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Lack of Molybdenum May Have Delayed Life on Earth
esocid writes "Scientists from around the world have reconstructed changes in Earth's ancient ocean chemistry during a broad sweep of geological time, from about 2.5 to 0.5 billion years ago. They have discovered that a deficiency of oxygen and the heavy metal molybdenum in the ancient deep ocean may have delayed the evolution of animal life on Earth for nearly 2 billion years. Bacteria cannot fix nitrogen efficiently when they are deprived of molybdenum. And if bacteria can't fix nitrogen fast enough, then eukaryotes — a kind of organism that includes plants, pachyderms and people — are in trouble because eukaryotes cannot fix nitrogen themselves at all. Ariel Anbar, a co-author of the research of Arizona State University, stated that "eukaryotes depend on bacteria having an easy enough time fixing nitrogen that there's enough to go around. So if bacteria were struggling to get enough molybdenum, there probably wouldn't have been enough fixed nitrogen for eukaryotes to flourish.""
This casts an interesting light on the idea of terraforming. There's often been the idea that we could just introduce plants into a CO2 rich environment and in pretty short order we'd have a breathable atmosphere. Apparently that may not be the case. Without an oxygen rich environment to free the molybdenum, there's no significant nitrogen fixation and thus those plants are going to be hurting pretty quickly.
Also, this makes me wonder what those eukaryotes were doing for the first 2 billion years. Were they undergoing all sorts of genetic mutations that primed them for takeover once the situation changed? IOW, I wonder what would have happened if this little molybdenum problem had resolved earlier. Would the eukaryotes continued to flounder (pun!) because of a lack of genetic diversity? Or would they have just as rapidly developed putting the current day well into the cockroaches-rule-the-earth epoch?
man, I feel like mold.
According to wikipedia.
Coincidence? I think not!
The universe used to be full of life, it's really quite a common occurrence, but for some reason the Earth, and other distant planets on the edges of galaxies, were mined for molybdenum, causing us to be the last lifeforms ever produced by a fertile cosmos. This teeming universe of life is long gone, for various reasons, but because these were chosen backwaters for exploitation, these final planets of life are completely unable to communicate or realize that reality. The distance is simply too great to span.
Maybe we're the last man standing. Call it "The Meek Shall Inherit" or something.
to build Crow T. Robot.
Monstar L
Oddly enough, none of the articles on nitrogen fixation even mention moly....
Whats that all about?
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Bacteria cannot fix nitrogen efficiently when they are deprived of molybdenum So when God created the earth, all of his nitrogen was broken?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Not necessarily. The use of bitumen/tar was documented in biblical times. The Romans were thought to have used coal for metalwork. A Greek by the name of Heronas, developed a prototype steam engine. They might have advanced faster technologically, if they weren't afraid of making the slaves unemployed
You can also read the history of the combustion engine . The first combustion engines were based on gunpowder, then coal powered steam engines, coal gas, and finally petroleum. At the same time, engineers experimented with one stroke, two stroke and four stroke engines with vertical and V slant pistons.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Damn near killed 'um!!
*ducks*
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.
It's the 1910s. Where do you get a high-energy-density fuel that's readily available? Certainly not from corn; chemistry was just accepting the Rutherford model, they're not exactly modern chemists.
One word: Pokemon. Now *I* am very sad I caught that reference. And you've got it a little backwards: Lack of it caused the delay.
I will be very sad if anyone catches the reference.
I wouldn't worry about it.
never send a chemist to a gearhead discussion, it's like jack knife vs pistol
Model T, 1909-27 designed to run on corn and hemp ethanol (Henry really disliked petroleum fuels, thought they were dirty and disgusting, liked nice clean and clear corn squeezings better), prohibition basically finished off ethanol as a fuel, although it was semi popular up until then, albeit as a blend with regular gasoline, already the petroleum exploiters were pushing their way in to total control. Incidentally, later on he also championed hemp for plastic bodies on cars instead of sheet metal. Once again planned obsolescence and the lobbying of some big corporations killed off the "tough as nails and no rust" idea.
The dude was generations ahead of his time really on the "big picture" side of things. Also helped bring about a serious urban middle class with his "pay your workers well, enough so they can afford the products they make", a formula that worked quite well until the current crop of wall street snakeoil salesmen decided that outsourcing out of their own nation-screwing over all their own potential customers- was a better idea. Pretty funny to watch them try to explain what is going on now with their credit and derivatives gambling losses..no way can anyone honest call them "investments"...
Imagine a world without zinc, er, molybdenum!
Brett
I find the assumption that the only way of fixing nitrogen requires molybdenum rather implausible. Chances are that molybdenum got used for that purpose once it became available, and before that, nitrogen fixation was either not needed (because there was enough ammonia and/or nitrous oxide around), or there were other pathways.
This is why I read slashdot!
Given that we're exploring alternative histories here, wouldn't it be more accurate to say that if molybdenum had been more abundant, animal life might have evolved sooner? The normal state is after all what we're looking at.
This discovery could be useful for accelerating the terraforming of planets, eventually.
Excuse my sheer ignorance of the subject, but may I ask what humans, plants and pachyderms have in common to lump us into the same group that other creatures aren't lumped in to?
Is there any reason we're being lumped along with things like elephants and trees or was that list just a very small sample of the creatures included such that the term covers pretty much all living creatures? Presumably creatures like primates are also in this group?
I didn't know that there was any other way besides coal/coke for the ancients to have done blacksmithing, although wikipedia says it can be done with charcoal. I have no idea how charcoal would work. The Wikipedia article isn't quite accurate:You can't blacksmith using just coal; the coal is turned to coke by oxygenating it with a blower, and pouring water on it. At least that's what they taught in my college blacksmithing class. I can't remember the fellow's name, unfortunately, but he was 72 at the time and travelled to different universities teaching his dying art to the younger generation. This was some time in the late 1970s. He'd smithed Gerald Ford's wrought iron fence, at the time of the class Carter was president.
I really should build a forge.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
It's so sad when bad things happen to good ideas. The fact that there may have been dearth of molybdenum in the early oceans isn't a crippling blow to the development of eukaryotes.
Nitrogenase, the enzyme that performs nitrogen fixation today, commonly uses, but doesn't require, molybdenum for its function. There are forms of the enzyme that use vanadium or iron as a cofactor to the ubiquitous iron-sulfur cluster that actually performs the chemistry.
I don't know if this event happened before or after the iron catastrophe, but the fact that the enzyme uses iron anyway makes me believe that there must have been enough iron around the oceans back then. Methinks the author's running off the old idea that the nitrogen reduction occurs on the molybdenum atom instead of one of the iron atoms in the iron-sulfur cluster.
Actually, some Model T's could run on ethanol so farmers could make fuel themselves.
I just knew there had to be an underlying scientific reason.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
I work in a metallurgical research lab. We have lots of Molybdenum - but things seem pretty lifeless around here!
P226
Hello,
I am a blacksmith. I use straight coal for my forging. The act of burning the coal transforms the coal around it into coke. This coke is what I then move into the fire. The water he was using was to keep the fire from expanding (probably had a poor fire pot or a side draft forge). Now I do use special coal. Metallurgical grade coal burns hotter and cleaner than heating coal.
As for using other fuels. I've successfully used charcoal in my forge. In fact charcoal has been used longer than coal. Charcoal was used exclusively in the production of iron and steel until the industrial revolution created a need for lower quality coal produced iron. Charcoal is (was) made by cooking wood until all of the non-carbon impurities are baked off leaving a very clean burning solid. This was done historically my building mounds of wood with a small fire at the center. They would them cover this with grass and dirt to keep oxygen from getting to the fire and causing the carbon to burn. These would be tended for days until the wood had completely charred.
Today's blacksmiths use gas forges and coal forges because they are easier to work with and procuring supplies is easier. Oh, and blacksmithing isn't a dying art. Don't let anybody tell you that it is. I know of several hundred blacksmiths in central Virginia alone. I live 100 yards from a fully functional blacksmith shop (though I don't work there, I often hang out there). There are at least four other studios in town. Hobby blacksmiths (like I have become since leaving the field and entering IT) are everywhere. Just search for blacksmith guilds and you'll see they are all over the place.
Later!
Huh?