Related papers: First Life in the Universe
Life can be viewed as a localized chemical system that sits on, or in the basin of attraction of, a metastable dynamical attractor state that remains out of equilibrium with the environment. Such a view of life allows that new living states…
After Earth's origin, our host star, the Sun, was shining 20 to 25 percent less brightly than today. Without greenhouse-like conditions to warm the atmosphere, our early planet would have been an ice ball and life may never have evolved.…
The solar system started to form about 4.56 Gyr ago and despite the long intervening time span, there still exist several clues about its formation. The three major sources for this information are meteorites, the present solar system…
The age of the universe in the Big Bang model can be calculated from three parameters: Hubble's constant, h; the mass density of the universe, Omega_m; and the cosmological constant, Omega_lambda. Recent observations of the cosmic microwave…
In the first two years of operation JWST has delivered key new insights into the formation and evolution of galaxies in the early Universe. By combining imaging with spectroscopy, we discovered and characterised the first generation of…
High-energy astrophysical events that cause galaxy-scale extinctions have been proposed as a way to explain or mollify the Fermi Paradox, by making the universe at earlier times more dangerous for evolving life, and reducing its present-day…
Hydrogravitional-dynamics (HGD) cosmology of Gibson/Schild 1996 predicts that the primordial H-He^4 gas of big bang nucleosynthesis became proto-globular-star-cluster clumps of Earth-mass planets at 300 Kyr. The first stars formed from…
Understanding where elements were formed has been a key goal in astrophysics for nearly a century, with answers involving cosmology, stellar burning, and cosmic explosions. Since 1957, the origin of the heaviest elements (formed via the…
The chemical elements are created in nuclear fusion processes in the hot and dense cores of stars. The energy generated through nucleosynthesis allows stars to shine for billions of years. When these stars explode as massive supernovae, the…
This paper presents the proportional evolutionary time hypothesis, which posits that the mean time required for the evolution of complex life is a function of stellar mass. The "biological available window" is defined as the region of a…
We discuss the expected properties of the first stellar generations in the Universe. We find that it is possible to discern truly primordial populations from the next generation of stars by measuring the metallicity of high-z star forming…
"The investigation into the possible effects of cosmic rays on living organisms will also offer great interest." - Victor F. Hess, Nobel Lecture, December 12, 1936 High-energy radiation bursts are commonplace in our Universe. From nearby…
The smallest dwarf galaxies are the most straight forward objects in which to study star formation processes on a galactic scale. They are typically single cell star forming entities, and as small potentials in orbit around a much larger…
An attempt is made, probably for the first time, to understand the origin of the solar system in context with the evolution of the galaxy as a natural consequence of the birth of several generations of stellar clusters. The galaxy is…
From a modern perspective cosmology is a historical science in so far that it deals with the development of the universe since its origin some 14 billion years ago. The origin itself may not be subject to scientific analysis and…
The existence of massive black holes was postulated in the sixties, when the first quasars were discovered. In the late nineties their reality was proven beyond doubt, in the Milky way and a handful nearby galaxies. Since then, enormous…
The existence of a thermodynamic arrow of time in the present universe implies that the initial state of the observable portion of our universe at (or near) the ``big bang'' must have been very ``special''. We argue that it is not plausible…
The widespread presence of ribonucleic acid (RNA) catalysts and cofactors in Earth's biosphere today suggests that RNA was the first biopolymer to support Darwinian evolution. However, most "path-hypotheses" to generate building blocks for…
The lower limit of the mass of the first stars suggested recently may imply the formation of massive stars of mass greater than 8 solar mass irrespective of the details of the initial mass function. The production of heavy metals from the…
The early start to life naively suggests that abiogenesis is a rapid process on Earth-like planets. However, if evolution typically takes ~4Gyr to produce intelligent life-forms like us, then the limited lifespan of Earth's biosphere…