Thanks for that, I was just looking into my bookshelf for an explantion that Issac Asimov gave in one of his short stories - he coined a term for it - cant remember the term, name of the story and cant even find the book, wonder which ex wife has the book now :-(
Tim -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, 12 May 2006 6:57 p.m. To: NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi List Subject: Re: [DUG] General Theory OT means strictly off topic. Sorry I cant resist this post, since someone else started it. OK well I am not exactly an AstroP but I know a little bit. If you go back to the big bang, then its a matter of temperature, or in terms of the energy involved you can describe things in eV (electron volts). The half decent BB theories start to kick in at about 10^-44 seconds. At 10^-37 sec it expanded most rapidly, basically you can look at it as an adiabatic thermal process, where the energy per unit volume is dropping and things are uncoupling and condensing out. Neutrino physics may be important here but these things are pretty hard to study because the ones we get from our sun tend to go right through the earth. Well anyway due to a useful asymmetry (maybe involving neutrinos), a bit more matter than antimatter was formed, and the balance of antimatter positrons annihilated with matter electrons, to give heaps of photons, plus the matter your body eventually got made from. After 10^-3 seconds, as the bubble gets bigger and the energy density drops, the leftover protons and neutrons of matter start to condense together to make the lighter nuclei, and we get the very well known and studied reactions involving neutrons amongst hydrogen, deuterium, tritium and their isotopes. The gas is plasma whch means that the oppositely charged electrons are their in equal numbers, and when the temperature drops right down (maybe a quarter of an hour after the start of the show) we end up with about 75% hydrogen and 25% helium, in gaseous form, which is basically all we have today. Except for the embarrassing fact of dark matter, and dark energy, which is like 10 times as much as the hydrogen, and nobody is even sure what it is. It does stuff like keep the galaxies rotating like a bicycle wheel on that scale, instead of like the varied rotational speeds we see on the scale of say the solar system planets etc. The photons are cooling off too and that's the cosmic background we now see at about 3 degrees kelvin. Back to the BB, now density may be thin, but the temperature can stay in the millions of degrees until we can figure out how to get hydrogen atoms to lose some energy. By colliding they just share it, they don't lose it. This is where my favourite science starts, enter chemistry, stage left. Once you can get two hydrogens slow enough to stick together, you got a hydrogen molecule. It acts an a kind of evolutionary catalyst, because it is able to vibrate and rotate in many more lower energy modes. So a hydrogen molecule can start to degrade thermal kinetic energy and radiate it away as thermal photons. This allows the hot gas to cool, and the next stage of condensation into giant low density stars can start. The low abundance elements Beryllium and Boron are formed in the interstellar medium by cosmic rays, so there are only ever trace elements. The stars form carbon up to iron by nuclear fusion. Later as the bigger stars form they go nova and blow off material forming the fissile heavy elements into the interstellar medium, so elements like iron accumulate in more abundance than you would expect due to fusion. Umm, well to finish the story, organic molecules condense out of stellar nebulae and life condenses out of organic chemistry. Life condenses out of chemical factories under good conditions, and under really good conditions it can take over the geochemistry of an entire planet. One such chemical factory was started on the earth, due to a luck chance encounter collision when it was forming, that removed 90% of its crust and left it orbiting around it, which we call the moon. This allowed tectonic plates to form and allowed water to be constantly drawn down into an underground aquifers under the oceans along the plate bounds and driven back up again, creating a complex circulation system rich in organic chemicals, minerals grains, and allowed self modifying circulation patterns to produce complex plumbing. The cycling motion of water produced the equivalent of a programming loops and branches, as this natural computing system passing chemical over substrates. The natural chirality of crystal surfaces can be seen in the chirality of biomolecules to this day, betraying their evolutionary heritage. Sulphur based metabolic systems, based on key chemicals such as thioglutamate, eventually gave way to alternatives as life arouse from under the sea, and into the sea. It was a bootstrapping of many coexisting systems. As life altered rock, heavy basalts were transformed into lighter granites, which ended up in vast flaoting rafts of land, only earth has granites. Later life was able to climb up onto these continental granites and develop a level of dexterity that underwater living did not demand. Life made the atmosphere, and the land, and transformed the planet. Sorry I glossed over a bit ;) > There are about 10^80 protons & neutrons (baryons) if this > helps - which equates to about 10% of the mass of the > universe (more than 99% of the mass of the visible > component of the universe that is). I would assume there > would be about the same number of electrons. But I'm a > bit behind on my astrophysics, I use to read a lot of > popular science books, but this new stuff about dark > energy and the universe accelerating faster and faster as > time goes on sounds a bit weird to me. > > My guess would be that there are about the same number of > protons as electrons - charge is something that seems to > be preserved (Technically it's Charge, Parity and Time). > There are, however other particles that are charged. So > assuming that the universe does not have an overall > charge, there should be approximately the same number of > protons as electrons - the exception being some of these > other less commonly known particles making up the > difference. > > Are there any particle physicists that can clear this up > (and probably set me wrong)? > > Alister > > Neven MacEwan wrote: > > Kyley > > > > I suggest you read 'QED The stange theory of Light and > > Matter' by R P Feynman (Also would highly recommend his > > autobigraphy "Surely you're joking Mr Feynman") > > > > Then you start wondering "how many sub-atomic particles > are there?" > > > Neven > > > > Kyley Harris wrote: > >> I am starting to wonder how many electrons there are to > every proton. >> > >> > >> > ---------------------------------------------------------- > -------------- >> > >> _______________________________________________ > >> Delphi mailing list > >> [email protected] > >> http://ns3.123.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/delphi > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Delphi mailing list > > [email protected] > > http://ns3.123.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/delphi > > > > > -- > Alister Christie > Computers for People > Ph: 04 471 1849 Fax: 04 471 1266 > http://www.salespartner.co.nz > PO Box 13085 > Johnsonville > Wellington > > _______________________________________________ > Delphi mailing list > [email protected] > http://ns3.123.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/delphi > _______________________________________________ Delphi mailing list [email protected] http://ns3.123.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/delphi _______________________________________________ Delphi mailing list [email protected] http://ns3.123.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/delphi
