Billions of Years of Evolution

Planet Earth is the most important physical plane to every biological being.  The human in its current form has evolved its characteristics properties and nature over the last 4.3 billion years.  Our evolution includes all atoms and their relationships.  …

Planet Earth is the most important physical plane to every biological being.  The human in its current form has evolved its characteristics properties and nature over the last 4.3 billion years.  Our evolution includes all atoms and their relationships.

Introduction

Original Date: September 5, 2021

Last Updated: September 5, 2021

Planet Earth

Our planet earth has undergone many changes on the surface of the planet and in the atmosphere over its billions of years of existence. It is not only the home of millions of plant and animal species, but the home of billions of human beings.

We believe that all Psions and citizens on the planet should know these very basic facts regarding the Earth and its properties as well as the history of its inhabitants. Therefore the purpose of this article is to give a brief account of some of the dynamics of the Earth that the average person would not have studied at school, or learned through their television viewing.

General Facts

Our planet Earth is 4.543 billion years. It is the third planet from the Sun and the only celestial object to harbor and support human life. It is tilted at an angle of 23.5% and this angle changes slightly over a forty thousands year cycle.

The surface of the Earth is approximately 29.2% land element. Within the land there are seven continents: Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America and South America. And there are around two thousand islands in oceans around the world.

Water is the other major element of the Earth and is 70.8% represented by salt-water bodies: oceans, seas, gulfs, and freshwater bodies: which are lakes, and rivers. Both of these regions make up the Earths Biomes. There are five major types of biomes: aquatic, grassland, forest, desert, and tundra. These can be further broken into sub-regions however it is beyond the scope of this article. This is referred to as the biome which called the hydrosphere.

The Earth can be broken into Northern and Southern regions. These polar regions are covered in ice, and make up the Tundra biome. Found within the Earth’s outermost layer, the lithosphere is found the the crust and upper mantle which are composed of large rocky plates. These rigid structures are the tectonic plates. They are non-stationary, moving layers of rock which move across the surface over many millions of years.

The Atmosphere

Earth’s atmosphere consists mostly of nitrogen and oxygen. The atmosphere works as a protective shield to protect the terrestrial and Water biomes from damage from the Sun’s solar rays. The solar energy is divided unequally in different regions of the Earth.

There is more solar energy sent to the tropical regions than polar regions. There is a maximum sun angle which is higher above the horizon. This angle does not mean that the Sun is closer to the tropical regions, but that the sunlight moving through the atmosphere strikes the surface at a more direct angle.

All gases play a role in regulating surface temperature. Greenhouse gases are included in this regulation. The gases regulate the amount of heat that the planet can receive and what gets reflected back into space. A region’s climate is determined by latitude, elevation and proximity to oceans.

The Earth and the Force of Gravity

According to Newton’s gravitational Law every particle of matter attracts every other particle. This law is the reason that every particle within the earth’s atmosphere always falls down towards the earth regardless of where the object is located. However, this force can be negated by the Law of Lift.

Regarding gravity, it has an with other objects in space, including our closes neighbor the Moon. The Moon is the Earth’s natural satellite. The Sun’s gravitation forces holds the Earth within its orbit of 365.25 days, while the Earth holds the Moon within its orbit of 27.32 days. This is different than the phases of the Moon which is 29.5 days. The reason is that the Moon must travel further to orbit the Earth due to the Earth personal orbit.

The Earth and the Moon gravity exchange causes tides, and creates stability of the Earth’s axis. It also slows down the Earth’s rotation.

Life on Earth

Organic life didn’t always exist on Earth. It is suggested that life appeared in the oceans within the first billion years. The first organisms marked the proliferation of anaerobic and, millions of years later, aerobic organisms developed. The unique relationship with the Sun, Moon, and all of the elements of the Earth, have created the unique diversity of life that existed during the Earth’s first billions of years.

Over 99% of all species that ever lived on Earth are now extinct. That equates to four billion species that once lived on Earth are now gone. At least 900 species have gone extinct in the last five centuries. That leaves us with 8.7 million species that are currently alive today. There were nine human species walked the Earth 300,000 years ago. Of those there is only one that is still surviving, Homo Sapien. And some people believe that the branch of Homo Sapien has split at a nodal access meaning that they have very different destinies. The near future will tell.

To date there is almost 8 billion humans that live on the Earth at the various livable biosphere. Humans have impacted Earth’s surface, hydrosphere, and atmosphere. In many ways and some believe it has negatively impacted the survival of the Earth’s rich resources including plant and animal kingdoms.

There is even impact in space with humans placing more than 3,000 dead satellites and rocket sections floating in space, which equate to 900,000 pieces of space junk ranging in size from 1 to 10 centimeters in size that are bit enough to cause a collision hazard for the future. Will space become the “next Dump” for human beings?

Timeline of Life on Earth

3.8 billion years ago to 3.0 billion years ago

• This is a guess for the beginning of life on Earth. The first life may have developed in undersea alkaline vents, and was probably based on RNA (Ribonucleic acid) rather than DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid).
• A common ancestor gave rise to two main groups of life: bacteria and archaea.
• The oldest fossils of single-celled organisms date from this time.
• Some single-celled organisms may be feeding on methane by this time.
• Rock formations are fossilized microbes, date from this period.
• Viruses are present by this time, but they may be as old as life itself.
  * A virus is made up of a core of genetic material, either DNA or RNA, surrounded by a protective coat called a capsid which is made up of protein.

2.9 billion years ago to 2.0 billion years ago

• The “great oxidation event”.  The poisonous waste produced by photosynthetic cyanobacteria – oxygen – starts to build up in the atmosphere. Dissolved oxygen makes the iron in the oceans “rust” and sink to the seafloor, forming striking banded iron formations.
• Yet others think that cyanobacteria began pumping out oxygen as early as 2.1 billion years ago, but that oxygen began to accumulate only due to some other factor, possibly a decline in methane-producing bacteria. Methane reacts with oxygen, removing it from the atmosphere, so fewer methane-belching bacteria would allow oxygen to build up.
• Earth freezes over in what may have been the first “snowball Earth”, possibly as a result of a lack of volcanic activity. When the ice eventually melts, it indirectly leads to more oxygen being released into the atmosphere.
• First undisputed fossil evidence of cyanobacteria, and of photosynthesis: the ability to take in sunlight and carbon dioxide, and obtain energy, releasing oxygen as a by-product.
• There is some evidence for an earlier date for the beginning of photosynthesis, but it has been called into question.
• Eukaryotic cells – cells with internal “organs” (known as organelles) – come into being. One key organelle is the nucleus: the control centre of the cell, in which the genes are stored in the form of DNA.
• Eukaryotic cells evolved when one simple cell engulfed another, and the two lived together, more or less amicably – an example of “endosymbiosis”. The engulfed bacteria eventually become mitochondria, which provide eukaryotic cells with energy. The last common ancestor of all eukaryotic cells had mitochondria – and had also developed sexual reproduction.
• Later, eukaryotic cells engulfed photosynthetic bacteria and formed a symbiotic relationship with them. The engulfed bacteria evolved into chloroplasts: the organelles that give green plants their colour and allow them to extract energy from sunlight.
• Different lineages of eukaryotic cells acquired chloroplasts in this way on at least three separate occasions, and one of the resulting cell lines went on to evolve into all green algae and green plants.

We have billions of years more to cover and there just isn’t enough time today.

To be continued tomorrow.

Thanks for Reading!

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