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

✍ Scribed by George H. Shaw (auth.)

• Publisher: Springer International Publishing
• Year: 2016
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 117
• Series: SpringerBriefs in Earth Sciences
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

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.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter....Pages i-x
Introduction....Pages 1-7
Accretional History of Earth....Pages 9-17
Ocean Basin and Continental Evolution....Pages 19-24
Degassing Processes and Chemistry....Pages 25-34
The Underlying Chemical Nature of Life....Pages 35-39
The Miller-Urey Experiment and Prebiotic Chemistry....Pages 41-48
A Pathway to the First Organism....Pages 49-56
An Organic Carbon Rich Surface and the Source of Primitive tRNA on Earth....Pages 57-62
Evolution of the Atmosphere During the Hadean and Archean....Pages 63-67
The Faint Young Sun Problem....Pages 69-74
The Origin of Oxygenic Photosynthesis and Its Impact on the Atmosphere....Pages 75-93
What Can We Learn from Other Planets?....Pages 95-105
Summary....Pages 107-108
Back Matter....Pages 109-113

✦ Subjects

Biogeosciences; Planetology; Popular Earth Science; Geoecology/Natural Processes