The (conventional) History of the World

Terra, Sol III

2006-10-17T04:23:00.000-07:00

1:We are here.
2:Where?
1:There is the planet I was talking about.
2:What! That spinning lump of lava? You must be joking. You must have bumped your head on some asteroids. Nothing is about to happen there.
1:First, I have no head. Not exactly. And second, to fully appreciate what is about to happen we must move in that direction.
2:You mean forwards through time?
1:Yes

Earth begun as a spinning mass of gases. These gases coalesced and the heavier elements sunk to the centre of this soup. The collective gravity of this whole morass squeezed everything together into a hot, molten spinning ball.

The molten surface of the earth cooled due to the arrival of water in the form of comets and also probably through normal energy loss to space through dissipation. Comets are believed to have brought a lot of water to earth thus making life (as we know it) possible.

How life begun is still a mystery. Some say that it started spontaneously from a random and complex chemical reaction that birthed the first replicating molecule. Others say that it was delivered ready made from the depths of space riding piggy back on a comet. I say that's just avoiding the issue.

1:You saw that?
2:Yes.
1:Awesome isn’t it?
2:Yeah.
1:Keep watching.

So, life arrived. Life, as a matter of course, tends to take energy from the environment, process it and present it back in a form more accessible to even more life. These single-celled organisms continued there work but true colonialism didn’t begin until chloroplasts came into the picture. They enabled photosynthesis and with this, life really hit its stride. Life split into three main classes recognised today.

Bacteria
Archaea
Eucaryota (consists mainly of multi-cellular organisms)

(I'm still trying to get the difference between bacteria and Archaea. Apparently bacteria have nuclei while the Archaeans do not. Some Eucryotes are also single-celled thus confusing me even more. Perhaps the differences have less to do with structure than with how they work?)

Single cells started co-operating with each other producing the first complex cells. It is thought that chloroplasts were once free cells but were harnessed by plants to provide energy. Specialization of cells in these complex cells resulted in the first multi-cellular organisms. Plants colonized the planet starting with the ancient oceans before rising out of the murky depths and spreading imperially over the earth's surface.

Another group of cells assimilated a bacteria known by the name mitochondria. This mitochondria enabled the cells to process ATP with greater effeciency. These cells were more active than the rest and they are what developed into what we call animals today.

Now, obviously, I am omitting a world of detail but all this information is available to the public for free.

The next article will involve the ascent of man.

The bang

2006-08-30T04:03:00.000-07:00

(Around 15 billion years ago, give or take 5 minutes)

2:Where are we?
1:Nowhere.
2:When is it?
1:Time doesn’t exist yet.
2:Look, we can’t be nowhere, we have to be somewhere.
1:No. Space doesn’t exist yet.
2:But you are standing next to me.
I’m not really standing and you are not really next to me. It’s just your perceptual reality.

1:What’s that?
2:What?
1:That.
2:Oh, that’s a bang.

1:Wow.
2:Indeed. What you just felt was space and time infusing your being. So you are now next to me and we are at the beginning. Now be silent and keep watching.

The big bang really wasn’t that big as far as Spontaneous Universe creations go. It was really quite ordinary but the inhabitants of each Universe call the bang the BIG bang. That’s called subjectivity. No one knows what existed before the bang and most avoid the whole thing by claiming there is no such thing as “before” the bang since Time was created at the bang. The same applies to all the matter and energy that was released at the bang.

The big bang released a large amount of energy, matter and antimatter. The matter and anti-matter went at it fiercely and fortunately for us, there was an excess of matter over anti-matter in the infant Universe. An excess of one part per billion of matter resulted in all the matter you see (and even that you don’t see) in the Universe right now. Such small excess resulted in all this? Gives you an idea of how much there was in the beginning.

We could argue, philosophically of course, that in some other Universe, the ratios were much different resulting in a much different configuration than in our Universe. There must be one were matter and anti-matter were an exact much for each other and so that Universe is one of pure energy rushing away from the centre at the speed of light.

What of one with only one type of matter? Must have been more like a big Thump. One moment nothing, the next a huge, vast enormous lump of matter. Which then crushed itself into a black hole due to its enormous gravity. Imagine that, a Universe with one big black hole.

Back to our Universe.

The infant Universe was very, very hot. It was, however, expanding rapidly. As it expanded, it cooled. Whatever types of particles there were then became the more common particles available today i.e. Baryons. Baryons are a group of particles that include

 Photons
 Neutrinos
 Electrons
 Quarks
These are the building blocks of all matter.

The Universe continued to expand and cool. Three minutes after the beginning it had cooled to around 3,000 billion Kelvin. At this temperature, protons and neutrons formed. These then begun to react forming Deuterium an isotope of hydrogen then through a lot of stuff I don’t get, an electron was captured turning Deuterium into hydrogen. Hydrogen, the most common element in the Universe, the food of stars, was now available.

Expansion and cooling continued. Huge seas of matter begun to group together, gravity ignited stars. These groups formed the galactic super clusters. These super clusters for reasons still unknown today, accelerated away from each other and continue to do so today. The expansion of the Universe is still picking up speed. Why? WHY? What force is driving the acceleration? It is a genuine mystery.

Stars process hydrogen and create all the other elements. Every element known was created in a star. What happens when all the hydrogen in the Universe is exhausted? The end is cold and dark. Fortunately, it is so, so far away. So, the stars created the heavier elements. Stars were born and stars died and more and more heavy elements were released. The raw materials for planets were now available.

Now as stars formed, not all the matter was used in the star, some were left to form planets. Solar systems came into existence.

2:Let’s go.
1:Where?
2:See that ordinary super-cluster?
1:Yes.
2:See that smaller-than-average spiral shaped galaxy?
1:Yes.
2:See that solar system forming at the edge?
1:Yes.
2:See that rocky planet third from the star?
1:Yes.
2:It is there that we go. Something interesting is about to happen.

(Our observers can do this because to they can move through time as easily as through space. So as well as moving to our planet, they have moved about 10 billion years into the future)

Intro

2006-08-29T07:02:00.000-07:00

I have always been interested in history. I hope this endeavour will teach me more about our history as well as provide a broad timeline for most of the most influential events in our history. Let me start by saying that everything I post here will be as thoroughly researched as possible. This does not mean, however, that I am not prone to mistakes. I encourage you to correct me where necessary and I promise I will faithfully add your corrections to the site if they are correct.

Thank you.

The first post will be here in two days.