Basic Chemistry

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Del curso dictado por University of Rochester

Confronting The Big Questions: Highlights of Modern Astronomy

281 calificaciones

University of Rochester

Confronting The Big Questions: Highlights of Modern Astronomy

281 calificaciones

An introduction to modern astronomy's most important questions. The four sections of the course are Planets and Life in The Universe; The Life of Stars; Galaxies and Their Environments; The History of The Universe.

De la lección

Are we alone in the Universe?

Planets and Life in The Universe - Exoplanets searches, exoplanet census, astrobiology

Condensation Theory6:56

Planet Formation5:55

Basic Chemistry2:40

DNA and RNA6:24

Appearance of Life9:04

Are We Alone?9:24

Conoce a los instructores

Adam Frank
Professor
Physics and Astronomy

Okay, welcome back everyone.

Well now, you know, we're at the edge of the most important question

that we can ask in astronomy and that is, the origins of life.

So we've taken our, we've gone all the way from

studying our own solar system to studying whole other solar systems.

To studying the theory of how solar systems form.

And since we believe that planets are the home of life,

we are now ready to take on the issue of life itself.

But to do that, we have think a little bit about the

chemical building blocks of life.

So let's just think a little bit about basic chemistry, or, you

know, the sort of the chemistry that we need for understanding life.

And of course, all matter is made out of different elements, and all the

elements were either came from the big

bang itself or were forged inside of stars.

in fact actually, it's only hydrogen and helium and a few

other light elements that actually came from right after the big bang.

Everything else carbon,

nitrogen, oxygen, etc. Were all fused inside the center of stars.

So there is a you know array of elements that exist in the, the Universe.

And there's all kinds of chemical combinations they can

make and when they do those are called molecules.

Life is composed of a specific subset of those.

We think of life being organic chemistry

and this seems to be chemistry where carbon

is involved.

but also things like oxygen and hydrogen are also involved.

But organic chemistry is a, there's, because

of carbon's the structure, its, its elemental

structure, it, there's just a wild array of interactions that are possible for it.

So in particular, you know, now you know, this would be,

studying life would be impossible if it wasn't for the fact that

life on earth has chosen a particular subset of molecular structure, what are

called amino acids and nucleic acids, to really act as its building blocks.

So you know, life on Earth is all based on

a series of of, you know, complex molecules called amino acids.

And basically.

Eh, all the proteins, which are the structure and the, of, of, of cells.

The structure of life,

hair you know, the sun, the things inside of cells that

move things around are all proteins. And they are all, every protein is built

out of a, you know, a, a collection, a relatively small collection of amino

acids. And so when we start thinking about how

life formed, we're going to need to be thinking about amino acids and

how those can combine into more complex molecules.

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