The research, which was published in Nature Geoscience, analysed how the Sun s nourishing sunlight will speed up the rate at which the atmosphere is deoxygenated.
The study s authors noted in their paper that future deoxygenation is an inevitable consequence of increased solar radiation.
According to Matthew Warke of the University of St Andrews, as the Sun grows older, it will get considerably brighter and brighter.
Earth will, consequently, receive much more sunlight and solar energy that will increase the weathering of silicate rocks.
Earth s oxygen is going to run out one day because of the Sun (Image: GETTY)
Once the planet s oxygen runs out most if not all life as we know it will end (Image: GETTY)
The first organisms to “breathe” oxygen or at least use it appeared 3.1 billion years ago, according to a new genetic analysis of dozens of families of microbes. The find is surprising because the Great Oxidation Event, which filled Earth s atmosphere with the precious gas, didn t occur until some 500 million years later.
“I was pretty thrilled to see this paper,” says Patrick Shih, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California (UC), Davis, because by tracking protein evolution, it offers a new way to reconstruct some of life s most consequential transformations. “The transition from a world that was mostly anaerobic to one that was mostly aerobic was one of the major innovations in life,” says Tim Lyons, a biogeochemist at UC Riverside.
Scientists broadly agree that Earth s early atmosphere and oceans were largely devoid of oxygen gas but perhaps not completely. Geochemists, for example, have found mineral deposits dated to about 3 billion years ago that they
Feb. 25, 2021 , 12:00 PM
The first organisms to “breathe” oxygen or at least use it appeared 3.1 billion years ago, according to a new genetic analysis of dozens of families of microbes. The find is surprising because the Great Oxidation Event, which filled Earth’s atmosphere with the precious gas, didn’t occur until some 500 million years later.
“I was pretty thrilled to see this paper,” says Patrick Shih, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California (UC), Davis. The advent of proteins that can use oxygen, Shih and others say, marks a key step in the emergence of aerobic microbes, which are those able to harness oxygen. “The transition from a world that was mostly anaerobic to one that was mostly aerobic was one of the major innovations in life,” says Tim Lyons, a biogeochemist at UC Riverside.