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Mountain Ranges

Hadean Eon

Geologic Timescale

Hadean time is not a geological period as such. No rocks on the Earth are this old, except for meteorites. During Hadean time, the Solar System was forming, probably within a large cloud of gas and dust around the sun, called an accretion disc. The relative abundance of heavier elements in the Solar System suggests that this gas and dust was derived from a supernova, or supernovas — the explosion of an old, massive star. Heavier elements are generated within stars by nuclear fusion of hydrogen, and are otherwise uncommon. We can see similar processes taking place today in so-called diffuse nebulae in this and other galaxies, such as the Nebula M16, below left.

 

The sun formed within such a cloud of gas and dust, shrinking in on itself by gravitational compaction until it began to undergo nuclear fusion and give off light and heat. Surrounding particles began to coalesce by gravity into larger lumps, or planetesimals, which continued to aggregate into planets. "Left-over" material formed asteroids and comets, like asteroid Ida.

 

Because collisions between large planetesimals release a lot of heat, the Earth and other planets would have been molten at the beginning of their histories. Solidification of the molten material into rock happened as the Earth cooled.  Sometime during the first years of its history, the surface of the Earth changed from liquid to solid. Once solid rock formed on the Earth, its geological history began.  The advent of a rock record roughly marks the beginning of the Archean eon.

 

The Earth is thought to have been formed by collisions in the giant disc-shaped cloud of material that also formed the Sun. Gravity slowly gathered this gas and dust together into clumps that became asteroids and small early planets called planetesimals.

 

Everything you can see, touch, smell, feel, and taste is made of atoms. Atoms are the basic building-block of all matter (including you and me, and everyone else you'll ever meet),

 

Our world is made of elements and combinations of elements called compounds. An element is a pure substance made of atoms that are all of the same type. At present, 116 elements are known, and only about 90 of these occur naturally. 

 

A chemical element is a substance that cannot be made into a simpler form by ordinary chemical means. The smallest unit of a chemical element is an atom, and all atoms of a particular element are identical.

Atoms in motion

Parts of an Atom

There are two parts to an atom:

 

  • At the center of an atom is a nucleus made up of two types of particles called protons and neutrons.

 

    • Protons have a positive electrical charge. The number of protons in the nucleus determines what element the atom is.

    • Neutrons are about the size of protons but have no charge.

 

  • Electrons, much smaller than protons or neutrons, have a negative electrical charge, move at nearly the speed of light, and orbit the nucleus at exact distances, depending on their energy.

 

An atom is made up of a nucleus of neutrons and protons ‐ even smaller particles than an atom. They are called subatomic particles. Electrons circle around this nucleus. Atoms tend to have the same number of electrons as the number of protons in the nucleus. This number is very significant. Each kind of atom has a different number of protons. For example: oxygen has 8 protons. That means it also has 8 electrons. The 8 is known as its atomic number. But gold has 79 protons and 79 electrons. If you wanted to know how many protons and electrons are found in any given atom, the Periodic Table of the Elements is the place to find out.

Everything is made from Atoms
Quantum Mechanics -The Structure of an Atom

Numbers in the Universe

 

How were numbers in the universe used to create some of the properties that are familiar to us? How does the very existence of creation PROVE that a divine Being MUST exist?

 

God's creation is based on mathematical laws and principles that govern everything around us. The awesome complexity of the earth, as well as the immense expanse of space and all it contains, is witnesses that an intelligent Being with tremendous power made them. They are an eternal testimony that a God DOES exist who both created them and continuously upholds them with laws he set in place. The numbers in the universe are so amazing that every human is capable of ultimately concluding that He exists (Romans 1:20)!

 

God's power

 

The Milky Way galaxy we live in roughly contains 100 billion stars. Astronomers have also estimated that the number of galaxies in the observable universe is 200 BILLION! The current diameter of the observable area is about 93 BILLION light years. The width of the ENTIRE universe (the parts we can and cannot see) is bigger still. In comparison, the width of a typical galaxy is only 30,000 light-years.

 

The first division of time

 

The first natural division of time we find in the Bible is a day. When God ordained periods of rest and worship for Israel he marked them with the number seven. The seventh day is a weekly holy day. The seventh Hebrew month has special Biblical Feast days within it. The seventh year was deemed a year of rest for the land. Every seven times seven years (49) marked a very special period known as the year of Jubilee.

 

Nature's creation

 

We see a law of numbers in various nature areas. For example, we can see a division of seven from the animal kingdom. For an animal such as a dog, who is obviously in animal kingdom (division 1), they are further classified as a vertebrata, then as a Mammalia, then of the order of Carnivore, the family of Canidae, the genus of dog and a species of retriever. A seven-fold division from the plant kingdom for a Tea Rose (one division) would be in the kingdom of vegetables, sub-division of Phanerogamia, and then a further division into Dicotyledon, Rosiflorae, Rosaciae, and finally a genus of rose.

 

The creation of vegetables

 

Life revolves around law and order for vegetables. For those plants that grow indoors, three prevails. For those plants that grow outside, the numeric five is prevailing. Indian corn grains are usually arranged in even numbers, but never an odd one! The growth of leaves on a plant appears in a particular arrangement. Some leaves are alternately spaced while others are spaced opposite, while still others are arranged in a spiral pattern.

 

The creation of chemistry

 

Discoveries are constantly made in chemistry. Chemistry, unlike geology, does not have its theories consistently revamped by newer one. All substances in the known universe are composed of combinations of a variety of elements. Elements are one of a class of substances that cannot be separated into simpler substances by chemical means. The way in which the elements are arranged may seem complex but there is a design behind it.

 

When magnetized all elements fall into two classes. A class arranges itself in the direction of west and east and does so at 90-degree angles to the magnetic force lines. The other class arranges itself to align with our magnetic pole. Monads are elements that combine with one and only one atom. Elements that come together with two atoms of another substance are called Dyads. Those that combine with three atoms are Triads, etc. Some of the most important elements are a multiple of either 4 or 7 (or very closely so). The atomic weight of iron (Chemical symbol: Fe) is 56 (7 x 8), silver's weight (Ag) is about 108 (4 x 27), copper's weight (Cu) is around 63 (7 x 9), carbon's weight (C) is 12 (3 x 4), mercury's weight (Hg) is 200 (4 x 50), etc.

 

The creation of sound and music

 

Sound is a wave, an oscillation of pressure transmitted through the air (or other substance) within frequencies that are heard. Experiments have determined a fixed set of vibrations for each note. The below scale shows, for each note, the number of vibrations in possesses in parenthesis. If one looks at the below table, one will notice the prominence of 11 and well as 7. The scale also has a vibration range of 264.

What is matter?

 

Matter is anything, such as a solid, liquid or gas, that has weight(mass) and occupies space. For anything to occupy space, it must have volume.  Thinking about it, everything on earth has weight and takes up space, and that means everything on earth is matter.  Solids, liquids and gases are all made up of very tiny stuff that the naked eye cannot see, called atoms, molecules and/or ions.

 

What are solids?

Solids are simply hard substances, and they are hard because of how their molecules are packed together. Examples include rock, chalk, sugar, a piece of wood, plastic, steel or nail. They are all solids at room temperature. They can come in all sizes, shapes and forms. 

Think of ice cubes as an example. They are solids when frozen. They change into liquid at room temperature. 
What about ashes? Is that solid too? Yes, ashes are tiny solid particles that fall off when something burns— like wood ash in the fireplace.

Characteristic of particles (molecules) in a solid.

 

  • The particles are close together (that’s why they cannot be squashed or compressed.

  • The particles cannot move freely from place to place (this is why they have a fixed shape).

  • The particles are arranged in a regular, distinct pattern.

  • The particles are held together by strong forces called bonds (This is why solids do not flow like water. Their particles are only able to vibrate in their position and cannot move from place to place.)

  • The particles can vibrate in a fixed position

  • Different solids behave slightly differently, because they have different properties such as ‘STRENGTH’. This makes solids useful for different things. Look at a pencil eraser—it is a solid, but can slightly change shape because the strength in its bonds are slightly weaker that that in a piece of diamond.

What is a Liquid?

 

Liquids do not hold their shape at room temperature. There is space between the atoms of a liquid and they move slightly all of the time. This allows you to stick your finger into water and pull it back out, letting the water fill back in where your finger once was. But when walking through the water in the swimming pool, you have to push the water out of the way ‐ this means that you feel the heaviness of the water. Liquids flow or pour and can take on the shape of a container. If the liquid is poured into a wider or narrower container, the liquid will take on that new shape. Liquids are affected by gravity. If you pour only half a cup of milk, the top half of the container would have no milk. Liquids cannot be handed to another person well without the container. Imagine going into a restaurant and asking for lemonade. What if the waiter just put the lemonade into your hands ‐ no glass or cup? Could you lay the lemonade on the table to drink in a few minutes? Even water in a river or a lake has a container ‐ the banks, the bottom, the shore ‐ they form the container.

Liquid Matter
Energy and the Four States of Matter Solid Liquid Gas and Plasma

What is a Gas?

 

Gases not only do not hold their shape at room temperature, they don't even stay put. Gases are always moving. There is so much space between the atoms in gas that you can move around in them easily. When you walk from one side of the room to the other, you have walked through a bunch of gases that make up our air. You barely even know they are there. Gases will take on the shape of their container and can be compressedinto a smaller space. Like when we compress air into a balloon ‐ it fills out the balloon shape. Gases will fill up the space too. You don't see only half of the balloon filled with air ‐ the air is not as influenced by gravity as a liquid or a solid would be.

What is Plasma?

 

We often talk about the three states of matter; solid, liquid and gas. Most of the matter that we use is in one of those three forms. But there is another that we see and use and that we would have a hard time living without ‐plasma. It is often called the fourth state of matter. Plasma is electrically charged, does not hold its shape, has a huge amount of energy and is very difficult state to manipulate without a laboratory. Plasma can be found here on the earth in flames, lightning, and the polar auroras. The sun, the stars, and some other space events and objects are also made of plasma matter.

 

What is a Change of State?

 

Matter can move from one state to another, but can still be the same substance. A change of state, also called a phase change, is a physical change from one state of matter to another, for example, from solid to liquid or from liquid to gas.

How does matter move from one phase to another? If the motion of the atoms is altered by pressure or temperature, the state can change too. By lowering the temperature of water, it can freeze into a solid. By heating water, it can become steam which is a gas. Whether solid, liquid or gas ‐ water is still water.

 

Pressure can change matter from one state to another. Deep in the earth solids turn to liquids because the heavy weight of layers and layers of the earth push down on the solids causing them to turn to liquid magma. This is just one example of how pressure can change matter too.

 

Other matter changes too, but often only exists in two states or requires the help of humans and technology to move through all three phases. Water is the only matter on earth that can be found naturally in all three - solid, liquid and a gas.

The Archean

If you were able to travel back to visit the Earth during the Archean, you would likely not recognize it as the same planet we inhabit today. The atmosphere was very different from what we breathe today; at that time, it was likely a reducing atmosphere of methane, ammonia, and other gases which would be toxic to most life on our planet today. Also during this time, the Earth's crust cooled enough that rocks and continental plates began to form.

 

It was early in the Archean that life first appeared on Earth. Our oldest fossils consist of bacteria microfossils. In fact, all life of the Archean was bacterial. The Archean coast was home to mounded colonies of photosynthetic bacteria called stromatolites. Stromatolites have been found as fossils in early Archean rocks of South Africa and western Australia. Stromatolites increased in abundance throughout the Archean, but began to decline during the Proterozoic. They are not common today, but they are doing well in Shark Bay.

 

The Proterozoic Eon

 

Proterozoic, which is subdivided into three eras: the Paleoproterozoic, Mesoproterozoic, and Neoproterozoic. Many of the most exciting events in the history of the Earth and of life occurred during the Proterozoic — stable continents first appeared and began to accrete. Also coming from this time are the first abundant fossils of living organisms, mostly bacteria and archaeans, but soon eukaryotic cells appear as fossils too.

 

With the beginning of the Mesoproterozoic comes the first evidence of oxygen build-up in the atmosphere. This global catastrophe spelled doom for many bacterial groups, but made possible the explosion of eukaryotic forms. These included multicellular algae, and toward the end of the Proterozoic, the first animals.

 

Life

 

The first traces of life appear in the early Archean. However, clearly identifiable fossils remain rare until the late Archean, when stromatolites, layered mounds produced by the growth of microbial mats, become common in the rock record.

 

Stromatolite diversity increased through most of the Proterozoic. Until they flourished in shallow waters throughout the world. Their importance for understanding Proterozoic life is tremendous; stromatolites that have been silicified (forming a type of rock known as stromatolitic chert) often preserve exquisite microfossils of the microbes that made them.

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