Question: How do you think the world was made?

Alexander Allen answered on 14 Mar 2019:

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I’ve always wanted a chance to answer this from the start and (as we’re getting so close to the end of this competition) I’m going to give a run down of what science’s current understanding of the formation of the universe to humanity was. As concisely as I can…

BANG! Everything that exists now was created instantly – not just energy and matter but space and time themselves. I’ve used the analogy of the balloon before but imagine putting dots on the surface of a balloon and blowing it up – the dots stay where they are but the space in between them increases. So more and more space is created as time begins to tick forward. Everything expanded apart so quickly that many believe that models of the universe now are echos of what it’s like in the bubbly quantum world.

Everything everywhere is all basically one place which causes it to be too hot to break into anything useful. At this stage we just have a big mish-mash of possibility. Like a soup of materials and other stuff that isn’t even worth talking about.

So then one trillionth of a second after the big bang… matter starts to appear. Super tiny fundamental particles called quarks begin to take existance and very quickly they begin to join together… The universe begins to have some things that we can identify today. Quarks join together to make bigger and bigger pieces of matter:

So finally, one millionth of a second after the big bang… All of the building blocks of atoms form: particles like protons and neutrons. Some protons are forced together at such high temperatures that the form bigger particles… This is the birth of Hydrogen and Helium atoms… The universe cools to allow little negative particles of charge to start orbiting the atoms and everything is cooling and drifting apart. I know we’ve been talking in terms of seconds but it takes about 50 000 years for the universe to become the dark place filled with matter that it is today.

Finally the universe is transparent but with no stars… Let’s say roughly 1 billion years after the big bang, though it could be sooner, little clusters of atoms begin to gather together, attracted by tiny gravitational forces… Atoms start to cluster up, pulling in more atoms, making the gravitational forces of these clusters stronger and stronger, pulling in more atoms… It’s a cycle! Things are pushed together at such pressures that they begin to heat up and once again temperatures in these clusters are soaring! It get’s hotter and hotter, forcing atoms together and to fuse.

This fusing process needs everything to be very hot, but once it happens it gives of a heck of a lot more heat. A chain reaction of fusions leads to a big ball of continuously fusing material – An ongoing nuclear explosion that we call a star!

All of these stars create bigger and bigger atoms, eventually peppering the universe with heavy atoms as these stars explode and die. Eventually a star is born in this new “peppered universe” and (as before) all the light hydrogen rushes inwards forming the familiar nuclear explosion but this is special… This is THE SUN!

This time though… Lots of the heavier elements have formed and are circling around this new sun… When the sun starts to give out massive amounts of winds and radiation. The heavier stuff isn’t blown quite as far… big cores of iron start collecting through gravity and attract more and more stuff that all comes together in a firey ball… This is the Earth, or what will become it because there are lots more “possibly planets” out there… One (we have called Thea) collides with the new earth and makes an even bigger planet with a smaller body orbiting together…

The Earth and moon!

The Earth cools and volcanoes rule the lava covered world! It takes a lot of cooling and a long time! But cool it does and all that vicious atmosphere of steam has a chance to condense… It rains and the Earth is covered in water… Still a volcanic powerhouse though…

In the water, little molecules begin to collect together and form little chains… Nothing complicated but chains that like to be together… and crucially some of them replicate… Once you have something that can use other molecules to make a copy of itself you have the building blocks for life.

This goes nuts! Copies are quite often not perfect and this results in quite a lot of mistakes. These will fall apart… but occasionally a mistake will lead to things getting better. Some of these primitive things find a basis for getting their own molecules to themselves and harness the energy of the sun to create little useful sugar particles – these are essentially food and you have created plant life. Suddenly a by-product of the process is released into the atmosphere and you have oxygen… Now everything that lives will have to learn to use it… Thankfully the life forms thrive and some learn to replicate themselves in groups and before you know it all sorts of useful tools have evolved… Armour, eyes, weapons… These are animals and some animals can eat other animals.

Life eventually expands filling the oceans and some even make it onto land… Some animals don’t even have to stay in the water at all and these little changes continue to make advancements… Not everything lasts… The occasional asteroid tries to wipe out life but some survives and complicated things begin to get very advanced… Soon you have monstrous reptile predators patrolling a diverse world of animals and plants… Dinosaurs rule…

Until one big asteroid wipes them out and only the small hairy warm blooded creatures survive… These continue to modify as mammals… Evolving to live in trees and grow hands and feet that can grab… These are monkeys and eventually apes… Some apes learned to use tools and in the process build spears and knives that would help hunting and gathering food… It became possible as hunting became easier, for there to be more chance of the development of language …

Eventually one of these “early humans” figured out that rather than catching their food – they could raise their own food on farms. This was the birth of modern civilisation and agriculture

AND this is where science leaves us and history takes over… History is a lot of cultures or people arguing who owns what and how people can get things… But it’s still interesting…

That is a very rough, very quick version of the events that lead us to today… With quite a few gaps but I tried to give a good overview