Are we alone in the universe?

@Setanta,

I hope you might be interested in this clip

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiE_0CJjiAA&t=161s

What is interesting is not only our bodies that received its elements from those dead stars and supernovae, but whether there is a connection between our desire and the same dust-dispersion of stars.
There may be a thought within the same clusters and materials that we cannot comprehend and attain in our five senses, but only revelations of the same essence.

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I cannot accept the contention that we are not a part of the natural world. We come from nature, and we live within nature. The first great extinction event was the Great Oxidation Event. Almost all life on the planet went extinct. Only some of the Archaea survived, and the cyanobacteria which cause the event.

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The cyanobacteria producing the oxygen caused the event which enabled the subsequent development of multicellular forms.

It is likely that life on earth will survive us.

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Always wondered about that name since it was really the opposite of 'Oxidation'.

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@Leadfoot,

I don't know what you think you're saying, but it was precisely because the cyanobacteria created all that atmospheric oxygen that the extinction event occurred. Archaea are the earliest known life forms, at between 3.77 and 4.26 billion years before the present; atmospheric oxygen is poisonous to them.

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@Setanta,

That’s what you get from accepting things rather than understanding the underlying science. It was 'Oxygenation' that was the initial event.

After checking your link I see even they have that as the alternate (but more accurate) Oxygenation event there.

I should add that while 'oxidation' is a very 'natural' (ie, entropy increasing) process, oxygenation is most definitely not.

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@Leadfoot,

set is correct "oxygention" is a result of life forms converting the components of the planets "second atmosphere" The first atmosphere was H and He. This ws blown away and replacedby COx Nox Sox NHx and HOH. ARchea were first acellular and new life forms, with nuclei and free form bacteria "partnered up" and photosynthesis was born .
This isnt a hypothesis because enough evidence exists from sites in Greenland, Russia, proterozoic and Australian Hadean sediments and the early minerlogy of the Siberian nd Canadian Shields. The mineral s of that age are the first to contain OXYGEN in their molecular makeup. So the occurrence of photosynthesis and minerals like OXIDES and OXY HYDROXIDES are a co-chrono occurence.

The "great oxygenation" event has always been called the "Great toxic event" (half in jest) because along with the oxide, peroxide and oxyhydroxide minerals making rather sudden appearances cyanophytes (also called cyano bacteria which is not a real classification term) which were autotrophic aerobic archea that contained groups of chemicals like chlorophyll, xanthophyll, and several others. The rest is fossil history,

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@Leadfoot,

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It was 'Oxygenation' that was the initial event.

No , because we have really strong evidence of the loss of the original anaerobic atmosphere of the earth. It occurred very quickly an the atmosphere began to gradually de-acidify and oxygenate primarily because early Archean life, mostly LCA's (last common ncestor)of plants which, as we know "poop out oxygen"
The stratigraphic -boundary of this zone contains all kinds of geologic evidence (earliest iron minerals were acidified and made sulfide species (like pyrite) . After the great oxygenation event, minerals began to show oxides an these oxides correspond with (newest archea) began to show cyclic carbon laced helices that Mary Chan at Delaware and folks at John Hopkins are studying these pre-life structures under E microscopic FISH mass spec,this has all been

Evidence my boy, evidence. Its all we can draw from. Now its changing almost monthly .I expect there to be several really "Darwinian level" papers to be published in the nxt few years about the first appearance of life from the careful dissection of " chemical fossils" Bob HAzen, at Duquesne has been doing a lot of convincing comparative mineralogical "paleontology" by actually TIMING the first occurrence of certain minerals on the planet. Its been a damned long job to convince the skeptical world of biologists how the planets history (at its earliest dates) is best analyzed by looking at mineral stratigraphy. We have to look for min zones that are NOT all fucked up by continents smashing into each other so weve been looking at the shields . where the planets earliest chemical histories are seen nd then compared with biotic zones from elsewhere.
Its boring as hell doing the work but Bobs reports have read so well, I was reading one of em while I was sitting on the can. (That is high praise from a reviewer)

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From Set's link:

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The Great Oxidation Event (GOE), sometimes also called the Great Oxygenation Event, Oxygen Catastrophe, Oxygen Crisis, Oxygen Holocaust,[2] or Oxygen Revolution, was a time period when the Earth's atmosphere and the shallow ocean experienced a rise in oxygen,

Think about it for a minute. Oxidation removes oxygen from the atmosphere.

Why is this so hard for you guys?
Science my boy, science.

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@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

No , because we have really strong evidence of the loss of the original anaerobic atmosphere of the earth. It occurred very quickly an the atmosphere began to gradually de-acidify and oxygenate primarily because early Archean life, mostly LCA's (last common ncestor)of plants which, as we know "poop out oxygen"
The stratigraphic -boundary of this zone contains all kinds of geologic evidence (earliest iron minerals were acidified and made sulfide species (like pyrite) . After the great oxygenation event, minerals began to show oxides an these oxides correspond with (newest archea) began to show cyclic carbon laced helices that Mary Chan at Delaware and folks at John Hopkins are studying these pre-life structures under E microscopic FISH mass spec,this has all been

algae blooms are followed by a corresponding bloom in bacteria that consume the algae and deplete oxygen levels as well; so generally you shouldn't assume that a rise in plant mass automatically leads to a sustained rise in oxygen levels, i.e. because plants have predators that consume them and use up oxygen.

Ecosystems and their food web interdependencies are complex. Oxygen levels probably can only rise sustainably when ecosystems evolve to feed consumers while other plants also evolve to resist predation/consumption. That way, you get specialization/differentiation between certain plant species that are more adapted to supplying the food chain with nutrients, while others are more adapted to maintain oxygen, shading moisture, sequestering carbon, and all the other thermostatic functions that maintain and stabilize the environment for all the species that live in it.

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@Leadfoot,

ok you have to undertsand that the "oxidation" he talks about is what happens to the mineral species after an excess of free oxygen radicals are freed via photosynthesis. Its the minerals that have undergone oxidation (recall the word RUST?) , and the cyanobacter actually free up oxygen (It acts like one of those oxygen generators that COPD people carry in a little bag. Youve got it backwards m boy.
The banded iron stones are examples of chemical stratigraphy. The free oxygen radicals in an acid medium exchange electrons and the mineral layers of , lets say, IRON (magnetite) is changed to siderite by oxidation with carbon and also to Limonite or Goethite by hydroxy oxidation.

Thats the neat thing about the theory that Hazen has developed, except he wound up drawing a "chain of life by having some grad students of his develop a series of programs (Bob cant code fer ****) that connect the 'first appearances by chemical activities, ion radii and valence states

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@livinglava,

.
You seem to want to start with conclusions when you should really start with the available evidence that answers the question "where did all this oxygen come from during the time of increasing oxygen occurence both in the atmosphere and the new rocks that are defintely OXIDES??.

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@farmerman,

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Think about it for a minute. Oxidation removes oxygen from the atmosphere

Oxidation mens that something receives oxygen and bonds ionically with it. "Oxygenation" is what hppens IN the atmosphere as oxygen was released by photosynthetic plants such as stromatolites. What I said before was that as the oxy gen ions became more and more available (from the photosynthesis - we know this happened because we have the ffossil photosynthesizers and the rocks that took this up to form oxides .

Ya know Leadfoot, if thiis is your way to get me to answer the origin of mitochondria, pretty smart , it just occurred to me that may be where you were going.

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@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

You seem to want to start with conclusions when you should really start with the available evidence that answers the question "where did all this oxygen come from during the time of increasing oxygen occurence both in the atmosphere and the new rocks that are defintely OXIDES??.

I'm not even talking about what you were talking about. I don't have information about the specific ecosystems and food webs of that period. I was pointing out generally that there is a somewhat surprising relationship between algae blooms and oxygen levels because of the fact the algae blooms feed bacterial blooms that end up consuming the oxygen.

So when you're dealing with cyclical predator/prey relationships, you can't just assume that an increase or decrease in oxygen or some other byproduct of the ecosystem is due to a single factor within the ecosystem, e.g. plant population surge, because there is going to be a corresponding surge in whatever consumes that plant growth.

That's why I pointed out that there are adaptations in different species that mitigate different aspects of the ecosystem. It's tedious to rewrite the examples I gave so it's irritating that you just debate with something I posted instead of just noting what I said and taking it into consideration.

You just want to go on with whatever you were thinking before I posted, so you put what you said in debate with what I said, when they are really not two competing explanations at all because I am talking about ecosystemic dynamics while you are talking about geochemical issues without even mentioning the biological processes that are involved.

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@livinglava,

the specific colonial plants involved would have included ecossystems that include water and air and commensal related critters. I think that, what you and I say is instantaneous May be viewed over 100000 years or more. I guess Im not surprised that an occurence, such as the appearance of photosynesis would quickly take over and produce an atmosphere thats over available in one or two gases. Once the iron banded foormations seen all over the world , actually began , the actual red bannds represented the slow accumulation of seiments rich in siderite and limonite located right next to deposits of moderate oxygen containing layers of magnetite and Titanium/Iron oxides (ilmenite) all surrounded by stromatolite beds .and manganese dioxide sands.

You are discussing the origin of oxygen and are looking for something other than cyanobacters and stylolite masses of critter goo. I dont really want to go down that path because its like asking a farmer whether his diesel tractor engine actually operates because theres a little horse in the tank.

We really know pretty well what was happening , in the time , calendar space between 2.6 Billion years ago , when the evidence strongly supports oxygen being freely available because of cyano bacter and other \photosynthesizing life , and the "CAMBRIAN EXPLOSION" at about 550 Million years ago. (DO the math) a suitable amount of time could account for Oxygen being expelled as photosynthetic "poop" by bacteria, algae, colonial algae such as today's SPIROGYRA . We have the interests to actually find and look at fossils of these critters as well as finding these huge mounds of stromatolites . We do know that cyano bacters were already struggling to live in a hostile sulphitic environment as early as 3.4 Billion years ago and weve got an ample amount of fossils between these times and the later "Great Oxygenation event which was somehwere at or after 2.6 BILLION years ago (It was at about this time we feel that the cyanobacters WON THE WAR and all the iron banding and other oxides actually took over.
Evolution may seem to take place in a visual second between sediments representing intervals between 3.4 B years and 2.6 B years. In places like the Flinders Hills and the Issua Formation of Australia and Greenland respctively, there was a respiration war going on between anaerobes, and aerobic species . It took about a billion years to be th dominant gas producer even though we know of sspecific times in between that aerobic life tried and lost in 'warm little pools" (To borrow an aphorism from some guy with a beard).

Sorta the same thing is being displayed wrt to our understanding of the CAMBRIAN EXPLOSION ,( when excess O2 saturation and the availablity of free carbon and calcium/Magnesium allowed for animals with hard shells and proteinaceous shells to show up in the fossil record in great numbers). During an earlier period of about 60 Million years the, wormlike ancestral forms of animals were already developing shells and hard structures to show up in a time that journalists wrote from a borrowed term originated by Steve Gould and Miles Eldredge. Gould, in a talk he gave before his death (one in which i and several other colleagues were in attendance), he said that he wa actually "Pissed off that he and... and Miles did Not just keep our ... mouths shut and not coin that damn term... Because its given the Creationists a rope from which to dangle to present one more of their idiotic arguments"...

And this was a time just before the last of the great Trials about teaching Creationism in High School natural science and biology was was being fought (Edwards v Aguillard or was a few years from being fought ( Kitzmiller v Dover School District)
BUT I DIGRESS...

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@farmerman,

Don't give him undeserved credit.

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@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

the specific colonial plants involved would have included ecossystems that include water and air and commensal related critters. I think that, what you and I say is instantaneous May be viewed over 100000 years or more.

So lots of biological adaptations and evolution and ecosystemic change can occur in that time, no?

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I guess Im not surprised that an occurence, such as the appearance of photosynesis would quickly take over and produce an atmosphere thats over available in one or two gases.

Intuitively it makes sense, but surely you can imagine that there could be many different ecosystemic geometries that would account for the exact outcomes that emerged and ended up in fossil records.

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Once the iron banded foormations seen all over the world , actually began , the actual red bannds represented the slow accumulation of seiments rich in siderite and limonite located right next to deposits of moderate oxygen containing layers of magnetite and Titanium/Iron oxides (ilmenite) all surrounded by stromatolite beds .and manganese dioxide sands.

Do you want to explain your thoughts about possible mechanics of how these minerals interacted with the living/energetic environment that produced and/or utilized them? Or are you just listing fancy terminology you know for the sake of impressing readers?

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You are discussing the origin of oxygen and are looking for something other than cyanobacters and stylolite masses of critter goo. I dont really want to go down that path because its like asking a farmer whether his diesel tractor engine actually operates because theres a little horse in the tank.

That's a terrible analogy. It implies your assumptions about cyanobacteria and 'critter goo' are the beginning and end of the discussion. If nothing else, you should explain how you envision the ecosystemic interaction occurring if it really so simple as you imply.

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We really know pretty well what was happening , in the time , calendar space between 2.6 Billion years ago , when the evidence strongly supports oxygen being freely available because of cyano bacter and other \photosynthesizing life , and the "CAMBRIAN EXPLOSION" at about 550 Million years ago. (DO the math) a suitable amount of time could account for Oxygen being expelled as photosynthetic "poop" by bacteria, algae, colonial algae such as today's SPIROGYRA . We have the interests to actually find and look at fossils of these critters as well as finding these huge mounds of stromatolites . We do know that cyano bacters were already struggling to live in a hostile sulphitic environment as early as 3.4 Billion years ago and weve got an ample amount of fossils between these times and the later "Great Oxygenation event which was somehwere at or after 2.6 BILLION years ago (It was at about this time we feel that the cyanobacters WON THE WAR and all the iron banding and other oxides actually took over.

How would they 'win the war,' exactly if the Cambrian explosion was going on? In fact, what would it even mean for photosynthesizers/producers to 'win the war,' when feeding consumers is part of how they win the war against each other in competition for resources?

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Evolution may seem to take place in a visual second between sediments representing intervals between 3.4 B years and 2.6 B years. In places like the Flinders Hills and the Issua Formation of Australia and Greenland respctively, there was a respiration war going on between anaerobes, and aerobic species . It took about a billion years to be th dominant gas producer even though we know of sspecific times in between that aerobic life tried and lost in 'warm little pools" (To borrow an aphorism from some guy with a beard).

There are different types of competition that go on in ecosystems, but mostly it is about niche-specialization and stabilization of population-interdependency patterns.

Quote:

Sorta the same thing is being displayed wrt to our understanding of the CAMBRIAN EXPLOSION ,( when excess O2 saturation and the availablity of free carbon and calcium/Magnesium allowed for animals with hard shells and proteinaceous shells to show up in the fossil record in great numbers). During an earlier period of about 60 Million years the, wormlike ancestral forms of animals were already developing shells and hard structures

This is an interesting aspect of the topic that deserves more discussion.

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to show up in a time that journalists wrote from a borrowed term originated by Steve Gould and Miles Eldredge. Gould, in a talk he gave before his death (one in which i and several other colleagues were in attendance), he said that he wa actually "Pissed off that he and... and Miles did Not just keep our ... mouths shut and not coin that damn term... Because its given the Creationists a rope from which to dangle to present one more of their idiotic arguments"...
And this was a time just before the last of the great Trials about teaching Creationism in High School natural science and biology was was being fought (Edwards v Aguillard or was a few years from being fought ( Kitzmiller v Dover School District)
BUT I DIGRESS...

And cue the part of your post where you go off on negative hostilities and anti-Creationist hate.

You digress indeed.

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@livinglava,

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but surely you can imagine that there could be many different ecosystemic geometries that would account for the exact outcomes that emerged and ended up in fossil records.

I llike the ""ecosystemic geometries" BUT NO, I cant. Since I said Im limiting myself to wahat I can see as evidence, and when oxygen producers, seem to occur slightly before and during the oxygenation event and then oxygen uptake mechanisms occur almost in line, aand all the ris of cyanobacteria occured over about a billion years and then follows a "Proterozoic Explosion" . evidence strongly supports a cause of oxygen rises in the atmosphere and uptake of the Excess Oxygen equilibrium constant [ K (O2)] by minerals and sedimets , related to the gradual takeover of the living world by free living algae and stromatolitic type plants (Oxygen producers)

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Or are you just listing fancy terminology you know for the sake of impressing readers?

Actually i was talking right at you nd I guess, crediting the ability to follow me as I was praphrsing Bob HAzen research about mineral evolution and interaction through time. I guess I shouldnt overestimate the audience. My feeling is that you really may not give a **** about this stuff and you are just waiting for opportunities to jump in and nail me with your own insults.

Maybe Set was right. Your really not worth wasting time on. So Ive decided to put youon Ignore , you will join the august group of Frank Apisa, Medved, Camlok, and one or two others that are equal to your style of "whiny debate"

Im a senior worker in my field. Ive got several TERMINAL degrees, and one honorary degree, several patents and a bunch of awardplaques that Ive used the Oak frames for cartoons, and about 42 years of experience. I was actually being rather avuncular I thought. However , my patience is not endless and After discussing this , in a fashion I thought was rather approachable, I cant dumb it down any further .So, why not just miss my direct participation> I probably wont be done with you because quite a few others herein, have had the same response to you and you to them, and Ill probably be responding to you when they quote a line you come up with.

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@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

Quote:
but surely you can imagine that there could be many different ecosystemic geometries that would account for the exact outcomes that emerged and ended up in fossil records.

I llike the ""ecosystemic geometries" BUT NO, I cant. Since I said Im limiting myself to wahat I can see as evidence,

You have to extrapolate from what you know about how ecosystems work, even in the absence of direct fossil evidence. Wasn't it Einstein who said that the far side of the moon must exist even though we can't see it directly?

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and when oxygen producers, seem to occur slightly before and during the oxygenation event and then oxygen uptake mechanisms occur almost in line, aand all the ris of cyanobacteria occured over about a billion years and then follows a "Proterozoic Explosion" . evidence strongly supports a cause of oxygen rises in the atmosphere and uptake of the Excess Oxygen equilibrium constant [ K (O2)] by minerals and sedimets , related to the gradual takeover of the living world by free living algae and stromatolitic type plants (Oxygen producers)

But why didn't the consumers pick up the slack and overpower the photosynthesizers by consuming their energy and then suffocate themselves with CO2 in the process as would occur in the present?

Presumably the photosyntesizers had survival advantages that consumers had some catching up to do, but why didn't that catching up occur in so many millennia, especially considering the simplicity of life at that time and thus the ease of adaptability by mutating in lots of diverse genetic directions simultaneously?

Wouldn't you expect the consumers to quickly evolve and adapt to consuming all the photosynthesizing biomass? Or do you think photosynthesizers/producers were just more efficient at outrunning their consumers in terms of evolutionary adaptations?

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@farmerman,

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Ya know Leadfoot, if thiis is your way to get me to answer the origin of mitochondria, pretty smart , it just occurred to me that may be where you were going.

Closer anyway.

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@Leadfoot,

But don’t it seem funny to name an event for what happened to 'organisms' we're still looking for?

The event that started it all was in fact, Oxygenation.
Oxidation is easy and 'natural'. Oxygenation is hard and takes careful design.

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