this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2023
6 points (100.0% liked)
Loredom
74 readers
2 users here now
Science, art, history, philosophy. Everything worth knowing.
founded 1 year ago
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I feel this is very oxygen centric thinking.
Life on earth existed for ~1.2 Billion Years before the Great Oxidation Event seeded Earth's oceans and atmosphere with O2.
That is 1/3 of the entire time life has existed on earth.
Yes, finding a very reactive element like oxygen in the atmosphere is a great indicator of an ongoing organic process on an Exoplanet.
But in our sample size of one we already know that No free oxygen does not mean, no life. And while our sample size of one indicates that intelligent life comes after o2 in the atmosphere we have no idea if this is always the case.
To be fair, the article doesn't say lack of oxygen equals no life, only that certain technologies demand oxygen.
Sorry, I didn't mean to come off a dismissive.
Finding atmospheric o2 would be a great leap in exoplanet and exobiology research as something as reactive as free o2 is a massive pointer to an organic origin. Any free o2 would have to be constantly replenished as it would quickly be reacted with (quickly in geological timescales) and pulled from the atmosphere and there is no known normal planetary process to do this.
Mars is the perfect example as it is red due to all the iron-oxide (rust) in the surface regolith and there is basically none (less than 0.0001%) in the atmosphere.
The flipside of this is that without atmospheric oxygen, iron would not be locked up in iron-oxide and may be more available to use by non-oxygen breathing life forms. All the iron ore humans mine and use comes from the release of o2 into the world's oceans during the the Great Oxidation Event, which combined with dissolved iron in the oceans then sank to the bottom to become the deposits we now mine.
I mean even if iron is plentiful in a raw form without oxygen, how is it going to be worked without great heat? I think that is the issue really. What heat production can replace fire when oxygen is scarce. Much of our technology revolves around welding.
I don't know but our tech progress is founded on o2 being plentiful.
A sample size of one does not give you a good idea of what is possible.
And that is the point I am trying to make. Looking for o2 will allow us to identify possible life and civs like us but that does not mean it is the only way to develop or live.
No atmospheric o2 likely means no tech civ similar to us but it does not mean no life or no tech.
I think I get you. I have been looking at this with google searches since reading the article and I did find this https://www.scienceabc.com/nature/can-fire-occur-non-oxygenated-reaction.html which at least gives possibilities.