There was little to no atmospheric oxygen in the primordial Earth. There isn't, to my knowledge, any science which disagrees with this and that means the Tea People will ... but ... we don't care beans about Tea People but we care a great deal about science. (WIKI: Great Oxygenation Event)
The Earth, as originally designed by the Good Lord, could not possibly have sustained human beings. That seems like sensationalist clickbait but it's true, nevertheless.
Note: if you want to believe this is Bible-bashing, go away. We are fed-up with people who refuse to educate themselves.
If you want to go for Intelligent Design V2, consider the possibility the Good Lord designed the Earth to work and evolve this way. It wasn't a trick but rather it's the way to make planets. That's about all we need on that topic.
For almost 1.5 billion years, there was little or no atmospheric oxygen (i.e. dioxygen or O2, two Oxygen atoms in a molecule). Cyanobacteria started producing oxygen by photosynthesis and this is the mechanism by which the atmospheric oxygen was generated.
This is where the story picks up with my Catholic friend. He is highly enamored of the idea of seeding hydrocarbons for the evolution of life from comets. Recent discovery of hydrocarbons on multiple comets adds major credence to that thinking.
Here at the Rockhouse, the problem we have with that is anything entering the atmosphere from anywhere else should burn up or mostly. Any hydrocarbons in it should be broken down by the heat. We like the concept but we really don't think it will work. However, the apparent ubiquity of such hydrocarbons possibly indicates, well, life all over the place.
Something the hydrocarbons on the comets indicates to us here at the Rockhouse is an apparent heavy preference at the planet-building level for carbon-based life. When there are hydrocarbons everywhere and little to no evidence of any type of silicon-based life, the conclusion seems to be it has to be carbon but it's not science if we lock out the alternative and that wrecks a lot of sci-fi too.
Something a little extreme in the thinking here is regarding how much the evolution of DNA from hydrocarbons is inevitable. As we see from the Great Oxygenation Event, it doesn't take much, if any, oxygen to do it because methane is called a hydrocarbon but there is no oxygen in it (CH4). Cyanobacteria 'eat' methane and they 'excrete' oxygen but that demands an answer to where the hell did they get the oxygen to discrete when it didn't come with the methane. Perhaps any oxygen is bonded in hydrocarbons such as sugars, alcohols, etc and this is what was broken down by the cyanobacteria but where did they get it.
We're obviously not chemists here at the Rockhouse but we can follow it so long as it doesn't get too strange.
The reason for doing any of this is armchair enthusiasm for the ageless question of what makes life. My friend is Catholic as in for generations but he has no Biblical reservations about such review and I'm glad of it because this means we can get into a bit of the theology of this insofar as life originated somewhere, if not here. No matter where we postulate it began, somewhere there is apparently a process which, in effect, turns rocks into life. Even if that life or the precursors came to Earth via comets, there is still an explanation needed for how it came that life arose anywhere.
An excellent point from my friend yesterday is the Earth is not old and there were many billions of years which preceded the appearance of this planet. That time is over twice the time it took for life to originate on Earth so it seems the probability is extremely high it is all over the Universe and, in some places, has been there considerably longer than we.
That goes out to why does SETI not hear them but that's another story.
The Earth, as originally designed by the Good Lord, could not possibly have sustained human beings. That seems like sensationalist clickbait but it's true, nevertheless.
Note: if you want to believe this is Bible-bashing, go away. We are fed-up with people who refuse to educate themselves.
If you want to go for Intelligent Design V2, consider the possibility the Good Lord designed the Earth to work and evolve this way. It wasn't a trick but rather it's the way to make planets. That's about all we need on that topic.
For almost 1.5 billion years, there was little or no atmospheric oxygen (i.e. dioxygen or O2, two Oxygen atoms in a molecule). Cyanobacteria started producing oxygen by photosynthesis and this is the mechanism by which the atmospheric oxygen was generated.
This is where the story picks up with my Catholic friend. He is highly enamored of the idea of seeding hydrocarbons for the evolution of life from comets. Recent discovery of hydrocarbons on multiple comets adds major credence to that thinking.
Here at the Rockhouse, the problem we have with that is anything entering the atmosphere from anywhere else should burn up or mostly. Any hydrocarbons in it should be broken down by the heat. We like the concept but we really don't think it will work. However, the apparent ubiquity of such hydrocarbons possibly indicates, well, life all over the place.
Something the hydrocarbons on the comets indicates to us here at the Rockhouse is an apparent heavy preference at the planet-building level for carbon-based life. When there are hydrocarbons everywhere and little to no evidence of any type of silicon-based life, the conclusion seems to be it has to be carbon but it's not science if we lock out the alternative and that wrecks a lot of sci-fi too.
Something a little extreme in the thinking here is regarding how much the evolution of DNA from hydrocarbons is inevitable. As we see from the Great Oxygenation Event, it doesn't take much, if any, oxygen to do it because methane is called a hydrocarbon but there is no oxygen in it (CH4). Cyanobacteria 'eat' methane and they 'excrete' oxygen but that demands an answer to where the hell did they get the oxygen to discrete when it didn't come with the methane. Perhaps any oxygen is bonded in hydrocarbons such as sugars, alcohols, etc and this is what was broken down by the cyanobacteria but where did they get it.
We're obviously not chemists here at the Rockhouse but we can follow it so long as it doesn't get too strange.
The reason for doing any of this is armchair enthusiasm for the ageless question of what makes life. My friend is Catholic as in for generations but he has no Biblical reservations about such review and I'm glad of it because this means we can get into a bit of the theology of this insofar as life originated somewhere, if not here. No matter where we postulate it began, somewhere there is apparently a process which, in effect, turns rocks into life. Even if that life or the precursors came to Earth via comets, there is still an explanation needed for how it came that life arose anywhere.
An excellent point from my friend yesterday is the Earth is not old and there were many billions of years which preceded the appearance of this planet. That time is over twice the time it took for life to originate on Earth so it seems the probability is extremely high it is all over the Universe and, in some places, has been there considerably longer than we.
That goes out to why does SETI not hear them but that's another story.
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