92 life's beginning on the earth 



space in another direction. The tidal wave which had be- 

 come separated from the sun formed a long red-hot nebula 

 which, like a huge band, hung out into space. This must 

 have occurred from two to three billion years ago. From 

 this mass the planets circling our sun were formed gradually 

 by a process of condensation, .(according to this theory— 

 developed by J. Jeans, a Russian astronomer and quoted by 

 Oparin). Thus, from a part of the hot gaseous mass separ- 

 ated from the sun, our earth was formed. Carbon passed 

 into it along with other elements from the sun. 



As the earth cooled down, carbon was one of the first 

 elements to condense in solid form owing to its extremely 

 high boiling point. Heavy metals — particularly iron — like- 

 wise condensed and formed the solid nucleus of our earth. 

 Even at present the interior of our planet consists largely 

 of red-hot, molten iron mixed with some other metals. 

 Carbon must have interacted chemically with these heavy 

 metals. Just as sulfur combines chemically with iron (page 

 57) so also carbon may combine with metals, particularly 

 with iron to form so-called "carbides." 



The earth was still red hot at that time and was sur- 

 rounded not by an atmosphere of oxygen and nitrogen, as 

 at present, but by overheated steam vapor. No liquid water 

 was able to form on account of the high temperature. 

 Oparin assumes, with good reason, that this overheated 

 steam vapor interacted chemically with the carbon-metal 

 compounds whereby enormous amounts of hydrocarbons 

 were formed. (These are substances like methane, etc. 

 chemically related to mineral oils — see page 61). He as- 

 sumes that the hot molten mass of metal and metal carbides 

 was covered with a thin layer of igneous rock which at times 

 would rupture so as to bring the water vapor surrounding 

 the earth into contact with carbides and allow the formation 

 of hydrocarbons. The probability of this formation of 

 hydrocarbons is strongly supported by the fact that Jupiter, 



