Brief history from 0 to carbon

Brief history from 0 to carbon

Our universe began in a tremendous explosion known as the Big Bang about 13.7 billion years ago. Observations by NASA’s Cosmic Background Explorer and Wilkinson Anisotropy Microwave Probe revealed microwave light from this very early epoch, about 400,000 years after the Big Bang, providing strong evidence that our universe did blast into existence (NASA, 2006). All space, time, matter and energy emerged at once from the singularity. The Big Bang created the simplest elements, hydrogen and helium, which formed the first stars and galaxies (Notion AI, 2023).

All the carbon on our planet comes from nuclear reactions in stars:

48Be+24He612C

The Milky Way galaxy formed, including our Sun and solar system. Material clumped into planetesimals that formed planets. Rocky material coalesced into a molten Earth, which solidified and released gases to form an early atmosphere.

Life emerged on Earth at least 3.5 billion years ago. The earliest life were single-celled microbes called prokaryotes (see Fig. 1). Scientists believe life first developed in oceans, evolving from simple chemicals into primitive cells.

Amino acids are the molecules that self-assembled (and still do on cosmic rocks) first. After we got simple proteins and the start of DNA. From these we got to development of bacteria and archaea, the first life and single-celled prokaryotes. Dominant for billions of years until more complex eukaryotic cells.

Evolution of eukaryotic cells, with specialized internal parts like a nucleus. Eukaryotes eventually produced all complex life, including plants and animals.

All the prehistoric animals and plants died and under immense pressure and temperature turned into fossil fuels. All study in organic chemistry starts from the simplest molecules – alkanes, commonly found in liquid fossil fuels (crude oil). 

Why are we interested in all of these? They are made of carbon. Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon. Chemistry – related to chemical properties. Chemical properties – chemical reactions. 

All of the organic molecules have carbon, most of them have other elements like H, N, O, P, S, Hal (Hal – halogen, halogen – group 17 elements). Some organic molecules have other elements in their structure, like Mg in chlorophyll or Fe in haemoglobin. 

Basic rules you need to know:

Carbon is element 6 of the Periodic table. Has 6p, 6n, 6e, Ar=12 amu.

Electron configuration is 2,4 or 1s2,2s2,2p2

The graphical formula is shown 🡪

Carbon becomes excited (receives energy) and will have 4 unpaired electrons 1s2,2s1,2p3

This allows carbon to form 4 chemical bonds

Remember that it (carbon) will ALWAYS have 4 BONDS

The diversity of the organic compounds

Currently, about 20 million different organic compounds are known. Inorganic compounds count to 0.5 million compounds. Why such diversity?

The unique property of carbon is to form 4 bonds and the fact that organic compounds can form cycles and many stable isomers.

Author: Duman Bakayev