Billions of years ago, broken quartz reacted with water, providing the conditions necessary for the evolution of photosynthetic microorganisms that produce most of the oxygen in the atmosphere today.
Quartz is the most common form of silicate mineral. (Photo: Inverse).
Earthquakes and other geological processes facilitate oxygen-producing reactions, influencing the evolution of some of the earliest organisms on Earth. Researcher Mark Thiemens of the University of California, San Diego, and colleagues crushed quartz rock and exposed it to water under chemical conditions similar to those on Earth before oxygen levels rose. They used quartz because it is the simplest and most common silicate mineral, New Scientist reported on March 20.
The team found that broken crystals on the surface of quartz can react with water to form oxygen molecules and many other oxygen-containing compounds such as hydrogen peroxide . Also known as free radicals , these molecules were crucial to early evolution because they can damage DNA and other parts of cells, says University of California researcher Timothy Lyons. Riverside. According to him, life can develop enzymes very early on to deal with the harmful effects of free radicals.
In nature, quartz and some other silicate minerals can be rubbed off by earthquakes, erosion, or shifting ice. They can then interact with water and produce oxygen molecules. Thiemens and colleagues estimate that seismic processes alone could produce 100 billion times more hydrogen peroxide than reacting in the atmosphere, another potential source of oxygen.
These adaptations to oxygen sources from seismic activity may help some organisms survive the dramatic change in chemical conditions on Earth, which accompanies the Oxygen Catastrophe . The same geological process that occurs in other celestial bodies, such as sandstorms on Mars or tidal fluctuations on Saturn’s moon Enceladus, could also produce oxygen, the researchers say.
Today, oxygen makes up about one-fifth of the Earth’s atmosphere, largely produced by plants and microorganisms. There was very little oxygen in the atmosphere until concentrations spiked during the Oxygen Catastrophe event 2.3 – 2.4 billion years ago due to the rapid spread of microorganisms that released oxygen through photosynthesis.