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The Importance Of Life On Earth

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How did life begin? What is the atmosphere? As well as how do these relate? Well, we'll get there. I believe that Earth's atmosphere and life on Earth coevolved, and that life started in hydrothermal vents. I will be using evidence supporting my thesis to explain how the atmosphere evolved, how life on Earth and the atmosphere greatly affect each other, and why I believe that life started in hydrothermal vents. Before we get too far ahead, we need to know more about the atmosphere. The atmosphere changed very drastically over time. “Many of the collisions released water vapor and other gasses…becoming the first atmosphere”(Earth and Early Atmosphere | Big History Project, youtube). In the beginning, the Earth was very violent and there were a lot of meteors hitting. When meteors stopped hitting, the Earth cooled down a lot. The water vapor then condensed and became the ocean by precipitation. “Volcanic activity on the Earth's surface created a lot of heat and a lot of carbon dioxide gas”(GCSE Chemistry The Earth's Atmosphere(AQA 9-1), youtube). As the Earth cooled, the Earth's layers were created and volcanoes were able to appear. When these volcanoes erupted, carbon dioxide gas entered the atmosphere. The entering of carbon dioxide triggered a chain of events. “This life-giving gas only started to appear about 2.4 billion years ago”(Workbook#3, Unit 2). This new “life-giving gas” is called oxygen. With carbon dioxide and water vapor in the atmosphere, bacteria were able to perform photosynthesis, which releases oxygen as a waste product. As time went on, a type of organism evolved that could use oxygen and release carbon dioxide. Eventually, this cycle brings us to how our atmosphere is now. To know more about the coevolution of the atmosphere and life on Earth, then we need to know more about how these subjects affect each other. After carbon dioxide was released into the atmosphere, cyanobacteria “evolved a way to take energy from sunlight”(Workbook#3, Unit 2). In other words, when carbon dioxide entered the atmosphere, cyanobacteria learned to perform photosynthesis, which then started to put oxygen into the atmosphere as a waste product. The next question is why was there

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