Big Bang to Entropy…
Inspired by two courses taught by Bill Hammond at the Midcoast Senior College, Brunswick, Maine, Spring and Fall Semesters 2023.
See David Christian, Origin Story A Big History of Everything, Little Brown Spark, @ 2018
That’s the overview, now onto some of the details.
Complexity, Energy and Entropy
I’ll start with the Thresholds, to me, they are the miracles of our existence.
Thresholds:
I Big Bang <—
II Stars
III Beyond Helium, how dying stars created the elements
IV Formation of our sun and solar system
V Life appears <—
- Chemical elements to living elements
- Single cells
- Multicells
- Plants
- Animals
- Fish
- Dinosaurs
- Mamals
VI Homo sapiens appear
VII Holocene, farming and new human political, religious, economic and social constructs
VIII Fossil fuels and the Great Acceleration by humans aka the Anthropocene
IX Will we be around 100, 1000, a million years and beyond? What does the future look like for homo sapiens?
Our sun dies in 4.5 billion years hence.
Our galaxy, the universe, entropy…
To me, the most astounding of these nine thresholds are #1 The Big Bang and #5 the emergence of life. Why? Because Big Bang appeared out nothing and nowhere. And life started from inert chemicals to become living organisms. Those are the two origin stories that should be rigorously studied, discussed, understood over and over again. Both will continue to vex us humans for a long, long time.