Reactions Set the World on Its Course
Essay Preview: Reactions Set the World on Its Course
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What do we know about our world? What do we care to figure out? Do we want to just drift along life accepting our world how it is, or is it our duty to make an attempt to understand our surroundings. I pick the latter; I believe that our view of the world will never be complete. There will always be scientific inquiry that should be answered. In order to begin laying a “foundation of understanding” we must first understand Chemical reactions, for “chemical reactions set humanity on its path..”
The very first “building block” in our skyscraper of understanding starts with the very creation of our universe and the reactions that take place. The accepted theory that correlates with the creation of our universe, and eventually our planet is the Big Bang Theory. The Big Bang is the scientific theory that states the universe formed from a tremendously dense and hot state about 13.7 billion years ago. However, what really began the creation of our world, along with life in our world is Big Bang nucleosynthesis. This process occurred when the universe had been cooled down enough to form stable protons and neutrons. After the Big Bang, the universe continued to expand and with this it began to cool. Protons and neutrons that began to form had a strong tendency to form helium-4. After the formation of Helium would be the formation of Carbon. Triple collisions of helium-4 nuclei will end up forming carbon, this process is called the triple-alpha process.1 Nucleosynthesis ends up filling the early universe with about 25% helium-4 by mass.2 The reason for the large quantity of helium-4 is due to its durability to the conditions presented by the early universe. However, now we are left with a vast and ever expanding universe with some hydrogen and carbon and other radioactive elements. When does this science have to do with us?
About 4.4 billion years ago, the surface had cooled enough to form a crust although volcanoes still populated the surface. However, these volcanoes proved to create our early atmosphere. They released steam, carbon dioxide, and ammonia. This “atmosphere”, primarily consisted of carbon dioxide and water vapor, with some nitrogen but virtually no oxygen. What is believed to be one of the first, if not the first bacteria is called cyanobacteria. This bacterium is what started the evolution of life on our early planet; they were the first oxygen-producing evolving phototropic organisms. They were responsible for the initial conversion of the earths atmosphere from anoxic to oxic (without oxygen to with oxygen) Being the