Website de Steensplinter

de Steensplinter — Geology and a cosmology of the obvious

4.6 groundwork

contents

(website version 2.30 - august 2007)

groundwork [continued]

     1. preview
     2. geology, a key to the past
     3. some evidence
     4. formation of a bivalve shell
     5. causality
     6. inorganic processes

inorganic processes

In the preceding examples, organisms had a central role in a series of processes, leading to the formation of records.
I will use the words `organism' and `organic' exclusively for living beings.
Organisms, nowadays, are so omnipresent and prevalent that it is difficult to find familiar examples of records left by purely inorganic processes. Look around your living room: books, furniture, pictures, tapestry and curtains. Nearly everything is a record of processes involving the organism: active man.
Nevertheless there are many purely inorganic processes on and within our earth.
A clear example of an inorganic process is that of a volcanic eruption, which produces a flow of lava. This lava, solidified and preserved is a substantial record of the process of eruption.

in short:
In a landscape all you see around you consists of records of processes, both inorganic and organic: rocks, erosion gullies, mountains on the one hand, tree roots and the trails and droppings of mountain goats on the other.

Beyond earth, earth-like planets, astronauts and satellites, all processes in the wide expanses of the universe are purely inorganic.
Also in the remote past, before life existed, all primeval processes led to purely inorganic records.
Right after the `Big Bang' first hydrogen was formed, then helium was synthesized, and heavier elements followed.
Galaxies and stars were formed.
What we think happened in those early beginnings is extensively described in all books on the subject and will not be repeated here.

Question:   are the form and behaviour of the first spiral galaxies
                 fully predictable out of what went on before?

continued