Ancient rocks show life could have flourished on Earth 3.2 billion years ago - Polidicks

[url]http://phys.org/news/2015-02-ancient-life-flourished-earth-billion.html[/url] [t]http://cdn.phys.org/newman/gfx/news/hires/2015/ancientrocks.jpg[/t] [QUOTE]The oldest rock samples, from 3.2 billion years ago, were collected in the desert in northwestern Australia. [/QUOTE] [QUOTE][B]A spark from a lightning bolt, interstellar dust, or a subsea volcano could have triggered the very first life on Earth.[/B] But what happened next? Life can exist without oxygen, but[B] without plentiful nitrogen to build genes [/B]- essential to viruses, bacteria and all other organisms -[B] life on the early Earth would have been scarce[/B]. The ability to use atmospheric nitrogen to support more widespread life was thought to have appeared roughly 2 billion years ago. Now research from the University of Washington looking at some of the planet's oldest rocks finds [B]evidence that 3.2 billion years ago, life was already pulling nitrogen out of the air[/B] and converting it into a form that could support larger communities. "People always had the idea that the really ancient biosphere was just tenuously clinging on to this inhospitable planet, and it wasn't until the emergence of nitrogen fixation that suddenly the biosphere become large and robust and diverse," said co-author Roger Buick, a UW professor of Earth and space sciences. "Our work shows that there was no nitrogen crisis on the early Earth, and therefore it could have supported a fairly large and diverse biosphere." "[B]Imagining that this really complicated process is so old, and has operated in the same way for 3.2 billion years, I think is fascinating[/B]," said lead author Eva Stüeken, who did the work as part of her UW doctoral research. "It suggests that these really complicated enzymes apparently formed really early, so maybe it's not so difficult for these enzymes to evolve." [B] "This is hard evidence that pushes it back a further billion years," [/B]Buick said. Fixing nitrogen means breaking a tenacious triple bond that holds nitrogen atoms in pairs in the atmosphere and joining a single nitrogen to a molecule that is easier for living things to use. The chemical signature of the rocks suggests that nitrogen was being broken by an enzyme based on molybdenum, the most common of the three types of nitrogen-fixing enzymes that exist now. Molybdenum is now abundant because oxygen reacts with rocks to wash it into the ocean, but its source on the ancient Earth - before the atmosphere contained oxygen to weather rocks - is more mysterious. [B]The authors hypothesize that this may be further evidence that some early life may have existed in single-celled layers on land, exhaling small amounts of oxygen that reacted with the rock to release molybdenum to the water.[/B] [/QUOTE]

Life on this planet gets really freaky when you consider the geological timescale. We are the latest generation of the most advanced tool-using branch of a tree of life that has been running nonstop for, now, at least 3 billion years. This also gives us more reason to study Mars and try and work out its history better. It may very well have had a thriving Earth-like ecosystem before its atmosphere pissed off.

[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;47153367]Life on this planet gets really freaky when you consider the geological timescale. We are the latest generation of the most advanced tool-using branch of a tree of life that has been running nonstop for, now, at least 3 billion years. This also gives us more reason to study Mars and try and work out its history better. It may very well have had a thriving Earth-like ecosystem before its atmosphere pissed off.[/QUOTE] I like the think of Mars as what Earth will be if we fuck Earth up too much.

[QUOTE=Source;47153602]I like the think of Mars as what Earth will be if we fuck Earth up too much.[/QUOTE] Yeah, especially if we manage to do the whole 38% farther from the sun thing that mars has going on

[QUOTE=KorJax;47153814]Yeah, especially if we manage to do the whole 38% farther from the sun thing that mars has going on[/QUOTE] We're humans, I wouldn't put it past us.

[QUOTE=Source;47153602]I like the think of Mars as what Earth will be if we fuck Earth up too much.[/QUOTE] I prefer to think of Venus as that. Minus a bit of the heat.

don't forget somehow dissipating our magnetic field

[QUOTE=Nebukadnezzer;47156156]don't forget somehow dissipating our magnetic field[/QUOTE] it's okay we can just nuke it back into working order :)

b-but the bible says it's only 50,000 years old guys

[QUOTE]The oldest rock samples, from 3.2 billion years ago, were collected in the desert in northwestern Australia.[/QUOTE] Evolution is an arms race and we had the head start.

[QUOTE=SebiWarrior;47158445]b-but the bible says it's only 50,000 years old guys[/QUOTE] can we not

[QUOTE=Bathtub;47164255]can we not[/QUOTE] No, because I just got yelled at by this Baptist guy I work with while reading this article because he thinks the Earth is only 3,000 years old. He's an educated man with a degree too, and it's fucking apalling.

[QUOTE=SebiWarrior;47158445]b-but the bible says it's only 50,000 years old guys[/QUOTE] It doesn't actually, but okay.

[QUOTE=SebiWarrior;47158445]b-but the bible says it's only 50,000 years old guys[/QUOTE] Maybe God's days were longer than ours.

[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;47153367]Life on this planet gets really freaky when you consider the geological timescale. We are the latest generation of the most advanced tool-using branch of a tree of life that has been running nonstop for, now, at least 3 billion years. This also gives us more reason to study Mars and try and work out its history better. It may very well have had a thriving Earth-like ecosystem before its atmosphere pissed off.[/QUOTE] It's amazing to think of how many times we've had a global lifeform turnover that caused changes that make some earlier life completely unrecognizable or without a modern, commonly-identifiable analog. For example, one of the greatest extinction events that Earth has ever seen was due to microbial life being wiped out by the highly toxic gas known as . . . . .[i]oxygen[/i].