Science's answer to the ultimate question: Where do we come from?
6 hours ago
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- #evolution
- #cosmology
- The question of 'where do we come from?' is profound and has been explored by poets, philosophers, and theologians, but science now provides meaningful answers.
- Biologically, humans are descendants of a continuous chain of organisms dating back about four billion years, evolving through mutations and natural selection.
- Life on Earth may have emerged from non-living ingredients, possibly through panspermia, where life was brought to Earth from elsewhere in space.
- Earth and the Solar System formed about 4.56 billion years ago from a molecular cloud, with planets emerging from a protoplanetary disk around the young Sun.
- Heavy elements necessary for life were created in stars and spread through stellar deaths, enabling the formation of rocky planets like Earth.
- The Universe's first stars formed from neutral atoms after the Big Bang, leading to the creation of galaxies and the cosmic structures we see today.
- The Big Bang theory explains the Universe's expansion from a hot, dense state, with light elements forming in the first few minutes through nuclear reactions.
- Before the Big Bang, cosmic inflation—a phase of rapid expansion driven by space's inherent energy—set the initial conditions for the Universe.
- Despite significant progress, unanswered questions remain, such as the origin of matter-antimatter asymmetry and what preceded cosmic inflation.