Rare Earth: our protective magnetic field (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, May 20, 2016, 23:11 (3109 days ago) @ David Turell

Plate tectonics contribute to the oxygen level on Earth:-http://news.rice.edu/2016/05/16/oxygen-atmosphere-recipe-tectonics-continents-life-2/-"Plants and certain types of bacteria produce oxygen as a byproduct of photosynthesis. This oxygen production is balanced by the sink: reaction of oxygen with iron and sulfur in the Earth's crust and by back-reaction with organic carbon. For example, we breathe in oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, essentially removing oxygen from the atmosphere. In short, the story of oxygen in our atmosphere comes down to understanding the sources and sinks, but the 3-billion-year narrative of how this actually unfolded is more complex.” -***-"Today, some 20 percent of Earth's atmosphere is free molecular oxygen, or O2. Free oxygen is not bound to another element, as are the oxygen atoms in other atmospheric gases like carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide. For much of Earth's 4.5-billion-year history, free oxygen was all but nonexistent in the atmosphere. -***-"Lee and colleagues showed that around 2.5 billion years ago, the composition of Earth's continental crust changed fundamentally. Lee said the period, which coincided with the first rise in atmospheric oxygen, was also marked by the appearance of abundant mineral grains known as zircons. “The presence of zircons is telling,” he said. “Zircons crystallize out of molten rocks with special compositions, and their appearance signifies a profound change from silica-poor to silica-rich volcanism. The relevance to atmospheric composition is that silica-rich rocks have far less iron and sulfur than silica-poor rocks, and iron and sulfur react with oxygen and form a sink for oxygen. A view of Earth's atmosphere taken from the International Space Station in 2003.(Photo courtesy of ISS Expedition 7 Crew, EOL, NASA) “Based on this, we believe the first rise in oxygen may have been due to a substantial reduction in the efficiency of the oxygen sink,” Lee said. “In the bathtub analogy, this is equivalent to partially plugging the drain.” -***-“'The bathtub analogy is simple and elegant, but there's an added complication that must be taken into account,” he said. “That is because oxygen production is ultimately tied to the global carbon cycle — the cycling of carbon between the Earth, the biosphere, the atmosphere and oceans.” Lee said the model showed that Earth's carbon cycle has never been at a steady state because carbon slowly leaks out as carbon dioxide from Earth's deep interior to the surface through volcanic activity. Carbon dioxide is one of the key ingredients for photosynthesis. -***-"Lee said the team's model showed that volcanic activity and other geologic inputs of carbon into the atmosphere may have increased with time, and because oxygen production is tied to carbon production, oxygen production also must increase. The model showed that the second rise in atmospheric oxygen had to occur late in Earth's history. -***-"Exactly what caused the composition of the crust to change during the first oxygenation event remains a mystery, but Lee said the team believes it may have been related to the onset of plate tectonics, where the Earth's surface, for the first time, became mobile enough to sink back down into Earth's deep interior."-Comment: There is no question the Earth is a most unusual planet. Both carbon and oxygen cycles are closely related to plate tectonics. Good planning?