[ home | research
| personal | resume]
Why are we here ?
We are here because, 13.7 billion years ago, the universe borrowed
energy from the vacuum to create vast amounts of matter and antimatter
in nearly equal numbers. Most of it annihilated and filled the
universe with photons. Less than one part per billion survived to form
protons and neutrons, and then the hydrogen and helium that makes up
most everything there is. Some of this hydrogen and helium collapsed to
make the first generation of massive stars, which produced the first
batch of heavy elements in their central nuclear fires. These stars
exploded and enriched the interstellar clouds that would form the next
generation of stars. Finally, about 4.6 billion years ago, one
particular cloud in one partcular galaxy collapsed to form our Sun and
its planetary system. Life arose on the third planet, based on the
hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and other elements found in the
protostellar cloud. The development of life transformed Earth's
atmosphere and allowed small furry mammals to take center stage.
Primitive men and women evolved and moved out of Africa to conquer
the world with their new knowledge of tools, language, and agriculture.
After raising food on the land, your ancestors, your parents, and then
you consumed this food and breathed the air. Your own body is a
collection of the atoms that were created billions of years earlier
in the interior of stars, the fraction of a fraction of a percent of
normal matter that escaped annihilation in the first microsecond
of the universe. Your life and everything in the world around you
is intimately tied to countless aspects of modern astrophysics.
from: Carroll, B.W., and Ostlie, D.A., 2007, An Introduction to
Modern Astrophysics, Addison-Wesley Pub. Comp. Inc