Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write from the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Showing posts with label Science - Space and Astronomy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Science - Space and Astronomy. Show all posts

Saturday, March 12, 2022

Processual Consciousness and Integrated, Complex Astrobiological Intelligence


Seeing the Universe as a Cosmic-Connectedness

Processual Consciousness and Integrated,
Complex Astrobiological Intelligence

The Disequilibrium of Entropic Spaces
Speaks to Cosmic Self-Awareness

by R.E. Slater


The What and The Why

The first question I suppose I should answer is how does science continually end up here on a bible blog? Firstly, because it interests me. Secondly, because theology should never rest alone in a vacuum from any stream of life. Which means religion and theology should always be integrated with all material, ethical, moral, aesthetic, and spiritual aspects of our cosmic world.

Further, a major part of Process Philosophy and Theology, if not its entirety, is it's panrelational, panexistential, and panpsychic qualities bourne along inside it's Whiteheadian bones (as in, Alfred North Whitehead, the British mathematician and philosopher).

When Whitehead proposed his organic theory of matter and the universe (The Philosophy of Organism, later to be known as Process Philosophy) he didn't intend for it to continue the Enlightenment/Scientific Era's reductionary outlook upon the nature of scientific cosmology. He intended to end its unnatural formulations and return to Hegel's shortened life's work to extend and uplift it beyond where it ended.

Whitehead did this by acknowledging Einstein's Relativity Theory of the Large and the resultant Quantum Physics Theory of the Small by escalating their separate revelations together into an integrum of cosmological significance beyond their mere disconnected parts.

Scientifically, relativistic quantum gravity is the cosmic glue physicists are trying to use to bring both the Relativity and Quantum theoretical views together. But in Whitehead, his intention was philosophical. As in the areas of metaphysics and ontology and what those would mean for societal ethics.

Whitehead was looking to bring holism into non-holistic thinking. And for today's Whiteheadian Process Theologian - whether Christian, Buddhists, Jewish, or Islamic - such an endeavor is looking for the cosmic significance - and Cosmic Signifier - to the matter and energy lying behind the cosmic whole.

The Significance of the Processual Whole

Hence, Whiteheadian Process Philosophy and its *compending religious auxiliary known as Process Theology (*compendium - a concise but comprehensive summary of a larger work) each require the view of a universe which is in communication with itself. A deeply integrated and relational communication by however its quantum energies and forces are measured. There is within and about the substance of this cosmic whole we call the universe a kind of panpsychic communication (some may describe this as an aural communication) between itself in particular, and outwardly with the entirety of cosmological matter and forces.

In the human species we call this kind of self-awareness as "consciousness". In the material world of science it may describe this communal interaction as vibrational signaling utilizing frequencies of light, sound and plasmic radiation. In the spiritual world of religion one may call it God or a spirituality of some kind. But however we call this transactional activity found throughout the universe, it is structurally connected in communicating within itself, across itself, and outside of its cosmic "environmental" biomes.

Examples?

  • Colonies of ants and bees communicate to their fellow members across their nests and hives.
  • Living masses of trees seem to know "who" their competing neighbors are - whether beneficial or invasive.
  • Competing entropy systems, whether biological coral reefs - or the mantle of the earth itself - work together to fed off lost energy in the seas and deep within the earth, converting destructive forms of energy into beneficial landscapes inviting more complex entropic systems to become participatory symbiotic hosts and guests.

A processual world, like a processual entropic universe, bears within itself a kind of restorative equilibrium energy by which everything comprehends everything else throughout its "inorganic and organic" spaces. Informing, or communicating, to the other spaces via reactionary entropic cycles of life and death in whatever way we, as humans, might describe these cosmic terms signifying relationship to the experiencing other which are highly aware of their cosmic environments whether as an energy, or as a force, or by some other means of complex communication science might describe as the natural laws of thermodynamics. The point? The universe is not found in its parts and pieces but also in its whole. Its mass. Its entirety as a complex cosmic organism (using the broadest of terms).

Cycles of Processual, Processing, Cosmic Awareness

Human consciousness is not unique nor singular to itself. The universe breathes a kind of "consciousness" within its spaces even as biological spaces do the same as mentioned above.

Human consciousness is but another non-unique expression of a universal "consciousness" or "awareness" of itself. When we look at an ant's intelligence in comparison to a monkey's, a dolphin's, an elephant's, pig, cat, or dog, their consciousness are different in kind to each other even as they are different in kind to our own - or to the cosmic universe we live within.

For science to investigate whether the earth has its own planetary "intelligence" isn't quite the same as asking whether a planetary intelligence is like to our own. As unique and special as the human conscience is it could well be speculated that the earth's planetary intelligence is every bit as connected, integrated, and unique to itself as we are in our own mental, physical, and spiritual capacities.

Moreover, even as dietary regimen, exercise, and spiritual pursuits keep a body's soul in healthy communication with it's complexly integrated environments, so too does the earth's planetary wellbeing have health factors of its own measured in:

  • the volcanic activity of released poisonous gases;
  • the increasing deoxygenation of earth's densely populated forested jungles due to human ingress and destruction across the Canadian, Siberian, African, and Amazonian biotic masses; and,
  • the deadly pollutionary deaths the earth is absorbing into itself measured across its acceding and accretional environmental habitats.

To the degree we, or the earth, remain healthy, indicates the degree to which we better understand how our human-technological imprint on the earth remains healthy or not by how we enable the earth to self-regulate it's own planetary IQ.

Processual Entropy as a Quixotic Amorphous Life-Giver

Remember, entropy is always present within a system turning chaos into occasional results of random wellbeing for entropic states wired to work in this way. In this case, a hot Earth required for its planetary health unique ways to dissipate it's primal heat. Given what it had on hand to use, organic life was able to arise to participate in cooling down the earth lest it boil away into a hot Mercury-like rock.

Though astrophysicists may deny any IQ (Intelligence Quotient) to the Earth's planetary comprehension of itself, Process Thought states the opposite to the science's mechanistic assertion of "matter v mind" reductionism. If the Earth is considered within it's larger cosmological context, the earth's planetary intelligence is everywhere about us. Presently in its disruptive stages to itself due to our disruptive interference to its equilibrium-establishing rhythms and flows.

But Earth's planetary IQ is here and is something we need to attune ourselves to in order to live with the Earth in a more beneficial give-and-take entropic balance of wholeness and completeness. Our species is yet too young and immature to participate with our planet's complexly integrated cosmological IQ. Hopefully we will learn to grow into it and become better participating ecological partners.

Processually Integrated Religions Recognize Evolving Processual Creations

In a Christian context, processual living may be described as learning to live within the flows and rhythms of the Spirit of God. Not only to one another as a human species but to the earth surrounding us.

The Native Americans spoke of these matters in their primal religions even as the Eastern religions of the East do as well. Christianity is but one religion among many which shares a common core to the earth, waters, and sky above.

Christianity's own distinctive lies in its story of God's Incarnation as Jesus, who is acclaimed to be fully God and fully human (not half-and-half like skim milk). And the Christian story speaks particularly to the atonement the Creator God of the universe brought to mankind through Jesus's life, ministry, death, and resurrection.

In this theological matter the other religions lie mute. But when looking around us, these same religions tell the story of life and death, of atonement and redemption. Perhaps not in the same way as the Hebrew-Christian bible overtly declares but in their similarities of theme and construct, wisdom and retribution, purpose and goal.

All acknowledged religions peer into the universe to see life itself built deep down inside its unfolding, driving forces overcoming, and overcomed, by other forces of life and death and life renewed again. The Christian story is not unique or alone in  this cosmic story. In the story of God lies the story of Jesus in His own story of life and death and life renewed again.

In its processual form this same redemptive story of atonement is retold everywhere about us. We only need to look beyond the cycles of tragedy and death, or our own caustic material Westernization, to see it.

R.E. Slater
March 12, 2022

* * * * * * * *



The Iberian Peninsula at night from orbit. (NASA)SPACE


Astrophysicists Say 'Planetary Intelligence' Exists…
But Earth Doesn't Have Any

February 21, 2022


We tend to think of intelligence as something that describes just one individual. But it's possible to describe all kinds of collectives as intelligent, too – whether we're talking about social groups of humans, enclaves of insects, or even the mysterious behavior of slime mold and viruses.

By extension, could intelligence be observed on a much grander scale – perhaps that of an entire planet? In a newly published paper, a team of space scientists explores this tantalizing question, reaching some surprising conclusions about our very own Earth.

"An open question is whether or not intelligence can operate at the planetary scale, and if so, how a transition to planetary-scale intelligence might occur and whether or not it has already occurred or is on our near-term horizon," the team writes.

They note that understanding this question could help us to steer the future of our planet; however, according to their own criteria, it looks like we're not there yet.

"We don't yet have the ability to communally respond in the best interests of the planet," says astrophysicist Adam Frank from the University of Rochester.

"There is intelligence on Earth, but there isn't planetary intelligence."

According to the researchers, the emergence of technological intelligence on a planet – a common reference point in astrobiology research – should perhaps be viewed not as something that happens on a planet but to a planet.

In such an interpretation, the evolution of planetary intelligence would represent the acquisition and application of a collective body of knowledge operating across a complex system of different species at the same time, and in a harmonious way that benefits or sustains the whole biosphere.

Unfortunately – and obviously – humans and Earth are not at that point yet.

In fact, Frank and his co-authors say we've only made it to the third stage of their hypothetical timeline for the development of planetary intelligence.

  • In the first stage, characteristic of a very early Earth, a planet with an 'immature biosphere' develops life, but there are insufficient feedback loops between life and geophysical processes for co-evolution of different kinds of life.
  • In the second stage, the 'mature biosphere' has developed.
  • Next, a planet could become the third stage: an 'immature technosphere', where Earth currently is. In this stage, technological activity has developed on the planet, but it's not yet sustainably integrated with other systems, such as the physical environment.
  • If those tensions can be resolved, however, an immature technosphere stands a chance to develop to the final stage: a 'maturing technosphere', where feedback loops between technological activity and other biogeochemical and biogeophysical states act in sync to ensure maximum stability and productivity of the full system.
  • This idealized state is where Earth should be trying to get to, the researchers argue. "Planets evolve through immature and mature stages, and planetary intelligence is indicative of when you get to a mature planet," says Frank.
"The million-dollar question is figuring out what planetary intelligence looks like and means for us in practice because we don't know how to move to a mature technosphere yet."

According to the researchers, we currently sit on a precipice, where our collective actions clearly have global consequences, but we are not yet in control of those consequences.

If, in tandem with other forces on the planet, we can develop a balance where those consequences become controlled, we might finally evolve – as a planet – to the next level.

"A transition to planetary intelligence, as we described here, would have the hallmark property of intelligence operating at a planetary scale," the researchers write in their paper. "Such planetary intelligence would be capable of steering the future evolution of Earth, acting in concert with planetary systems and guided by a deep understanding of such systems."

The paper was published in the International Journal of Astrobiology.



Monday, January 24, 2022

Update: Discover of Mysterious X Particles in the Very, Very Early Universe


Part of the Large Hadron Collider's Compact Muon Solenoid detector. (CERN)


Physicists Detect Mysterious X Particles in
'Primordial Soup' For The First Time

January 24, 2022


A mysterious particle thought to have existed briefly just after the Big Bang has now been detected for the first time in the 'primordial soup'.

Specifically, in a medium called the quark-gluon plasma, generated in the Large Hadron Collider by colliding lead ions. There, amid the trillions of particles produced by these collisions, physicists managed to tease out 100 of the exotic motes known as X particles.

"This is just the start of the story," says physicist Yen-Jie Lee of MIT, and a member of the international CMS Collaboration headquartered at CERN in Switzerland.

"We've shown we can find a signal. In the next few years we want to use the quark-gluon plasma to probe the X particle's internal structure, which could change our view of what kind of material the universe should produce."

Mere moments after the Big Bang, the very early Universe wasn't made of the same stuff we see floating around today. Instead, for a few millionths of a second, it was filled with plasma superheated to trillions of degrees, consisting of elementary particles called quarks and gluons. That's the quark-gluon plasma.

In less time than it takes to blink, the plasma cooled and the particles came together to form the protons and neutrons of which normal matter is constructed today. But in that very brief twitch of time, the particles in the quark-gluon plasma collided, stuck together, and came apart again in different configurations.

One of those configurations is a particle so mysterious, we don't even know how it's put together. This is the X particle, and it's only been seen very rarely and briefly in particle colliders – too briefly to be probed.

Theoretically, however, X particles could appear in the very small flashes of quark-gluon plasma that physicists have been creating in particle accelerators for some years now. And this might afford a better opportunity to understand them.

During the Large Hadron Collider's 2018 run, positively charged atoms of lead were slammed together at high speeds. Each of these roughly 13 billion collisions produced a shower of tens of thousands of particles. That's a dauntingly colossal amount of data to sift through.

"Theoretically speaking, there are so many quarks and gluons in the plasma that the production of X particles should be enhanced," Lee says. "But people thought it would be too difficult to search for them because there are so many other particles produced in this quark soup."

Although X particles are very short-lived, when they decay, they produce a shower of lower-mass particles. To streamline the data analysis process, the team developed an algorithm to recognize the patterns characteristic of X particle decay. Then they fed the 2018 LHC data into their software.

The algorithm identified a signal at a specific mass that indicated the presence of around 100 X particles in the data. This is an excellent start.

"It's almost unthinkable that we can tease out these 100 particles from this huge dataset," Lee said.

At this point, the data are insufficient to learn more about the X-particle's structure, but the discovery could bring us closer. Now that we know how to find the X-particle's signature, teasing it out in future data sets should be a lot easier. In turn, the more data we have available, the easier it will be to make sense of them.

Protons and neutrons are each made up of three quarks. Physicists believe that X particles may be made of four – either an exotic, tightly bound particle known as a tetraquark, or a new kind of loosely bound particle made from two mesons, each of which contain two quarks. If it's the former, because it's more tightly bound, it will decay more slowly than the latter.

"Currently our data is consistent with both because we don't have enough statistics yet. In the next few years we'll take much more data so we can separate these two scenarios," Lee says.

"That will broaden our view of the kinds of particles that were produced abundantly in the early Universe."

The research has been published in Physical Review Letters.


Friday, December 17, 2021

NASA's Parker Solar Probe Explores the Sun


https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/stereo-a-spacecraft-returns-data-from-the-far-side-of-the-sun



NASA's Parker Solar Probe Touches The Sun For The First Time
Dec 14, 2021

NASA Goddard
For the first time in history, a spacecraft has touched the Sun. NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has now flown through the Sun’s upper atmosphere – the corona – and sampled particles and magnetic fields there. 
 
The new milestone marks one major step for Parker Solar Probe and one giant leap for solar science. Just as landing on the Moon allowed scientists to understand how it was formed, touching the very stuff the Sun is made of will help scientists uncover critical information about our closest star and its influence on the solar system. 


Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

Click to Enlarge  |  For more Info go here




Artist's impression of Parker entering the solar corona. (NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Joy Ng)

For The First Time in History, a
Spacecraft Has 'Touched' The Sun

15 DECEMBER 2021

In an incredible historic first, a human-made spacecraft has swooped in and made contact with the Sun.

On 28 April 2021, NASA's Parker Solar Probe actually flew into and through the solar corona, the upper atmosphere of the Sun. Not only did it live to tell the tale – proving the efficacy of Parker's high-tech heat shielding – it took in situ measurements, giving us a wealth of never-before-seen data on the heart of our Solar System.

"Parker Solar Probe 'touching the Sun' is a monumental moment for solar science and a truly remarkable feat," said astrophysicist Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters.

"Not only does this milestone provide us with deeper insights into our Sun's evolution and its impacts on our Solar System, but everything we learn about our own star also teaches us more about stars in the rest of the Universe."

Parker Solar Probe launched in 2018, with its primary objective to probe the solar corona. In its planned seven-year mission, it should be making a total of 26 close approaches, or perihelions, to the Sun, using a total of seven gravity assist maneuvers from Venus to bring it ever closer. The April perihelion was the eighth, and the first to actually enter the corona.

In its nearly five hours inside the solar atmosphere, Parker measured fluctuations in the Sun's magnetic field and sampled particles. Previously, our estimates of these properties relied on external information.

"Flying so close to the Sun, Parker Solar Probe now senses conditions in the magnetically dominated layer of the solar atmosphere – the corona – that we never could before," said astrophysicist Nour Raouafi, Parker project scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.

"We see evidence of being in the corona in magnetic field data, solar wind data, and visually in images. We can actually see the spacecraft flying through coronal structures that can be observed during a total solar eclipse."


(NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Naval Research Laboratory)

Above: The bright features visible in the pictures here are coronal streamers, normally only seen from Earth during an eclipse. These were imaged by the Parker probe during the ninth perihelion in August this year.

The Sun doesn't have a solid surface. Instead, its boundary is defined by what we call the Alfvén critical surface, where gravity and the Sun's magnetic fields are too weak to contain the solar plasma.

Above this point, the solar wind emerges, blowing powerfully through the Solar System, so fast that waves within the wind break away from the Sun. What we call the 'surface' of the Sun, composed of roiling convection cells plasma and known as the photosphere, is far below.

One of the goals of Parker was to find out more about the Alfvén critical surface; namely, where it is, and what its topography is like, since we didn't know either of those things. Estimates had put the Alfvén critical surface at somewhere between 10 and 20 solar radii from the center of the Sun. Parker entered the corona at 19.7 solar radii, dipping down to as low as 18.4 solar radii during its corona jaunt.

Interestingly, the probe seemed to encounter the magnetic conditions of the corona sporadically, suggesting that the Alfvén critical surface is wrinkled. At lower depths, Parker encountered a magnetic structure known as a pseudostreamer, which we can see arcing out from the Sun during solar eclipses. Parker's data suggest that these structures are responsible for the deformation of the Alfvén critical surface, although we don't currently know why.

Inside the pseudostreamer, conditions were quieter than the surrounding solar atmosphere. Particles no longer buffeted the spacecraft quite so chaotically, and the magnetic field was more orderly.

Parker also investigated a phenomenon known as solar switchbacks. These are Z-shaped kinks in the magnetic field of the solar wind, and it's not currently known where or how they form. We've known about switchbacks since the 1990s, but it wasn't until Parker investigated them in 2019 that we learnt that they are rather common. Then on its sixth flyby, the probe's data showed us that switchbacks occur from patches.

Now Parker has detected them inside the solar atmosphere, suggesting that at least some of the switchbacks come from the lower corona.

"The structure of the regions with switchbacks matches up with a small magnetic funnel structure at the base of the corona," said astronomer Stuart Bale of the University of California, Berkeley, lead author on a paper on the phenomenon in press at The Astrophysical Journal. "This is what we expect from some theories, and this pinpoints a source for the solar wind itself."

We still don't know how these curious structures formed, but with dozens more perihelions ahead, going as close as 9.86 solar radii from the center of the Sun, we're likely to be getting some pretty fascinating answers.

"We have been observing the Sun and its corona for decades, and we know there is interesting physics going on there to heat and accelerate the solar wind plasma. Still, we cannot tell precisely what that physics is," Raouafi said.

"With Parker Solar Probe now flying into the magnetically-dominated corona, we will get the long-awaited insights into the inner workings of this mysterious region."

The research has been published in Physical Review Letters.



https://scied.ucar.edu/learning-zone/sun-space-weather/sun-regions



https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/science/solar-anatomy.html



https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Cutaway-view-of-the-Sun-showing-the-interior-layers-and-average-temperature-values-and_fig1_51890986




Friday, November 12, 2021

Process Shorts - The Process God of a Process Universe




The Process God of a Process Universe
by R.E. Slater


The God of process who spoke process from His Being
into a process-less primordial void. - re slater


What if the universe, pre-Big Bang, began with the ability to create life in its potentiality as a primordial cosmic singularity? That in it's very structures it would be literally impossible not to create life?

If, underlying all of the universe's randomness and chaos, it's teleology was always conditionally set to relentlessly pursue, bring forth, adapt to, and overcome, any obstacle which denied to it's inner cosmic core the insatiable urge to create, to birth, to bring wellbeing, to any form of energy or force?

Process theology says the process God of creation breathed into (gave to) the very nature of the existing primordial soup of the (uni)cosmos, His essence, His being, His very Self, into "becoming" upon an eternally un-formed, infinitely dense, massively uniform, primordial space yet to birth time, matter, and the quantum forces we see today.

That is, God gave to the void of creation His own process Image, Nature, Self, and Being. 

Which means that from like to like, from our process God to a process universe, process is therefore all around us in its every form because process is inherent in the very structure and outcomes of creation.

That this God of process, who was the First Order of all succeeding processes, had filled the entirety of creation with orders-and-orders-of-magnitudes of endless, process-becoming, creativity. That the Creator God filled this primordial cosmic soup-of-a-singularity to overflowing with the insatiable urge to overcome all barriers, all obstacles, in its need to bring forth life, creativity, novelty, and wellbeing in all their forms and meanings.

That creation's very cosmic essence is eternally in the process of creative, spontaneous, becoming. And because its cosmocreational structure is thus, it may give birth to universes, multiverses, and create an unstoppable, infinite array of evolutionary becoming.

That the God of the possible came upon the improbable and filled the very building blocks of creation with life upon life upon life.

That this "ether-like" spirit-quality drives itself forward against all that is not life.

We may then call this urge, drive, force, or energy, the process structures of the cosmos which comes from the God who births all processes into *becoming (rather than being) from His own Being into that which was not structured like this before.

Process then is both the starting point - and inherent embedded teleology - found in every portion of creational-cosmic existence wherever we look.

In essence, life strives for life in all that becomes from being.


R.E. Slater
November 6, 2021
edited November 12, 2021

*That is, creatio continua v creatio ex nihilo, meaning God births from what's there rather than births from nothing; assuming the primordial void is as old as God Himself - or perhaps, when the primordial void came into being so did God; but the former remained as void until the latter spoke into it life.
Process theology allows for both views but it makes more sense in the science realm to apply it to the creatio-primordial rather than thinking something can be born from nothing. Science says there must be something from which "nothing" can be born.
Thus, God acted upon the primordial void as versus creating the primordial void. It makes God no less God but it definitely screws with the classic theistic mindset built upon Greek and Hellenistic philosophies. - re slater








Tuesday, October 26, 2021

Earth's Evolutionary History - The Great Oxidation Event


Artist's impression of asteroid bombardment on early Earth.
 (SwRI/Dan Durda, Simone Marchi)


The Great Oxidation Event (GOE), also called the Great Oxygenation Event, was a time period when the Earth's atmosphere and the shallow ocean first experienced a rise in oxygen, approximately 2.4–2.0 Ga (billion years ago) during the Paleoproterozoic era. Geological, isotopic, and chemical evidence suggests that biologically-produced molecular oxygen (dioxygen, O2) started to accumulate in Earth's atmosphere and changed it from a weakly reducing atmosphere practically free of oxygen into an oxidizing atmosphere containing abundant oxygen, causing many existing anaerobic species on Earth to die out. The event is inferred to have been caused by cyanobacteria producing the oxygen, which stored enough chemical energy to enable the subsequent development of multicellular life forms.

Asteroids May Have Stolen The Oxygen
From Earth's Ancient Atmosphere

by Michelle Starr
October 21, 2021

For a period of Earth's history, between roughly 2.5 to 4 billion years ago, our planet was a punching bag for asteroids.

During this time, Earth was absolutely pelted with large space rocks, compared to the relative quiet of our existence today. This activity would have produced significant alterations to the chemistry of the planet's atmosphere – but the scale and shape of those alterations, especially the effect on oxygen levels, has been difficult to quantify.

Now, a study of tiny, once-molten particles in Earth's crust has revealed that these asteroid impacts were far more numerous than we had thought, which may have delayed the oxygenation of Earth's atmosphere.

These particles are called impact spherules, and they're created when an asteroid slams into Earth, generating such intense heat that the crust melts and sprays into the air. When the material settles, cools, and hardens, it forms a layer of spherules in the planet's crust.

In recent years, far more of these spherules have been unearthed in drill cores and excavations, which means, in turn, that the asteroid collision rate may be 10 times higher than previous analyses suggested. This would have had a much more significant effect on Earth's oxygen levels than previous models.

"Current bombardment models underestimate the number of late Archean spherule layers," says planetary geologist Simone Marchi of the Southwest Research Institute. "[This suggests] the impactor flux at that time was up to 10 times higher than previously thought."

All of this extra rock from space generates chemistry that results in a lot more oxygen being held back from the atmosphere.

How, when, and why Earth's atmosphere became rich with oxygen is deeply important to our understanding of planet habitability. Most multicellular organisms on Earth can't live without oxygen; without it, we probably wouldn't be here.

For reasons not fully understood, however, oxygen levels didn't start to significantly rise in what we call the Great Oxidation Event until the emergence of photosynthesizing cyanobacteria on the scene 2.4 billion years ago.

Asteroid bombardment, the team's new analysis reveals, could have been one of the mechanisms at play preventing oxygen levels from rising. As space rocks repeatedly slammed into Earth, their impact vapors would have removed the limited amounts of oxygen present in the early atmosphere.

"Late Archean bombardment by objects over 6 miles in diameter would have produced enough reactive gases to completely consume low levels of atmospheric oxygen," said astronomer and geologist Laura Schaefer of Stanford University.

"This pattern was consistent with evidence for so-called 'whiffs' of oxygen, relatively steep but transient increases in atmospheric oxygen that occurred around 2.5 billion years ago.

"We think that the whiffs were broken up by impacts that removed the oxygen from the atmosphere. This is consistent with large impacts recorded by spherule layers in Australia's Bee Gorge and Dales Gorge."

The team's new analysis on spherule layers challenges previous impact models and scales up the intensity of collisions, finding that an asteroid larger than 10 kilometers (6 miles) across would have hit Earth once every 15 million years or so.

That may seem infrequent, but geologically speaking, that's a lot of big asteroids – and 10 times more frequent than we had thought.

Modelling then revealed the cumulative oxygen sink effect these impacts would have had. Only once bombardment slowed did oxygen levels start to rise, changing Earth's surface chemistry and transforming the planet into a habitable world. This, the researchers now believe, is no coincidence.

"Impact vapors caused episodic low oxygen levels for large spans of time preceding the Great Oxidation Event," Marchi said.

"As time went on, collisions became progressively less frequent and too small to be able to significantly alter post-Great Oxidation Event oxygen levels. The Earth was on its course to become the current planet."

The research has been published in Nature Geoscience



* * * * * * * * 


Great Oxidation Event

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O2 build-up in the Earth's atmosphere. Red and green lines represent the range of the estimates while time is measured in billions of years ago (Ga).
  • Stage 1 (3.85–2.45 Ga): Practically no O2 in the atmosphere. The oceans were also largely anoxic with the possible exception of O2 in the shallow oceans.
  • Stage 2 (2.45–1.85 Ga): O2 produced, rising to values of 0.02 and 0.04 atm, but absorbed in oceans and seabed rock.
  • Stage 3 (1.85–0.85 Ga): O2 starts to gas out of the oceans, but is absorbed by land surfaces. No significant change in oxygen level.
  • Stages 4 and 5 (0.85 Ga – present): Other O2 reservoirs filled; gas accumulates in atmosphere.[1]

The Great Oxidation Event (GOE), also called the Great Oxygenation Event, was a time period when the Earth's atmosphere and the shallow ocean first experienced a rise in oxygen, approximately 2.4–2.0 Ga (billion years ago) during the Paleoproterozoic era.[2] Geological, isotopic, and chemical evidence suggests that biologically-produced molecular oxygen (dioxygen, O2) started to accumulate in Earth's atmosphere and changed it from a weakly reducing atmosphere practically free of oxygen into an oxidizing atmosphere containing abundant oxygen,[3] causing many existing anaerobic species on Earth to die out.[4] The event is inferred to have been caused by cyanobacteria producing the oxygen, which stored enough chemical energy[5] to enable the subsequent development of multicellular life forms.[6]

The early atmosphere

The composition of the Earth's earliest atmosphere is not known with certainty. However, the bulk was likely dinitrogenN
2
, and carbon dioxideCO
2
, which are also the predominant carbon- and nitrogen-bearing gases produced by volcanism today. These are relatively inert gases. The Sun shone at about 70% of its current brightness 4 billion years ago, but there is strong evidence that liquid water existed on Earth at the time. A warm Earth, in spite of a faint Sun, is known as the faint young Sun paradox.[7] Either carbon dioxide levels were much higher at the time, providing enough of a greenhouse effect to warm the Earth, or other greenhouse gases were present. The most likely such gas is methaneCH
4
, which is a powerful greenhouse gas and was produced by early forms of life known as methanogens. Scientists continue to research how the Earth was warmed before life arose.[8]

An atmosphere of N
2
 and CO
2
 with trace amounts of H
2
O
CH
4
carbon monoxide (CO), and hydrogen (H
2
), is described as a weakly reducing atmosphere. Such an atmosphere contains practically no oxygen. The modern atmosphere contains abundant oxygen, making it an oxidizing atmosphere.[9] The rise in oxygen is attributed to photosynthesis by cyanobacteria, which are thought to have evolved as early as 3.5 billion years ago.[10]

The current scientific understanding of when and how the Earth's atmosphere changed from a weakly reducing to a strongly oxidizing atmosphere largely began with the work of the American geologist, Preston Cloud, in the 1970s.[7] Cloud observed that detrital sediments older than about 2 billion years ago contained grains of pyriteuraninite,[7] and siderite,[9] all minerals containing reduced forms of iron or uranium that are not found in younger sediments because they are rapidly oxidized in an oxidizing atmosphere. He further observed that continental redbeds, which get their color from the oxidized (ferric) mineral hematite, began to appear in the geological record at about this time. Banded iron formation largely disappears from the geological record at 1.85 billion years ago, after peaking at about 2.5 billion years ago.[11] Banded iron formation can form only when abundant dissolved ferrous iron is transported into depositional basins, and an oxygenated ocean blocks such transport by oxidizing the iron to form insoluble ferric iron compounds.[12] The end of the deposition of banded iron formation at 1.85 billion years ago is therefore interpreted as marking the oxygenation of the deep ocean.[7] Heinrich Holland further elaborated these ideas through the 1980s, placing the main time interval of oxygenation between 2.2 and 1.9 billion years ago, and they continue to shape the current scientific understanding.[8]

Geological evidence

Evidence for the Great Oxidation Event is provided by a variety of petrological and geochemical markers.

Continental indicators

Paleosolsdetrital grains, and redbeds are evidence of low-level oxygen.[13] Paleosols (fossil soils) older than 2.4 billion years old have low iron concentrations that suggest anoxic weathering.[14] Detrital grains found in sediments older than 2.4 billion years old contain minerals that are stable only under low oxygen conditions.[15] Redbeds are red-colored sandstones that are coated with hematite, which indicates that there was enough oxygen to oxidize iron to its ferric state.[16]

Banded iron formation (BIF)

Banded iron formations are composed of thin alternating layers of chert (a fine-grained form of silica) and iron oxides, magnetite and hematite. Extensive deposits of this rock type are found around the world, almost all of which are more than 1.85 billion years old and most of which were deposited around 2.5 billion years ago. The iron in banded iron formation is partially oxidized, with roughly equal amounts of ferrous and ferric iron.[17] Deposition of banded iron formation requires both an anoxic deep ocean capable of transporting iron in soluble ferrous form, and an oxidized shallow ocean where the ferrous iron is oxidized to insoluble ferric iron and precipitates onto the ocean floor.[12] The deposition of banded iron formation before 1.8 billion years ago suggests the ocean was in a persistent ferruginous state, but deposition was episodic and there may have been significant intervals of euxinia.[18]

Iron speciation

Black laminated shales, rich in organic matter, are often regarded as a marker for anoxic conditions. However, the deposition of abundant organic matter is not a sure indication of anoxia, and burrowing organisms that destroy lamination had not yet evolved during the time frame of the Great Oxygenation Event. Thus laminated black shale by itself is a poor indicator of oxygen levels. Scientists must look instead for geochemical evidence of anoxic conditions. These include ferruginous anoxia, in which dissolved ferrous iron is abundant, and euxinia, in which hydrogen sulfide is present in the water.[19]

Examples of such indicators of anoxic conditions include the degree of pyritization (DOP), which is the ratio of iron present as pyrite to the total reactive iron. Reactive iron, in turn, is defined as iron found in oxides and oxyhydroxides, carbonates, and reduced sulfur minerals such as pyrites, in contrast with iron tightly bound in silicate minerals.[20] A DOP near zero indicates oxidizing conditions, while a DOP near 1 indicates euxenic conditions. Values of 0.3 to 0.5 are transitional, suggesting anoxic bottom mud under an oxygenated ocean. Studies of the Black Sea, which is considered a modern model for ancient anoxic ocean basins, indicate that high DOP, a high ratio of reactive iron to total iron, and a high ratio of total iron to aluminum are all indicators of transport of iron into a euxinic environment. Ferruginous anoxic conditions can be distinguished from euxenic conditions by a DOP less than about 0.7.[19]

The currently available evidence suggests that the deep ocean remained anoxic and ferruginous as late as 580 million years ago, well after the Great Oxygenation Event, remaining just short of euxenic during much of this interval of time. Deposition of banded iron formation ceased when conditions of local euxenia on continental platforms and shelves began precipitating iron out of upwelling ferruginous water as pyrite.[18][13][19]

Isotopes

Some of the most persuasive evidence for the Great Oxidation Event is provided by the mass-independent fractionation (MIF) of sulfur. The chemical signature of the MIF of sulfur is found prior to 2.4–2.3 billion years ago but disappears thereafter.[21] The presence of this signature all but eliminates the possibility of an oxygenated atmosphere.[9]

Different isotopes of a chemical element have slightly different atomic masses. Most of the differences in geochemistry between isotopes of the same element scale with this mass difference. These include small differences in molecular velocities and diffusion rates, which are described as mass-dependent fractionation processes. By contrast, mass-independent fractionation describes processes that are not proportional to the difference in mass between isotopes. The only such process likely to be significant in the geochemistry of sulfur is photodissociation. This is the process in which a molecule containing sulfur is broken up by solar ultraviolet (UV) radiation. The presence of a clear MIF signature for sulfur prior to 2.4 billion years ago shows that UV radiation was penetrating deep into the Earth's atmosphere. This in turn rules out an atmosphere containing more than traces of oxygen, which would have produced an ozone layer that shielded the lower atmosphere from UV radiation. The disappearance of the MIF signature for sulfur indicates the formation of such an ozone shield as oxygen began to accumulate in the atmosphere.[9][13]

Mass-dependent fractionation also provides clues to the Great Oxygenation Event. For example, oxidation of manganese in surface rocks by atmospheric oxygen leads to further reactions that oxidize chromium. The heavier 53Cr is oxidized preferentially over the lighter 52Cr, and the soluble oxidized chromium carried into the ocean shows this enhancement of the heavier isotope. The chromium isotope ratio in banded iron formation suggests small but significant quantities of oxygen in the atmosphere before the Great Oxidation Event, and a brief return to low oxygen abundance 500 million years after the Great Oxidation Event. However, the chromium data may conflict with the sulfur isotope data, which calls the reliability of the chromium data into question.[22][23] It is also possible that oxygen was present earlier only in localized "oxygen oases".[24] Since chromium is not easily dissolved, its release from rocks requires the presence of a powerful acid such as sulfuric acid (H2SO4) which may have formed through bacterial oxidation of pyrite. This could provide some of the earliest evidence of oxygen-breathing life on land surfaces.[25]

Other elements whose mass-dependent fractionation may provide clues to the Great Oxidation Event include carbon, nitrogen, transitional metals such as molybdenum and iron, and non-metal elements such as selenium.[13]

Fossils and biomarkers (chemical fossils)

While the Great Oxidation Event is generally thought to be a result of oxygenic photosynthesis by ancestral cyanobacteria, the presence of cyanobacteria in the Archaean before the Great Oxidation Event is a highly controversial topic.[26] Structures that are claimed to be fossils of cyanobacteria exist in rock as old as 3.5 billion years old[27] These include microfossils of supposedly cyanobacterial cells and macrofossils called stromatolites, which are interpreted as colonies of microbes, including cyanobacteria, with characteristic layered structures. Modern stromatolites, which can only be seen in harsh environments such as Shark Bay in western Australia, are associated with cyanobacteria and thus fossil stromatolites had long been interpreted as the evidence for cyanobacteria.[27] However, it has increasingly been inferred that at least some of these Archaean fossils were generated abiotically or produced by non-cyanobacterial phototrophic bacteria.[28]

Additionally, Archaean sedimentary rocks were once found to contain biomarkers, also known as chemical fossils, interpreted as fossilized membrane lipids from cyanobacteria and eukaryotes. For example, traces of 2α-methylhopanes and steranes that are thought to be derived from cyanobacteria and eukaryotes, respectively, were found in Pilbara, Western Australia.[29] Steranes are diagenetic products of sterols, which are biosynthesized utilizing molecular oxygen. Thus, steranes can additionally serve as an indicator of oxygen in the atmosphere. However, these biomarker samples have since been shown to have been contaminated and so the results are no longer accepted.[30]

Other indicators

Some elements in marine sediments are sensitive to different levels of oxygen in the environment such asthe transition metals molybdenum[19] and rhenium.[31] Non-metal elements such as selenium and iodine are also indicators of oxygen levels.[32]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_evolutionary_history_of_life

Hypotheses

Hypotheses to explain this gap must take into consideration the balance between oxygen sources and oxygen sinks. Oxygenic photosynthesis produces organic carbon that must be segregated from oxygen to allow oxygen accumulation in the surface environment, otherwise the oxygen back-reacts with the organic carbon and does not accumulate. The burial of organic carbon, sulfide, and minerals containing ferrous iron (Fe2+) is a primary factor in oxygen accumulation.[39] When organic carbon is buried without being oxidized, the oxygen is left in the atmosphere. In total, the burial of organic carbon and pyrite today creates 15.8±3.3 Tmol (1 Tmol = 1012 moles) of O2 per year. This creates a net O2 flux from the global oxygen sources.The ability to generate oxygen via photosynthesis likely first appeared in the ancestors of cyanobacteria.[33] These organisms evolved at least 2.45–2.32 billion years ago,[34][35] and probably as early as 2.7 billion years ago or earlier.[7][36][2][37][38] However, oxygen remained scarce in the atmosphere until around 2.0 billion years ago,[8] and banded iron formation continued to be deposited until around 1.85 billion years ago.[7] Given the rapid multiplication rate of cyanobacteria under ideal conditions, an explanation is needed for the delay of at least 400 million years between the evolution of oxygen-producing photosynthesis and the appearance of significant oxygen in the atmosphere.[8]

The rate of change of oxygen can be calculated from the difference between global sources and sinks.[13] The oxygen sinks include reduced gases and minerals from volcanoes, metamorphism and weathering.[13] The GOE started after these oxygen-sink fluxes and reduced-gas fluxes were exceeded by the flux of O2 associated with the burial of reductants, such as organic carbon.[40] For the weathering mechanisms, 12.0±3.3 Tmol of O2 per year today goes to the sinks composed of reduced minerals and gases from volcanoes, metamorphism, percolating seawater and heat vents from the seafloor.[13] On the other hand, 5.7±1.2 Tmol of O2 per year today oxidizes reduced gases in the atmosphere through photochemical reaction.[13] On the early Earth, there was visibly very little oxidative weathering of continents (e.g., a lack of redbeds) and so the weathering sink on oxygen would have been negligible compared to that from reduced gases and dissolved iron in oceans.

Dissolved iron in oceans exemplifies O2 sinks. Free oxygen produced during this time was chemically captured by dissolved iron, converting iron Fe and Fe2+ to magnetite (Fe2+Fe3+
2
O
4
) that is insoluble in water, and sank to the bottom of the shallow seas to create banded iron formations such as the ones found in Minnesota and Pilbara, Western Australia.[40] It took 50 million years or longer to deplete the oxygen sinks.[41] The rate of photosynthesis and associated rate of organic burial also affect the rate of oxygen accumulation. When land plants spread over the continents in the Devonian, more organic carbon was buried and likely allowed higher O2 levels to occur.[42] Today, the average time that an O2 molecule spends in the air before it is consumed by geological sinks is about 2 million years.[43] That residence time is relatively short in geologic time - so in the Phanerozoic there must have been feedback processes that kept the atmospheric O2 level within bounds suitable for animal life.

Evolution by stages

Preston Cloud originally proposed that the first cyanobacteria had evolved the capacity to carry out oxygen-producing photosynthesis, but had not yet evolved enzymes (such as superoxide dismutase) for living in an oxygenated environment. These cyanobacteria would have been protected from their own poisonous oxygen waste through its rapid removal via the high levels of reduced ferrous iron, Fe(II), in the early ocean. Cloud suggested that the oxygen released by photosynthesis oxidized the Fe(II) to ferric iron, Fe(III), which precipitated out of the sea water to form banded iron formation.[44][45] Cloud interpreted the great peak in deposition of banded iron formation at the end of the Archean as the signature for the evolution of mechanisms for living with oxygen. This ended self-poisoning and produced a population explosion in the cyanobacteria that rapidly oxygenated the ocean and ended banded iron formation deposition.[44][45] However, improved dating of Precambrian strata showed that the late Archean peak of deposition was spread out over tens of millions of years, rather than taking place in a very short interval of time following the evolution of oxygen-coping mechanisms. This made Cloud's hypothesis untenable.[11]

More recently, families of bacteria have been discovered that show no indication of ever having had photosynthetic capability, but which otherwise closely resemble cyanobacteria. These may be descended from the earliest ancestors of cyanobacteria, which only later acquired photosynthetic ability by lateral gene transfer. Based on molecular clock data, the evolution of oxygen-producing photosynthesis may have occurred much later than previously thought, at around 2.5 billion years ago. This reduces the gap between the evolution of oxygen photosynthesis and the appearance of significant atmospheric oxygen.[46]

Nutrient famines

A second possibility is that early cyanobacteria were starved for vital nutrients and this checked their growth. However, a lack of the scarcest nutrients, iron, nitrogen, and phosphorus, could have slowed, but not prevented, a cyanobacteria population explosion and rapid oxygenation. The explanation for the delay in the oxygenation of the atmosphere following the evolution of oxygen-producing photosynthesis likely lies in the presence of various oxygen sinks on the young Earth.[8]

Nickel famine

Early chemosynthetic organisms likely produced methane, an important trap for molecular oxygen, since methane readily oxidizes to carbon dioxide (CO2) and water in the presence of UV radiation. Modern methanogens require nickel as an enzyme cofactor. As the Earth's crust cooled and the supply of volcanic nickel dwindled, oxygen-producing algae began to out-perform methane producers, and the oxygen percentage of the atmosphere steadily increased.[47] From 2.7 to 2.4 billion years ago, the rate of deposition of nickel declined steadily from a level 400 times today's.[48]

Increasing flux

Some people suggest that GOE is caused by the increase of the source of oxygen. One hypothesis argues that GOE was the immediate result of photosynthesis, although the majority of scientists suggest that a long-term increase of oxygen is more likely.[49] Several model results show possibilities of long-term increase of carbon burial,[50] but the conclusions are indecisive.[51]

Decreasing sink

In contrast to the increasing flux hypothesis, there are also several hypotheses that attempt to use decrease of sinks to explain GOE. One theory suggests that the composition of the volatiles from volcanic gases was more oxidized.[39] Another theory suggests that the decrease of metamorphic gases and serpentinization is the main key of GOE. Hydrogen and methane released from metamorphic processes are also lost from Earth's atmosphere over time and leave the crust oxidized.[52] Scientists realized that hydrogen would escape into space through a process called methane photolysis, in which methane decomposes under the action of ultraviolet light in the upper atmosphere and releases its hydrogen. The escape of hydrogen from the Earth into space must have oxidized the Earth because the process of hydrogen loss is chemical oxidation.[52] This process of hydrogen escape required the generation of methane by methanogens, so that methanogens actually helped create the conditions necessary for the oxidation of the atmosphere.[24]

Tectonic trigger

2.1-billion-year-old rock showing banded iron formation

One hypothesis suggests that the oxygen increase had to await tectonically driven changes in the Earth, including the appearance of shelf seas, where reduced organic carbon could reach the sediments and be buried.[53][54] The newly produced oxygen was first consumed in various chemical reactions in the oceans, primarily with iron. Evidence is found in older rocks that contain massive banded iron formations apparently laid down as this iron and oxygen first combined; most present-day iron ore lies in these deposits. It was assumed oxygen released from cyanobacteria resulted in the chemical reactions that created rust, but it appears the iron formations were caused by anoxygenic phototrophic iron-oxidizing bacteria, which does not require oxygen.[55] Evidence suggests oxygen levels spiked each time smaller land masses collided to form a super-continent. Tectonic pressure thrust up mountain chains, which eroded releasing nutrients into the ocean that fed photosynthetic cyanobacteria.[56]

Bistability

Another hypothesis posits a model of the atmosphere that exhibits bistability: two steady states of oxygen concentration. The state of stable low oxygen concentration (0.02%) experiences a high rate of methane oxidation. If some event raises oxygen levels beyond a moderate threshold, the formation of an ozone layer shields UV rays and decreases methane oxidation, raising oxygen further to a stable state of 21% or more. The Great Oxygenation Event can then be understood as a transition from the lower to the upper steady states.[57][58]

Increasing photoperiod

Cyanobacteria tend to consume nearly as much oxygen at night as they produce during the day. However, experiments demonstrate that cyanobacterial mats produce a greater excess of oxygen with longer photoperiods. The rotational period of the Earth was only about six hours shortly after its formation, 4.5 billion years ago, but increased to 21 hours by 2.4 billion years ago, in the Paleoproterozoic. The rotational period increased again, starting 700 million years ago, to its present value of 24 hours. It is possible that each increase in rotational period increased the net oxygen production by cyanobacterial mats, which in turn increased the atmospheric abundance of oxygen.[59][60]

Consequences of oxygenation

Eventually, oxygen started to accumulate in the atmosphere, with two major consequences.

  • Oxygen likely oxidized atmospheric methane (a strong greenhouse gas) to carbon dioxide (a weaker one) and water. This weakened the greenhouse effect of the Earth's atmosphere, causing planetary cooling, which has been proposed to have triggered a series of ice ages known as the Huronian glaciation, bracketing an age range of 2.45–2.22 billion years ago.[61][62][63]
  • The increased oxygen concentrations provided a new opportunity for biological diversification, as well as tremendous changes in the nature of chemical interactions between rockssandclay, and other geological substrates and the Earth's air, oceans, and other surface waters. Despite the natural recycling of organic matter, life had remained energetically limited until the widespread availability of oxygen. Due to its relatively weak double bond, oxygen is a high-energy molecule[5] and produced a breakthrough in metabolic evolution that greatly increased the free energy available to living organisms, with global environmental impacts. For example, mitochondria evolved after the GOE, giving organisms the energy to exploit new, more complex morphologies interacting in increasingly complex ecosystems, although these did not appear until the late Proterozoic and Cambrian.[64]

Role in mineral diversification

The Great Oxygenation Event triggered an explosive growth in the diversity of minerals, with many elements occurring in one or more oxidized forms near the Earth's surface.[65] It is estimated that the GOE was directly responsible for more than 2,500 of the total of about 4,500 minerals found on Earth today. Most of these new minerals were formed as hydrated and oxidized forms due to dynamic mantle and crust processes.[66]

In field studies done in Lake FryxellAntarctica, scientists found that mats of oxygen-producing cyanobacteria produced a thin layer, one to two millimeters thick, of oxygenated water in an otherwise anoxic environment, even under thick ice. By inference, these organisms could have adapted to oxygen even before oxygen accumulated in the atmosphere.[67] The evolution of such oxygen-dependent organisms eventually established an equilibrium in the availability of oxygen, which became a major constituent of the atmosphere.[67]

Origin of eukaryotes

It has been proposed that a local rise in oxygen levels due to cyanobacterial photosynthesis in ancient microenvironments was highly toxic to the surrounding biota, and that this selective pressure drove the evolutionary transformation of an archaeal lineage into the first eukaryotes.[68] Oxidative stress involving production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) might have acted in synergy with other environmental stresses (such as ultraviolet radiation and/or desiccation) to drive selection in an early archaeal lineage towards eukaryosis. This archaeal ancestor may already have had DNA repair mechanisms based on DNA pairing and recombination and possibly some kind of cell fusion mechanism.[69][70] The detrimental effects of internal ROS (produced by endosymbiont proto-mitochondria) on the archaeal genome could have promoted the evolution of meiotic sex from these humble beginnings.[69] Selective pressure for efficient DNA repair of oxidative DNA damage may have driven the evolution of eukaryotic sex involving such features as cell-cell fusions, cytoskeleton-mediated chromosome movements and emergence of the nuclear membrane.[68] Thus the evolution of eukaryotic sex and eukaryogenesis were likely inseparable processes that evolved in large part to facilitate DNA repair.[68]

Lomagundi-Jatuli event

The rise in oxygen content was not linear: instead, there was a rise in oxygen content around 2.3 Ga ago, followed by a drop around 2.1 Ga ago. The positive excursion, or more precisely, the carbon isotopic excursion evidencing it, is called the Lomagundi-Jatuli event (LJE) or Lomagundi event,[71] (named for a district of Southern Rhodesia) and the time period has been termed Jatulian. In the Lomagundi-Jatuli event, oxygen content reached as high as modern levels, followed by a fall to very low levels during the following stage where black shales were deposited. The negative excursion is called the Shunga-Francevillian event. Evidence for the Lomagundi-Jatuli event has been found globally: in Fennoscandia and northern Russia, Scotland, Ukraine, China, the Wyoming craton in North America, Brazil, South Africa, India and Australia. Oceans seem to have been oxygenated for some time even after the termination of the isotope excursion itself.[72][73]

It has been hypothesized that eukaryotes first evolved during the LJE.[72] The Lomagundi-Jatuli event coincides with the appearance, and subsequent disappearance, of curious fossils found in Gabon, termed Francevillian biota, which seem to have been multicellular. This appears to represent a "false start" of multicellular life. The organisms apparently went extinct when the LJE ended, because they are absent in the layers of shale deposited after the LJE.

See also