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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!
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.
That reminds me of a quote from Chuck Palahniuk:
.... Does this remind you of anything? Maybe the ol' Adam and Eve story? .... You ever wonder when God's coming back with a lot of barbecue sauce?"
"Centuries ago, sailors on long voyages used to leave a pair of pigs on every deserted island. Or they'd leave a pair of goats. Either way, on any future visit, the island would be a source of meat. These islands, they were pristine. These were home to breeds of birds with no natural predators. Breeds of birds that lived nowhere else on earth. The plants there, without enemies they evolved without thorns or poisons. Without predators and enemies, these islands, they were paradise. The sailors, the next time they visited these islands, the only things still there would be herds of goats or pigs.
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.
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"...
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
Compared to prokaryotes (simple life, bacteria), all eukaryote life (advanced life like plants pachyderms and people) are essentially cousins. This is a split that happened at the dawn of life on earth. This article theorizes that the split would have happened earlier if not for a lack of molybdenum and the resultant lack of usable nitrogen.
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.