Earth as it was originally delivered was deadly poisonous to any form of life we know and it took three billion years before there was enough oxygen for much of anything to live. (Science Daily: Oxygen levels were key to early animal evolution, strongest evidence now shows)
Perhaps you're surprised to discover the early Earth was a hugely inhospitable place so that's a bit unusual but it's probably not such a surprise to discover it took a great while to make enough oxygen for anything to live. In part this article is a tribute to algae since they're the lowly creatures which did it and we can go straight to the sci-fi with some terraforming with algae, if you have three billion years to wait.
"Red Planet" is a movie which featured seeding Mars with various types of growth and they anticipated it would be breathable in a jiffy but perhaps not quite a jiffy although we're willing to spend quite a bit of time waiting when Carrie-Anne Moss is the captain although we will have to find a way to lose Val Kilmer.
Evolution in which small mammals become bigger ones is interesting but the really fascinating aspect is making life out of nothing. We have already reviewed the fact you're not fundamentalists and the fact I'm not trying to bash religion so we have quite a bit of latitude to review but there's not much review necessary since creation of the oxygen was one step of the process. The science looks pretty good for how that happened but this is still well past the actual creation of life.
Some process originally got the first organic molecules functioning to make the algae in the first place and there's plenty of study in that process to last likely the rest of your days. I suspect, actually, the knowledge of that process will be fairly complete over the next fifty years. I started into it fifty years ago with "The Origins of Life on Earth" and that story had incomplete sections but it has developed significantly since then. It seems likely another fifty years should show scientists stating with certitude how the process took place. Fundamentalists still won't believe it but that's their problem since what they believe is no-one's problem but their own to resolve.
Some do want to stir a measure of religion into this and the best insertion point I've seen in some while is how anyone explains the existence of white people. We saw humans evolved in Africa where an unprotected white person will die because our skin cannot tolerate the sun. However, in that environment which would kill us, the human genome had the genes necessary to make the switches to present white people some time in a different place. If you want to call that 'intelligent design' then I really don't have much of an argument against it. White people are just about as improbable as it's possible to get and yet here we are.
Perhaps you're surprised to discover the early Earth was a hugely inhospitable place so that's a bit unusual but it's probably not such a surprise to discover it took a great while to make enough oxygen for anything to live. In part this article is a tribute to algae since they're the lowly creatures which did it and we can go straight to the sci-fi with some terraforming with algae, if you have three billion years to wait.
"Red Planet" is a movie which featured seeding Mars with various types of growth and they anticipated it would be breathable in a jiffy but perhaps not quite a jiffy although we're willing to spend quite a bit of time waiting when Carrie-Anne Moss is the captain although we will have to find a way to lose Val Kilmer.
Evolution in which small mammals become bigger ones is interesting but the really fascinating aspect is making life out of nothing. We have already reviewed the fact you're not fundamentalists and the fact I'm not trying to bash religion so we have quite a bit of latitude to review but there's not much review necessary since creation of the oxygen was one step of the process. The science looks pretty good for how that happened but this is still well past the actual creation of life.
Some process originally got the first organic molecules functioning to make the algae in the first place and there's plenty of study in that process to last likely the rest of your days. I suspect, actually, the knowledge of that process will be fairly complete over the next fifty years. I started into it fifty years ago with "The Origins of Life on Earth" and that story had incomplete sections but it has developed significantly since then. It seems likely another fifty years should show scientists stating with certitude how the process took place. Fundamentalists still won't believe it but that's their problem since what they believe is no-one's problem but their own to resolve.
Some do want to stir a measure of religion into this and the best insertion point I've seen in some while is how anyone explains the existence of white people. We saw humans evolved in Africa where an unprotected white person will die because our skin cannot tolerate the sun. However, in that environment which would kill us, the human genome had the genes necessary to make the switches to present white people some time in a different place. If you want to call that 'intelligent design' then I really don't have much of an argument against it. White people are just about as improbable as it's possible to get and yet here we are.
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