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The First Oxygen Poor World Ocean
March 18, 2013 04:44 PM - Andy Soos, ENN
A research team led by biogeochemists at the University of California, Riverside has filled in a billion-year gap in our understanding of conditions in the early ocean during a critical time in the history of life on Earth. Over time, the planet cooled and formed a solid crust, allowing liquid water to exist on the surface. The first life forms appeared between 3.8 and 3.5 billion years ago. Photosynthetic life appeared around 2 billion years ago, enriching the atmosphere with oxygen. Life remained mostly small and microscopic until about 580 million years ago, when complex multicellular life arose. It is now well accepted that appreciable oxygen first accumulated in the atmosphere about 2.4 to 2.3 billion years ago. It is equally well accepted that the build-up of oxygen in the ocean may have lagged the atmospheric increase by well over a billion years, but the details of those conditions have long been elusive because of the patchiness of the ancient rock record.
What are you doing at 8:30 pm on March 23rd? Are you doing something cliché like going out for a nice dinner and a movie? Instead, how about joining millions of people from around the world by participating in Earth Hour, an event where you shut off your lights to express your concern for the [...]
As a blog writer for ENN I am always looking tools for helping me to reduce my carbon footprint. While reading the Sierra Club Home Blog I read an interview with Susan Hunt Stevens, the founder of Practically Green, a website designed for people who want to live more sustainably but aren’t sure where to start. Being that the site was free and I had somehow already found a way to flub my "easy green New Year’s Resolutions", I decided that there would be no harm in exploring the site.
Most people watch movies to be entertained or for escapism, but film can also serve another purpose. Documentary films can introduce viewers to new human (or animal) experiences and can challenge viewers to reflect on their own lives. In celebration of the 85th Academy Awards I have compiled a list of environmentally themed Academy Awards [...]