Re: Origins and Mental Activity

On Oct 29, 10:00 am, Zoe <muz...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sun, 28 Oct 2007 13:53:01 -0400, "Perplexed in Peoria"



<jimmene...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"Zoe" <muz...@xxxxxxx> wrote in messagenews:p679i3dc32d0sgfcjcvtuacir6licahua6@xxxxxxxxxx
I would like to work with the current understanding of the Big Bang
activity before continuing to chew on the laws of intelligence.

Taking it for granted that there is no certain answer as to how the
elements formed after the big bang -- except maybe helium and hydrogen
-- but that they most assuredly made their appearance eventually
(maybe from supernovas), I would like to work from that point on.

Okay, so here we have some basic elements distributed randomly
throughout the universe, and in great quantity. Space would look
something like this, multiplied many many times over, I guess?

N H C C He N O
O C O Li
H N C O
O N Li H He
C C He
H N C O C N
He
O O O H N He C H

N C H N N H O Li O

Is this a correct understanding so far as to the possible state of the
universe sometime after the Big Bang and before the formation of
anything more unified than the separate elements?

Pretty close to correct.

ahhh, here is someone who is not in automatic fight-mode; not afraid
to appear to agree, if only partially, with the "enemy". Woot.

But lets add just a little detail just to make sure
we are on the same page. Just after the Big Bang, there wasn't much
but H and He. Then the first generation of stars formed and eventually
went super-nova. Now you have some C, some O, some Fe, and
traces of all the other stuff. In the second and later generations of
stars, you get planets too, because the Fe and the ices formed from
compounds like CO and H2O provide dust grains which stick together
in the nebula and eventually grow big enough to become planetesimals.

But, looking at the universe as a whole, it is still 98% H and He, even
though the other stuff is most common on Earth-sized planets.

okay, I think we are on the same page so far, at least in the area of
the formation of individual elements. Can you explain, from a
chemistry and physics basis, what causes these elements to appear in
more than one type of compound?

It is mainly to do with energy. A simple example is two hydrogen atoms
colliding. Each atom in this case is identical, consisting of one
positively charged proton and one negatively charged electron, meaning
that each atom is electrically neutral. When they approach close
enough, each electron can "feel" the electric field of the proton in
the other atom and each electron may then end up bound to the pair of
protons, making a system that is overall electrically neutral. It
turns out the the energy of the combined system is lower than the
energy of two separate hydrogen atoms, so when the two hydrogen atoms
combine to form a hydrogen molecule, energy is emitted in the form of
electromagnetic radiation. To break the hydrogen molecule apart you
have to put in this same quantity of energy. The reason the energy is
lower is explained by quantum theory, which is beyond the scope of
this thread. However the reason atoms and molecules form the way they
do, follows on from this basic idea. You can however get a grasp of it
without understanding the quantum theory behind it. For example if you
try the same collision as above with two helium atoms they will not
combine as the combined state is no longer a lower energy. By rote you
can learn that the reason for this is that the two electrons in a
Helium atom fill the available ground quantum state so there is no way
to reconfigure the system to a lower energy. Here's some background
reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_orbital

Klazmon

.

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