Origin of life
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| + | The Aborigines of Australia focus their creation myth around the “dreamtime”, a time around 10,000 years ago. In the beginning, everything already existed, save for life. The stars, planets, and everything else woke up, and burst through a surface, racing to their places. Two beings, however, formed themselves out of nothing. These beings are called the Ungambikula. Upon arriving to the Earth, they found masses of half-completed humans composed of animals and plants. To all extents, they were formless beings. The Ungambikula took a human of whose form they admired, and constructed all other humans in that way. The process of forming a human was not easy, requiring years of working with stone knives. At long last, every human in the world “existed” in a full and complete way. With their work done, the Ungambikula parted to below the surface, and went to sleep. The ground wherever they stepped, however, is holy, and marked by opals (Ed note: Opals play a VERY important role in Aborigine culture.) | ||
===Viking/Norse=== | ===Viking/Norse=== | ||
Revision as of 16:36, 7 July 2008
The Origin of Life is a much-debated topic that relates to how life began on this planet. Depending upon individual perspectives, there are a multitude of creation, design, and bizarre theories as to how life began. This article attempts to discuss the more well known stories, as well as a few not so well known stories. The last section consists of the scientific story as to how life originated.
Contents |
Well Known
The creation myths in this section discuss that of mainstream religious beliefs.
Jewish/Catholic
This particular creation story is derived from Genesis, the first chapter of the Bible, or the Torah in the Jewish faith. The myth states that God created the world, space, all the stars, and all known life over a series of six days, allowing Himself to rest on the seventh. While Creationists (Intelligent Design pushers) insist that this occurred exactly 6000 years ago, and that the “days” were literal 24 hour days, nowhere does the Bible mention when the creation took place, or even discuss how long the days were.
Islamic/Muslim
Islam, rather than placing its entire myth in one book, spreads the myth of creation across the Qur’an. In the Islamic faith, the skys and earth were made as one unit. Rather than taking 6 days, the Qur’an teaches creation took 6 long spans of time. Similar to the Bible, the Qur’an teaches that one God created the world and everything, and that He made all organisms from a single drop of water. After which, he made angels, the moon, the sun, and all other stars. The only things not made by now was man. Much like the God of Abrahamic faith, God took multiple types of soil, mixed it together, and made man (not mentioned if it was in his image or another). God placed Adam in Paradise, than created Eve (In Islam, Hawa), from Adam’s side. Finished, God commanded all angels to bow to Adam, than departed to the heavans. Iblis, believed to be the personification of Satan, refused to obey, and as in the Bible, tempted Eve, gave them the fruit, and Man was expelled from Paradise.
Less Well Known
Section under progress, I have to go to work…
Aborigine
The Aborigines of Australia focus their creation myth around the “dreamtime”, a time around 10,000 years ago. In the beginning, everything already existed, save for life. The stars, planets, and everything else woke up, and burst through a surface, racing to their places. Two beings, however, formed themselves out of nothing. These beings are called the Ungambikula. Upon arriving to the Earth, they found masses of half-completed humans composed of animals and plants. To all extents, they were formless beings. The Ungambikula took a human of whose form they admired, and constructed all other humans in that way. The process of forming a human was not easy, requiring years of working with stone knives. At long last, every human in the world “existed” in a full and complete way. With their work done, the Ungambikula parted to below the surface, and went to sleep. The ground wherever they stepped, however, is holy, and marked by opals (Ed note: Opals play a VERY important role in Aborigine culture.)
Viking/Norse
Native American
Scientific
Although little evidence can be found as to how the earth formed, the general consensus among the scientific community is the following. The Big Bang occurred at a time when all the mass in the universe was confined to one single point, the size of which is the subject of debate. The explosion that occurred rocketed mass away from this single point at a time around 4.5 billion (4,500,000,000) years ago. The superhot mass expanded from this point, and through the effects of Gravity, mass started to gather in chunks around larger masses. These masses became larger, creating a string effect of increased gravity. On some of these masses, the gravitational force became enough to collect gasses, and keep them on what would become planets. As for stars, they followed the same procedure, save for the fact they accumulated mostly hydrogen and helium. When the stars hit temperatures of over ~15.7×106 K (15,700,000 degrees Celsius), fusion begins, colliding hydrogen together, fusing it into Helium, and producing light, heat, and other wavelengths. The stars are believed to have become this hot by the sheer amount of mass they gathered. A topic of interest is that the gas mixture on Jupiter is quite enough for it to have become a star. Scientist believe the reason it did not was because it failed to acquire the necessary temperature.
The planets were, at one point or another, almost as hot as the sun, but through the principals of entropy, they began the gradual process of cooling down, and around 3 billion years ago, life is believed to have began. The oceans had, by this time, cooled down to around 100 degrees Celsius, and scientist assume a pH of around 5.8 allowed for significant reactions to occur to produce noticeable amounts of organic molecules. The relentless bombardment of UV radiation would have made life impossible on the surface, as the ozone layer had not yet formed by that time. The organic molecules forming in the ocean eventually made a massive primordial soup, and, somehow or other, the molecules for a cell wall mixed with the molecules for the cytoplasm, RNA got in, and life began. From this point on, evolution took over. Whatever cell could get the most food in the shortest time and make the most offspring (mitosis) survived to pass on its traits. Sooner or later, two cells grouped together, working to a mutual advantage, forming the first multicellular organism.
The most important organelles in the cell, the mitochondria and the chloroplasts were at one point individual organisms capable, in the enriched environment of the ocean, of creating their own ATP (the driving source of reactions and energy.) Wheras the first primitive cells were only capable of deriving 2-4 ATP from their reactions, Mitochondria, in the presence of Oxygen, and Chloroplast, in the presence of CO2, could produce 32 ATP, a tremendous survival advantage. The presence of a cell membrane, similar to that of the membrane found on the exterior of the cell, attests to this separate origin.