How the Big Bang Evolved into Life On Earth
Should we as humans expect to find intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe? There are many reasons for and against this concept, but first we should trace just how our terrestrial life started.
The beginning of time and the universe began with the Big Bang. This was an explosion that started the expansion of the universe. In the most basic sense, the standard model is simply the idea that every bit of the matter and energy in the universe was once compressed to an unimaginable density. In the big bang, the material exploded outward into the formation of matter that we see today. Shortly after this event everything in the universe was very dense and very hot. It was only until 500,000 years later that it cooled enough so that hydrogen and helium could form by fusion processes. Even then, it took another two billion years of cooling for enough clumps of interstellar dust and gas, called molecular clouds, to achieve stability in the universe.
From these molecular clouds, stars were able to form due to compression of the material by gravitational forces. In the core of a star fusion takes place that causes it to emit light. If the star is initially large enough, its death happens in the form of a supernova explosion. During this explosion, in less than one second, every element up to and including uranium is synthesized by fusion and dispersed into space. As time passed in the universe, the heavy element content as a whole increased, so new stars were more enriched.
Production of planets is an entirely different process. Planets form from the accretion disk surrounding newly formed stars. This material, comprised of dust and rock, collides and sticks together eventually gaining ...
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...ls. Or, we presently may have the technology, but since humans have only had the ability to send detectible waves (like radio) outward from the planet for the last 100 years or so, and taking into account the great distances these waves have to travel, it is quite possible that nothing intelligent has heard us yet. In my opinion, if indeed we are alone in this universe, wouldn't it just be a terrible waste of space?
Bibliography:
1. http://www.setileague.org/articles/little.htm
2. Ward, Peter D. and Brownlee, Donald. Rare Earth -- Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe. Copernicus, 2000
3. Kuhn, Karl F. In Quest of the Universe. 2nd Edition. West Publishing Company. 1994
4. http://www.u-net.com/ph/mas/home.htm
5. Hawking, Stephen. The Big Bang and Black Holes. Vol. 8. World Scientific Publishing Co. 1993
6. http://www.edventure.com
[9] Ward, Peter D.; Brownlee, Donald (2000). Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe. Copernicus Books (Springer Verlag). ISBN 0-387-98701-0.
A massive explosion at the beginning of the universe created everything, including living things. Stardust had scattered everywhere forming together to create planet earth and all biotic things. Tiny particles began to join together to form hydrogen and helium after the Big Bang. Further after, young stars began forming as clouds of gas and dust settled together with gravity. This caused them to heat up as they became denser, this formed stars. At the cores of the stars, hydrogen and helium nuclei fused together creating heavier elements. Almost every element on Earth was formed by this way. The light emitting from stars is the energy released from nuclear fusion. Elements such as Carbon and Iron, formed
Solar nebula is a rotating flattened disk of gas and dust in which the outer part of the disk became planets while the center bulge part became the sun. Its inner part is hot, which is heated by a young sun and due to the impact of the gas falling on the disk during its collapse. However, the outer part is cold and far below the freezing point of water. In the solar nebula, the process of condensation occurs after enough cooling of solar nebula and results in the formation into a disk. Condensation is a process of cooling the gas and its molecules stick together to form liquid or solid particles. Therefore, condensation is the change from gas to liquid. In this process, the gas must cool below a critical temperature. Accretion is the process in which the tiny condensed particles from the nebula begin to stick together to form bigger pieces. Solar nebular theory explains the formation of the solar system. In the solar nebula, tiny grains stuck together and created bigger grains that grew into clumps, possibly held together by electrical forces similar to those that make lint stick to your clothes. Subsequent collisions, if not too violent, allowed these smaller particles to grow into objects ranging in size from millimeters to kilometers. These larger objects are called planetesimals. As planetesimals moved within the disk and collide with one another, planets formed. Because astronomers have no direct way to observe how the Solar System formed, they rely heavily on computer simulations to study that remote time. Computer simulations try to solve Newton’s laws of motion for the complex mix of dust and gas that we believe made up the solar nebula. Merging of the planetesimals increased their mass and thus their gravitational attraction. That, in turn, helped them grow even more massive by drawing planetesimals into clumps or rings around the sun. The process of planets building undergoes consumption of most of the planetesimals. Some survived planetesimals form small moons, asteroids, and comets. The leftover Rocky planetesimals that remained between Jupiter and Mars were stirred by Jupiter’s gravitational force. Therefore, these Rocky planetesimals are unable to assemble into a planet. These planetesimals are known as asteroids. Formation of solar system is explained by solar nebular theory. A rotating flat disk with center bulge is the solar nebula. The outer part of the disk becomes planets and the center bulge becomes the sun.
Are we alone in the Universe? This has been the big question all semester. We know that life can develop in the universe because of our presence here, but there is no simple definition of life. There is an essential characteristic of life and that is the ability to reproduce. Dr. Frank Drake developed the SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence). Drake believed if extraterrestrial civilization were going to communicate with us, this would be the signal. Not every star is home to an intelligent, communicative civilization, but what keeps SETI going is the idea that perhaps some solar star is. To guide the SETI, the drake equation was established. (N=R*fp ne fl fi L) It is an
Stars are born in the interstellar clouds of gas and dust called nebulae that are primarily found in the spiral arms of galaxies. These clouds are composed mainly of hydrogen gas but also contain carbon, oxygen and various other elements, but we will see that the carbon and oxygen play a crucial role in star formation so they get special mention. A nebula by itself is not enough to form a star however, and it requires the assistance of some outside force. A close passing star or a shock wave from a supernova or some other event can have just the needed effect. It is the same idea as having a number of marbles on a trampoline and then rolling a larger ball through the middle of them or around the edges. The marbles will conglomerate around the path of the ball, and as more marbles clump together, still more will be attracted. This is essentially what happens during the formation of a star (Stellar Birth, 2004).
The Big Bang, the alpha of existence for the building blocks of stars, happened approximately fourteen billion years ago. The elements produced by the big bang consisted of hydrogen and helium with trace amounts of lithium. Hydrogen and helium are the essential structure which build stars. Within these early stars, heavier elements were slowly formed through a process known as nucleosynthesis. Nucleosythesis is the process of creating new atomic nuclei from pre-existing nucleons. As the stars expel their contents, be it going supernova, solar winds, or solar explosions, these heavier elements along with other “star stuff” are ejected into the interstellar medium where they will later be recycled into another star. This physical process of galactic recycling is how or solar system's mass came to contain 2% of these heavier elements.
The idea behind the Solar Nebular Hypothesis is that the solar system was condensed from an enormous cloud of hydrogen, helium, and a few other elements and rocks. Around five billion years this cloud of materials began to spin and contract together into a disk shape under their own gravitational forces. The particles started combined together, protoplanets, to eventually form planets. A great mass of the material eventually began to form together, protosun, and make up the sun.
After discovering the approximate age of the universe to be roughly 14 billion years old I was fascinated. To even try to fathom the idea that everything within the Universe has probably existed for such a vast amount of time is almost incomprehensible. It makes one wonder what our own significance is in this world which makes up a small amount of the Universe. Why were we even put here? Honestly, the Earth would probably be a lot happier if we were never put here because all we have done to this planet is destroy nature and use all of the natural resources available to us. So why are we apart of this vast scale of the Universe? Will mankind eventually discover more of the Universe and find other planets that are inhabitable? Similar questions were asked and answered in an essay written by Alan Lightman.
Around 15 billion years ago, a huge explosion occurred and it started the expansion of the universe. This explosion is known as the big bang. What existed before this event is completely unknown can only be speculated upon. The Big Bang basically involved an explosion of space within itself unlike a normal explosion of a bomb were fragments are thrown outward. The Big Bang then began laying the foundations for the universe. The first stars form 100-200 million years after the Big Bang, and reionized the Universe. After that, the first supernova exploded and spread nitrogen, oxygen, silicon, magnesium, carbon, and iron through uranium throughout the Universe. A supernova is a the explosion of a star, it is the largest explosion which takes place in space, radiating as much energy as the sun is supposed to in its entire life span. The solar system then formed 4.6 billion years ago.
Gravity collapsed the matter, forming the sun in the center of the nebula. As the sun came to be, the rest of the material began to clump up and small particles came together and became into bigger and better particles. Solar wind took light elements such as hydrogen and helium, and only left rocky materials such as earth. The solar winds led the rest of the materials to become into gas giants. This also led to asteroids, comets, planets, and moons to be created. Earths rocky core was made first with dense elements binded together. As dense material went to the middle, the lighter material was then made into the crust. Eventually, earths magnetic field was made and gravity took light elements. As Earth was evolving, earth was impacted by a large mass that made pieces of the planets mantle go into space. Gravity made it possible for these pieces to form the moon. The mantle under the crust caused plate tectonics and the movement of the large plates on the surface of earth. Such impacts and a lot of friction made mountains and volcanoes possible, which then began to throw gasses into the atmosphere. The planet was in a state where liquid water neither freezes nor evaporates but can remain as a liquid, the water remained at the surface, which was the key role in the development of life. According to a new theory, disk instability, clumps of dust and gas collided together early in life. Over
Giant clouds form around a star that creates pressure--nebula. Differences in temperature create a gravitational collapse which creates protostar
Baum et al. further point out that ETI could harm us intentionally as they could attack us out of selfishness or out of a more altruistic desire to protect the galaxy from us or harm us unintentionally as they might give us a biological or computer disease that our defences cannot handle (p.2122-2125). While there is some justification for this point of view but there are reasons to believe that extraterrestrials would be cooperative, ETI being more intelligent and intellectual beings would tend to choose cooperative options as a non-cooperative measure is a risky strategy and can hinder the evolutionary process ( Baum et al., 2011, p.2119) .Searching for life beyond the confines of our very own planet, Earth, has been an ongoing obsession by astronomers and merely detecting the existence of ETI can be beneficial because it will be such a monumental discovery - arguably the most important discovery in human history (Baum et al., 2011, p.2118; SETI, n.d., p.109). If ETI cooperates with us, then they might be of assistance to many of humanity’s biggest challenges such as poverty, global warming, and enlighten us to the truth of our existence.
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