"Is it possible that there could be life on planets in other solar systems? Ones similar to ours, including a sun."
Content with the tag: “photosynthesis”
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Oxygen Production in Earth's Early Oceans Predates the Great Oxidation Event
It is widely accepted that around 2.4 billion years ago, the Earth’s atmosphere underwent a dramatic change when oxygen levels rose sharply. Called the “Great Oxidation Event” (GOE), the oxygen spike marks an important milestone in Earth’s history, the transformation from an oxygen-poor atmosphere to an oxygen-rich one paving the way for complex life to develop on the planet.
Two questions that remain unresolved in studies of the early Earth are when oxygen production via photosynthesis got started and when it began to alter the chemistry of Earth’s ocean and atmosphere.
A research team that includes members of NAI’s Arizona...
Source: [Link]
November 4, 2009 / Posted by: Daniella Scalice
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Greening the Earth
Late Precambrian carbonate outcropping is visable at the south end of Death Valley, California. Carbon isotopes in these layers bear evidence of the first extensive greening of the Earth
One of the most dramatic and seemingly inexplicable events in the history of Earth’s biosphere occurred roughly 540 million years ago when multi-cellular life exploded all over the planet. This large-scale diversification of life is known as the ‘Cambrian explosion’ and lead to the variety of organisms we see on Earth today. Scientists have often attributed the Cambrian explosion to significant geologic or climatic changes on our planet, but new NASA-sponsored research may have a better explanation.
Rather than catastrophic disruptions in Earth’s climate, a new study indicates that the Cambrian explosion may have been caused by more...Source: [Nature]
August 26, 2009 / Written by: Aaron Gronstal
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New Evidence for an Earlier Origin of Oxygenic Photosynthesis
Outcroppings of ancient ocean sediments show deposits of the iron oxide, hematite. CREDIT: HIROSHI OHMOTONAI’s Archean Biosphere Drilling Project supported the acquisition of pristine drill core samples obtained from ancient rocks in Western Australia. New results from those studies, published in the current issue of Nature Geoscience, point toward an earlier start for oxygenic photosynthesis on the early Earth than previously thought.
An international team of researchers, including members of NAI’s Penn State Team, found hematite crystals and associated minerals preserved in a jasper formation within ancient marine sedimentary rocks. Their interpretation is that the rocks formed in an oxygenated water body 3.46 billion years ago. Because the findings imply the presence...
March 17, 2009 / Posted by: Daniella Scalice
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The Color of Alien Plants
The April 2008 issue of Scientific American features an article by Nancy Kiang of NAI’s Virtual Planetary Laboratory Team based on her studies predicting the colors of plants on other worlds. The studies, published in Astrobiology in February 2007, consider that as photosynthesis on Earth produces the primary signatures of life that can be detected astronomically at the global scale, a strong focus of the search for extrasolar life will be photosynthesis, particularly photosynthesis that has evolved with a different parent star. Depending on the nature...
Source: [Scientific American]
March 25, 2008 / Posted by: Daniella Scalice
Planetary Surface and Interior Models and Super Earths
ROADMAP OBJECTIVES: 1.1, 1.2, 4.1, 5.2, 6.1, 7.2
The Virtual Planetary Laboratory – The Life Modules - Photosynthesis
ROADMAP OBJECTIVES: 5.1, 6.1, 6.2, 7.2
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