Scientists have long wondered how Earth's atmosphere filled with oxygen. UBC geologist Matthijs Smit and research partner Klaus Mezger may have found the answer in continental rocks that are billions of years old.
Earth Sciences
Sep 18, 2017
4
285
Computers are simulating the ancestral versions of the most common protein on Earth, giving scientists an unparalleled look at early life's development of harnessing energy from the Sun and production of oxygen.
Earth Sciences
Aug 8, 2017
0
16
Scientists know that atmospheric oxygen irreversibly accumulated on Earth around 2.3 billion years ago, at a time known as the Great Oxidation Event, or GOE. Prior to that time all life was microbial, and most, if not all, ...
Earth Sciences
Jun 6, 2017
0
15
Rice University petrologists who recreated hot, high-pressure conditions from 60 miles below Earth's surface have found a new clue about a crucial event in the planet's deep past.
Earth Sciences
Apr 25, 2017
8
228
More than 2.4 billion years ago, Earth's atmosphere was inhospitable, filled with toxic gases that drove wildly fluctuating surface temperatures. Understanding how today's world of mild climates and breathable air took shape ...
Earth Sciences
Mar 13, 2017
8
680
A study of tiny mineral 'inclusions' within diamonds from Botswana has shown that diamond crystals can take billions of years to grow. One diamond was found to contain silicate material that formed 2.3 billion years ago in ...
Earth Sciences
Feb 23, 2017
0
167
Research led by the University of St Andrews and published yesterday (Monday 6 February) in Nature – provides new insight into how life evolved alongside changes in the chemistry of Earth's surface. These researchers examined ...
Earth Sciences
Feb 8, 2017
4
390
A University of Wyoming researcher contributed to a paper that determined a "Snowball Earth" event actually took place 100 million years earlier than previously projected, and a rise in the planet's oxidation resulted from ...
Earth Sciences
Feb 6, 2017
0
478
A low level of atmospheric oxygen in Earth's middle ages held back evolution for 2 billion years, raising fresh questions about the origins of life on this planet.
Earth Sciences
Feb 2, 2017
16
1295
Somewhere between Earth's creation and where we are today, scientists have demonstrated that some early life forms existed just fine without any oxygen.
Earth Sciences
Nov 29, 2016
4
10612
