CHRISTIAN JAY B.

RAMOS BSCE – 1D
GEOLOGY FOR CIVIL ENGINEERS 02/13/2023

REACTION PAPER: NAKED SCIENCE – BIRTH OF THE EARTH

The video “Birth of the Earth” by Naked Science is an informative video

documentary focusing on how our world was made several billion years ago. The

makers of the video communicated with numerous experts in the fields of geology and

astronomy to share their knowledge and discoveries that led to the understanding of the

origins of the Earth, including the materials that have been existing way before life took

place on this planet. The 12-hour-clock analogy used in the video is a great help in

further understanding the significant events that happened in the process of Earth’s

creation which are million or even billions of years apart from one another, making it

difficult to imagine how long those years are in our perspective.

Earth is the only planet in the universe known to mankind that is capable of

supporting life, but the early days of the Earth is very far from being habitable. Through

the use of huge telescopes, humans have been able to gather evidence from the sky

that will explain how the Earth was formed. It all started with a huge region of dust and

materials called a molecular cloud that are sitting at the edge of our very own Milky Way

galaxy. These materials are debris from the explosion of first generation of stars. This

particular event shows the cycle of life of stars and planetary systems that can support

life billions of years later which seems to be impossible during that time.

For the next several millions of years, this cloud of dust will slowly contract using

the force of its own gravity. As its contracts, its small rotation began to speed up and its
center began to heat up, resulting to a spinning ball we now call the Sun. The other

materials that are spinning so fast around this huge ball formed a disk-like formation

that would later give birth to the solar system. This outer disk of the sun will be the

planets’ especially the Earth’s building blocks. It was not found until recently how these

scattered objects in space became the Earth that we know today. Once these materials

accumulated and had an at least a diameter of one mile, its gravitational pull became

strong enough to attract other materials from its surroundings.

Because of this event, an estimated number of 20 planets were formed in the

inner solar system. As time goes by, their orbits began to coincide with one another,

resulting to various collisions between these planets. It took 3 million years for these

planets to stabilize which are now known as Mercury, Venus, Mars, and our very own

Earth. Meanwhile, it took 30 million years for Earth to become what it is after those

million years of collision.

At this point, it may seem that Earth have undergone numerous processes of

transformation, but comparing it to a 12 minute clock, we are just a few minutes from

when we started.

A hurricane of deadly particles was discharged by the Sun and was sent out

throughout the solar system, eroding every planets' atmosphere, especially the Martian

atmosphere which is evident now since this red planet currently has a very thin

atmosphere, making it impossible for life to occur here. If humans ever existed in this

time, an astronaut caught by this event in space will instantly die.

 However, Earth was spared from this disastrous event. It is because the heat

from earth’s formation melted the elements in the molten earth. The lightest elements

rose to the surface while the heavy ones such as iron sank down to the center, creating

a liquid core. This liquid core formed a magnetic field called the magnetosphere around

the earth which deflected the solar winds from eroding the Earth’s atmosphere. The

solar winds that managed to be deflected to the poles and enter the Earth’s atmosphere

reacts with the elements in our atmosphere, creating the Aurora Borealis.

Earth's experience with these disastrous events does not stop there. Millions of

years later, another planet will be colliding with another planet as evidenced by our

Moon. During a simulation done in the video, when another smaller planet made an

impact with the Earth, a very long streak of debris from this collection later on formed

the Moon that we know today. This collision also caused our planet to have a tilt on its

axis, giving us the different seasons that we experience in a cycle every year.

If you think that Earth is already suitable for life at this point, given that it already

has its own atmosphere and magnetosphere, think again. The surface temperature

during this time is still very high for humans to survive. Oxygen still does not exist in the

planet since elements such as carbon and nitrogen dominate the atmosphere, making

it impossible to breathe. Also, liquid water is still non-existent during this time.

The existence of water in our planet's surface was a mystery to scientists until

now. They have discovered that the water that is now on Earth came from the

bombardment of asteroids in the planet which contained water. It is also important to

note that this event would not be possible without the presence of Jupiter in our Solar

system. Its strong gravity caused the asteroids in the asteroid belt to change their path
and went towards our planet, giving it a huge supply of something that will later be

essential in the survival of living organisms. This event was theorized to have made up

the Earth's overall water supply today.

The existence of oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere is something that baffled

scientists for years, not until they discovered the stromatolites that are currently existing

on the coastlines of Australia. These are strange looking rocks made up of blue-green

bacteria that can perform photosynthesis, making it possible to produce oxygen. These

existed 1 billion years after the Earth’s formation.

These conditions made Earth became suitable for life to thrive. 500 million years

ago, animal life already existed in the planet. And using the 12-hour-clock analogy in

the video, 19 seconds before midnight, the first humans were born after 4.5 billion years

of Earth's formation.

The theories presented in the video are the most widely accepted theories about

the origin of the Earth. Since they are just theories, there is no guarantee that they surely

happened since these are events that occurred billions of years ago, way beyond the

existence of living organisms in this planet. What I find fascinating about these queries

is that these scientists were able to formulate ideas and hypothesis by just observing

simple experiments and natural phenomena that may seem meaningless to ordinary

people but are already clues of what has transpired way before our time. On top of that,

they were able to secure evidence to support their claims which is already a feat on its

own considering that the things that we have today in our planet and those we observe

in our skies may not be similar on what existed during the Earth's formation. There may

be some events, things, or phenomena that we still can't comprehend or explain, but
the fact that we are already on our way to unfold the secrets of the universe, especially

of the Earth, is already a huge achievement for the mankind.

Just by thinking that our planet came from dust, and we humans are made up of

materials similar to those of stars, sends me to an existential crisis. We are just tiny

systems of materials in this vast universe, yet we can comprehend what lies beyond

what we can physically reach. Through simple events, experiments, and simulations,

we were able to comprehend the possible scenarios that happened billions of years

ago.

By understanding the origin of the only planet that we can call home, it will make

us appreciate the things that we take for granted - the trees, air, soil, and water. The

fact that we won't be here without those significantly fortunate events should humble us

and think of taking care of our only home. We don't have another Earth to abuse again.

But if we act otherwise, the planet may go back to the times when it is all barren, dry,

and extremely hot. And we all know that we won’t survive.