O. Chem I Lecture #1: Origin of Matter

Hello Internet, and Welcome to the Organic Chemistry Lecture Series by The Science of Life.  This is the first lecture, so let’s start off at the beginning.  That means let’s start off with the synthesis of the units of chemistry in mother nature, well before either the Earth or Humans were even ever a thing.

The Big Bang happened 14.7 billion years ago.  This was the first instance of space, energy, and time in our universe.  It’s where the universe itself banged into existence.  What caused it is a mystery; nobody knows how it happened.

Notice what was missing from the list: matter.  In the very first seconds of the universe, there was no matter in the universe.  Everything in the universe was on the energy side of the  equation.  After a few minutes of cooling, the energy finally became cool enough (and therefor cool enough) to condense to form matter in the form of quarks and bosons.  The quarks are the building blocks of protons and neutrons required for the nucleus of atoms, and the most well-known of the bosons is the electron which orbits the nucleus of an atom.

As things cooled further, the quarks combined to form mainly protons, and combined with electrons to form Hydrogen atoms in clouds.  Gravity takes over, and eventually, these clouds of hydrogen in otherwise empty space condenses enough to form big balls of gas which eventually starts the process of nuclear fusion.  The second that happens, we call that ball of gas a star.

The nuclear fusion in a star works to convert hydrogen into helium, and helium into the heavier elements.  This includes the carbon which is central to the study of Organic Chemistry.  Eventually the stars begin developing Iron 56, at which point the star begins the march towards fizzling out like the end of a camp fire without any fresh wood.  When this happens, it’s only a matter of time before it goes super-nova, or explodes all of its material into space.  This explosion helps accelerate the condensation of nearby space-clouds into star systems, some of which also include planets.  Because nature is messy like that and not the neat and sterile environment of a lab.

After a few generations of stars, about 4.7 billion years ago, one of these supernova helps condense one of these clouds of gas that we now call “our solar system”.  So that’s an oversimplified version of how all the elements were synthesized by nature.

So that comes to the end of this lecture.  Next time, I will be covering some basic definitions which need to be known before carrying on further into the course.  Subscribe to stay up to date and click on the bell to get notified when I upload new episodes.