Around 2.7 billion years ago, 90% of life on earth died. The cause? Climate change. And to think, if this change didn't happen... well I wouldn't be here writing this, thats for sure. Either way, around 2.5 - 3 billion years ago, that little sucker to the right was introduced to the earth. Oxygen, our very essence, almost destroyed the earth.
I want to just touch on the depth of 90%. Numbers on a page don't say much, nor do they say much for a time period long, long before us. But lets think of life as we know it on earth. 6.6 Billion people, billions upon billions of more species of flora and fauna. That includes vast regions of unchartered forests around the world (both tropical and deciduous), plus everything underneath the oceans which we know nothing about.
So should we have an "oxygen revolution" of our own, what would happen? What would happen if 90% of life actually died? I'm going to be a little conceited in this example and ask, what if 90% of human population died? Well lets just say half of the people in India would survive. The rest of the world? Gone. Kaput. Sayonara.
Before the Great Oxidation, cells and organisms relied on surrounding cells and chemicals for energy. When the food around the world begun to get scarce, cells started using the sun as a source of power. And that change, that adaptation, set the foundations for life as we know it. And what a concept that is. Death, as an act of creation.
When organisms first began with oxygen, for the most part it was a waste product. And it still is. What cells really want is the carbon dioxide, which through sunlight and photosynthesis, produces oxygen. This basically gave the organisms an unlimited amount of energy. Energy was starting to mix and evolve in better ways with substance.
And now, billions of years later, a better interaction occurred. On the time line of the earth, humans are a blip on the radar screen. Yet, we seem to be the most harmonious with the earth. I know it doesn't make sense, especially when we see all the destruction, damage, and problems that we create for ourselves as well as the earth. But thanks to 90% of the earth dying, we are able to live... and in great numbers.
Plants take in Carbon Dioxide, and as a waste product, produce Oxygen. We take in Oxygen and as a waste product, produce Carbon Dioxide. What could be more simplistic yet ingenious? This harmonious mix of energy and matter has been a major role to why we are so successful as a species. We all want humans to prosper, but embrace the changes of the world, whatever they might be. This post isn't so much for the evolution of the earth and oxygen, but on a more basic level. The continuous growing interaction of matter and energy. Constantly changing, constantly moving, it creates, destroys, changes, and all over again. And it has no end in mind for whatever it might create. It has no mind to have an end in mind. It has simply been, and will continue to be, forever. Infinitely changing, for infinity.
