Professor Dave Bercovici of Yale University came to Colby on Tuesday September 26th to discuss origins as it applies to Earth and the evolution of our planet to the point we rest at today. Professor Bercovici took his audience through the rather finite scientific process that guided the formation of Earth, from the big bang, to the collapse and formation of stars, and the formation of planets. What was particularly astounding about the origin of our planet was the necessity of so many, tiny pieces to fall perfectly in order, otherwise we may not have the society we are existing in today.

One of the first points Professor Bercovici drew focused on how unique the Earth really is. He asked the audience to consider why it was that the Earth was the only terrestrial planet in our solar system with liquid water, habitable climate, and complex life (or really any life at all)? It’s not something commonly questioned, but when considering the origins of the earth, you must start with what made the Earth so different from other planets in our own solar system and beyond.

Moving into the formation process, the evidence for the Big Bang and the idea of Dark Energy begin to frame the universe’s existence and its continuous expansion. From this point, Professor Bercovici posed the question “how do we get from there to making life?” The answer is in the collapse of clouds and the resulting formation of a star. Our sun is a star that stopped collapsing because it was releasing energy responsible for converting hydrogen to helium (elements that eventually become the planets core).  This was crucial timing for a small star like the sun, because as a result it will burn for a long time permitting the billions of years needed to reach the level of life surrounding us today.

To put the sun in perspective, Professor Bercovici then continued to explain Red Super Giant Stars and actually placed the size of our sun in perspective to the rest of the universe. In the example he used, you could barely see our sun (Sol), compared to the rest of the stars (sizes other than the supergiants included as well). It’s almost deflating to consider how important our day to day life seems, but in the reality of the universe we aren’t even as large as a laser beam from our professor’s pointer.

Thinking about the origins of ourselves, families, and the planet can be a humbling experience in this way. The process of making a solar system is fast and has to happen quickly with all the pieces literally coming together. The origin of the Earth is defined by these many, exact, finite steps: the gravitational collapse of cloud fragments, hydrogen fusing to helium at 10 million degrees, this energy needing to be released at the right time to create a small enough star that will last a long time allowing life to form, the pre-solar cloud collapsing into a disk, the planet needing to accrete and surpass the one meter hurdle, our moon forming to create the natural patterns on Earth that frame our daily lives, atmosphere forming, and plate tectonics exposing new mineral into the atmosphere and ocean.