Researchers supported in part by the NASA Astrobiology Program have attempted to better understand global barometric pressure on Earth during the Archaean by studying vesicle sizes in 2.9 billion year-old […]
early earth
Posted inHabitable Zones, Press Release
Ocean Changes Almost Starved Earth Life Of Oxygen
Chemical changes in the oceans more than 800 million years ago almost destroyed the oxygen-rich atmosphere that paved the way for complex life on Earth, new research suggests. Then, as […]
Posted inOrigin & Evolution of Life, Press Release
Ancient Rocks Provide Clues To Earth's Early History
Oxygen in the form of the oxygen molecule (O2), produced by plants and vital for animals, is thankfully abundant in Earth’s atmosphere and oceans. Researchers studying the history of O2 […]
Posted inHabitable Zones, Press Release
Modeling the albedo of Earth-like magma ocean planets with H2O-CO2 atmosphere
During accretion, the young rocky planets are so hot that they become endowed with a magma ocean. From that moment, the mantle convective thermal flux control the cooling of the […]
Posted inBiosignatures & Paleobiology, Press Release
Lake Bed Reveals Details About Ancient Earth
Sleuthing by a Rice University postdoctoral fellow is part of a new Nature paper that gives credence to theories about Earth’s atmosphere 1.4 billion years ago. Rice’s Justin Hayles and […]
Posted inHabitable Zones, Press Release
Oxygen Levels on Early Earth Rose And Fell Several Times
Earth’s oxygen levels rose and fell more than once hundreds of millions of years before the planetwide success of the Great Oxidation Event about 2.4 billion years ago, new research […]
Posted inHabitable Zones, Press Release
A Warm or a Cold Early Earth? New Insights From a 3-D Climate-carbon Model
Oxygen isotopes in marine cherts have been used to infer hot oceans during the Archean with temperatures between 60 deg C (333 K) and 80 deg C (353 K). Such […]
Posted inOrigin & Evolution of Life
Early Earth Less Hellish Than Previously Thought
Conditions on Earth for the first 500 million years after it formed may have been surprisingly similar to the present day, complete with oceans, continents and active crustal plates. This […]
Posted inAtmospheres, Climate, Weather, Habitable Zones
Nitrogen Isotopic Composition and Density of the Archean Atmosphere
Understanding the atmosphere’s composition during the Archean eon is a fundamental issue to unravel ancient environmental conditions. We show from the analysis of nitrogen and argon isotopes in fluid inclusions […]
Posted inHabitable Zones
Evaluating Solutions to the Faint Young Sun Problem
During the Archean eon, between about 3.8 billion years ago and 2.5 billion years ago, the Sun was about 20 to 25 percent fainter than it is today. With less […]