How Did the Earth Get Here?

How Did the Earth Get Here?

Of all of the questions that face man, the question of how the earth was formed is one of the most challenging, and the different theories that man has formed over the years on the creation of the planet have often generated a great deal of controversy.
While today’s scientists believe that they have finally found the answer to this most basic question, it is important to remember that previous generations, societies and cultures assumed that their answers to this question were correct in their day too. Here is some basic information on the most popular theory of how the earth was formed.
The development of our planet began some 4.6 billion years ago, and the Earth has gone through staggering geological changes since that time. The Earth has been existence in some form for roughly a third of the history of the universe itself. The formation of our home planet began with the dawn of the Hadean era, in which various solar debris accumulated into an increasingly dense globe.
Very little of this matter exists in its former form today, but scientists have concluded that the primary ingredients were basic rocks and crystals. At some point during this era, the young earth formed its first mantle shortly before it collided with another large protoplanet, and much of the matter on our planet was formed by this event. In the chaos that followed, the Earth was a violent setting that was constantly bombarded by meteorites and rocked by terrific and constant volcanoes.
As the planet cooled off and things began to settle down, the Earth entered the Archaean era. It was during this period that our atmosphere was created, but the total absence of an ozone layer and the scarcity of oxygen meant that this would have been a difficult place to survive. However, the very first fossils began to appear during this time, and with it the story of life on Earth began. By this time, the Earth was large enough to attract the building blocks of life into its gravitational field, and the accumulation of water began to create our great oceans and seas.
In these waters, life slowly evolved, and it is likely that the early days of evolution included a world of lifeforms that is even more diverse than the world of today. Some of these lifeforms found a way to build and store energy through the use of the sunlight and the abundant carbon dioxide, and the oxygen that was created by this basic form of photosynthesis allowed for evolution to continue down its curious path.