“Why is there air?”
Because OXYGEN. No lie, this is one of my favorite stories. I love this so hardand yet it’s something most people think is an absurd question. I mean, air! It just exists. Why question why?
But BryanR asked the question and opened the unholy door to my fascination with oxygen and I’m sure he had no clue what he was in for.
Despite my (amateur) scientific leanings, it is a story I knew nothing about until page 297 of Bill Bryson’s 2003 book, A Short History of Nearly Everything. There is a chance I had skimmed over the facts of the matter at some point, but certainly I had never understood them until I read Bryson’s blithe and amusing ode to everything.
Which is to say, there is air because of the Great Oxygen Catastrophe that occurred approximately 2.3 billion years ago. Anyone who has watched the new Cosmos series knows about this, now, but to recap for those who don’t:
Cyanobacteria started off-gassing biologically produced oxygen via photosynthesis.
That’s it, that’s the catastrophe. But think of this way: what if a whole bunch of trees and grass and such all started producing anthrax in massive quantities instead of oxygen and throwing it out into our atmosphere in exponentially increasing amounts. Short of firebombing everything everywhere, we’d be screwed. And indeed, most of the life forms at the time the Great Oxygen Catastrophe happened were very, very screwed. As in dead.
Because oxygen is NOT NICE. As Bryson described it:
“That oxygen is fundamentally toxic often comes as a surprise to those of use who find it so convivial to our well-being, but that is only because we have evolved to exploit it. To other things it is a terror. It is what turns butter rancid and makes iron rust. Even we can tolerate it only up to a point. The oxygen level in our cells is only about a tenth the level found int he atmosphere.”
Oxygen is a terror.
Think about that. Think about the toxic, poisonous chemical compound that is necessary for us to live…but only up to a point! Too little, we die. Too much, we die. Originally all life on Earth was anaerobic, that is, did not use or need oxygen to survive. Oxygen is a terror to any anaerobic life form, it kills without mercy.
Except when it doesn’t.
One of the most amusing takes on this happened on tumblr (naturally) and I find it both funny and inspiring:
Why is there air? Because oxygen killed nearly everything on Earth once.
Air is a deadly concoction we have evolved to exploit. We are DEATH BREATHERS because of air.