How did the Earth come about?

Question

Need some clarification. I am only interested in how plant life formed initially on Earth. How did this occur without seeds, etc.

Ok, I do believe in God, but I wanted to find out about the theory of how plant life came about without his help. Please... No if you believe in God then why ask responses. And just saying the big bang doesn't do it.

Sorry I didn't specify before I didn't want the answers God created all life. I am also not trying to be sinical here, so keep that in mind.

Answer 1

I don't think anyone really knows. There are theories, but most don't answer all the questions. If you check through what we do know about the history of the planet there are periods where there was no plant life at all and suddenly there's tons of plants everywhere. They tell this from fossils. Very baffling. We probably won't ever know, but you can read about the fossils found and get an idea as to when there was plant life, just not really why it came about. Sorry.

Maybe there *is* a higher power that made it all. Us earthlings certainly have nothing more than good guesses.

Answer 2

The main theories go like this:
before the earth was colonized by plants and then animals, it was barren rock. The earliest forms of life were merely molecules that could replicate themselves similar to RNA or DNA that we're familiar with today. They most likely came about by the severe lightning storms that constantly pervaded our atmosphere. Over more than a billion years those molecules became more and more complex. During this time the first cellular life began. One of the many important features of cells is that they separate whats inside from whats outside, allowing for an inner metabolism and containment of different substances. Many more millions of years went by and at about 450 million years ago, algae started to colonize land. Between then and now the plants we know have evolved and many many more have died and gone extinct. The differences between the main ways plants reproduce is a very braod topic. Plants don't have to come from seeds, they can come from buds, meaning they are clones of their parent plant, they can come from fertilized eggs, they can come from spores. Earlier plants probably didn't undergo sexual life cycles like the ones producing seeds today. Many plants still don't. The key idea of evolution is that life adapts to its environment and is selected by it. Each living organism is capable of producing many offspring. Those offspring differ from eachother. Some survive longer and leave a disproportionally higher number of their own offspring. The traits that made them different and contributed to their longer survival are hereditary, so they passed them on. It isn't hard to imagine how over such an inconceivably long time as 2 billion years, this process has been responsible for what we are today.

The other theory is that a superbeing created everything the way it is only a relatively short while ago. I won't pretend to know as much about the various groups who make these claims so I'll leave it at that. Unfortunately I can't seem to get as good of explanations from their various representatives to explain what we see around us as I can with the first theory. :)

Answer 3

It was created by a very inteligent being. Humans today can't make a seed, but he is far more intelligent and so knows how to make seeds and put life into them. They are simple chemistry, just hydrocarbons, but they need life in them to grow. It is a miracle of the creation. Even lightning was created to separate the nitrogen out of the air and let it fall to the ground to nourish the plants that grow. It is all such a miracle.

Answer 4

God made it. He can do anything. It may be hard for us to understand, but we don't have to understand. God knows everything and we don't. We can't even begin to imagine some of the things he knows because our brains are so tiny in comparison. God doesn't need seeds to make plants, (or plants to make seeds)

Answer 5

God created it.
it took 42 thousand years 49 thousand if you count the day of rest. "a day unto the lord is as a thousand years"
how he actually did it we dont know. he spoke and it happoned. if he spoke and all the material gatherd into a big ball which blew up it is a possible theory (big bang) keep in mind that if it went down like this. God is the one that put the big ball there.
however he did it. this we know. God did it.

Answer 6

History

Main article: History of Earth

Based on the available evidence, current scientists have been able to reconstruct detailed information about the planet's past. Earth is believed to have formed around 4.57 billion years ago out of the solar nebula, along with the Sun and the other planets. Initially molten, the outer layer of the planet cooled when water began accumulating in the atmosphere when the planet was about half its current radius, resulting in the solid crust. The moon formed soon afterwards, possibly as the result of the impact with a Mars-sized object known as Theia. Outgassing and volcanic activity produced the primordial atmosphere; condensing water vapor, augmented by ice delivered by comets, produced the oceans.[6] The highly energetic chemistry is believed to have produced a self-replicating molecule around 4 billion years ago, and half a billion years later, the last common ancestor of all life lived.[7]

The development of photosynthesis allowed the sun's energy to be harvested directly; the resultant oxygen accumulated in the atmosphere and gave rise to the ozone layer. The incorporation of smaller cells within larger ones resulted in the development of complex cells called eukaryotes.[8] Cells within colonies became increasingly specialized, resulting in true multicellular organisms. Aided by the absorption of harmful ultraviolet radiation by the ozone layer, life colonized the surface of Earth.

Over hundreds of millions of years, continents formed and broke up as the surface of Earth continually reshaped itself. The continents have migrated across the surface of the Earth, occasionally combining to form a supercontinent. Roughly 750 million years ago (mya), the earliest known supercontinent Rodinia, began to break apart. The continents later recombined to form Pannotia, 600–540 mya, then finally Pangaea, which broke apart 180 mya.[9]

Since the 1960s, it has been hypothesized that severe glacial action between 750 and 580 mya, during the Neoproterozoic, covered much of the planet in a sheet of ice. This hypothesis has been termed "Snowball Earth", and is of particular interest because it preceded the Cambrian explosion, when multicellular lifeforms began to proliferate.[10]

Since the Cambrian explosion, about 535 mya, there have been five mass extinctions.[11] The last occurred 65 mya, when a meteorite collision probably triggered the extinction of the (non-avian) dinosaurs and other large reptiles, but spared small animals such as mammals, which then resembled shrews. Over the past 65 million years, mammalian life has diversified, and several mya, a small African ape gained the ability to stand upright. This enabled tool use and encouraged communication that provided the nutrition and stimulation needed for a larger brain. The development of agriculture, and then civilization, allowed humans to influence the Earth in a short timespan as no other life form had, affecting both the nature and quantity of other life forms, and the global climate.

Origin of life

Main article: Origin of life

There is no truly "standard" model for the origin of life, but most currently accepted scientific models build in one way or another on the following discoveries, which are listed roughly in order of postulated emergence:

1. Plausible pre-biotic conditions result in the creation of the basic small molecules of life. This was demonstrated in the Miller-Urey experiment.
2. Phospholipids spontaneously form lipid bilayers, the basic structure of a cell membrane.
3. Procedures for producing random RNA molecules can produce ribozymes, which are able to produce more of themselves under very specific conditions.

There are many different hypotheses regarding the path that might have been taken from simple organic molecules to protocells and metabolism. Many models fall into the "genes-first" category or the "metabolism-first" category, but a recent trend is the emergence of hybrid models that do not fit into either of these categories.[citation neede

Answer 7

interesting you asked this question,well it's mainly because of god,god creates everything there is in this world and the universe,why? because god don't have a beginning n an end,god creates things that has an end and beginning, that would answer your question i hope cause the science clarification does not make any sense to me

Answer 8

Simple, God. Enough Said.

Answer 9

God created it, it is a long story read the first book of the bible which is Genesis for more info :)

Answer 10

There are several theories, but a popular one is The Big Bang Theory:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang