(ORDO NEWS) — Experts from the United States managed to establish how exactly the amount of oxygen sufficient for life appeared in our atmosphere. Everything turned out to be very simple. The Earth began to rotate more slowly and this provoked a real oxygen catastrophe.
Reported by Nature Geoscience.
Everyone knows that the early Earth rotated at a fairly high speed. The duration of the day then did not exceed several hours, but after a while the speed began to decrease under the influence of a sufficiently strong gravitational attraction of the Moon.
Scientists analyzed the fossils and found that about 1.4 billion years ago, the duration of a day did not exceed 18 hours. Experts also found that about 1.8 milliseconds are added to the day every hundred years. Due to the fact that the days have become longer, the life of cyanobacteria has also changed.
They started getting enough sunlight. Accordingly, the production of oxygen increased as a product of metabolism.
The experts noted the fact that cyanobacteria become active only a few hours after dawn. In the event that the length of the day is insufficient, then the amount of oxygen emitted by them will be minimal.
Scientists have studied the process of oxygen release by microbes not only in natural conditions, but also in laboratory conditions. A special computer model was also created that perfectly demonstrates the level of oxygen rise in the atmosphere.
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