Re: Origins and Mental Activity

On 30 Ott, 04:42, Zoe <muz...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
On Mon, 29 Oct 2007 02:40:23 -0400, "Perplexed in Peoria"



<jimmene...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"Zoe" <muz...@xxxxxxx> wrote in messagenews:3vt9i31hh1evotjnrh9jie77pb9mso148t@xxxxxxxxxx
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?

I can try. The first molecule to form will be H2, since H is by far the
most common single atom. It will form even before the first generation
of stars once the original Bang has cooled off enough due to expansion.
Then once you have some O atoms floating around, they will bump
into H2 and react to become OH and an H that escapes (to balance
momentum and energy. OH may run into C yielding CO plus an
escaping H again. But if OH runs into H2, you can get H2O with
yet another H flying away. Some of those Hs will recombine to make
more H2, and other Hs will run into C, forming things like CH, leading
eventually to lots of carbon compounds like acetylene, formaldehyde,
and methane.

All of this proceeds very slowly and very randomly. It never even
gets close to chemical equilibrium. Because those supernovas are
throwing fairly concentrated C and O into the H and He background,
different places will have different concentrations of the various atoms,
different places will have different temperatures, etc. It is a real mess.

The key words if you want to look up some of this stuff on the web
are 'gas-phase free radical chemistry' and 'interstellar molecular
clouds'. I hope I addressed your question.

not really, but thanks for the lesson.

My question has to do with the observed limits of chemistry. Is it
the normal behavior of chemistry, when it finds sugars and phosphates
floating around, to line them up in a chain, repeating and on a
regular and consistent basis, and to which nucleotides gravitate and
attach themselves? I'm not talking about what you find in a system
already up and running, as in the genetic system. I'm talking about
chemistry's ability to organize elements and molecules and compounds
into arrangements that are not a normal course of chemical bonding if
such chemical elements were floating about at large in a pool.

snip>

The laws of chemistry are the same inside you and a gas cloud orbiting
a star.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Origins and Mental Activity
    ... elements formed after the big bang -- except maybe helium and hydrogen ... Then once you have some O atoms floating around, ... eventually to lots of carbon compounds like acetylene, formaldehyde, ... are 'gas-phase free radical chemistry' and 'interstellar molecular ...
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  • Re: Origins and Mental Activity
    ... elements formed after the big bang -- except maybe helium and hydrogen ... stars, and others as a result of nucleosynthesis in supernovae. ... Consider the spread below to be the random distribution of ... elements in or near gas clouds, ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Origins and Mental Activity
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    (talk.origins)
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