Yesterday's Episode on National Geographic about Earth was by far one of the finest and entertaining program i have ever seen.
This episode shattered many myths about the origin of earth. Though this program started as yet another program that tried to relate the journey of earth with a twelve hour cycle, the journey through these 12 hour cycle was indeed very facinating.
The three most striking things about this episode were:
(1) Origin of Water: I think the explanation given about the origin of water was very interesting and agaist all pre-existing notions.
As per the documentary, water never orignated on Earth. The condition of earth was such that it did was not feasible for water to exist. The temperature of all the matter from the surface of the sun till that of earth was very hot.
But the temperature beyond earth was relatively cooler. Especially in the astroid belt between mars and jupiter. Because of the low temperatures in these astroids, the water molecules in these astroids solidified.
These astroids, over a period of time constantly bombarded with the earth and these water molecules were released onto the earth surface. So if earth were to have substantial amount of water, hell lot of astroids might have bombarded with the earth surface.
So going against popular belief, the documentary stuck its neck out with this logic. This fact about water was quite exciting.
(2) Origin of Oxygen:
During the initial stages of the formation of earth, it was filled with Co2, Nitrogen and hydrogen.
In order to explain the origin of Oxygen, they took us to one remote part of Australia. Near one of lake shore they showed coral like structure which were supposed to be holding small micro organisms. These breathed in carbon-do-oxide and produces oxygen. SO these organisms were attributed with the origin of oxygen.
Inorder to prove their ancientness they showed us the solidified version of these organisms in another part of australia. These remains were supposed to be 2 billion years old. So these organisms were responsible for the initial oxygen on our planet.
(2) Formation of Rocks:
Now the organisms should have produced plenty of oxygen. But contrary to this assumption, it took many more millions of years for the atmosphere to get its share of oxygen. This was because the land was filled with molten iron during that time. Now when oxygen was getting generated, this oxygen was bubbling through this molten iron. So iron reacted with oxygen to produce rust and this rust settled down as rocks.
So most of the oxygen generated was absorbed by iron. Once this thirst was quenched, the oxygen started to move to the atmosphere. This took a fairly long time.
There were many more interesting things discussed in the documentary. But my memory seems to be failing me. So I would like to stop here... before closing this post, just like to mention that according to the 12 hour clock, human being arrived on this planet at 11:59:35 seconds. So we have shared only 25 seconds with this beautiful and amazing planet called earth.
Labels: NatGeo
