Last night I saw The Day After Tomorrow, Roland Emmerich awesome movie, and I entertained the idea of \u200b\u200bhow many brothels can cause something as turkey as an ice age. So today I bring this beautiful little story, telling how he nearly died near this planet, made a heap of years.
The greatest tragedy that affected life on Earth occurred 251 million years ago. At a minimum, 96% of marine life and 80% of the land disappeared as a result of a series of disasters that changed the face of the globe. It was the Permian period, at the end of the Paleozoic era, there was only one continent and ocean. There was a very important biodiversity and the climate was slightly warmer than today.
It started with a ten-mile asteroid that hit against the extreme southeast of the Gondwana supercontinent. The force of impact was such that caused a major rift that eventually split Australia in Antarctica. Today the crater can be found in Wilkes Land, on the Indian Ocean coast, on the white continent, with an area of \u200b\u200b480 km in diameter. This is truly remarkable, as the Chicxulub crater does not reach 200 km. Yes, the latter is the one that would have cleared out the dinosaurs 65 million years.
The cosmic piñazo probably immediately sparked wildfires worldwide (there was only one continent) increasing the toxicity of the atmosphere to free hundreds of thousands of tons of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, greenhouse gases typically.
However, the asteroid had fallen into one end of the world, something remote and projecting into the ocean only super Phantalassa, a condition that had subsided slightly the effect of cosmic collision. On the other hand, the coal was characterized by large scale fires much more severe. The damage was very important, but only mean the beginning of something much worse. While
celestial body collided with the planet had been devastating mediate its effect (rain of ashes, tsunamis, earthquakes, fires, toxic releases into the atmosphere), there was collateral damage in particular to condemn virtually all life on Earth. The force with which he had collided the asteroid would have been such that the shock wave would have strongly shaken the earth's crust, especially in the antipodes. At that time, was a point opposite the northern bay (now would Siberia). The shock would trigger a strong volcanism that have lasted thousands of years. Current evidence shows that all the northern and eastern Russia, called the Siberian Traps, is the result of that time. Between 2 and 4 million km3 of lava would have been drained on the earth's crust of what today are almost 2 million km2 of basalt, which originally would be more than seven.
acid release sulfur dioxide added to the forest fires would have counteracted the effect of nuclear winter should have followed the meteor impact, and even it is detected that would have caused a greenhouse effect that global temperatures have risen to 5 ° C.
So far, these three disasters have decimated life on Earth, up to 70 to 75% of the original settlers, within that amount of 300 thousand years (in geologic time is a blink). But as I said earlier, this was much much worse.
The methane clathrate is a special water ice is characterized by containing a significant proportion of dissolved methane gas. It is found in the ocean, and stays there for specified concentration for very high pressures. Now suppose that a disastrous event has the ability to raise the temperature of the ocean (it takes thousands of years for that record), the clathrates would melt, releasing thousands of tonnes of methane into the atmosphere, the same way that gas escaping from a gas. Methane is poisonous in very high concentrations, it is unmarked another greenhouse gas more.
Finally, the icing on the cake. Increasing sea water temperature would have caused a decrease in solubility, extracting oxygen and important sediment deposited salt. These conditions favored the growth of anaerobic life in the sea, bacteria that excrete hydrogen sulfide (sulfuric acid). The acidification of water and the periodic release of a gas as poisonous as the appointment, ended up turning the planet into a nearly fatal.
After an increase in global temperature to 10 ° C, acidification of the seas, mist yellow poisonous gas hovering around the sea shores, after 700 thousand years, life on earth had disappeared in 95%. In a million years, life on the globe faced its greatest crisis. Had ended the Paleozoic Era and a new dawn would come to the Mesozoic Era, and its first period, the Triassic. While over ten million years after the planet had become a dry, barren, hot and hostile desert almost life forms, the disaster had provided an opportunity for the survival and spread of a species, similar to a monitor or a glutton cynodonts therapsids had survived the tragedy on the basis of social adjustments, dietary and dimensional. This survivor born in a few million years a new kind of animal, mammal to be called some time later and claim the world to himself.
Aloha!
PD1: I found this song, so I owe you.
PD2: Some people believe that something else happened as told, something like a nearby supernova or a powerful solar flare well, but it seemed a bit exaggerated.
PD3: 850 million years ago, there was an ice such that the whole planet was turned into a snowball.
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