EARTH SCIENCE
Was the Timing of the Rise in Earth's Atmospheric Oxygen Triggered by Geological as Opposed to Biological Processes?
Viewpoint: Yes, the timing of the rise in Earth's atmospheric oxygen was triggered not by biological processes but by geological processes such as volcanic eruption, which transported elements (among them oxygen) from Earth's interior to its atmosphere.
Viewpoint: No, the theories based on geological principles accounting for the timing of the rise in Earth's atmospheric oxygen have insufficient data to supplant biological processes as the cause.
As most people know, oxygen is essential to most forms of life, with the exclusion of anaerobic or non-oxygen-dependent bacteria. But when, and from where, did this life-giving oxygen arise during the course of Earth's history? The first question, regarding the point at which oxygen appeared on the planet, is answered with relative ease by recourse to accepted scientific findings. According to the best knowledge available at the beginning of the twenty-first century, oxygen first appeared between 2.2 and 2.4 billion years ago. This would place the appearance of oxygen somewhere between 2.1 and 2.3 billion years after Earth's formation from a spinning cloud of gases that included the Sun and all the future planets and satellites.
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