Today, 21 percent of the air we breathe is made up of molecular oxygen. But this gas was not always in such ample, life-sustaining supply, and in fact was largely absent from the atmosphere for the first 2 billion years of ...
Earth Sciences
May 16, 2016
0
1359
Using the oldest fossil micrometeorites - space dust - ever found, Monash University-led research has made a surprising discovery about the chemistry of Earth's atmosphere 2.7 billion years ago.
Earth Sciences
May 11, 2016
1
51
An instrument onboard the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) detected atomic oxygen in the atmosphere of Mars for the first time since the last observation 40 years ago. These atoms were found in the ...
Space Exploration
May 9, 2016
0
290
Research published this week by an international team of scientists, including the British Antarctic Survey, provides new insights into how carbon dioxide changed in the oceans surrounding Antarctica during glacial periods.
Earth Sciences
Mar 31, 2016
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11
Reconstructing the emergence and evolution of life on our planet is tightly linked to the questions as to when and to what extent Earth's atmosphere became oxygenated. New geological studies based on data from Western Greenland ...
Earth Sciences
Feb 16, 2016
1
1237
A team using the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument suite aboard NASA's Curiosity rover has made the first detection of nitrogen on the surface of Mars from release during heating of Martian sediments.
Space Exploration
Dec 23, 2015
0
3691
By examining rocks at the bottom of ancient oceans, an international group of researchers have revealed that arsenic concentrations in the oceans have varied greatly over time. But also that in the very early oceans, arsenic ...
Earth Sciences
Dec 4, 2015
0
614
Falling oxygen levels caused by global warming could be a greater threat to the survival of life on planet Earth than flooding, according to researchers from the University of Leicester.
Environment
Dec 1, 2015
13
499
How do you go about hunting for life on another planet elsewhere in our galaxy? A useful starting point is to imagine looking from afar for signs of life on Earth. In a telescope like those we have on Earth, those aliens ...
Astronomy
Nov 25, 2015
0
18
Earth's oxygen-rich atmosphere emerged in whiffs from a kind of blue-green algae in shallow oceans around 2.5 billion years ago, according to new research from Canadian and US scientists.
Earth Sciences
Nov 20, 2015
3
794
