Earth's Early Atmosphere, Oceans, and the Origin of Life

This book provides a comprehensive treatment of the chemical nature of the Earth's early surface environment and how that led to the origin of life. This includes a detailed discussion of the likely process by which life emerged using as much quantitative information as possible. The emergence of life and the prior surface conditions of the Earth have implications for the evolution of Earth's surface environment over the following 2-2.5 billion years. The last part of the book discusses how these changes took place and the evidence from the geologic record that supports this particular version of early and evolving conditions.

Addresses the issue of Earth's early surface and its relationship to the origin of life more comprehensively, and to some extent more quantitatively than has been done to date Provides arguments for adopting a view of the early Earth's surface significantly different from conventional wisdom Expands on a model for the emergence of life proposed by Eigen and De Duve using quantitative treatment of molecular biologic components, a novel approach which underpins the likelihood that life would arise with a much higher probability than previously thought Combines molecular biology insights with geological reasoning of conditions and environments on the early Earth Examines the geologic evidence in support of the presented model Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Autorentext

As a graduate student at the University of Washington, Dr. Shaw focused on experimental geophysics, especially high pressure measurements of elastic properties. These studies continued through an NSF post-doctoral fellowship at Edinburgh, Scotland, at the Department of Geology and Geophysics at the University of Minnesota, and to a lesser extent after he took up a position at Union College. During his time at Minnesota Shaw was awarded an American Geophysical Union Congressional Science Fellowship. He spent the year working for a congressman from Washington State on energy and environmental issues, and particularly on the formulation and passage of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982. Dr. Shaw left Minnesota in 1988 to take up an endowed chair with the responsibility of restarting and developing a geology department at Union, a small private liberal arts college. At Minnesota he developed with a colleague a course in energy resources and policy, which we taught for about ten years and which he continued to teach at Union. About fifteen years ago Dr. Shaw initiated a course called "Great Moments in the History of Life" beginning with the origin of the universe and chemical elements and continuing through the Anthropocene. This revived an old interest in early Earth history and especially the conditions preceding and surrounding the origin of life. This book is the result of that revived interest.

Inhalt

Introduction.- Accretional history of Earth.- Processes of degassing.- Atmospheric processing of degassed volatiles.- Early Archean geography.- Degassing processes.- Prebiotic chemistry why we should pay attention to this.- Eigen's hypercycle and the emergence of life.- How the carbon-rich surface is key to emergence of life.- Evolution of Earth starting with a carbon-rich surface.- Implications of this model.- Conclusions.