It is important for a person to understand not only what kind of world he is in, but also how this world arose. Was there something up to the time and space existing now. How life was born on his home planet, and the planet itself didn’t appear out of nowhere.
In the modern world, many theories of the appearance of the Earth and the origin of life on it have been put forward. For lack of a chance to test the theories of various scholars or religious worldviews, more and more different hypotheses arose. One of them, which will be discussed, is a hypothesis that supports stationary states. It was developed at the end of the XIX century and exists to this day.
Definition
The stationary state hypothesis supports the view that the Earth did not form over time, but always existed and constantly supported life. If the planet has changed, it is very insignificant: species of animals and plants did not arise, and just like the planet, they always were, and either died out or changed their numbers. This hypothesis was put forward by the German physician Thierry William Preyer in 1880.
Where did the theory come from?
Now it is impossible to determine the age of the Earth with absolute accuracy. According to a study based on the radioactive decay of atoms, the planet is approximately 4.6 billion years old. But this method is imperfect, which allows adherents to support the evidence provided by the theory of a stationary state.
It is reasonable to call the followers of this hypothesis precisely adepts, not scientists. According to modern data, Eternism (the so-called stationary state theory) is more a philosophical doctrine, since the postulates of the followers are similar to the beliefs of the Eastern religions: Judaism, Buddhism - about the existence of an eternal, uncreated Universe.
Followers' Views
Unlike religious teachings, adherents who support the theory of stationary states of all objects in the universe have quite accurate ideas about their own views:
- The earth has always existed, as well as life on it. There was also no beginning of the Universe (denial of the Big Bang and similar hypotheses), it always was.
- Modification occurs to a small extent and does not fundamentally affect the life of organisms.
- Any species has only two development paths: a change in abundance or extinction - species do not transform into new forms, do not evolve, and do not even change significantly.
One of the most famous scientists supporting the stationary state hypothesis was Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky. He liked to repeat the phrase: "... the beginning of life in that Cosmos that we observe was not, since there was no beginning of this Cosmos. The Universe is eternal, as is life in it."
The theory of the stationary state of the Universe explains such unresolved issues as:
- age of clusters and stars,
- homogeneity and isotropy,
- relict radiation
- redshift paradoxes for distant objects around which scientific debate has not yet subsided.
Evidence
The general proof of the stationary state is based on the idea that the disappearance of deposits (bones and waste products) in the rocks can be explained by an increase in the number of the species or population or the relocation of representatives to an environment with a more favorable climate. Up to this point, deposits were not stored in the layers due to their complete decomposition. It cannot be denied that in some types of soils, the remains are indeed better preserved, and in some, worse or not preserved at all.
According to followers, only the study of living species will help draw conclusions about extinction.
The most common evidence that stationary states exist is coelacanth (coelacanth). In the scientific community, they were cited as an example of a transitional species between fish and amphibians. Until recently, they were considered extinct at about the end of the Cretaceous period - 60-70 million years ago. But in 1939 off the coast of about. Madagascar was caught live representative coelacanth. Thus, now coelacanth is no longer considered a transitional form.
The second evidence is Archeopteryx. In biology textbooks, this creature is presented as a transitional form between reptiles and birds. It had plumage and could jump from branch to branch over long distances. But this theory collapsed when in 1977 in Colorado the remains of birds were undoubtedly more ancient than the bones of Archeopteryx. Hence the assumption is true that Archeopteryx was neither a transitional form, nor a primordial bird. At this point, the stationary state hypothesis became a theory.
In addition to such striking examples, there are others. For example, the theory of a stationary state is confirmed by "extinct" and found in living nature lingules (sea brachopods), hatteria, or tuatar (large lizard), solendons (shrews). Over millions of years, these species have not undergone changes in comparison with their fossil ancestors.
Similar paleontological "mistakes" are enough. Even now, scientists cannot say with certainty which extinct species could be the predecessor of a living one. It is precisely such gaps in the paleontological teaching that led the adherents to the idea of the existence of a stationary state.
The situation in the scientific community
But in the scientific community, theories based on the mistakes of others are not accepted. Stationary states contradict modern astronomical research. Stephen Hawking, in his book A Brief History of Time, notes that if the Universe really developed in a certain "imaginary time", then there would be no singularities.
The singularity in the astronomical sense is the point through which it is impossible to draw a straight line. A vivid example can be a black hole - an area that even light moving at the maximum known speed cannot leave. The center of the black hole is considered to be the singularity - atoms compressed to infinity.
Thus, in the scientific community, such a hypothesis is philosophical, but its contribution to the development of other theories is important. So, the questions posed by archeologists and paleontologists by followers of Eternism make scientists more thoroughly review their research and re-examine scientific data.
Considering stationary states as a theory of the origin of life on Earth, one should not forget about the quantum sense of this phrase so as not to get confused in concepts.
What is quantum thermodynamics?
The first significant breakthrough in quantum thermodynamics was made by Niels Bohr, having published three main postulates on which the overwhelming number of calculations and statements of current physicists and chemists are based. Three postulates were skeptical, but it was impossible to not recognize them as true at that time. But what is quantum thermodynamics?
The thermodynamic form, both in classical physics and quantum, is a system of bodies that exchange internal energy with each other and with surrounding bodies. It can consist of one body or several and at the same time is in states that are different in pressure, volume, temperature, etc.
In an equilibrium system, all parameters have a strictly fixed value; therefore, an equilibrium state corresponds to it. Represents reversible processes.
In nonequilibrium form, at least one parameter does not have a fixed value. Such systems are out of thermodynamic equilibrium, most often represent irreversible processes, for example chemical ones.
If we try to display the equilibrium state in the form of a graph, we get a point. In the case of a nonequilibrium state, the graph will always be different, but not in the form of a point, due to one or more inaccurate values.
Relaxation is the process of transition from a nonequilibrium state (irreversible) to an equilibrium (reversible). The concepts of reversible and irreversible processes play an important role in thermodynamics.
Prigogine's theorem
This is one of the conclusions of thermodynamics about nonequilibrium processes. According to him, in a stationary state of a linear nonequilibrium system, the production of entropy is minimal. In the complete absence of obstacles to achieve a state of equilibrium, the value of entropy drops to zero. The theorem was proved in 1947 by physicist I.R. Prigogine.
Its meaning lies in the fact that the equilibrium stationary state, which the thermodynamic system seeks for, has as low entropy production as the boundary conditions imposed on the system allow.
Prigozhin’s statement was based on the Lars Onsager theorem: for small deviations from equilibrium, the thermodynamic flow can be represented as a combination of sums of linear driving forces.
Schrödinger thought in its original form
The Schrödinger equation for stationary states made a significant contribution to the practical observation of the wave properties of particles. If the interpretation of de Broglie waves and the Heisenberg uncertainty relation give a theoretical idea of the motion of particles in force fields, then the Schrödinger statement, written in 1926, describes the processes observed in practice.
In its original form, it looks like this.
Where,
i is the imaginary unit.
Schrödinger equation for stationary states
If the field in which the particle is located is constant in time, then the equation does not depend on time and can be represented in the following form.
The Schrödinger equation for stationary states is based on Bohr's postulates regarding the properties of atoms and their electrons. It is considered one of the main equations of quantum thermodynamics.
Transition energy
When an atom is in a stationary state, radiation does not occur, but the electrons move with some acceleration. In this case, the electron states are determined on each orbital with an energy Et. Its value can be estimated approximately by the ionization potential of this electronic level.
Thus, after the first statement, a new one appeared. The second Bohr's postulate is that if, when a negatively charged particle (electron) moves, its angular momentum (L n = m e vr n ) is a multiple of a constant bar divided by 2π, then the atom is in a stationary state. That is: m e vr n = n (h / 2π)
From this statement, another follows: the energy of a quantum (photon) is the difference between the energies of the stationary states of atoms through which a quantum passes.
This value, calculated by Bohr and finalized for practical purposes by Schrödinger, made a significant contribution to the explanation of quantum thermodynamics.
Third postulate
Bohr's third postulate - on quantum transitions with radiation also implies stationary states of an electron. So, radiation, when passing from one to another, is absorbed or emitted in the form of energy quanta. Moreover, the energy of quanta is equal to the difference between the energies of stationary states between which the transition occurs. Radiation occurs only when the electron is removed from the nucleus of the atom.
The third postulate was experimentally confirmed by the experiments of Hertz and Frank.
Prigogine’s theorem explained the properties of entropy for nonequilibrium processes tending to equilibrium.