Scientists may have solved a 2.3-billion-year-old mystery about how Earth maintained enough oxygen to support life. Ancient rocks reveal that phosphorus recycling in the oceans created a self-sustaining cycle that helped keep oxygen levels high, even as the planet underwent dramatic environmental changes. The discovery challenges assumptions about Earth’s early atmosphere and raises new questions about why complex life took so long to emerge.
Source: ScienceDaily | Earth Science
ScienceDaily | Earth Science
- Europe's new Sentinel-3C satellite just sent back spectacular images of Earth
- Scientists uncover the 2.3-billion-year-old secret that helped keep Earth habitable
- NASA captures a stunning transformation in Australia's red outback
- NASA spots a giant patch of Moon-like rock on Earth
- This “golden tree” coral was too strange for any known family
- Earth’s center is moving, and NASA just measured it
- A meteor hit Oklahoma 100 million years later than scientists thought
- Scientists find an “earthquake gate” as California fault stress hits a 1,000-year high
- 1.7-billion-year-old fossils reveal a crucial clue to the rise of complex life
- Scientists may have misread a 2-billion-year-old clue about Earth
