Fresh water on Earth emerged 500M years earlier than previously thought
Researchers at Curtin University discovered fresh water on Earth around four billion years ago, challenging existing theories. Analysis of ancient crystals suggests landmasses and fresh water played a crucial role in early life emergence. Published in Nature Geoscience.
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Researchers at Curtin University have made a groundbreaking discovery regarding the presence of fresh water on Earth. By analyzing ancient crystals from Western Australia's Jack Hills, they have determined that fresh water, crucial for sustaining life, appeared around four billion years ago, much earlier than previously believed. The study, led by Dr. Hamed Gamaleldien and Dr. Hugo Olierook, challenges existing theories about Earth's early history and the presence of oceans. The findings suggest that landmasses and fresh water played a significant role in the emergence of life on Earth within a relatively short timeframe after the planet's formation. This research sheds light on the Earth's early hydrological cycle and provides insights into the conditions that allowed life to flourish. The study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, marks a significant advancement in understanding Earth's early history and paves the way for further exploration into the origins of life.
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7 commentsIt’s analogous to finding evidence that humans were in North America 10,000 years before we previously thought, but there is no way we should treat that as a lower bound: https://news.berkeley.edu/2023/10/05/tests-confirm-humans-tr...
But reading carefully, it looks like by "fresh water" they means water on land aka rain, not just the existence of seas.
[1]https://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2019/04/how-likely-...
“If an industrial civilization had existed on Earth many millions of years prior to our own era, what traces would it have left and would they be detectable today” [1]?
TL; DR Difficult after ~2.5 million years unless they had a nuclear war.
As for humans: “some specific tracers that would be unique” include “persistent synthetic molecules, plastics and (potentially) very long-lived radioactive fallout in the event of nuclear catastrophe. Absent those markers, the uniqueness of the [Anthropocene] may well be seen in the multitude of relatively independent fingerprints as opposed to a coherent set of changes associated with a single geophysical cause.”
Bonus: “…should any of the initial releases of light carbon described above indeed be related to a prior industrial civilization…these releases often triggered episodes of ocean anoxia (via increased nutrient supply) causing a massive burial of organic matter, which eventually became source strata for further fossil fuels. Thus, the prior industrial activity would have actually given rise to the potential for future industry via their own demise. Large-scale anoxia, in effect, might provide a self-limiting but self-perpetuating feedback of industry on the planet.”
So if we’re going out, we should go all the way and suffocate the oceans out of courtesy.
[1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journa...
I mean, I never thought of it prior to today. But why not.
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