was hydrogen finding rhythm.”
I see the first cells not as accidents of chemistry, but as organized responses to hydrogen flow. Energy sought continuity, and matter obliged — forming membranes to hold the gradient, catalysts to harvest it, and codes to remember the pattern. Life, in this sense, was not created; it was stabilized. A long breath of hydrogen that learned to last.
“Every living system is a continuation of hydrogen degassing — slowed, coded, and aware.”
Even today, deep microbial ecosystems feed on mantle hydrogen. Life began where the planet exhaled —and perhaps, it still does.
Sources:
• Russell, M.J. & Martin, W. “The Emergence of Life from FeS Bubbles at Alkaline Hydrothermal Vents.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B (2004).
• Sleep, N.H., Bird, D.K. & Pope, E.C. “Paleoproterozoic Hydrogen-Based Ecosystems.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2011).
• Lang, S.Q. et al. “Deep Hydrogen-Driven Subsurface Life.” Nature Geoscience (2010).
• Schulte, M. et al. “Serpentinization and Its Implications for Life on Early Earth and Other Planets.” Astrobiology (2006).
• Larin, V.N. The Primordially Hydridic Earth Hypothesis. Moscow: Nedra, 1980.
VI. Autopoiesis and Consciousness
Every organism is a negotiation with entropy — a temporary island of order carved from the universe’s continual drift toward equilibrium. Life does not resist decay; it delays it, converting flow into form, form into memory, and memory into purpose.
“Life is hydrogen organizing itself into time.”
At its essence, life is autopoietic — self-creating and self-sustaining. Each cell maintains its boundary, repairs its structure, and renews its components, using hydrogen as its oldest energy vector. From the first microbial membranes to the neurons firing in the human brain, the same process continues: energy crossing a gradient, stabilizing form, and creating awareness. I see consciousness not as a separate phenomenon but as an evolved continuity. When energy flows long enough through self-organizing matter, it begins to notice itself. Awareness is not an anomaly within physics — it is physics, in the act of remembering itself.
“Consciousness is the moment when energy pauses to observe its own flow.”
Hydrogen, having once ignited the stars and birthed the oceans, now fuels thought — the final, most delicate combustion. In every heartbeat, every synapse, the same hydrogen atoms that once drifted through the nebulae now participate in reflection, bridging the cosmic and the cognitive.
“We do not think about the universe; the universe thinks through us.”
Sources:
• Maturana, H.R. & Varela, F.J. Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living. (MIT Press, 1980).
• Prigogine, I. Order Out of Chaos. (Bantam, 1984).
• Dyson, F. Origins of Life. (Cambridge University Press, 1999).
• Schrödinger, E. What is Life? (Cambridge University Press, 1944).
• Varela, F.J. “Patterns of Life: Intertwining Identity and Cognition.” Brain and Cognition (1997).
VII. The Primordial Hydrogen Continuum: Energy, Matter, and Return to Source
Everything that exists is moving between two conditions —potential and form, energy and awareness. Hydrogen is the bridge between them: the simplest atom, the most abundant element, and the universal mediator of transformation.
“Hydrogen is not fuel — it is the memory of motion.”
From the first stars to living cells, from magma to thought, hydrogen threads through every process — a single pulse flowing through different scales of reality. It is the scaffolding of existence: the same electron that ignited the Sun also fires in a neuron. When I think of this continuum, I no longer see separation between physics, biology, and consciousness.They are not different domains but different speeds of the same event — energy learning form, form learning reflection. Hydrogen is the language in which the universe writes its autobiography.
“What we call life is simply hydrogen slowing down enough to dream.”
Eventually, the universe will cool; galaxies will drift apart; hydrogen itself will stretch thin across an expanding void. But even that is not an ending. In deep time, energy returns to equilibrium, and from that balance, a new fluctuation will emerge — a new asymmetry, a new universe, a new hydrogen. The breath resumes.
“The universe does not repeat — it rehearses eternity.”
In this cyclic vision, nothing is wasted. Energy becomes matter, matter becomes mind, and mind, by understanding the pattern, allows energy to know itself again. The circle closes. And perhaps that is what consciousness was always meant to do — to close the circle by remembering its source.
Sources:
• Penrose, R. Cycles of Time: An Extraordinary New View of the Universe. (Bodley Head, 2010).
• Steinhardt, P. & Turok, N. “A Cyclic Model of the Universe.” Science (2002).
• Coleman, S. & De Luccia, F. “Gravitational Effects on and of Vacuum Decay.” Physical Review D (1980).
• Prigogine, I. The End of Certainty. (Free Press, 1997).
• Larin, V.N. The Primordially Hydridic Earth Hypothesis. Moscow: Nedra, 1980.
VIII. Epilogue: The Role of Humanity in the Continuum
We are used to thinking of ourselves as the pinnacle of evolution — yet perhaps we are merely a new state of hydrogen. Not an atom, not a molecule, but a conscious structure through which the Universe first becomes aware of its own energy.
“Humanity is the form through which hydrogen learns to think.”
We are not spectators of the cycle — we are its continuation. Our bodies, our thoughts, even our technologies — all are extensions of the same breath that once ignited the stars and kindled life in the depths of the ancient Earth. Every power plant, every neuron, every photon glowing in a screen — each is a different modulation of the same flow. And today, for the first time in history, humanity approaches the understanding of this connection. We are ceasing to extract energy from nature and beginning to act in resonance with it. Hydrogen — which for billions of years has created and sustained life — is becoming our conscious partner. We return to the source — not in a circle, but along a spiral: at a new level of awareness, where technology and nature cease to be antagonists.
“The energy that once gave birth to life can now be understood by life itself.”
The world stands at the threshold of a transition — from the age of combustion to the age of comprehension, from extraction to resonance. If the Stone Age began with fire, then the Age of Primordial Hydrogen will begin with awareness — the recognition that energy and mind are inseparable, that humanity is not the master of the planet, but a phase of its own self-reflection.
“To understand hydrogen is to understand the Universe — and to understand the Universe is, for the first time, to understand ourselves.”
Sources:
• Larin, V.N. The Primordially Hydridic Earth Hypothesis. Moscow: Nedra, 1980.
• Lovelock, J. Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth. Oxford University Press (1979).
• Vernadsky, V.I. Scientific Thought as a Planetary Phenomenon. (1945).
• Teilhard de Chardin, P. The Phenomenon of Man. (1955).
• Prigogine, I. The End of Certainty: Time, Chaos, and the New Laws of Nature. Free Press (1997).
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