[DUG] General Theory

Sat May 13 10:18:44 NZST 2006

That's a pretty good summary of the history of the life and the universe and
everything as we know it...

I didn't know the bit about the earth's crust becoming the moon and changing
the way water circulates - is the implication that without the moon forming
the early ecosphere would have been drastically different for formation of
life?

There was a recent theory that the Big Bang may recurr at cyclic intervals.
The dakr matter relates to the Lambda (cosmological constant) that Einstein
formulated to explain why the universe doesn't expand.  When he found it was
expanding he took it out again, but since then it has come back into favour
as a mechanism to explain dark matter and the discrepancy between the
calculated and observed runaway expansion of the universe...."But there is a
problem: the lambda that scientists have detected is more than a googol (1
followed by 100 zeros) times smaller than what theory predicts. To explain
such a large discrepancy, physicists have been forced to come up with ever
wilder theories."

See
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2006-05-08-cyclic-universe_x.htm?
POE=TECISVA

A recurring Big Bang would allow the cosmological constant to decay to the
value observed....

The other amazing thing in the history of everything is that the earth
started of with a methane- sulphur etc atmosphere, the first life that
spread onto land was compatible with this and thrived, and transformed it
over a long time to the atmosphere we have today, the life also changing to
the altered atmosphere as it went.....literally the early life terraformed
the planet.

John

-----Original Message-----
From: delphi-bounces at ns3.123.co.nz [mailto:delphi-bounces at ns3.123.co.nz] On
Behalf Of kaller at ihug.co.nz
Sent: Friday, 12 May 2006 6:57 p.m.
To: NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi List
Subject: Re: [DUG] General Theory

OT means strictly off topic. Sorry I cant resist this post, since someone
else started it.

OK well I am not exactly an AstroP but I know a little bit. 
If you go back to the big bang, then its a matter of temperature, or in
terms of the energy involved you can describe things in eV (electron volts).
The half decent BB theories start to kick in at about 10^-44 seconds. At
10^-37 sec it expanded most rapidly, basically you can look at it as an
adiabatic thermal process, where the energy per unit volume is dropping and
things are uncoupling and condensing out. Neutrino physics may be important
here but these things are pretty hard to study because the ones we get from
our sun tend to go right through the earth. Well anyway due to a useful
asymmetry (maybe involving neutrinos), a bit more matter than antimatter was
formed, and the balance of antimatter positrons annihilated with matter
electrons, to give heaps of photons, plus the matter your body eventually
got made from. After 10^-3 seconds, as the bubble gets bigger and the energy
density drops,  the leftover protons and neutrons of matter start to
condense together to make the lighter nuclei, and we get the very well known
and studied reactions involving neutrons amongst hydrogen, deuterium,
tritium and their isotopes. The gas is plasma whch means that the oppositely
charged electrons are their in equal numbers, and when the temperature drops
right down (maybe a quarter of an hour after the start of the show)  we end
up with about 75% hydrogen and 25% helium, in gaseous form, which is
basically all we have today.

Except for the embarrassing fact of dark matter, and dark energy, which is
like 10 times as much as the hydrogen, and nobody is even sure what it is.
It does stuff like keep the galaxies rotating like a bicycle wheel on that
scale, instead of like the varied rotational speeds we see on the scale of
say the solar system planets etc.

The photons are cooling off too and that's the cosmic background we now see
at about 3 degrees kelvin.

Back to the BB, now density may be thin, but the temperature can stay in the
millions of degrees until we can figure out how to get hydrogen atoms to
lose some energy.  By colliding they just share it, they don't lose it.
This is where my favourite science starts, enter chemistry, stage left.

Once you can get two hydrogens slow enough to stick
together, you got a hydrogen molecule.  It acts an a kind of evolutionary
catalyst, because it is able to vibrate and rotate in many more lower energy
modes. So a hydrogen molecule can start to degrade thermal kinetic energy
and radiate it away as thermal photons.  This allows the hot gas to cool,
and the next stage of condensation into giant low density stars can start.

The low abundance elements Beryllium and Boron are formed in the
interstellar medium by cosmic rays, so there are only ever trace elements.
The stars form carbon up to iron by nuclear fusion.

Later as the bigger stars form they go nova and blow off material forming
the fissile heavy elements into the interstellar medium, so elements like
iron accumulate in more abundance than you would expect due to fusion.

Umm, well to finish the story,  organic molecules  condense
out of stellar nebulae and life condenses out of organic chemistry. Life
condenses out of chemical factories under good conditions, and under really
good conditions it can take over the geochemistry of an entire planet.

One such chemical factory was started on the earth, due to a luck chance
encounter collision when it was forming, that removed 90% of its crust and
left it orbiting around it, which we call the moon. This allowed tectonic
plates to form and allowed water to be constantly drawn down into an
underground aquifers under the oceans along the plate bounds and driven back
up again, creating a complex circulation system rich in organic chemicals,
minerals grains, and allowed self modifying circulation patterns to produce
complex plumbing. The cycling motion of water produced the equivalent of a
programming loops and branches, as this natural computing system passing
chemical over substrates. The natural chirality of crystal surfaces can be
seen in the chirality of biomolecules to this day, betraying their
evolutionary heritage.

Sulphur based metabolic systems, based on key chemicals such
as thioglutamate, eventually gave way to alternatives as
life arouse from under the sea, and into the sea.  It was a bootstrapping of
many coexisting systems. As life altered rock, heavy basalts were
transformed into lighter granites, which ended up in vast flaoting rafts of
land, only earth has granites. Later life was able to climb up onto these
continental granites and develop a level of dexterity that underwater living
did not demand. Life made the atmosphere, and the land, and transformed the
planet.

Sorry I glossed over a bit ;)

> There are about 10^80 protons & neutrons (baryons) if this helps - 
> which  equates to about 10% of the mass of the universe (more than 99% 
> of the  mass of the visible component of the universe that is).  I 
> would assume  there would be about the same number of electrons.  But 
> I'm a bit behind  on my astrophysics, I use to read a lot of
> popular science books, but  this new stuff about dark
> energy and the universe accelerating faster  and faster as
> time goes on sounds a bit weird to me.
>
> My guess would be that there are about the same number of protons as  
> electrons - charge is something that seems to be preserved 
> (Technically  it's Charge, Parity and Time). There are, however other 
> particles that  are charged.  So assuming that the universe does not 
> have an overall charge, there should be approximately the same number 
> of protons as  electrons - the exception being some of these
> other less commonly known  particles making up the
> difference.
>
> Are there any particle physicists that can clear this up
> (and probably  set me wrong)?
>
> Alister
>
> Neven MacEwan wrote:
> > Kyley
> >
> > I suggest you read 'QED The stange theory of Light and Matter' by R 
> > P  Feynman (Also would highly recommend his autobigraphy "Surely 
> > you're  joking Mr Feynman")
> >
> > Then you start wondering "how many sub-atomic particles
> are there?" >
> > Neven
> >
> > Kyley Harris wrote:
> >> I am starting to wonder how many electrons there are to
> every proton. >>
> >>
> >>
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>
> --
> Alister Christie
> Computers for People
> Ph: 04 471 1849 Fax: 04 471 1266 http://www.salespartner.co.nz
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