Scribd
Upload
88 views2 pages

Reflection - Biology

Neil deGrasse Tyson discusses how life originated on Earth in a harsh environment over 4 billion years ago. Early bacteria were able to thrive in severe conditions with poisonous gases and volcanoes. Tyson explains that hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon combined in the right way to create life. Stanley Miller's experiment in the 1950s recreated early Earth conditions and showed how amino acids could form from simple gases, providing insight into how life first developed. Studying biology in high school taught about biological processes and how organisms adapt to their environments, but also makes one appreciate the astonishing fact of life's existence.

Uploaded by

Lorie Anne Valle
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
88 views2 pages

Reflection - Biology

Neil deGrasse Tyson discusses how life originated on Earth in a harsh environment over 4 billion years ago. Early bacteria were able to thrive in severe conditions with poisonous gases and volcanoes. Tyson explains that hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon combined in the right way to create life. Stanley Miller's experiment in the 1950s recreated early Earth conditions and showed how amino acids could form from simple gases, providing insight into how life first developed. Studying biology in high school taught about biological processes and how organisms adapt to their environments, but also makes one appreciate the astonishing fact of life's existence.

Uploaded by

Lorie Anne Valle
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 2

How Life Began

By: Neil deGrasse Tyson


(Reflection Paper)

1. Can you appreciate how difficult life has been produced?


2. How are all this knowledge useful as a context for our study of Biology?
3. Recall your study of Biology in high school. What have you learned then?

Life has been produced astonishingly. As shown in the video of Neil deGrasse Tyson,
there were poisonous gases and volcanoes, as well as indeed "inhospitable
circumstances for life on Earth," according to Tyson. One of the most exciting
comparisons Tyson gave was that if you compacted Earth's whole history into a single
day, it would melt and reconstitute minutes after it was created. According to Tyson,
life on Earth originated four billion years ago. The Earth was bombarded with many
objects from outer space for 600,000,000 years, a time known as "the heavy
bombardment." Life, according to Tyson, most likely began in this setting. Bacteria,
the earliest forms of life, were able to thrive, adapt, and reproduce in those severe
conditions, according to one popular theory of how life originated on Earth, as we
study Biology in High school. In other ways, the harsh hydrogen sulfide that humans
cannot withstand allows certain bacteria to thrive.
In fact, according to Tyson, some primordial life could have flourished in adverse
conditions. Tyson claims in the film that hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon are
four components that, when mixed in just the proper manner, may help create all
types of life. Stephen Mojzsis, one of the scientists in the film, co-authored an essay
with Oleg Abramov in 2009 about the habitability of bacteria during an intense
bombardment, which is discussed in the video. While the authors acknowledge that
"the intense heat would have doubtlessly destroyed surface habitats for early life,"
they also state that "new subsurface habitats would have been created in the form of
impact-induced hydrothermal systems," which could have been habitats that allowed
life to survive and thrive deep beneath the Earth's surface during the heavy
bombardment. The film looked at various tests conducted by Stanley Miller in the
early 1950s. His purpose was to recreate the conditions of early Earth and examine
the chemical basis of life formation. In the experiment, he had a series of flasks
placed so that the experiment would work. One of the flasks was filled with gases that
were supposed to exist in the early Earth's atmosphere. He'd link it to a second flask
filled with water to depict oceans. He then applied an electric charge to them to
imitate lightning in the early atmosphere. After a few days, a dark gooey substance
was formed, which, when tested, revealed amino acids, which contain carbon and
other essential ingredients for the formation of life. The media hailed miller's
experiment as a watershed moment in modern science's understanding of the origins
of life. Biology in high school taught us about various biological processes and how
multiple creatures deal with the obstacles of existing in their environment. It entails
investigating living organisms, ranging from single-celled organisms through
multicellular plants, animals, and people. Nevertheless, it made me realized how we
should take care of and appreciate our lives. We should be grateful for our existence
and explore and know more about life in biology because it is astonishingly
interesting and informative.
Word Counts: 502 (excluding the title and questions)
Reference: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/3114_origins.html

You might also like