生物专业英语Lecture 7-The Origin and Diversity of Life.pdfVIP

The Origin and Diversity of Life 1. A Home for Life: Formation of the Solar System and Planet Earth The story of lifes origins begins with the formation of the earth. The sequence of events that gave rise to our planet began, in turn, with the cosmic explosion 宇宙的爆炸 physicists call the Big Bang. According to the Big Bang model, the universe expanded from an extremely dense and hot state and continues to expand today. The graphic scheme above is an artists concept illustrating the expansion of a portion of a flat universe The sun at the center of our solar system condensed from a cloud of primordial原始的 matter roughly 5 billion years ago; the planets, including the earth, condensed about 4.6 billion years ago. The earth is composed of a number of layers: a solid crust, a semisolid mantle, and a largely molten (liquid) core that has a solid center. Basic physical features of Earth that may have made the emergence of life possible include the planets size, temperature, composition, and distance from the sun. The major current hypothesis holds that life arose spontaneously on the early earth by means of chemical evolution from nonliving substances. 2. The Emergence of life: Organic and Biological Molecules on a Primitive Planet Evidence for prelife stages of chemical organization comes from laboratory experiments that try to duplicate the physical environment and chemical resources of the early earth. These experiments, including the pioneering work of Miller