The Universe, like the heart of a giant Organism, pulsates with a frequency of a trillion trillion years, contracting and expanding, giving life to stars, planets, atoms, elementary particles... How this heart beat is a mystery hidden in the depths of the past... When and whether it will stop - the answer lies in the foreseeable future... What forces control the life of this Organism? What is its evolution, what happened in the past, how to understand the present, what to expect in the future? The authors of the book “Quintessence” reflect on this: one of the leading physicists, Doctor of Science, Honored Worker of Science and Technology of the USSR, laureate of the USSR State Prize, author of a number of discoveries and inventions - Professor Mark Efremovich Zhabotinsky and a famous writer, author of scientific and fiction books about outstanding scientists, about the discoveries and misconceptions of science: “Crazy” ideas”, “Transformations of the hyperboloid of engineer Garin”, “The collapse of paradoxes”, “Quanta and Muses”, “Axel Berg - the man of the 20th century”, “People and Robots”, the trilogy “Premonitions and Accomplishments” / “Great Mistakes”, “Ghosts”, Unity”/, “Cursed Questions” - Irina Lvovna Radunskaya. The book “Quintessence” - not fiction, not speculation. This is a documentary story about the discoveries of real people: physicists, mathematicians, astronomers, astrophysicists. People who are daring, courageous, and perspicacious, who ask questions of Nature, which, while resisting, she cannot help but answer...