WHY ARE WE HERE?

EVOLUTION AND THE BIG BANG

By the Science Editor, Vashaanth Gowri-Kriszyk

July 2017
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Introduction
This article is about the Big Bang, the evolution, and how life was formed. The article
will start with the Big Bang, then how stars form and die, then how life on Earth formed
and finishing off with evolution. I hope this article answers these two questions: Why
are we here? Why is everything here?

The Big Bang

According to the Big Bang Theory, the entire universe was created by the Big Bang’s
occurrence. But what was the Big Bang?
The Big Bang is the main theory most scientists believe to be accurate about how the
universe was created. According to all the current evidence, the Big Bang or some
other scientific beginning had taken place in order for our universe to be created.
Currently, the theory states that the universe was probably born as a singularity for
reasons unknown and before that there was nothing. However, there is ongoing
research investigating whether there could have been something before the Big Bang.
Earlier, I stated that the universe was probably born as a singularity. This might have
made you wonder what a singularity is.
A singularity is what is at the centre of a black hole. A black hole is something that
‘eats’ anything that goes past its event horizon. Black holes are also areas of extreme
gravitational pressure. Black holes will be discussed in more detail later.
After the Big Bang, the universe inflated or expanded (this means it got bigger) then
cooled down. It still is expanding and cooling down today.

How do stars form and die?

Stars are amazing to look at in the night sky. However, have you ever wondered how
they were formed?
Stars are formed by other stars exploding or dying. The only exception is the first stars,
which were created by the cooling universe.
The next step is for a nebula to form. Then nuclear fusion occurs which means that
Hydrogen becomes Helium, and Helium becomes other elements. These are elements
you can find on The Periodic Table. All the elements up to the element of iron on The
Periodic Table can be found in a sun-like star or smaller stars.

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Following the nuclear fusion, proto-star forms. This is a big hot swirling ball of gas.
What would happen next is that the proto-star cools down and becomes a star. The
remains from the formation of the star would make a star system.
Million years later this star would die. What happens next depends on the star.
For instance, Sun-size stars would get massive, then make lots of hydrogen and helium,
and become a type of star called Red Dwarfs. At this point, all fusion starts stopping
and a change happens in the star. Following this change, the star has changed from
being a Red Dwarf to a Blue Dwarf. After this change, the star stops fusion where it
then becomes a White Dwarf. Finally, it cools and becomes a Black Dwarf.
On the other hand, stars the size of eight to fifteen suns or solar masses go supernova.
The type of supernova at the end of a star’s life is Type II. Type I is when one star in a
binary system takes the matter from the other star in a binary system. A binary system
is a group two stars, or black holes orbiting each other. Type II occurs when a big star
runs out of nuclear fuel and it explodes.
Supernova stars become neutron stars. A neutron star is a ball with a radius of ten
kilometers but its mass is roughly the same as the sun! If a person went to a neutron
star, the energy to lift your head there would be like climbing Mount Everest on Earth.
Black holes form because of hypernova explosions. A star that goes hypernova must
have twenty-five plus solar masses. Stars called Wolf-Rayet stars become black holes.
A hypernova, which is sometimes called a collapsar, is a very energetic type of
supernova. A hypernova is when a centre of a star that is thirty or more solar masses
collapses and forms a black hole. The black hole is a rotating black hole and it has twin
energetic jets coming out of it. It also has a disc called an accretion disc which is a disc
of matter swirling around it. Jets are parallel beams of matter that comes from some
astronomical objects like water from a hose. There are different types of jets,
depending on the astrophysical situations. However, the main two types are galactic
jets and stellar jets. Galactic jets are believed to have a single source, which is a
supermassive black hole at the centre of a galaxy. Whereas, stellar jets have several
origins. Stellar jets are produced by young stars that are still in the process of forming.
This takes place in the planetary nebulae which mark the final stages of evolution for
intermediate and low mass stars, and in compact objects such as neutron stars and
stellar black holes in binary systems. Going back to the jets which were mentioned
about hypernova, these are two stellar jets.
The collapse of the centre of the star (this is the star that made the black hole)
happened extremely fast and that made the outer parts of the star not get affected
straight away. Then the entire star exploded because there were waves of Ni56, which
is an isotope or type of Nickel, that just formed. At the same time, shock waves would
have gone through the entire star as the jets burst through the star.

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Astronomers are scientists who look at the stars and make theories about other
objects in space. They state that gamma-ray bursts should accompany the jets and
Ni56. Astronomers do not know how the gamma rays are formed but they do know
that the gamma-ray burst making a big cone that people cannot see unless it is
pointing at Earth. It would not be good if they were pointing at Earth because gamma
rays are radioactive, and if it hits us, which it would do if it was pointing at Earth, it
would completely destroy a person or all life on Earth.
Black holes are also areas of extreme gravitational pressure. In the past, people
thought that once an object went past the event horizon of the black hole it was gone
forever. This is not true. Dr. Steven Hawking made a theory called Hawking Radiation,
which proposes this idea that black hole should lose mass. This means that the
positron (which has negative mass and negative charge) would fall into the black hole
and the electron (which has positive mass and negative charge) would escape. This
means the black hole would lose mass and eventually the black hole would disappear.
A theory by Dr. Hawking, which is called The Hawking Paradox proposes that the
information which enters the black hole is lost forever. This theory does not support
his other theory, called Hawking Radiation which was considered earlier in this article.
The Hawking Paradox is against all laws of physics, although black holes, especially
singularities, have been against all laws of physics since they were made as a theory.
Hawking supported this theory for many years until he said he was defeated by
another scientist called Susskind and ended what was called the black hole war.
Susskind's theory is more complicated. He thinks all the information is smeared around
the black hole. Also, he thinks that the information is copied and stored around the
edge. He thinks that something similar happens in the universe.
Even light can only escape a black hole through Hawking Radiation. This means black
holes are pretty much invisible. How do people find black holes when they are
invisible? People find black holes through looking at objects near a possible black hole.
If objects are getting sucked towards something you cannot see, there is a black hole
there.
How did life form on Earth?
The starting point for life is a long-gone star if it still existed would be near the solar
system.
A star- let’s call it Choco1 star- exploded as a supernova. Then the remains of Choco1
star started to create a new small star. This is the Sun. Now the remnants from the
making of the star become the planets.
The Moon is thought to have been a molten planet like Earth, and astronomers call it
Theia. Then how did it become the Moon? Scientists have a theory to explain this and

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this theory is called the Giant Impact Hypothesis. It proposes the idea that Theia and
Earth hit each other. This theory also explains why some chemicals on Earth are on the
Moon. Figure 1 is an artist’s impression of Theia’ and Earth’s collision.

Figure 1

Earth’s first Era was called the Hadean Era after the Greek God, Hades. It was called
that when there was no life on Earth. It lasted from 4.6 billion years ago to 4 billion
years ago (b.y.a).
Did life begin on another planet or did it start here on Earth? Scientists still do not
know the answer to this.
However, what scientists do know is that around four b.y.a in the Archean Era,
microscopic life formed. Then for the next three billion years, bacteria and archaea
ruled the Earth. After the three billion years, complex life forms ruled the Earth.
In Figure 2, the Geological Time Scale, which is the scale all earth scientists use, is
shown.

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Figure 2

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There are many versions of the Geological Time Scale, and Figure 2. just illustrates one
of them.
The first complex life is thought to have evolved when an archaeon and a bacterium
which is one single bacteria, joined together.
The first complex life evolved in the Protozoic Eon in the Ediacaran or Vendean Period.
When Earth was formed, there was no oxygen. Animals need oxygen to live. So how
did oxygen form on Earth?
Prior to the existence of oxygen on Earth, the sky and the sea was red because of the
Carbon Dioxide or CO2.
Cyanobacteria, which are photosynthetic bacteria, release oxygen as waste product.
This appeared in the late Hadean Era but became evolutionary successful in the
Protozoic. They created oxygen to 14% higher than previously in the billion years
preceding.
In the Cambrian Period, there was a geological occurrence, that palaeontologists and
other earth scientists call the Cambrian Explosion. No, it doesn’t mean there was a big
explosion throughout the Cambrian Period. It refers to the explosion of life. What this
means is before the Cambrian, there was not really any diversity between species. At
the beginning of the Cambrian, however, there was a sudden diversity in-between
species. This is the Cambrian Explosion. The first trilobites, ammonites, and belemnites
evolved in the Cambrian. The predecessors of the Ichthyosaurus also evolved in the
Cambrian.
The next major event was the evolution of land-based animals. This was around 360
million years ago. The first animals on land were the amphibians. Next reptiles went
on to the land.
Then reptiles evolved into mammals. So, the first mammals were our and all mammals
first mammalian ancestor. Then some mammals and reptiles went back into the sea.
Following this, dinosaurs and birds evolved, then mammoths evolved and the
mammoths go extinct and many more things have happened but I would not focus on
that in this article. Instead, we will learn about human evolution.

Human Evolution
The first step in human evolution is when a common ancestor of apes and humans
evolved into two different paths. One was the apes, the other was humans.

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Then Australopithecus, which is a type of a hominid, went on two paths. Hominid is

the definition of the species of all human ancestors that evolved as the result of two
groups. One group consisted of apes, and the other consisted of humans. They both
had a common ancestor. Australopithecus were the ones which evolved into Homo
and Paranthropus. The group of Paranthropus goes extinct, consequently, the group
called Homo started ruling. Studies show that there were subtypes of Homo and whilst
all the remaining types were extinct one kept ruling, and this is the only type remaining
and currently existing. That’s us, the Homo Sapiens.
To see how Homo Sapiens was related to other hominids, see Figure 3.
There are some books and websites I have recommended for further reading, which
are available on the Resource List at the end of this article, should you wish to read
these.

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Figure 3

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What is evolution and what is its very important role for us to be here?
Evolution was proposed by Charles Darwin as a theory, and it is now called Theory of
Evolution, or Evolutionary Theory. He proposed it in the name of his famous book: On
the Origin of Species by The Means Of Natural Selection, Or the Preservation of
Favoured Races in The Struggle for Life. It is now published as On the Origin of Species
by The Means Of Natural Selection or On the Origin of Species.
Evolution means the process when an animal’s offspring is slightly different from the
source of its origin, which is the offspring’s parent in this case. This would result in a
different species or varieties of the same species. Evolution is completely random.
Sometimes, people manipulate how evolution works. For example, people made
wolves breed and killed the ones they didn’t like. In this way, people made dogs.
Charles Darwin stated, “Owing to this struggle for life, any variation, however slight
and from whatever cause proceeding, if it be in any degree profitable to an individual
of any species, in its infinitely complex relationship to other organic beings and to
external nature, will tend to the preservation of that individual, and will generally be
inherited by its offspring.” This explains how evolution is also influenced by our
environment.
If someone changed one point in evolution, entire species would never exist and no-
one would know that they existed. Furthermore, animals previously in the fossil record
would not exist.
Evolution means that all life on earth is related. This is because all multi-cellular or
complex life forms are descended from single-cellular or simple organisms. For
instance, multi-cellular life is humans and animals. On the other hand, single-cellular
life is bacteria and archaeons (also called archaea).
This means when you eat sausages, you are eating, in an evolutionary perspective, a
distant family member (the pig). This also means in a sense you are related to Albert
Einstein, Roald Dahl and Elvis Presley. That seagull that stole your crisps at the seaside
is an extremely distant relative. This also means you are related to dolphins, elephants,
dinosaurs and those extremely irritating insects- what are they called? - ah, mosquitos.
But how could and how did evolution make all life on Earth and in the universe? Are
there aliens in the universe? If so, did the evolution have an influence on that too?
It all begins with a molecule called Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA). This makes
Ribonucleic Acid (RNA), which is an acid helps cells to make amino acids. These are
made of Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, and Nitrogen. Amino acids join each other in
order to make proteins. Proteins make up cells, which make up your body.

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DNA is what makes evolution happen. DNA can divide and this contributes to changes
in the DNA. These changes are called mutations. When a DNA molecule with mutations
divides, it can cause cancer or make a species be better adapted for their environment.

Conclusion
This article looked in depth into the reasons to why we are here and exactly the way
we are. It is our past, it is our present and will be our future. This means evolution,
extinction, and destruction of the solar system.
Furthermore, we considered theories of how the universe might have been developed.
The observable universe is fourteen light years long. In 2016, it was concluded that
there are around 200 billion galaxies in the observable universe at the moment. There
are billions of stars in every galaxy, meaning that there could be many planets. This
indicates that there is a high chance of extra-terrestrial life.
According to approximate numbers put in the Drake Equation, there are supposed to
be many alien civilisations. The Drake Equation is an equation created by Frank Drake.
It says:
N = R*×fp×ne×fl×fi×fc×L
N = The number of civilizations in the Milky Way Galaxy whose electromagnetic
emissions are detectable.
R* =The rate of formation of stars suitable for the development of intelligent life.
fp = The fraction of those stars with planetary systems.
ne = The number of planets, per solar system, with an environment suitable for life.
fl = The fraction of suitable planets on which life actually appears.
fi = The fraction of life bearing planets on which intelligent life emerges.
fc = The fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable
signs of their existence into space.
L = The length of time such civilizations release detectable signals into space.

These things show us that there is so much more to being discovered about the
universe and life.

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Resources

Books:
Space, Stars and Slimy Aliens (Junior Edition) by Nick Arnold
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
The Illustrated Origin of Species by Charles Darwin abridged & introduced by Richard.E
Leakey
Dead Dinosaurs by Martin Oliver
The Incredible Unlikeliness of Being by Alice Roberts
The Incredible Human Journey by Alice Roberts

Websites:
[Link]
[Link]
[Link]
[Link]

Places to visit:
National Space Centre. Their website is [Link]
7ECFYcNfAodTT0AKg.
Isle of Wight:
Dinosaur Isle- [Link]
Dinosaur Expeditions - [Link]/.
Natural History Museum. Website: [Link]/.
Oxford University Museum of Natural History. Website: [Link].

©2017 Vashaanth Gowri-Kriszyk. All Rights Reserved