A Brief History of The Earth

by Jackson Dave

Our solar system was born from the swirling debris of exploding stars some 4.5 Billion years ago. Our emerging star, at the center, pulled in most of the matter, leaving eddies and pockets of stuff to congeal into planets, moons, asteroids, comets and stray debris. 

As gravity pulled the matter together, forming Earth, it compressed and heated up. Frequent collisions with astral bodies produced a wildly hostile environment. Finally, an extremely large passing body crashed into our young planet, knocking its rotation askew. Gravity trapped the attacker, and its mass stabilized our small “binary system.” We call it Moon. It slowed our rotation, gave us seasons and has been slowly moving away ever since.

As the planet compressed, volcanic activity began in the center and started radiating outward. The mass of our planet was in the correct zone that caused formation of a solid surface. Water from comets, as well as vaporized rocky mass from the lunar collision, began collecting into pools. Trapped by gravity, an early atmosphere of poisonous (to us, but we weren’t there) gases developed from the exhaust of intense volcanic activity.

Spurred on by chemicals and lightening, amino acids formed, which eventually led to DNA, then life in the water. Next, autotrophs emerged, which eventually became the whole basis of the food chain. At the 1 Billion year mark, cyanobacteria started photosynthesis, producing oxygen.

With an atmosphere rich in carbon-based gasses from the core of the planet, over the next 3 Billion years, plant life teemed in the sea. This life poured oxygen into the atmosphere, which from growing air pressure also accumulated in the water. As it cooled, the water absorbed most of the gasses that would be poisonous to animal life.

 

Finally, Pangea emerged. Plants took hold on the land; and eventually, lignite appeared, which allowed them to go up-up-up into trees. For a hundred million years, Earth was “Planet of the Trees.” Forests contributed to the massive production of oxygen; and with no animals (termites), the trees piled up in massive deposits, forming coal.

 

In a world, then, where life had existed for 3 Billion years, over a brief period of 40 MILLION years, what is called “The Cambrian Explosion” suddenly produced every phylum of animal that lives today—including vertebrates. The sea offered animals an enormous banquet of plant life, and oxygen to breathe.

The explosion of animal life in the sea, then on land, was promoted by a concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere that reached 35% . With high partial pressure of oxygen some could virtually absorb it through their exoskeletons. Millipedes, which now measure up to 6 or 7 inches, weighed in at 6 to 7 feet!

Now things start to get interesting. For the previous 3 Billion years, when organisms died, they descended, absorbed into the crust of the earth. Over the eons, all of this carbon-based material, heated and compressed by the enormous pressures of the oceans, collected and formed into giant deposits of ———- petroleum!

But an important new development changed all: life on the land doesn’t sink to the bottom of the sea when it dies. Living plant life, be it grasses or rain forest, adds oxygen to the atmosphere, but when it dies, and as it sheds growth tissue, it's eaten, it rots, or burns. That consumes as much oxygen as the plant produced in its lifetime. 

So over the next 350,000,000 years a new equilibrium was achieved. This led to the atmospheric conditions and the climate under which WE emerged and thrived. This was responsible—and essential—for our existence.

Fast forward: Our healthy seas continue to contribute oxygen to the atmosphere, but animal life on the land depletes it. And our oceans’ health are deteriorating. The disappearance of vast tracks of forest and other plant life subtracts oxygen also. When things burn, oxygen is removed from the atmosphere and hydrocarbons take its place; and the planet heats up. 

You can see where this is going: Our existence is a product of the accumulation of oil buried in the crust of our planet. By extracting the petroleum, burning it and spewing the exhaust into the atmosphere, WE are reversing the process that made our existence possible. The notion that we can get away with continuing this is folly. 

Our climate is already on the brink of massive “correction.” Poisonous carbon-based gasses that were absorbed from our early atmosphere into the oceans have been held in check by constant, low temperatures in the depths. IF, or when, the oceans begin to release those gasses, we may be looking down the barrel of our own extinction—-as did the dinosaurs when an asteroid struck 65,000,000 years ago.

Would that happen in a lifetime? Not likely. But as conditions deteriorate, the social, political and military chaos that is likely to erupt as world governments maneuver toward the end times may make our existence a living hell. 

The time is nigh, my friends, to take these warnings seriously.

 

Jackson Dave is a Robbinsense staff writer