Yes, the videos were extremely interesting, but they were also missing a lot of information and facts. The scientists are doing a great job trying to guess how it happened, but i believe that they will never know for sure. The human mind just isnt advanced enough to even fathom the idea of how the universe might have started. And its time they realized that. Its a great theory that the universe was once at a single point because everything is moving away from us at light speed. But for all we know, they are just traveling past otward from us due to the fact that there isnt any friction in space. A planet or star could have become stable and a supernova could have resulted, sending millions of rocks infinite in every direction. The only reason we dont fall out of orbit and drift around aimlessly as well, is because of the orbit of the sun, gravity, and whatnot. As the video showed, rocks would collide around and form larger conjoined rocks (like the bag of salt in space) until a single rock would get big enough to create a gravitational pull. Thus pulling more rocks to its surface infinitely, so i would guess. But im not sure why all of the space matter that space shuttles have to dodge to leave our planet doesnt fall and collide into earth... Anyway, there are a ton of unanswered questions that probably will never be answered. So just use your imagination and find your own belief. As for me, i believe the universe as we know it, is just a spec in the galaxy of another, and that galaxy is just a spec in another, and so on. Our planet is so miniscule and insignificant compared to all of space and time. I believe there are other planets that harbor life more intelligent and less intelligent than ours. But we will never know for sure. It isnt possible to make a machine that can travel through space at lightspeed to explore these ideas for ourselves. We cant even make it past the moon, yet the end of our solar system. And another interesting thought is that there are areas on our own planet that we do not have the technology to visit. The deepest oceans and trenches on earth have so much crushing force that we cannot explore these places. But we know its possible, because pictures have been taken of fish who can survive in such environments. We just need to invent the technology. I just think we have a lot to figure out about our own planet before we move on to conquering others.
And on a side note, i was just thinking, if there was a "big bang" and the universe was formed, and it is infinitely traveling in all directions, could you imagine if the "big bang" was replicated in another place in empty space. Two ground-zero points shooting universes in every direction infinitely. What happens when they collide at the speed of light?

12 Hours

In Thursday's lecture, I was very interested in the idea of taking the evolution of the universe and cramming it into only 12 short hours.  Once this was done, it could be seen just how little of time was spent on what seems to us as the important things.  Out of the 12 hours, the most time was spent on the accumulation of oxygen alone.  Eight hours were spent on oxygen filling the atmosphere and rising to a high enough level for animal survival.  Now I may be going out on a limb here, but I find it fascinating that most of earth's life was spent on producing one single element, yet dinosaurs came and went in a flash.

I would really like to comment on the idea of a fraction of a second as well, but that still blows my mind.  I'm still trying to catch that fraction before it flies by my head . . .

Earth

While watching the videos in class today I got to thinking about the first second in time. I found it quite interesting how scientists have divided up the 1 second into 10^(-43) seconds. The fact that this can happen blows my mind, almost to the point where I am driven to the point of disbelief. It seems to me that since there is no solid proof that the universe was created, how do we know for sure who we can and cannot trust. The science behind the matter is always evolving into bigger and better concepts. It is also extremely hard for me to imagine that the entire universe at one point never existed, yeah, that was billion of years ago, but its still incredibly weird for me to think

I found myself thinking about the heat that this explosion would have created. In one of the videos it said that the Earth was molten and very hot while it was forming. So it must have been a warm environment, right? If it was then what made it change to become cold like it is today?

I also began thinking about how the Birth of the Earth video mentioned how it is believed that the Earth was created from a dust cloud from around the sun, that when cooled down it created minerals and the minerals eventually combined. In the video it also stated that the minerals started attracting each other until one became big enough and it would attract the other minerals. So if this is how the Earth was formed, is it the same way other planets were formed? And if it was how did the larger mineral clumps not attract each other to create one big super planet??

The Evolution of Earth

Throughout today's studies, I found myself questioning the idea of life on other planets. There are so many more galaxies out there, and we just learned an idea of how Earth was created...who's to say that hasn't happened in one of those other galaxies? Unfortunately, we may never know the answer to that question.


Secondly, according to the information learned today, water got to Earth via comets containing ice. I studied this a little deeper and discovered that if water arrived by comets alone, MILLIONS of comet impacts would be required. Though this is not an unreasonable number, I can't help but wonder....is it possible that we will experience MILLIONS of comets impacting Earth again? If so, how long will it be until that day comes?


Lastly, I enjoyed hearing about the creation of the moon. I didn't realize that the composition of the moon was so abnormal. After further studying, I see that some believe that the impact made on Earth after the crash caused the large tilt in the axis, which is responsible for Earth's different seasons. Just something to think about!

Expedition Earth: UAF Fall 2010: Evolution of Earth

Expedition Earth: UAF Fall 2010: Evolution of Earth: "While watching the videos today in class I thought of how we were talking about how theories have been disproven and are, basically, forever..."

I think you have a very good point about the earth and theories. I think that we as humans are always trying to answer questions that we do not know the answer to. It is in our natural curiousity to try to answer such questions. Theories are great and all but sometimes I feel like they are pointless because some questions you are never going to find the answer to such as how the earth began, when it began etc.

Evolution of Earth

While watching the videos today in class I thought of how we were talking about how theories have been disproven and are, basically, forever changing. For example, the video said just 80 years ago the universe was thought to have been around forever and now there is the “Big Bang” theory. So I started looking, further, into earlier theories of the creation of Earth and earlier methods of dating the Earth.

First I found information about John Philips calculating, in the 17th century, the Earth’s age using stratigraphic concepts (which I still don’t really understand) and finding that the Earth was about 96 million years old. Mikhail Lomonosov thought that the Earth had been created on its own in the 18th century. There were a few other people who tried to date the Earth in different ways and found it to be 75,000 years old, but we get the idea that these old naturalists seemed to be way off.

In my research, William Thomson, seemed to be a big name that kept coming up. He found the Earth to be near 20 million years old. He was also the person who introduced the theory that the Earth was created of completely molten rock.

Overall, what I took from this class and this research is that scientists can come up with as many ideas as they want, about how Earth was created or how old Earth is, but in a matter of minutes these theories can be disproved. While looking through these different theories I kept thinking these same questions over and over: Is it worth it to come up with such theories or is it more for personal fulfillment that we seek these answers? Is it really relevant to find answers that may be incorrect or is it just a waste of time?

The good and the bad

I personally believe that everyone has a good/bad side to them that defines who they are. The Russians had some good and bad in them and definitley showed it upon their arrival to Alaska. Their good intentions involved teaching the Natives how to adapt to their environment in new ways, bringing along technology with them, etc... It just so happens that they did some harm as well. They brought diseases with them, diminished the spirit world, took over the way that the Natives ran their lives, and ultimately caused a 60% decrease in the Native population. It's sad that the Natives couldnt do anything about it although they tried to. "It is historical fact that they resisted Russian efforts to colonize them" says Napolean (Yuuyaraq pg. 9). But the Natives had to give in when 60% of their population was loss.