Scientists announced new findings about when Earth's oxygen 1st increased in the atmosphere. The results will help scientists search for life on other worlds.
The post Earth's oxygen provides new clues to alien life first appeared on EarthSky.
The Great Oxidation Event Scientists know that "something" happened billions of years ago to create a dramatic rise in breathable oxygen. They call this the Great Oxidation Event. But what happened, exactly? It's an important question as we begin the search for life on exoplanets, or distant worlds beyond Earth. After all, we might catch those alien worlds before or during their own Great Oxidation Events. So what do we need to look for, to find worlds in the process of developing their own large quantities of breathable oxygen? Researchers at McGill University in Montreal have now brought new evidence to this long-standing debate. They said on January 31, 2022, that the dramatic rise in oxygen in Earth's atmosphere took place alongside the evolution and expansion of complex eukaryotic ecosystems. Eukaryotes are any cells or organisms that possess a clearly defined nucleus. The scientists said their findings help explain how oxygen increased enough in Earth's atmosphere to be be able to support animal life. And they said the findings have implications for the search for life beyond Earth. The researchers published their peer-reviewed study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) on February 8, 2022. The 2022 lunar calendars are here. Order yours before they're gone! Earth's oxygen was almost non-existent First, some historical background. In the beginning, when Earth was still young, oxygen was almost nonexistent. The extremely low levels weren't nearly enough to support animal life as we know it today. So what changed? Scientists know that there was a massive increase in the amount of oxygen later in the planet's history, the Great Oxidation Event. Exactly how and when that happened, however, is still a subject of debate. As Maxwell Lechte, one of the lead co-authors of the study at McGill University, stated: Until now, there was a critical gap in our understanding of environmental drivers in early evolution. The early Earth was…