Great Oxygenation Event

As a kid, it was tough for me to grasp the massive time scale of Earth's history. Now, with nearly two decades of experience as a geologist, I think one of the best ways to understand our planet's history and evolution is by condensing the entire timeline into a single calendar year. It's not a new ...

Every living organism uses tiny quantities of metals to carry out biological functions, including breathing, transcribing DNA, turning food into energy, or any number of essential life processes.

How deep are Europa's ice sheets? Could the moon sustain life? The Europa Clipper Mission, which is due to launch in October, will help scientists answer...

The question of whether humans created a new epoch, the Anthropocene, has been stirring up drama for almost 25 years.

Dr. Dewi Langlet, a scientist at the Evolution, Cell Biology and Symbiosis Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST), studies foraminifera, single-cell organisms with shells made of calcium carbonate. He and his collaborators have shown for the first time that the burrowing of single-celled organisms in marine ecosystems affects oxygen distribution and bacterial diversity in sea sediments.…

Indian and Japanese scientists discover ancient ocean water in Himalayan mineral deposits dating back 600 million years.

Seaweeds cultivated in the sea off the coast of Trøndelag, Norway, will be converted into biocoal and used to improve agricultural land. A new method for carbon capture and storage is now being trialed by Norwegian researchers.

There was a time in Earth's turbulent history when everything almost slowed to a standstill.

Fossils found in Germany's Posidonia Shale don't get their gleam from fool's gold after all.

All that glitters is not gold, or even fool's gold in the case of fossils.

All nuclear fission power reactors run on fuel containing uranium and other isotopes, but fueling a nuclear reactor is a lot more complicated than driving up to them with a dump truck filled with uran...

Is life inherently suicidal? Why complex organisms seem to drive their own extinction

Article URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32843702 Points: 1 # Comments: 0

A 15-year study led by Carnegie's Robert Hazen and Shaunna Morrison details the origins and diversity of every known mineral on Earth, a landmark body of work that will help reconstruct the history of life on our planet, guide the search for new minerals and ore deposits, predict possible characteristics of future life, and aid the search for habitable exoplanets and extraterrestrial life.

A 15-year study details the origins and diversity of every known mineral on Earth, a landmark body of work that will help reconstruct the history of life on Earth, guide the search for new minerals and ore deposits, predict possible characteristics of future life, and aid the search for habitable planets and extraterrestrial life.

The violent event that likely preceded our solar system's formation holds the solution to a longstanding meteorite mystery, says new work from Carnegie's Alan Boss published in The Astrophysical Journal.

Diving deep and predicting storms have kept sharks alive through natural disasters and mass extinction events.

By drilling deep down into sediments on the ocean floor researchers can travel back in time. A research team now presents new clues as to when and why a period often referred to as the 'biogenic bloom' came to an abrupt end. Changes in the shape of the Earth's orbit around the Sun may have played a part in the dramatic change.

The planet's first photosynthesizers dined on green light

Large-scale disruptions to life may ultimately increase ecological complexity over geologic timescales, though the risk of extinction always looms.