Engineering planetary habitability: Earth’s first billion years. This project aims to establish the critical physical-chemical factors in the early surface environment and tectonic regime that supported early life and continuing habitability. Life was established on Earth within the first billion years of its 4.56-billion-year history. This project’s integrated geological and geochemical study will investigate this period’s rare sedimentary and volcanic record, including the oldest fossiliferous ....Engineering planetary habitability: Earth’s first billion years. This project aims to establish the critical physical-chemical factors in the early surface environment and tectonic regime that supported early life and continuing habitability. Life was established on Earth within the first billion years of its 4.56-billion-year history. This project’s integrated geological and geochemical study will investigate this period’s rare sedimentary and volcanic record, including the oldest fossiliferous sequences discovered recently, to show how the early Earth’s chemistry supported life and evolution. The project expects to enhance understanding of why life prospers on some habitable zone planets but not on others.Read moreRead less
Carbon dioxide sequestration more than 3.7 billion years ago and the oldest climate cycles. More than 3.7 billion years ago atmospheric greenhouse CO2 was sequestered into limestone sedimentary rocks deposited in ice-free oceans. Why then, with the 30-25 per cent cooler sun in those times, was our earth not frozen over? Solving this oldest climate problem, will give the deepest-time perspective to the earth's changing climate feedback loops.