What is the evidence that living things are made of stardust?
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
…show more content…
This explosion scatters different elements and stardust across the universe which now makes up planets such as Earth.
In 1973, Carl Sagan published “The Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective”. This book had included the following passage ‘Our Sun is a second- or third-generation star. All of the rocky and metallic material we stand on, the iron in our blood, the calcium in our teeth, the carbon in our genes were produced billions of years ago in the interior of a red giant star. We are made of star-stuff.’ Sagan had gathered significant amounts of research to create his book and the success of it has been remarkable. Living things have been created by the origins of the universe. According to Student Science (2014), Catherine Pilachowski claims that she feels a deep connection with cosmic objects most likely because everything in the human body is made from elements from stars. As an astronomer, Pilachowski has a deep connection with outer space and her anecdote and feelings are significant as a clear connection is shown between the universe and her body. National Geographic (2015) states that astrophysicist Karel Schrijver,
The development of atomic bomb boosted the level of understanding in terms of physics and chemistry of that particular time period. Physicists started to realize that stable nuclei can be converted to unstable nuclei. Through such process, they discovered that heavy nuclei can undergo nuclear fission. While testing, they added a neutron to an isotope of Uranium 235. This resulted Uranium 235 to become unstable and break down into Barium and Krypton, releasing two to three more neutrons. The breakdown of Uranium 235 is called “fission”. When the released neutrons attach to other isotopes of Uranium 235, this can result in a chain reaction of fission. For every generation of fission, the amount of fission is doubled, and this resulted in an extreme outburst of energy. The amount of energy released by this process is related to Einstein’s famous equation “E=mc^2” (Wolf).
All these effects were the cause of the discovery of nuclear fission and its properties. Nuclear Fusion Nuclear fusion is the process used by the sun and the stars in our solar system to produce their energy. Fusion involves smashing hydrogen atoms together at high velocities to form helium, and the matter is made into energy.
There is a fundamental dilemma that, presumably, each person faces as they begin to develop an understanding of their existence and identity which is something like, "What am I? Who am I? Where am I?" These questions are almost identical because they each address the same essential metaphysical issue of identity, "How and why Am I; why do I exist; what am I? What is the origin of I? Where am I going?" The answers to these difficult questions, whether intellectually satisfying or not, come in the form of cosmologies. Cosmologies create systems with which we understand the existence of the phenomenal world, and our own existence within it. They offer us a map, a concept, of our existence, tell us why we are here, where we are, and most often, where we are going. Of course, the most pervasive cosmologies are directly linked with particular religions, for religions are based upon the same issues: identity, origin, purpose, structure. However, this is not the domain of inquiry that I wish to pursue here, rather, I am interested in how the genre of Science Fiction creates, or recreates, cosmologies with which we might understand the universe and our individual meaning within it. How does SF create linguistic models of the cosmos, and what are the underpinnings of those cosmologies? If cosmological representations are created so that we can understand reality, in some sense, how is it done, and what questions do these cosmologies pose for the disciples thereof? I will look at two works in particular for this inquiry, Italo Calvino's short story cycle, Cosmicomics, and Pamela Zoline's short story, "The Heat Death of the Universe." I have chosen to focus my in...
For centuries, physicists and philosophers alike have wondered what makes up our universe. Aristotle thought that all matter came in one of four forms: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. Since then we have come a long way, with the discovery of the atoms and the subatomic particles they are made of. We can even guess at what makes up protons and neutrons. We have since then discovered and predicted the existence of particles other than the atom, such as the photon, neutrino, axion, and many others.
Stars explode at the end of their lifetime, sometimes when they explode the stars leave a remnant of gasses and, dust behind. What the gasses come together to form depend on the size of the remnant. If the remnant is less than 1.4 solar masses it will become a white dwarf, a hot dead star that is not bright enough to shine. If the remnant is roughly 1.4 solar masses, it will collapse. “The protons and electrons will be squashed together, and their elementary particles will recombine to form neutrons”. What results from this reaction is called a neut...
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.
energy it absorbed. Some of the released energy will go back to the earth and
Carl Sagan then begins going on how the stars go to supernova, planets also And he
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).
Water, H2O (-* H+ +OH- hydrogen ion and hydroxide ion. These ions participate in many important biochemical reactions. Ann Christensen,Arizona Biology Network). The most basic and most needed building block of life. It is also one of the most important, because there is no way we can live without it. If tomorrow all the fossil fuel in the world ran out, we could go any number of ways, but if the water all the water ran out tomorrow. We would be in a whole lot of trouble. With out water there would simply be now life on this planet. From the time the water of this planet started to cool the compounds we have today were forming. At about 3.55-4.55 billion years ago (scientist still can not agree stating the volatile condition of are young planet at the time due to volcanoes, earthquakes, comets, and asteroids. But when ever the first life form appeared which was cyanobacteria. The orinism was cyanobacteria a unicelluerl life form, from it came many other life forms, I do not know enough about the theory of the origins of life to go into further detail.
...ions happen. Supernovas give off many elements we have today including hydrogen and heavier elements such as iron. Supernovas also play a big role in creating new stars because the aftermath of the explosion creates an elemental environment for new interstellar reactions to occur. Discovery of a supernova was difficult at first, given the fact that most occur far away from our galaxy, but new technology now allow scientist to discover many supernova within may galaxies.
Croswell, K. The Alchemy of the Heavens: Searching for Meaning in the Milky Way. USA, Anchor Books, 1996. Print.
How life originated on earth is a question that people have wondered for ages. One possibility that answer this brilliant question is the panspermia theory, which suggests that life on earth originated thanks to the contribution of cosmic beings that come from any point in the universe. This hypothesis does not speak of organisms ranging in meteorites moving through the universe to the Earth to conquer it, but it speaks of complex chemical substances which had been formed earlier from the origins of the universe, which reached the earth at any given time.
Generally, the universe began as a composition of radiation and subatomic particles, which proceeded with galaxies formation. Galaxies are made up of hydrogen, helium, 100-200 billions of stars, planets and most having a black hole at the center, which attracts everything present in galaxies by force of gravity. Galaxies can be classified as either spiral (Milky Way- galaxy which human kind has been found to exist), elliptical, lenticular and irregular, where the structure is determined by neighboring galaxies with most galaxies are moving away from each other. Classification of galaxies is being conducted by online programs such as Galaxy zoo, using pictures from telescopes and is making significant progress.