Posted on 01/07/2004 2:10:38 AM PST by kattracks
ATLANTA (AP) — The first stars after the Big Bang were immense, superhot giants that lived briefly and then exploded as brilliant supernovae, but they seeded the universe with basic elements that were the building blocks for the sun and the Earth, and for life itself, according to a new study.Current theory holds that the universe began with the Big Bang, an event that caused space to expand in a fraction of a second from a tiny speck to an immensity bathed in heat and radiation. It took an estimated 300 million years for the universe to cool and for the first stars to form from hydrogen and helium.
But those were far different from the Earth's star, the sun, and most other stars in the universe now.
"The stars were simple, pure hydrogen and helium," said Volker Bromm, an astronomer for the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. And the universe was "smooth and boring." The vital ingredients that eventually turned the universe into a complex and lively place did not then exist.
Bromm and Abraham Loeb, also of Harvard-Smithsonian, used supercomputers to model the cycles of star formation that occurred after the Big Bang. They reported their findings Tuesday at the national meeting of the American Astronomical Society.
Those early stars were immense, extremely hot and very short-lived. After just a few million years, they collapsed and exploded as supernovae.
In that violence were created the heavier elements "that completely changed the universe," said Bromm. Elements from oxygen to carbon to iron were blasted into space where they eventually became part of a new generation of stars.
The next generation of stars were rich in carbon and oxygen, but had little iron. These stars shone longer than the first generation, but spent a long, lonely existence, with no planets.
"These stars were like the sun, but a very lonely sun," said Bromm. There was still not enough heavy metals to form planets, he said, and those stars "would live and die in solitude."
Supernovae continued to explode, seeding the universe with more and more heavy metals. Eventually, there were enough of these metals to create long-lived stars and for planets to accrete into their orbits. On at least one planet, the Earth, all the ingredients came together in the right place and time for life to evolve.
"The window for life opened sometime between 500 and 2 billion years after Big Bang," Loeb said in a statement.
Precisely when conditions were right for planets is still a mystery, Bromm said.
"The threshold for planet formation is still a question and we don't know the answer as yet," he said.
But what is clear, said Bromm, is the role those very early stars played in the universe of today.
"We owe our existence in a very direct way to all the stars whose life and death preceded the formation of our sun," he said. "And this process started right after the Big Bang with the very first stars."
The solar system may not be the only place it happened. More than 100 extra-solar planets — planets orbiting stars other than the sun — have been discovered. All of these planets orbit stars that are rich in heavy metals, supporting the idea that stars with heavy elements are more likely to have families of planets.
Always was. That's the trouble with your limited mind.
I think we've gone around on this previously. I've always been fascinated (a persistent itch) about the nature of Time. I convinced myself that the "flow" or passage of time is an illusion.
I've read many books on the nature of time and always end up more confused than when I started. Julian Barbour's The End of Time is the last one I've read. He, too says the passage of time is an illusion but his argument seems circular to me; it seems to require a 'meta-time' which looks, smells, tastes, and feels exactly like time.
The mathematician Rudy Rucker once asked Kurt Godel: "What is the cause of the illusion of the passage of time?" Godel answered elliptically, not directly addressing the question; but he did not question the premise (that the passage of time is an illusion).
--Boris
Yeah, and when they dig up the video of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, I'll believe that too! :-)
Evolution claims that change in DNA caused all life as we know it today. Where did the first DNA come from? What is being changed? Please don't try to cop out with the same old excuse that evolution does deal withthe origin of life...it does...and it has no answer!
When God said let there be light, from whence did the light come?
More than 100 extra-solar planets — planets orbiting stars other than the sun — have been discovered. All of these planets orbit stars that are rich in heavy metals, supporting the idea that stars with heavy elements are more likely to have families of planets.
The above makes no sense: most stars today around which we have found extra-solar planets are going to be be rich in heavy metals because all the heavy-metal-challenged stars are either long since burned out (as per the article) or are located in places like globular clusters, which are found in a spherical distribution surrounding the galactic center, which is too far away for us to find extra solar planets, even if they were to exist there. Hence, the only place we will find extra-solar planets is in nearby stars (because of the technical difficulting in detecting them), and virtually all nearby stars will be heavy-metal rich.
Our am I missing something?
As has already been pointed out, the entire article seems to be a rehash of previously-known material. However, there is some merit in pointing out that all planets thus far discovered orbit 2nd or 3d generation stars -- even if the authors didn't intend to make the point. It's factual support for the previously formulated theory of how such things happen. It would be a stunning blow to our understanding if we were to find a planet orbiting around a 1st generation star -- if such were within observational limits.
Maybe you could start doing a double ping.
The second to advise the post number at which the science thread has been highjacked by supernaturalists.
That way the rest of us wouldn't waste time reading the remainder of the thread.
If it's already been highjacked by your first ping,
put the post number advise in your ping and a second wouldn't be needed.
It's to bad we don't have a "science" forum, but I doubt the supernaturalists would leave it alone.
I can't! I used to know, but I lost my notes. Seriously, I've never claimed to know. Nor does Evolutionary Theory.
BTW - Many evolutionists discuss this issue...
Alot of people discuss origins. That still doesn't mean it's part of Evolution.
Please don't try to cop out with the same old excuse that evolution does deal withthe origin of life...it does...and it has no answer!
No. Wrong. You are either ignorant of Evolutionary Theory or purposely dishonest. Now why is that?
I probably ping enough as it is. If I discover a thread which seems to be overwhelmed by supernaturalists, and it's late in the game, I probably won't bother to ping the evolution & science list. No harm in letting the other side have a thread to themselves. But this thread was still in its early stages, so it seemed possible that something could be done with it.
But you're probably right about this thread. It wasn't a good enough article for me to bother the list.
His miracle however was not that of a sovereign personal Creator, but of a clever universe that somehow is able to do the impossible. In a recent article in New Scientist,2 Davies proposes a new solution to the problem of the origin of life — a quantum computer.
He acknowledges at the outset that, despite the continuing claims of Nobel Prize winning evolutionists, the known laws of physics, chemistry and biology do not explain the origin of life. The theory of chemical evolution that stemmed from Miller and Urey’s 1953 production of amino acids from an electric discharge in a mixture of oxygen-free gases ‘did not stand up to scrutiny’. While the Miller-Urey work has shown that ‘amino acids are written into the laws of nature, large and highly specialised molecules such as proteins are certainly not. … Throwing energy at amino acids will not create delicate chain molecules, just as putting dynamite under a pile of bricks won’t make a house.’
He goes on: ‘We now know that the secret of life lies not with the chemical ingredients as such, but with the logical structure and organisational arrangement of the molecules. … Like a supercomputer, life is an information processing system. … It is the software of the living cell that is the real mystery, not the hardware.’ But where did it come from? Davies framed the question this way: ‘How did stupid atoms spontaneously write their own software? … Nobody knows …’. In a materialist world (one without any supernatural Creator), the only world that Davies recognises, there are only two possibilities — chance and determinism. Determinism is the idea that there is ‘an in-built bias — even a conspiracy — in nature to create life’. But Davies points out that there is no evidence of such bias in the laws of physics, chemistry and biology. He rules out chance, because the odds against the chance formation of the complex organisation of life ‘are breathtakingly huge’.
He therefore turns his attention to the nature of information. He acknowledges that ‘biological information is not encoded in the laws of physics and chemistry … (and it) cannot come into existence spontaneously. … There is no known law of physics able to create information from nothing.’ So he proposes that ‘there might be some sort of principle that could explain how information can be garnered from the environment and accumulated in macromolecules.’ He considers ‘molecular Darwinism’ as a possible mechanism, the idea that natural selection could occur at the molecular level, but he then dismisses it because natural selection only works on living self-reproducing systems. And he also acknowledges the important point that imperfect molecular machinery would scramble information.
His vote goes to the recently discovered and little understood realm of quantum computing. A quantum computer can theoretically produce all possible solutions to a problem simultaneously. In practice, it would be ‘exponentially faster than classical systems’ at processing information. His argument is as follows. ‘The riddle of biogenesis is essentially computational in nature — discovering a very special type of molecular system from among a vast decision tree of chemical alternatives, most branches of which represent biological duds.’ That is, if there were a soup of molecular building blocks that could assemble themselves into macromolecules, a quantum computer could quickly calculate which ones would be biologically useful, and in what role and configuration. He does not say how this might happen, and ends the article at this point.
In summary, Davies has not contributed anything new to the origin-of-life debate. Refreshingly, he does acknowledge that chemical evolution provides no explanation at all, ...His latest attempt seems to be nothing more than grasping at a straw that might just hold the case together for evolution. It is therefore a tacit acknowledgment that otherwise, the evolutionary cupboard is bare.
References
1. Davies, P., The Fifth Miracle, Penguin, Melbourne, Australia, 1998.
2. Davies, P., Life force, New Scientist 163(2204):27–30, September 18, 1999.
3. Thaxton, C.B., Bradley, W.L., and Olsen, R.L., The Mystery of Life’s Origin: Reassessing Current Theories(not available in all stores), Lewis & Stanley, Dallas, USA, 1984; see also Q&A: Origin of Life. R
The Planetary Biology Program is chartered to investigate the origin and evolution of life. This research combines the talents of biologists, chemists, physicists, geologists, and astronomers into a multidisciplinary program which utilizes NASA's unique capabilities for technology, space flight, and exploration.
This Program's major areas of research address the chemistry of biologically important elements and compounds in interstellar space and in the solar system, the processes on the prebiotic Earth leading to the origin of life, the evidence in fossils and microorganisms regarding early evolution, and the search for life elsewhere in the cosmos.
Shall I continue?
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