Originally posted by XtR-X
Agh... this topic sucks now... we've had too much of it.
Well, then sorry for continuing it, but I had to react to some of it...
Originally posted by Rick
Money stifles societal progress. The problem with capitilism is it is based on making money then making progress. It keeps us going right now because we get something in return which gives us ambition to do our parts... But if we were naturally ambitious to better society, we would not be limited by our pockets. Just imagine the things we could do with no monitary limits!
A very interesting theory/idea Rick, but maybe it'd be better off in a thread of it's own...
So I'll just leave it, though I have to say I do not agree with much of your theory...
Originally posted by Nic
What makes me curious is how could anything have possibly survived such a massive explosion?
What about all the heat that was present?
How did life evolve from all this?
This has been more or less answered, but a couple of points...
One theory of the big bang says that in the beginning there was nothing in the universe than a black hole... This reach "critical mass" and exploded into the universe, releasing Hydrogen and Helium a long with a lot of heat..
After a while the hydrogen and helium started forming small "lumps" which grew ever bigger until they reached critical mass and started to react with eachother to create suns...
The suns lived for a while, before going supernova, sending out not only hydrogen and helium, but some of the other atoms we find in the wild today, like iron, (which had been created by the heat and pressure in the core of the sun)...
This happened once again, giving us the different atoms we know of today...
We're currently living in the "third generation" of suns, at least our sun is a third gen sun, and quite young at that...
So it happened a third time, but this time the atoms didn't only turn into suns, but planets too...
The closer to the sun, the more heavy atoms (iron and such) you'll find, and the farther off you go, the more Hydrogen and Helium you'll find... (Note: This does not totally apply to Mars, but I'll come back to that in another answer....)
And it is at this point that life started to "show up" in the universe...
Over the same time, the universe cooled down to the level it is now... But when it was first created, it was
hot!
This is a very general description, but if I were to write it any longer, most of you would probably go off in search of some wet paint to look at instead...
Originally posted by Rick
The Big Bang Theory exists to explain the patterns and the slow evolution of the Universe over many billions of years. It explains radiation, expansion, temperatures etc.. But not the creation of matter & energy in the cosmos.
That depends on which theory you follow...
The one I described above, says it's part of a circle, where the universe expands and subtracts, continuing endlessly... This accommodates the planets that were discovered some years ago that are older than the rest of the universe....
Think of it like the Ancient Greek way of looking at time and history, as they thought it was circulatory... There was no beginning, and there is no end... Everything is/will be repeating itself... Maybe not you, or your actions, but in general everything will be repeated...
(But that's another discussion again...)
But back to the topic of life...
There's a theory going around that is gaining momentum (at least it did last year when I was learning about this), that life didn't start on Earth, but rather in the/a asteroid belt... There the non-organic materials would be subject to enough shifting radiation, have enough water/other materials needed, and thus suddenly there was life...
Then why do we have life on Earth you ask?*
Because some time in the past, a comet/asteroid/whatever hit the asteroid belt, and sendt a couple of asteroids our way... One of them hit earth in the "correct" manner (didn't bounce of our atmosphere, or burn up in it), and made it's way down to us... The heat produced in the atmosphere reawakened the life, and it was spread out over the sea...
From there on and to today you know as much as me about how life spread...
*Note: This is still a theory....
I think I'll split this up into two posts, as it is getting quite long allready, and I'm about halfway...