That Time Oxygen Almost Killed Everything
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 6 авг 2017
- PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to to.pbs.org/DonateEons
↓ More info below ↓
What if we told you that there was a time when oxygen almost wiped out all life on Earth? 3 billion years ago, when the world was a place you’d never recognize, too much of a good thing almost ruined everything for everybody.
This episode on the Oxygen Catastrophe is supported by Squarespace. If you visit squarespace.com and use offer code "eons", you'll get 10% off your first purchase.
Produced for PBS Digital Studios.
Want to follow Eons elsewhere on the internet?
Facebook - / eonsshow
Twitter - / eonsshow
Instagram - / eonsshow
References:
metro.co.uk/2008/12/31/early-e...
www.amnh.org/explore/science-b...
origins.asu.edu/blog/oxygenat...
advances.sciencemag.org/conten...
www.livescience.com/1398-early...
www.bbc.com/news/science-envir...
www.sciencedaily.com/releases...
link.springer.com/referencewo...
www.sciencedaily.com/releases...
www.amnh.org/exhibitions/perma... 
Наука
Yeah, yeah, life is much more beautiful and all that but let's admit it, a planet covered in blood-red oceans is metal as hell
When she said the oceans went blood red I heard Nathan Explosion at the back of my head saying "Brutal."
Technically, rust as hell =p
Reminds me too much of DOOM.
I KNOW WHO YOU AAAAAARRRRE!
-William Murderface, Blood Ocean
Literally
I bet all the other planets are like OMG Earth keeps dying her water..first green then red now blue like what is going on?!?
Like hair
Midnight Gear
What a great intelligent observation that none of 123 other people made
Seems like earth was a punk in it's youth. xD
Edgy
iTs NoT a PhAsE mIlKy wAy
The title sounds like a story the elements would tell at thanksgiving
“Hey, Oxygen.”
*”What now, carbon?”*
“Hehehe...”
*”What?!”*
“Remember that time you almost killed everything?”
*”Shut up.”*
Actually it is still killing us. Not as fast and not as obviously, but it does.
dpatrickst170
Yep, oxygen produced free radicals, which can damahe DNA, and cause cancer
@@yeehaw289 Are you sure about that?
@@fahmieyzs engrish
It should end with carbon saying "well now is my turn of almos killing everything hehe"
What a time to be alive.
Literally.
i would have loved to be one of those bacteria, or maybe i was, who knows
Luis Sierra You wouldn’t even be able to see the world lol
Luis Sierra you wouldn’t even be conscious lol.
@@LuisSierra42 maybe you were your essence to be exact
One of my fantasies would be to have a time machine (with a decent life support system) to visit Earth at any stage in its history. Earth was a rocky and volcanic hellhole, a hot green water world, a hot red water world and a giant snowball. These sound like cool sci-fi locations for an epic space opera and it delights my inner geek.
Animals of the Cambrian era are more alien than anything I've ever seen in big sci fi movies. Opabinia is my favorite.
That would be most of people's dreams, including me. yet you need to travel faster than light do to it. but it doesn't means that is impossible. they have proved time travel is "mathematically possible", not because we don't create time machines means that is impossible. but really hard.
Faster then light travel making you go back in time is a fictional idea. From the observer's point of view if an object traveled faster then light towards them it would seem like the object is going back in time. They will see the object arrive 1st and then "travel" backwards as earlier and earlier light hits the viewer. These is disregarding all the weird things that will happen with ftl travel but going back in time is not one of the things even though to an observer it looks like the object split into two, one object that traveled towards them and one object that is traveling away from them and going "back" in time.
However, if you could go faster then light, you can still travel away from Earth to see what it looked like in the past. So do not be too disappointed.
FTL must allow time travel to be actual FTL. Please ask physicists to explain it to you.
If FTL travel does anything to time you won't travel backwards in time, rather you will travel forward in imaginary time.
THE SUN IS A DEADLY LAZER
not anymore, there's a blanket!
DontMockMySmock *laser
*Lazer
Nicholas Bohmer he was referring to a viral video called, "History of the world, I guess."
DontMockMySmock hey, we could make a religion outta this!
Exactly what I thought when ozone layer was mentioned. Praise the Wurtz!
Interesting phrasing at 1:41, "when these little microbes started farting out oxygen..."
One Drop
You don’t like What? Your farts clearly smell of methane and of disturbing amounts of rotten flesh.
I had to rewind and replay in order to make sure I didn't misheard her. Yes, she said that.
I about spat my drink out hearing her say that
When she said “they were basically being suffocated by their own waste” I laughed, because that’s basically what humans are doing
Not really, we still have plenty of oxygen, and that's in no danger. And there's no reason we can't survive global warming either. These doom and gloom people say global warming will kill everything forget how life flourished back on Earth when CO2 levels were above 400ppm. But things will get nastier with more disease, more storms and higher mortality rate all around.
@@jimmym3352 Hence being "suffocated by our own waste"... Even if some of us make it through the other end alive, humanity as we know it will still perish 🤷
Patterns, patterns. We evolved to seek them for a reason. Why? Because observing them works pretty well 😅 We're going to kill off a huge amount of species and probably most (if not all) of our population, then everything will adjust and bounce back.
And RUclips comments
I like how Millions of people talk like there not even Humans
Weather update:
Meteors are falling from the sky.
Weather update:
The floor is no longer lava.
Weather update:
... It's raining...
Flooding alert:
the entire world is now a ocean
Volcano alert:
thats land
The sun is a deadly lazer
@@cameronallen5995
Not anymore there's a blanket
oh look a place to live! no they dont have legs
*Quotes intensifies*
for a second there i felt like a kid listening in wonder at the story of our world
Ancient Laws me too.
Ancient Laws
Ancient Laws SCIENCE!
Ancient Laws Taaaste the suuuun
For a second there, you were. ;)
Earth: takes a billion years to form an ozone layer
Humans: puts a hole through it in less then a thousand
Earth already has a hole in the ozone layer its called the northern and southern lights.
Darryl Weathers that doesn’t mean that human didn’t also put a hole through it in less than a thousand.
@@ryrysofly09 wasnt any humans on mars or venus either. Didnt stop them from turning into a barren wasteland and a hellhole.
Darryl Weathers that doesn’t mean that humans didn’t put a hole in the ozone layer in less than 1000 years.
@@darrylweathers7361 The northern and southern lights are not holes. They are disturbances from solar radiation. It doesn't penetrate or cause holes in the ozone, it just distortion patterns that diminish after the event passes.
10'000'000 years later: "That time plastic almost killed everything"
Ha we won’t be around by then
@@El1society it's amazing to think how rare intelligent life is yet how delicate it is. we need a way out of this planet before we go extinct.
Plastics? No. Other human pollution? Also no, but they will likely cause an anthropecene extinction event.
🎶 NOW YOU CAN EAT SUNLIGHT 🎶 using a revolutionary technique you can convert sunlight into food 🎶 TASTE THE SUNNNN ☀️
History of the world I guess right???
THE *SUN* IS *A* DEADLY *LAZERRRRR*
U can make religion out off this
acapellascience You can also taste rainbows. *COUGH* Skittles *COUGH* “Taste The Rainbow.”
I wonder if I can eat *BLAAAAADES of GRAAAAASSSSS*
Fascinating story, excellent presentation.
The Warped Board +
+
+
+
nomoreusernames +!!!
I love how in the last few decades the story of "snowball earth" has grown from a little fringe theory and I've got to watch more and more details cone together.
Intelligent being from the future:”that time humans almost killed everything”
almost?
@@pphyjynx8217 trust me, we won't kill everything. Maybe ourselves, and life will continue on after us.
@@jimmym3352 never underestimate humanity's stupidity.
@@Kalorag never underestimate stupidity's humanity
@@caykroyd10 never humanize stupidity's underestimation
You know what would be an interesting episode? Could you guys please go through the rock layers in a place with well-known strata and explain the geological periods that created them? Many people have heard that "this era happened so many years ago", but not as much "the remnants of this era can be seen so many meters down from the surface".
You're saying that like if a crash course for geologic record was a bad idea.
It might be a good idea - that way people might know what words like "Ordovician", "Hadean" and "Eocene" mean without having to enroll in a Historical Geology course at their local University.
This would be wonderful!
Yes please
yesssss pls
Why did you skip the idea that the reason life on Earth survived the Oxygen Catastrophe is because aerobic bacteria evolved before the cyanobacteria could've gone extinct. Aerobic Bacteria are able to use oxygen + eating sugars from cyanobacteria for respiration, as opposed to making sugars with carbon dioxide + sunlight to then use. The existence of both in tandem is what causes our current atmosphere to balance somewhere other than completely CO2 or completely O2.
Because science.
They sure took their sweet time though. ;)
· 0xFFF1 Well Cyano Bacteria existed for only 300 million years when this was happening which possibly meant that they had a lot of work to do in using it up
you dont know how to cater to your audience. that is why you are confused.
+. 0xFFF1 : thanks for the comment. It occurred to me at the end of the video that it wasn't thoroughly explained why the oxygen didn't just continue to get greater to the point of complete mass extinction.
green oceans indicate low oxigen, oh the irony
sorry, had to make it
Nice one
Stupid people won't get it. Thus, so few comments.
It's nice being rare...
Lol. That's hilarious!
@@fobbitoperator3620 Stupid people? You're definitely not one of those people, though. Right? I'm sure there's a lot that you don't know. In reality, everyone is stupid. Just depends on the subject. Shakespeare once said, " The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool". Chew on that for a minute, smart guy.
ha
It was a lil bit funny
Lol, I turned into my long past 10 y/o self when she said, "...farted out oxygen."!
I love how this channel saves the "big words" for naming names and the rest of the time uses a language all ages can understand and relate too. :)
Always remember folks, humans aren't the first organisms whose rise resulted in a mass extinction. It's happened before, and it's happening again.
But also know this:
Though many things we know and love may soon come to an end, when nature finds its new equilibrium, if things go well, life may evolve to be more diverse and beautiful than ever before.
Seamus Callaghan and know this. Barring nuclear extermination, it won't happen in our lifetimes
The recovery part - sadly not. At least, not under any normal definition of lifetime. I wouldn't rule out the emergence of technologies that could indefinitely extend lifespans, store people in a dormant state for the long term, or both. The mass extinction is already very much underway though, and has been for a while. We will see that part ramp up noticeably within our lifetimes.
Seamus Callaghan not even 1 percent of species in last 150 years does not constitute a mass extinction. A good portion of those extinctions have happened without any human intervention.
Mass extinctions rarely happen in as few as 150 years. Most have taken thousands, as far as we can tell. Current extinction rates are 1000 to 10,000 times higher than normal background rates - the highest they've been since the K-T extinction. That
Unfortunately because of their semi-permeable skin the amphibians are on the front line...our toxins transfer directly through their skin and cause horrific genetic mutations.
The more i know about earth, the more i realize how rare it will be to find life on another planet.
Yeah you only have several trillion trillion chances of life being out there somewhere else
The more and more I study life and how incredibly tough it is, AND the fact that life *terraformed* this planet and enabled life as we know it. The more I realize how easy it would be to start elsewhere in the universe, and in no small degree
Sometimes it makes u wonder, where did its all started ? Does unbiological thing enable life or did life actually is not only the concept that we know. Does inanimate things actually has life, omg my brain :((
@@slinkerdeer think you should study more then. The chances of the existence of life at some point in time in another planet is veeeery slim and the chances of it actualy surviving is almost to none.
Septian Rico Hernawan life is organic, rocks don’t life, inanimate things life coral and sea shells do.
After watching this, i got a goosbump and it feels like Earth is a living organism.
J Kross p
To think, your average houseplant could have wiped out millions of lifeforms......
always knew that bean plant I had on my kitchen cabinet as a kid wanted to kill me!
Dang I never knew my elephant ear plant is so dangerous
Da Dragon Durp I SEE YOU EVERY WHERE
So maybe M Night Shyamalan was on to something with "The happening"? :)
Well after all that testing it better wipe out milions!
I've enjoyed every episode so far. I would really like you to discuss the evolution of grasses. I remember my introduction to agriculture professor pointing out that they haven't been around all that long. I always try to imagine a world without grass and what that would really look like.
Also, as a geologist, thank you for talking about BIFs. They're the coolest.
A brief answer to "what would that look like": lots and lots of ferns and other small leafy ground cover.
*Oceans turn blood red*
Me: Dammit Moses!
"Things just got to get worse, beofre they get better."
And that has become my new motto
This channel is just so fascinating. I love that I have the opportunity to watch an Eons video at any point of the day, and that I can learn so many things I don’t get a chance to while at school. Thanks so much for teaching me new things every day!
This episode took my BREATH away!
Ok I'll take my leave.
Can you make a video about the time there were giant insects, and how would an average mammal would fare in that environment?
It would be an interesting thought experiment, though mammals hadn't evolved yet.
German Jimenez THERE WERE GIANT INSECTS ?! I really want to believe you but I'm afraid to Google it because I surely I'd be disappointed.
April.6_6 Dragonflies the size of eagles, and just as predatory. Millipedes 10 feet in length. Those were the arthropods of the Carboniferous.
Wow. That is SO COOL. What did the Carboniferous dragonflies eat? Amphibians?
Some, probably, as well as primitive reptiles and other insects.
Her: imagine dying crushed by your own waste
Humanity: heh... imagine that...
Brilliantly done. I really like how you bring all this awesome information with such an enthousiasm that it's contagious.
So glad you covered this! This is one of my favorite stories from Earth's history and who doesn't like Iron Banded Formations?
If the ocean was green, and what color was the sky? 1:08
I think the atmosphere was still made of mostly nitrogen like today, it was probably already blue (cyan, to be precise).
MakoRuu
I hope you're trolling
MakoRuu
Either that or you responded to a comment that someone deleted
Luis Navas I
Luis Navas yellow or same as green
Climate change deniers: "little humans couldn't possibly be having such a drastic effect on the planet"
Microscopic bacteria: *"I'm about to ruin this man's whole career"*
"Climate change deniers", Snotty words from so called intelligent people determined to prove they are right at any cost. But hey, get rid of your computer, phone, car and anything else and I will join you in misery in a cave you twat.
@Dixie Ten Broeck we may never no ;)
Great episode! Added a lot more information to my understanding of that period in earth's past. Thanks!
I like how she says the time line like 2 millon years is nothing.
In comparison with the whole existence of universe or even earth it is really nothing.
Miss Houston she said billion
Earth is like what 4.5Billion years old? so ye 2million is basically nothing.
It kinda is. In terms of how old the Earth is.
To think we have any kind of a grip on how long any of this has been around is nuts.
Suffocated by thier own waste🤔 Sounds familiar.. Like humans
funny i laugh
Did earth's hydrosphere, atmosphere, and geosphere coevolve with earth's biosphere?
Yup!
Excellent Representation including host, animation and script (also remarcable nice-soothing background music)
"That Time Oxygen Almost Killed Everything"
I would rearrange this to -
"That Time Oxygen killed almost everything"
Cause it didn't just "almost kill", oxygen killed a lot and almost everything.
I understand it in a way that life itself came close to its end, so the original word order is more fitting.
THIS
YAY! This is one of my favorite "extinction stories", that somehow often gets left out of lists of "The Planet's Greatest Extinctions". Thanks for talking about it!
Okay I love PBS Eons! How had I not heard of it earlier?
yo! I love this channel. Just found you guys and I have been binge watching you guys for weeks.
Great work!You've earned a subscriber!
Sometimes, things gotta get worse before they get better- best quote I've heard so far!!
Thank you, for another great presentation. I enjoy learning things I didn't know , that I didn't know
Amazing video .I can't find words to appreciate your efforts
It's crazy to think that there are so many planets out there that we could have found already but it's just in one of these stages from a pic it would look lifeless
Luke - Or consider that life might have formed....and been snuffed out. And we'll never know.
This is what makes me believe that life on different planets don't have to have the same chemistry as Earth for there to be life. Earth wasn't always covered in Carbon Dioxide and Oxygen.
Marissa Ojeda
I do think that complex life would probably require a similarly powerful energy source to O2, however. Aerobic respiration produces several times more energy than anaerobic processes, so without it, life would have to run on much thriftier energy strategies, possibly forbidding the development of multicellular life
One of the finest channels on RUclips. Sincere kudos.
I like that ending message. Sometimes things get worse before they get better, with awsome hopeful music in the background.
She explains everything lightly and by the simplest of words. Love it!
No doubt. One of the best channels
thank you so much for also using metric system such as meter and ton 💗
this is the type of stuff that just shows how difficult it must be for complex life to get started. people always worry about great filters when talking about the fermi paradox and wondering if the filters are behind or ahead of us, there seem to be a lot we got through with pure luck. honestly any filters ahead of us are ones we are putting there ourselves.
I love that there seems to be no end to things that will blow my mind.
I can’t even tell you how much I love this channel :)
Thanks editing guy! That ending was special!
Just utilized this video for help with my college biology lab. Thanks PBS!
I love banded iron formations! And this channel.
"Too much of a good thing can ruin everything for everybody."
Maybe I'm just too good for the world.
Beautiful video, you earned a subscriber!
That dramatic music at the end tho...
I LOVE IT!
oxygen is really dangerous yet there are people that inhale it daily. don't do drugs, kids
Seriously?!!
what caused the glaciation to end? The forming of the ozone layer?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huronian_glaciation
Thank you, but all the wiki says is that volcanic activity would replenish some of the CO2. But it doesn't state that it was enough to end the age. It would imply, but doesnt state, that eventually enough of the oxygen producing bacteria died so that C02 from volcanic activity could catch up with the bacteria and even things out.
Either way, probably should have been a part of the video.
Considering all the extra tension these layers of ice would cause on the crust, volcanic activity would probably increase....
Redistribute the weight of the entire planet....
The snow/ice became dirty with volcanic ashes over time, thus absorbing more sun energy. Some volcano where ejecting CO2, helping creating a welcome heat blanket
We don't know! That's why it wasn't in the video, the thawing of snowball earth is a bit of a mystery. I find "volcanic activity" to be the geologists go-to as to why something happened, i think it's their way of thinking of something plausible to make the idiot asking hard questions to go away so they can figure out "important stuff"
The last line was so wonderful... sometimes things gotta get worse before they get better...❤❤
Thanks for the kind sharing
Earth: Covered-in an never ending blood-red ocean.
Nathan Explosion: Brütal.
I always thought it was crazy how one of the most chemically reactive elements filled our atmosphere, if we had life XD
Thank you for cool stuffs....and that victory music at the end...wow
Congrats you've earned a new subscriber!
Microscopic plankton friggin terraformed the earth??
Yep
Rafael Lopez ya is it hard trying to be edgy all the time?
Ayla Williamson This tbh
Wasn't technically Plankton though.
Ayla Williamson rekt
Wait, so you guys said that the early earth had very low oxygen concentrations and because of that, Iron rusted green more commonly than red. If that's the case, why is Mars red? Wouldn't you need a lot of oxygen (like when life created it on Earth) to produce all of that red rust?
Remember that rust, typical red rust anyway, is iron _oxide._ There _was_ plenty of free oxygen on Mars. It has mostly escaped into space as Mars's atmosphere wasted away or was trapped in the rocks and dirt as iron oxide, i.e. rust. Thus a red, and now free oxygen deficient, Mars.
shut up, *placoderm*
Love this channel! Just found it today
Excellent presentation!
I am in love with this channel.
PBS eon 4080: Time when humans killed almost everything
*things Gotta get worse before getting better*
Thanks You that ..i needed it
Excellent material! Condensed into a doable timeframe.
This is amazing. Thank you for this. 😄
'Nother great video. Love this channel ❤️
So interesting. Thank you!
The background music in this episode could not be more perfect for the story. Kudos!
0:29 - wait what, how could there be so much less dry land than now? The planet didn't lose water, did it? Or was the land much smoother, so a thinner layer of water could cover most of it?
I didn't understand that either. The best I can find is that there is some debate amongst geologists about how and when the continents appeared. The Oxygen catastrophe occurred at the end of the Archean Eon, which was the first eon after the Earth's solid crust formed. Some geologists hold that the continental crust floated to the Earth's surface during the Hadean Eon, while the Earth was still entirely molten. However, other geologists maintain that the continents were nucleated over oceanic hotspots only after the end of the Hadean.
Either way the continental crust, being denser than water, could only emerge above the surface of the sea once it was thick enough to float high out of the denser mantle. This process would have to take some time, so might have been still on-going throughout the Archean. Unfortunately (but perhaps not coincidentally) no known rocks are now to have survived from the Hadean to now, so a clearer answer is some way away.
Hmm...I don't know any more about the planet's geology than what I've picked up from channels like this. The way I see it, if the amount of water on Earth only ever increased (from meteorite impacts?), and if as you say the crust was solid at this point, and if gravity pulls water towards the center of the planet everywhere so it mostly ends up in the "lowest" areas, then geometrically the planet would have to be smoother to have a larger % of the surface covered by water than now. Am I missing something in that regard?
Unless...maybe some water getting mixed into the layers under the crust during subduction, so that the surface actually loses water over time?
Water is made of the lightest element, hydrogen. We receive extraterrestrial water every year. If hydrogen would not oxydize, it would leave the planet as helium do. Life need so many elements, including the dangerously reactive phosphorus for DNA... Life took so long to reach our level because a delicate balance slowly established
We would have a lot less dry land if all the glaciers melt. Right now, a lot of that water is at our poles in the form of ice.
Could you do an episode about gorgonopsids?
Juan Martín, yes.
I really like eons there so educational my #1 turn to show keep up the good work
never knew how interesting earth evolution is on the short astronomical scales due to life, love the channel
Can we use the same Cyanobacteria to reduce CO2?
I don't think that would be terribly different than using some other photosynthetic organisms like algae or plants to reduce CO2.
M Mustafa one of the best ways to reduce CO2 is through carbon sequestration. Either through pumping it deep into the earth or through more natural methods. I like the idea of creating and restoring more wetlands. They do an incredible job of trapping CO2. Sadly we've converted a lot of them into crop land since that soil is also nutrient dense.
Thanks Dave.
We could plant trees and stop chopping down all the ones that are there.
SuperDipMonster I think I read that chopping them down and then treating them and using them in buildings might help, under the grounds that dead trees biodegrade in a fashion that release green house gasses. Of course you probably want to put more trees where you chopped down trees, and I'm not sure how much you can do this sort of thing before the soil nutrition becomes a concern.
Oxygen stole my wife once.
Damn Oxygen.
the background music is spot on. transitioned quite well.
Really great episode!!!
May I request video about Ediacaran biota? They have much less coverage, are they are really boring-soft-bodied creatures, or is there something interesting about them?
So the Earth went from green to red to white and then to blue... It's a giant jawbreaker!
this channel is so awesome
Nicely explained and narrated🙂🙂
I’d like to think mars died from oxygenation. After all it has a CO2 atmosphere but a red rust surface? Where’d the oxygen come from ;)
From the comet water that broken into hydrogen and oxygen while solar wind blew off the hydrogen component.
And Venus became hell because of to much Co2 anyway it goes the balance is so fragile
Something happened to mars to make it the way it is. Mars wasn't always a dusty rock, something caused it to become the way it is. Possibly something to do with why there is an asteroid belt just beyond it. But if you've seen picture of mars there is very severe damage to the planets surface, and it isn't natural.
Matt Evans in what way do you me “isn’t natural”?
Mars is cooler than earth. The reason why We managing because the sun.
3:41 "They needed CO2 to survive. So they were basically being suffocated by their own waste (oxygen)" I'm sure there is a lesson here for humanity but I'm not the one to figure it out.
With all my ailments my brain is thanking me. Just shared this video on facebook. Knowledge is power, and that is the power to inform provoking understand witch in turn creates the same dynamic in a populous. Learning is the invocation of the god machine, story telling. Thank you for these videos. I will continue to like and share these videos from your chanle. Have you done a video on viruses yet, ill search and see if you have. But in the curent pandemic, id love if pbs can set the story straight for the uniformed. Thank you for all your help informing the populace, you are all worthy of praise to measures you cant even comprehend. Thank you isnt even close, but thank you.
I love this channel. Congratz