Picture this: billions and billions of atoms make up what we are. Cells working involuntarily, 24/7, slaving away to keep us alive with nothing in return. From the moment we took our first breaths and opened our eyes, without consciously knowing the significance of our own existence, our bodies, our surroundings, and this Earth. We are all made up of the same material, yet we are all different through our DNA, our physical features, and personalities. Humans have been evolving for centuries and will continue to improve. Earth has provided us with life and the opportunity to thrive. From the fruits and vegetables we harvest, the cows and chickens we raise, to the tools we use to build homes, schools, and hospitals. Where did all this start? How? Why us? Why you?
According to Scientific America, in an journal article “The Origin of Life on the Earth” by Leslie E. Orgel, the Earth formed about 4.6 billion years ago; with no trace of life existing before that time. Can you imagine what the Earth looked like? No plants, trees, people, animals, or buildings; like a huge abandoned abyss. An Earth without oceans and no oxygen in the atmosphere (Lal). For centuries there has been discussions about how the Earth was created, some say God created all organisms on Earth as well as the planet’s structure while other more scientific predictions say the Solar System was nothing but a cloud of dust particles floating in empty space. As stated by Matt Williams in his article “How was the Earth formed,” a cloud of gas and dust was interrupted, maybe by an explosion of a neighboring star, and the cloud of gas and dust started to collapse as gravity compressed everything together, forming a solar nebula which is a huge spinning disk containing dust and hydrogen gas. As it spun, the disk separated into rings forming white-hot particles.
The center of the disk became the Sun, and the particles in the outer rings cooled and condensed to make the solid forms know today as Earth, Mars, Venus, Mercury, and the outer planets (Williams). I cannot speak for everyone and their beliefs, but that’s for another discussion; everyone is entitled to their own opinions. It’s overwhelming to grasp the idea that Earth was once a harsh environment incapable of sustaining life with its atmosphere dominated by the surrounding materials from the solar nebula, especially light gases such as hydrogen and helium (Lal). Life now prevails, starting with the first forms of life, the prokaryote. As reported by Astrophysics & Space Science in an article “Origin of Life” by Ashwini Kumar Lal, the earliest form of life was a prokaryote, a unicellular bacteria containing a cell membrane and a ribosome, but missing a nucleus or membrane-bound organelles such as mitochondria or chloroplasts that thrived in aquatic environments. For a long time, complex multicellular organisms called eukaryotes did not exist (Lal). From atoms, to cells, to prokaryotes, and to eukaryotes, who would have thought that these microscopic organism would soon be the result of billions of life forms.
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Life has and will always be forever changing. Sparking new life, or evolving one life into another. Natural selection is inevitable and will continue its ongoing cycle until the end of time. Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and natural selection was right. In the article, “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection,” by Charles Darwin, he states: a change in the conditions of life, by specially acting on the reproductive system, causes or increases variability; and in the foregoing case the conditions of life are supposed to have undergone a change, and this would manifestly be favourable to natural selection, by giving a better chance of profitable variations occurring; and unless profitable variations do occur, natural selection can do nothing, he explains how different species of organisms develop through natural selection and says that only those who are able to adapt to their environments will survive and be able to reproduce.
