In 1950, Stanley Miller conducted an experiment.
He introduced water vapours in an atmosphere
that consisted of Hydrogen, Methane and Ammonia.
Then he discharged electrical sparks into
that space.
Some chemical reactions occurred.
He discovered that organic molecules had formed.
These included amino acids, aspartic acid,
glutamic acid and glycine.
This experiment was a demonstration of the
seed of life.
The emergence of organic life from prebiotic
ingredients, albeit inorganic.
The ingredients from which we, the modern
human beings, emerge.
The discoveries in this area are fascinating.
They tell us a story.
Our story.
Your story and my story.
Our common story.
The story of Big Bang.
David Christian is the co-founder of The Big
History project, along with Microsoft founder
Bill Gates.
According to David Christian, when the big
bang occurred, the universe was so hot that
it wasn’t possible to differentiate between
matter and energy.
In the first billionth of a second after the
big bang, matter and energy separated.
Energy and matter took different forms.
There was gravity and electromagnetism.
There were electrons and quarks.
Some 380,000 years after the big bang, atoms
of Hydrogen and Helium appeared in the universe.
The mix of hydrogen and helium allowed the
first stars to grow much more massive than
stars can get today.
Science suggests that the first stars formed
from clouds of gas around 150-200 million
years after the Big Bang.
The first stars synthesized heavy elements
such as carbon, oxygen and iron.
When these stars died, they created even heavier
elements like gold and uranium.
Through stellar explosions called supernova,
the first stars resulted in the formation
of later generations of stars.
The first elements, Hydrogen and Helium make
up about 98% of the matter of the universe
even today.
The other 2% are made up of all the other
elements in the periodic table.
Even though Big Bang occurred 13.8 billion
years ago, we can never lose connection with
our celestial past.
Materials from remnants of the big bang make
it to our planet frequently.
We’ll leave you with a data visualization
of known meteorite landings.
Meteorites are space rocks that fall on the
ground on earth after travelling through the
earth’s atmosphere.
This map visualizes the data relating to meteorite
landings.
The data was obtained from NASA’s portal.
The size and the color of the dots represents
the mass of the meteorites.
The larger size and blue color dots represent
meteorites of larger mass.
The smaller size and yellow color dots represent
meteorites of smaller mass.
The ones in-between would be represented by
green color.
There are lots of meteorites on this map that
you can’t see because they are too small.
Meteorites seem to be strewn all across the
globe though.
According to NASA, more than 50,000 meteorites
have been found on Earth.
In 2013, a meteor entered the earth’s atmosphere
above the skies in Chelyabinsk in Russia.
This meteor is the largest known space object
to enter the earth’s atmosphere in the 21st
century.
The meteor exploded in the earth’s atmosphere.
According to scientists, it had about 30 times
the energy of the atomic bomb that dropped
on Hiroshima in Japan in 1945.
The meteor created pandemonium among people.
It shattered glass on windows and damaged
buildings.
About 1500 people received injuries from glass
that broke from the impact of the meteorite.
Three days after the explosion, a remnant
of the meteorite was found in a lake.
According to David Kring of the Lunar and
Planetary Institute in Houston, some of the
material inside the meteorite piece was formed
in the first 4 million years of the history
of our solar system.
Just in case you got busy with going about
your life on earth, meteorites remind us of
our origin.
Our origin beyond the realm of our own planet.
They remind us of The Big Bang that occurred
13.8 billion years ago.
