Early Earth haze likely provided ultraviolet shield for planet, says CU-Boulder study. See press release here.
Earth’s thick organic haze 3 billion years ago likely similar to haze hovering over Saturn moon Titan today
A new study shows a thick organic haze that enshrouded early Earth several billion years ago may have been similar to the haze now hovering above Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, and would have protected primordial life on the planet from the damaging effects of ultraviolet radiation.
The University of Colorado at Boulder scientists believe the haze was made up primarily of methane and nitrogen chemical byproducts created by reactions with light, said CU-Boulder doctoral student Eric Wolf, lead study author. Not only would the haze have shielded early Earth from UV light, it would have allowed gases like ammonia to build up, causing greenhouse warming and perhaps helped to prevent the planet from freezing over.
The researchers determined the haze of hydrocarbon aerosols was probably made up of fluffy, microscopic particles shaped somewhat like cottonwood tree seeds that would have blocked UV but allowed visible light through to Earth’s surface, Wolf said.
Prior to the new study, the prevailing scientific view was that the atmosphere of Earth some 3 billion years ago was primarily made up of nitrogen gas with lesser amounts of carbon dioxide, methane, hydrogen and water vapor, said Wolf. “Since climate models show early Earth could not have been warmed by atmospheric carbon dioxide alone because of its low levels, other greenhouse gases must have been involved. We think the most logical explanation is methane, which may have been pumped into the atmosphere by early life that was metabolizing it.”
A paper on the subject by Wolf and CU-Boulder Professor Brian Toon of the atmospheric and oceanic sciences department is being published in the June 4 issue of Science. NASA’s Planetary Atmosphere Program funded the study.
The output of the sun during the Archean period some 3.8 billion to 2.5 billion years ago is thought to have been 20 percent to 30 percent fainter than today, said Wolf. But previous work by other scientists produced geological and biological evidence that indicates Earth’s surface temperatures were as warm or warmer than today.
As part of the early Earth study, Wolf and Toon used a climate model from the National Center for Atmospheric Research and concepts from lab studies by another CU group led by chemistry and biochemistry Professor Margaret Tolbert that help explain the odd haze of Titan, the second largest moon in the solar system and the largest moon of Saturn. Titan came under intense study following the arrival of the Cassini spacecraft at Saturn in 2004, allowing scientists to determine it was the only moon in the solar system with both a dense atmosphere and liquid on its surface.
Previous modeling efforts of early Earth haze by other scientists assumed that aerosol particulates making up the haze were spherical, said Wolf. But the spherical shape does not adequately account for the optical properties of the haze that blanketed the planet.
Lab simulations helped researchers conclude that the Earth haze likely was made up of irregular “chains” of aggregate particles with greater geometrical sizes than spheres, similar to the shape of aerosols believed to populate Titan’s thick atmosphere. Wolf said the aggregate aerosol particulates are believed to be fragmented geometric shapes known as fractals that can be split into parts.
During the Archean period there was no ozone layer in Earth’s atmosphere to protect life on the planet, said Wolf. “The UV shielding methane haze over early Earth we are suggesting not only would have protected Earth’s surface, it would have protected the atmospheric gases below it — including the powerful greenhouse gas, ammonia — that would have played a significant role in keeping the early Earth warm.”
CU-Boulder researchers estimated there were roughly 100 million tons of haze produced annually in the atmosphere of early Earth during the Archean. “If this was the case, an early Earth atmosphere literally would have been dripping organic material into the oceans, providing manna from heaven for the earliest life to sustain itself,” Toon said.
“Methane is the key to make this climate model run, so one of our goals now is to pin down where and how it originated,” said Toon. If Earth’s earliest organisms didn’t produce the methane, it may have been generated by the release of gasses during volcanic eruptions either before or after life first arose — a hypothesis that will requires further study, he said.
The new CU-Boulder study will likely re-ignite interest in a controversial experiment by scientists Stanley Miller and Harold Urey in the 1950s in which methane, ammonia, nitrogen and water were combined in a test tube. After Miller and Urey ran an electrical current through the mixture to simulate the effects of lightning or powerful UV radiation, the result was the creation of a small pool of amino acids — the building blocks of life.
Toon said the theory of early Earth being shrouded by a gaseous blanket containing methane and ammonia first arose in the 1960s and was subsequently discarded by scientists. In the 1970s and 1980s some scientists suggested the early Earth atmosphere was similar to those on Mars and Venus with lots of carbon dioxide, another theory that eventually went by the wayside. Since CO2-rich atmospheres do not produce organic molecules easily, scientists began looking in deep-sea volcanic vents and at wayward asteroids to explain early Earth life.
A 1997 paper by the late Carl Sagan of Cornell University and Christopher Chyba, then at the University of Arizona, proposed that an organic aerosol shield in early Earth’s atmosphere would have protected the ammonia wafting beneath it, allowing heating to occur at Earth’s surface. But the authors proposed the haze particles were spherical rather than irregular aggregate particles Wolf and Toon suggest and did not consider methane to be the driver of the system, eventually sinking that theory.
“We still have a lot of research to do in order to refine our new view of early Earth,” said Wolf. “But we think this paper solves a number of problems associated with the haze that existed over early Earth and likely played a role in triggering or at least supporting the earliest life on the planet.”
From space, early Earth probably looked much like Titan looks today, said Toon. “It would have been shrouded by a reddish haze that would have been difficult to see through, and the ocean probably was a greenish color caused by dissolved iron in the oceans. It wasn’t a blue planet by any means.”
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In order to know what happened YESTERDAY you should know what will happen tomorrow, and in order to know what will happen to,morrow you should know an specific LAW which applies to whatever happened yesterday and will happen tomorrow.
Any other thing is nothing else but the self indulging of a daddy’s kid crying.
Dr. Carl Woese of the University of Illinois has done extensive research on the evolution of earliest life forms, having identified the “Archae” methane-producing organisms as a distinct branch of life. Look up his research. Here’s one:
J Mol Evol. 1979 Jul 18;13(2):95-101.
A proposal concerning the origin of life on the planet earth.
Woese CR.
Abstract
The widely accepted Oparin thesis for the origin and early evolution of life seems sufficiently far from the true state of affairs as to be considered incorrect.
It is proposed that life on earth actually arose in the planet’s atmosphere, however an atmosphere very different from the present one. Because of an extremely warm surface, the early earth may have possessed no liquid surface water, its water being partitioned between a motten crust and a fairly dense atmosphere.
Early preliving systems are taken to arise in the droplet phase in such an atmosphere. The early earth, which resembled Venus then and to some extent now, underwent a transition to its present condition largely as a result of the evolution of methanogenic metabolism.
Robert of Ottawa says:
June 4, 2010 at 5:03 am
Leave it to a Canadian to cut through the BS and apply logic. I thought the Canadian educational system was kaput, but good thinking keeps emerging on its own!
Of course hydrocarbons are primarily abiogenic, caused by the polymerization of methane, after the reaction of mixed iron class element hematites, CO2 (free or as carbonate), water, heat and pressure produces the methane. Soviets proved it 30-40 years ago, Germans did a modified method in WWII for their diesel fuel (Fisher Tropf Process). Russians went from net importers of oil and gas to exporters in the last ten years, because they know where to drill by the new paradigm. They taught N Vietnam to do it, now they have deep wells in N Vietnam down to where the oil is made. China is doing it. Our “scientists” (most of them are geologists employed by oil companies) have suppressed this idea even after the Russians did the experiment and showed in the lab identical composition to oil constituents. Why do they suppress the abiogenic oil theory? I am a scientist who does not like to attribute motives for people doing bad science, that is an ad hominem variant, but can you guess? [Hint: it is similar to Al Gore’s and Jim Hansen’s motives.]
Some King Klowns are even proposing that it was early life on Titan that produced the enormous lakes of methane, ethane, propane and probably all the higher saturated hydrocarbons. I guess the methane on Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune comes from really huge dinosaurs, too. That idea will probably produce a grant or two for exobiologists in the future to look for bones on Titan, and the new age pseudo-scientists at SETI to point their antennas at Titan looking for frozen hydrocarbon hermits.
From the article:
“Methane is the key to make this climate model run, so one of our goals now is to pin down where and how it originated,” said Toon. If Earth’s earliest organisms didn’t produce the methane, it may have been generated by the release of gasses during volcanic eruptions either before or after life first arose — a hypothesis that will requires further study, he said.
Yes, you do that, you pin down where it originated, although we were already taught by you and others, then lied to, and then had it notarized into our textbooks, that oil and natural gas comes from a zillion tons of dinosaurs and rotten vegetation through some unknown mechanism involving complete and utter reduction of compltely oxygenated material, of which 70% of the organism is water and half of the remaining 30% IS oxygen! Do you know how much original live stuff has to be trapped deep under the crust without fermentation and mould eating it first? Do you know how absurd this fossil-fuel theory really is to a biochemist like me? (BTW, anaerobic fermentation produces protein and fatty acids, but only 1-5 carbon FAs. Then, to get to a hydrocarbon, the FA has to decarboxylate, losing another carbon, which is much of the remaining weight? Then how does the propane get to higher hydrocarbons of oil?)
If this is true, that oil is abiogenic, made 20 miles down at plate boundaries, then seeping up to reservoirs, then are reservoirs being refilled (are old Texas-style rocker oil pumps still rockin’ away in PA, TX, OK, and everywhere?)? Is oil being made today?
If oil and gas is made continuously in the mantle, then how does that change things? How will that impact the average human on the planet?
I am convinced by the science that we have an unlimited supply of hydrocarbon on this planet and many others. There is no “peak oil”. Developing countries can keep developing so their people do not have to remain colonized by the governance spurred on by the Gores, Hansens, Watts, Jones, Trenberths, Obamas, and the rest of the evil elitist planners. we will no longer have to believe all of the self-serving science.
Remember Piltdown Man… remember the Coelacanth!
losemal,
If you can’t tell the difference, you’re not a typical WUWT reader. Perhaps RC would be more to your liking. ☺
CO2 or O2 when exposed to UV light or lightning will create O3 that will in turn rapidly break back down to O2 therefor its alive.
“”” Baa Humbug says:
June 4, 2010 at 1:49 am
The young sun also spun faster around it’s axis, meaning a faster solar wind, hence less cloud cover on earth, partially compensating for the low TSI.
If life did begin in the atmosphere, it would explain alot. “””
Just how would you propose to assemble a quorum of relevant atoms and molecules, in the atmosphere to get a living organism ?
bubbagyro says:
June 4, 2010 at 9:11 am
“They” seem to be many but they are just a few. They own the global MSM but not the free will of people. And, you know, times are cyclical and now the “screw” is turning around once more…the other way. So, like the chinese philosopher said “Just sit at the front door of your house and you´ll see….”
Phil. says:
June 4, 2010 at 8:49 am
Phil, you may want to ask yourself how stratiform clouds stay up.
bubbagyro says:
June 4, 2010 at 9:11 am
“Of course hydrocarbons are primarily abiogenic, caused by the polymerization of methane, after the reaction of mixed iron class element hematites, CO2 (free or as carbonate), water, heat and pressure produces the methane. Soviets proved it 30-40 years ago, Germans did a modified method in WWII for their diesel fuel (Fisher Tropf Process). Russians went from net importers of oil and gas to exporters in the last ten years, because they know where to drill by the new paradigm. They taught N Vietnam to do it, now they have deep wells in N Vietnam down to where the oil is made. China is doing it. Our “scientists” (most of them are geologists employed by oil companies) have suppressed this idea even after the Russians did the experiment and showed in the lab identical composition to oil constituents. Why do they suppress the abiogenic oil theory? I am a scientist who does not like to attribute motives for people doing bad science, that is an ad hominem variant, but can you guess? [Hint: it is similar to Al Gore’s and Jim Hansen’s motives.]
….If oil and gas is made continuously in the mantle, then how does that change things? How will that impact the average human on the planet?
I am convinced by the science that we have an unlimited supply of hydrocarbon on this planet and many others. There is no “peak oil”. Developing countries can keep developing so their people do not have to remain colonized by the governance spurred on by the Gores, Hansens, Watts, Jones, Trenberths, Obamas, and the rest of the evil elitist planners. we will no longer have to believe all of the self-serving science.”
__________________________________________________________________________
Thank you (and Robert of Ottawa) for that information. You are correct, from the point of view of chemistry it makes perfect sense. 2nd Law and all that. It takes energy to drag the oxygen out of organic matter and releases energy when you add oxygen.
Bubbagyro per your comment if I remember this theory was not the centrifugal forces of the earth responsible for making the newly formed oil to move closer to the suface?
mkelly says:
June 4, 2010 at 10:32 am
Dunno. The scientists involved were focused on the chemistry. I imagine that methane, being a gas, would percolate to a layer closer to the surface where it could undergo polymerization at the right temp. and pressure.
I guess the angular momentum of the earth, spinning at 1000 mph, would have something to do with stratification.
But do AskSam for abiogenic oil AND theory or abiogenic AND Ukraine and see.
So, is this what the song “Smoke On The Water” by Deep Purple is referring to? They were ahead of their time.
Billy Liar says:
June 4, 2010 at 9:52 am
Phil. says:
June 4, 2010 at 8:49 am
Phil, you may want to ask yourself how stratiform clouds stay up.
And WHY CLOUDS STAY UP. Here is why:
Water drops in clouds are not in the form of Di-hydrogen Oxide (H2O) but as Hydrogen Hydroxide ( H-OH).
If any of you wanna see a cloud like formation just dissolve zinc sulphate in water and then add some alkali hydroxide. It will make some beautiful “clouds” of zinc hydroxide, the home made version of a METAL hydroxide as hydrogen hydroxide. When these charged water droplets loose its charge they fall down.
Now read:
http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=9eq6g3aj
and this one:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/31262841/Electric-Tree
“It’s nice that scientists can send their papers here for review.”
Actually, I think that the Government should require any research done with public funding to be published (with supporting data, algorithms, etc.) at a centralized web-site and be open for comments with no moderation (except for language) for one year.
Rhoda R says:
June 4, 2010 at 11:46 am
That’s “transparency”. That’s not for friends you know.
Hoi Polloi says:
June 4, 2010 at 5:42 am
With your lyrics…do you mean these guys were stoned?
Very probably…that deep purple haze…. It explains why they do believe in the “green-house effect”, sure they know a lot of cultivation in green houses.
Archonix says:June 4, 2010 at 12:53 am
. . . Question for those in the know: has Titan ever demonstrated any form of lightning?
Photo disassociation on Titan is from high energy electrons in the UV bands and cosmic radiation.
Coll reported (esa ) in 2007
As we predicted, no lightning discharges were detected in the quiescent Titan atmosphere. Therefore, Titan’s atmospheric chemistry is driven mainly by solar UV irradiation and not by electrical discharges. 4. The mixing ratios of the major gas phase species produced by UV photolysis of acetylene, as found experimentally: methylacetylene ; diacetylene ; divinyl ; and benzene were observed by the Cassini spacecraft in Titan’s upper atmosphere, with an agreement within better than an order of magnitude.
http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMV7F9RR1F_index_0.html
The accompanying paper press release
Tholins are complex nitrogen-rich substances that form in the laboratory when ultraviolet radiation or electrons react with simpler molecules such as methane and ethane in a surrounding atmosphere of nitrogen. On Titan, the methane and nitrogen-rich atmosphere makes their formation easy and they drift to the surface where they continue to react with other atoms and molecules.
Faced with creating such alien molecules, the French team designed a special reaction chamber to simulate Titan’s atmosphere and produce the tholins for study. “We can generate over 200 chemical species,” says Patrice Coll, a team member at Laboratoire Interuniversitaire des Systèmes Atmosphériques (LISA), Paris, “We do not yet know the detailed pathways that build the chemicals, but we believe that are very similar to those on Titan.”…..
….The aerosols govern what you can see on Titan. They create Titan’s hazy conditions, revealed by Huygens, and give the moon its dull orange glow. If you could stand on the surface of Titan and magically tune your eyes to infrared light, the haze and the clouds would seem to disappear and Saturn would loom large in the night sky. This is because the aerosols are largely invisible at infrared wavelengths. Change your eyes to ultraviolet, however, and you would be plunged into darkness because, at these wavelengths, the tholins behaves like a thick fog that absorbs all ultraviolet radiation falling on it.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pss.2007.04.010
maksimovich says:
Tholins are complex nitrogen-rich substances that form in the laboratory when ultraviolet radiation or electrons…
Hoy do you call it when electrons move?: Electricity and… btw, all chemical reactions are electrical in nature. Whence did it come the energy?
Talking about haze: Russian Volcano could bring ash to the U.S. pending the right weather conditions
http://beforeitsnews.com/news/72/101/Russian_Volcano_could_bring_ash_to_the_U.S._pending_the_right_weather_conditions.html
“Must have been”: The classic religious argument. “We are here, so a god must have created us.”
I never pay any heed to a “must have been” argument. Not in the least bit scientific.
“We think the most logical explanation is methane, which may have been pumped into the atmosphere by early life that was metabolizing it.”
Excuse me, if early life were metabolizing methane they would be consuming it/REMOVING the methane.
Richard G says:
June 4, 2010 at 2:10 pm
“We think the most logical explanation is methane, which may have been pumped into the atmosphere by early life that was metabolizing it.”
Excuse me, if early life were metabolizing methane they would be consuming it/REMOVING the methane.
Consuming? Producing? Same difference – who cares? – its just the “mood music” that needs to be right. Someone has woken up to the fact that high CO2 in early earth atmosphere is problematic for CAGW since runaway warming from CO2 never happened previously even with 20-50 x more CO2 than today, and never will. So now a fuzzy methane-ammonia “cloud of un-knowing” is needed to distract our attention away from this problematic early CO2.
“”” Enneagram says:
June 4, 2010 at 5:34 am
Same problem seen under a different paradigm:
We predict that NASA will never find the elusive methane rains on Titan, because the weather cycle that planetary scientists conjured is not occurring. (Thornhill offers another testable claim about “rain” and “storms” in his treatment of “Electric Weather”)
Thornhill emphasizes that the water molecule, unlike the methane molecule, is electrically polarized.
“The oxygen (blue) side of the water molecule is more negative than the hydrogen side (red), forming an electric dipole. In an electric field, the water molecule will rotate to line up with the field. When it condenses in a cloud the average electric dipole moment of a water molecule in a raindrop is 40 percent greater than that of a single water vapor molecule. This enhancement results from the large polarization caused by the electric field induced by surrounding water molecules.” “””
So Enneagram,
This may be all wet; but I seem to recall, that water has a dielectric constant of about 81. I’m sure that is for some sort of good water, like 18 megohm stuff.
Apparently this is related to the reason why so many things dissolve readily in water; presumably at least ionic bonds get strongly weakened when immersed in water.
Any ideas at the molecular level why H2O would have such a big dielectric constant; and it doesn’t seem to jibe with the ordinary visible light refractive index of around 1.333 ?
Come to think of it….
Early earth in northern europe is recreated i n s i d e everyones underwear about every other thursday, or so, a couple of hours after a certain pea soup and horrid non-flavoured pancakes without whipped cream even.
By smell alone, it’s all sulfur and methane I’m sure.
Tim Clark is correct. Indeed, ‘Deep Purple’ were ahead of their time as evidenced in their music and lyrics to ‘Smoke on the Water’, now reliably dated at early Archaean to late Phanerozoic.
‘They all went down to Rio (Kyoto aka Copenhagen)
On the ‘January River’ shoreline (prograding, maybe)
To make records within a mobile- (beach hut, Tuvalu?)
They didn’t have much time. (doomed – us all)
But Hansen, Jones and Briffa (not strictly accurate)
Were at the best place around (gov funding policy)
’til some stupids with their e-mails (various sites)
Crashed their farce to the ground (Nov ’09->)
Smoke on the water and fire in the sky (CAGW)
Smoke on the water……… ‘ (thanks for the evidence- Ant, Willis, Steve
and you know who you are)
Darn, why is there not a ‘cancel submit post’ button when you need one………