Slowing Down the Earth's Rotation Produces Oxygen Surges


For billions of years, the Earth’s constant rotation with the Moon has slowed the planet’s rotation through a process known as tidal friction.



"As the Earth rotates, the pull of the Moon (and the Sun, to a lesser extent) pulls into the Earth's oceans. This stretches the oceans until they move away from the Earth's center, sucking energy from the rotation and slowing it down," said study co -author Brian Arbic, a Department of Science professor. Earth and the Environment at the University of Michigan’s College of Literature, Science and the Arts.



Arbic says that this slowdown may seem small, but it resulted in the addition of additional daylight for hundreds of millions of years, and that slowdown still occurs today.



"Tidal friction continues to slow the rate of rotation. The days will continue to continue throughout geological time," Arbic said.





The emergence of oxygen on Earth

The researchers modeled different scenarios throughout the day and the release of oxygen from the microbial layer. When they compared their model with analysis of similar microbial layers taken from the Middle Island Sinkhole, they found confirmation of their prediction that photosynthetic bacteria release more oxygen during longer days.



This is not because microbes do more photosynthesis. On the other hand, because longer sunlight means more oxygen comes out of the microbial layer in one day.



It should be noted, the Earth’s atmosphere formed after the planet formed and cooled, about 4.6 billion years ago and is mostly composed of hydrogen sulfide, methane, and carbon dioxide (CO2).

The slow rotation of the Earth tells how the planet became rich in oxygen. As the Earth’s rotation slows down, microbes are bathed in longer sunlight, which increases the release of oxygen into the atmosphere.
Every breath you take is possible because billions of years ago, a dense layer of cyanobacteria (during early life on Earth) began to produce oxygen as a byproduct of photosynthesis.



But scientists still don’t know for sure what triggered the two transformative oxygenation events that transformed the Earth from an oxygen -rich planet to a low -oxygen one, where complex organisms can grow and diversify.





Now, as quoted from Live Science, researchers have identified an important factor that could drive the release of oxygen produced by microbes: the slowing of the Earth’s rotation that began about 2.4 billion years ago.



At birth, the Earth rotates faster then. Imagine, the Earth completes one rotation in just a few hours. But gradually, the rotation slowed down over hundreds of millions of years.



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According to a recent study, after the length of the day reaches a certain threshold, longer sunlight may cause more oxygen molecules to jump from areas with high concentrations (in dense layers of cyanobacteria) to areas with lower concentrations (atmosphere) .



Scientists recently found clues to this relationship in holes at the bottom of Lake Huron. Bordered by Michigan in the United States and Ontario in Canada, Lake Huron is one of the largest freshwater lakes in the world.



The Central Island sinkhole in the lake measures 91 meters in diameter and is located about 24 meters below the surface. There, sulfur-rich water preserves colorful microbes that thrive in low-oxygen environments, much like the earliest forms of bacteria on Earth.



In the cold depths of the sink hole live two types of microbes: purple cyanobacteria that seek sunlight and produce oxygen through photosynthesis, and white bacteria that take up sulfur and release sulfate.



Microbes scramble for position throughout the day, and sulfur -eating bacteria overwhelm the cyanobacteria in the morning and evening, blocking the purple microbes ’access to the Sun. However, during the day, the white microbes avoid light and migrate further into the burrow, leaving the purple cyanobacteria exposed and thus able to perform photosynthesis and release oxygen.



The researchers wrote that there may have been similar competition between microbial “communities” millions of years ago, with sunlight exposure of oxygen-producing bacteria inhibited by their microbial “neighbors”. As the number of days on Earth increases, oxygen producers get more time in the sun and release more oxygen into the atmosphere.



"We recognize that there is a fundamental relationship between the dynamics of light emission and oxygen, and that relationship is based on molecular scattering physics, where thermal changes cause molecules to migrate from an area with a higher concentration to one with a lower concentration," the lead author said. study Judith Klatt, lead author of the study. at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen, Germany.



“Shorter days allow less oxygen to come out of the dense cyanobacterial layer, even though the same amount of oxygen is produced per hour,” Klatt said.



Round cycle

Now, the Earth completes full rotation on its axis every 24 hours. But more than 4 billion years ago, a day lasted only about six hours.



All that changed after the Great Oxidation Event (GOE) about 2.4 billion years ago, followed by the Neoproterozoic Oxygenation Event about 2 billion years later. This event brings atmospheric oxygen to a current level of around 21%.



Both previous oxygenation events have been linked to the photosynthetic activity of cyanobacteria, and this new evidence suggests that another factor could be prolonged daylight on Earth, which triggers the release of more oxygen from the microbial layer.
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