{"id":1806872,"date":"2018-07-10T19:36:10","date_gmt":"2018-07-10T23:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.futurity.org\/?p=1806872"},"modified":"2018-08-21T16:05:42","modified_gmt":"2018-08-21T20:05:42","slug":"oxygen-early-earth-1806872","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.futurity.org\/oxygen-early-earth-1806872\/","title":{"rendered":"Oxygen had to fight a ‘war’ for Earth’s atmosphere"},"content":{"rendered":"
Earth’s oxygen levels rose and fell more than once hundreds of millions of years before the planet-wide success of the Great Oxidation Event about 2.4 billion years ago, according to new research.<\/p>\n
The evidence comes from a new study that indicates a second and much earlier “whiff” of oxygen in Earth’s distant past\u2014in the atmosphere and on the surface of a large stretch of ocean\u2014showing that the oxygenation of the Earth was a complex process of repeated trying and failing over a vast stretch of time.<\/p>\n
“These transient oxygenation events were battles in the war, when the balance tipped more in favor of oxygenation.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The finding also may have implications in the search for life beyond Earth. Coming years will bring powerful new ground- and space-based telescopes able to analyze the atmospheres of distant planets. This work could help keep astronomers from unduly ruling out “false negatives,” or inhabited planets that may not at first appear to be so due to undetectable oxygen levels.<\/p>\n
“The production and destruction of oxygen in the ocean and atmosphere over time was a war with no evidence of a clear winner, until the Great Oxidation Event,” says Matt Koehler, a doctoral student in earth and space sciences at the University of Washington and lead author of the new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of 糖心视频s<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n