Atlantis Online
December 14, 2024, 11:08:44 am
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
News: THE SEARCH FOR ATLANTIS IN CUBA
A Report by Andrew Collins
http://www.andrewcollins.com/page/articles/atlantiscuba.htm
 
  Home Help Arcade Gallery Links Staff List Calendar Login Register  

Earth's First Breath, Earlier Than Thought

Pages: [1]   Go Down
  Print  
Author Topic: Earth's First Breath, Earlier Than Thought  (Read 309 times)
Mia Knight
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 510



« on: September 29, 2007, 12:33:10 am »

Earth's First Breath, Earlier Than Thought
Randolph E. Schmid, Associated Press

   

Sept. 27, 2007 — Oxygen, key to life on Earth today, began to appear on the planet millions of years earlier than scientists had thought, new research indicates.

An analysis of a deep rock core from Australia indicates the presence of at least some oxygen 50 million to 100 million years before the great change when the life-giving element began rising to today's levels, according to two papers appearing in Friday's edition of the journal Science.

Previously, the earliest indications of oxygen had been from between 2.3 billion and 2.4 billion years ago when the "Great Oxidation Event" occurred.

The cause of the event is still not known, but before that the atmosphere was dominated by methane and ammonia. Today oxygen makes up about 21 percent of the atmosphere.

The discovery of traces of early oxygen was made in a study of a 3,000-foot-long rock core extracted in western Australia.

"We seem to have captured a piece of time before the Great Oxidation Event during which the amount of oxygen was actually changing — caught in the act, as it were," Ariel Anbar, an associate professor in Arizona State University's school of earth and space exploration, said in a statement.

The two research teams were led by Alan Jay Kaufman, associate professor of geochemistry at the University of Maryland and Anbar.

Carl Pilcher of the NASA Astrobiology Institute said: "Studying the dynamics that gave rise to the presence of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere deepens our appreciation of the complex interaction between biology and geochemistry. Their results support the idea that our planet and the life on it evolved together."

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/09/27/oxygen_pla.html?category=earth&guid=20070927153030
Report Spam   Logged

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Mia Knight
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 510



« Reply #1 on: September 29, 2007, 12:39:16 am »



Photo by Roger Buick

History in the Rocks

This picture shows the drill site of the ABDP-9 rock core (at bottom right), at Ishandlwana in Western Australia, beneath a massive exposure of banded iron in the Dales Gorge.
Report Spam   Logged
Pages: [1]   Go Up
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Powered by EzPortal
Bookmark this site! | Upgrade This Forum
SMF For Free - Create your own Forum
Powered by SMF | SMF © 2016, Simple Machines
Privacy Policy