Wolfgang Korsus Dipl.Ing. NT , Astrophysicist
Klingenberg 40 D – 25451 Quickborn
TEL.: +49 4106 69295 Cell phone: +49 162 5680456
Website : wolfgang.korsus.net
Chapter 6
Without oxygen there would be no life on earth. Oxygen is a chemical element with the symbol O. It is a colorless, odorless gas and is a strong oxidizing agent. Oxygen is extracted industrially from liquid air. Oxygen is frequently used in medicine, technology and space travel. You can find out more about its other properties in the following article.
On our planet 3 there were also times when oxygen was „THE DEADLY POISON“! I now like to remark that not everything was better in the past, not really. Because even in the very beginning, life ate itself; whoever could, devoured his neighbor and thus absorbed whatever energy was available in the immediate vicinity. A perfect local diet. As always, the specimens that survived were those that were faster, smarter and more assertive. Meanwhile, the earth continued to change….It wasn’t just raining, no, it was bucketing down, with countless volcanoes erupting along the way. The youngest micro-continents broke apart, collided and their pieces drifted around the globe on still glowing ground. Eventually, however, life reached a state of dynamic equilibrium, because not much new happened. Billions of bacteria ate each other, but it is estimated that at some point around two billion years after the formation of the earth, something very special happened:
One of these, I’ll call them, bacterial prototypes of life suddenly tapped into a completely new source of energy. Super clever, it tapped into the light of the sun. At that time, the thick veil of the atmosphere was just beginning to lift slightly, allowing the sun’s rays to reach the earth’s surface for the first time. (The water) in This all took place at a time when the thick veil of the atmosphere finally began to lift and the sun’s rays found their way to the earth’s surface.
That was the beginning of the light-flooded times, that was simply the unprecedented!
Someone is also interested in the unprecedented, and very much so. It is the cyanobacteria, which have probably colonized the earth for more than 3.5 billion years (Archaic) and are among the oldest life forms of all. They can perceive the direction of light incidence; a unique ability! According to the endosymbiotic theory …….
(The endosymbiotic theory describes the scientific assumption that in evolution two cells have entered into a mutually beneficial relationship, an endosymbiosis)
…. Cyanobacteria are the precursors of chloroplasts: Chlorophyll-free precursors („protozoa“) once took up cyanobacteria, which became endosymbionts and then chloroplasts. So it was cyanobacteria that made green algae green.
So to continue, the cyanobacteria were able to warm up more and more to the sun’s rays. It was this type of bacteria that developed the famous „photosynthesis“ on Earth, an extraordinarily complicated process that is still not fully understood today.
The following is a short note on photosynthesis….what does it do?
Cyanobacteria, shown here as fireweed
These hyperactive simple creatures were the creatures on earth that were able to warm themselves up to sunlight. I assume that the decisive factor for our further progress as living beings is well known ►
The sun’s energy is thus proven to be converted into sugar molecules and oxygen during photosynthesis. However, it should be noted that oxygen turned out to be a „deadly poison“ for all living organisms except cyanobacteria. This led to the greatest mass extinction ever experienced by the „phenomenon“ of life on earth. In the meantime, however, and I say with conviction, the course was set for survival:
„Life“ – – – breathe oxygen or you die! A terrible sentence, short but it turned out to be „right“. The sentence actually corresponds to a new > motto for life < and, with very few exceptions who were able to muddle through, this was indeed the „new motto for life“.
After what I’ve told you so far, some of you readers might think…..Aha, of course that’s how it came about!
But I beg you: think everything through again !!!
The development of the photosynthesis described above certainly represents a landmark milestone on the path of life. Because with oxidation, life had secured a new source of energy for billions of years. So this is exactly what life is all about:
…. constantly, very frequently, regularly or continuously recurring, constantly releasing energy with the help of repetitive, stable chemical processes that maintain the metabolism-and this is what we call the essence of life. The fact that you and I exist is due to the fact that we breathe oxygen. A process takes place in our body in which free energy is obtained from oxygen, and we need and consume this energy in order to stay alive.
Watch out: At first, life and oxygen remained in the water. (Hello important….!)
The cyanobacteria I mentioned back then produced sugar molecules with the help of sunlight and still do today, releasing oxygen in the process. In the water of the primordial oceans that existed at that time, the oxygen quickly oxidized everything. As a result, insoluble iron ores were formed, which sank to the sea floor and were deposited as so-called banded siliceous iron ores, usually in layers several kilometers thick. Now we will look at the next billion years in fast motion and I realize that even (like a self-chosen fate) after more than a billion years of photosynthesis practiced in the water, not much oxygen had reached the „atmosphere“. The largest quantities of oxygen remained in the sea and were used there chemically for iron oxidation. However, the biochemical cycles led to an immense growth of bacteria. Let me say quite succinctly….. „Nothing else really happened“. So if we simply focus on life throughout the Earth’s history, then only bacteria and single-celled organisms have existed for 90 percent of this time. Bacteria without a cell nucleus, called prokaryotes, and the 10,000 times larger eukaryotes or eukaryotes with a cell nucleus.
Free oxygen was constantly and tirelessly produced, and with these quantities of gas (oxygen), the gas was also released into the atmosphere. This means that the atmosphere of our planet Earth became more and more enriched with oxygen.
Now it came to the following outstanding event ( total chemistry ) because at a certain height, about 14 to 15 kilometers, something happened with the „oxygen molecules“, which was of existential importance for the further development of life:
Ozone was formed.
– Ozone – !!!!!!
Even if you don’t want to hear it anymore, I’ll say it again :
Billions of years after nature introduced photosynthesis (first in water), it became possible to produce sugar molecules and oxygen from the light of the sun. In the end, even an atmospheric protective shield was created, …… and since then it has had the ability to repel the sun’s terribly destructive ultraviolet radiation.
So the last statement I made clearly says that this is how it was ……damals ! However, I am slowly approaching today’s results „Ozone hole Antarctica, Arctic. Many climate specialists have contributed with very brief information and have confirmed me from a physical point of view. I thank them all in my own way by checking in often…and researching.
Climate protection: What about the hole in the ozone layer?
This statement suddenly became reality ⏩ The invisible threat from space: more than 35 years ago, scientists were able to prove for the first time that there is a huge hole in the ozone layer over the Antarctic!
I briefly contacted Dr. Rolf Müller from the Jülich Research Centre. He made the following statements on the above topic ⏩ ⏩ ⏩
N 15. SEPT. 2021, 13:49 MESZ
UPDATED ON 16. SEPT. 2021, 10:50 MESZ
F18 million square kilometers: At the beginning of December 2020, the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica was larger than ever before at this time of year. In the long term, however, researchers expect a small recovery.
The attached photo is from the ESA !!!
The world was turned upside down on May 16, 1985, when British researchers discovered a gigantic hole in the ozone layer over the Antarctic and published their findings in the scientific journal Nature. The observed ozone losses were more dramatic than all predictions. No wonder this news caused alarm across the globe: without the protective ozone layer, plant and animal life as we know it would hardly have been possible to continue. Like a giant umbrella, it filters the sun’s harmful UV radiation at an altitude of around 15 to 30 kilometers. This protects humans and animals, for example, from fatal cell damage, skin cancer and eye diseases.
Almost without exception, the international community has now pulled together: in the Montreal Protocol of 1987 and other agreements, it decided to ban ozone-depleting substances that humans had been blowing into the atmosphere for decades. The focus was on chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs): artificial chemical compounds that were used worldwide at the time as propellants, refrigerants and solvents and destroyed the protective layer. Since then, the ozone killer CFC has almost completely disappeared from refrigerators, spray cans and foams. ….So, so, so…!
But has the ozone layer also recovered? The Institute of Energy and Climate Researchi at Forschungszentrum Jülich is investigating the chemical, microphysical and dynamic processes in the Earth’s atmosphere. physicist and ozone researcher Dr. Rolf Müller also has something to say about this.
He is slightly optimistic that the hole in the ozone layer will close in the long, …..very long term: „Because the necessary steps have largely been taken.“
But for me, the question remains: will the hole in the ozone layer grow or shrink?
Scientists are indeed observing that the ozone layer over the Antarctic is gradually and exceptionally slowly recovering. After all that we have seen, I now assume that the hole in the ozone layer will close. But ………. that is an unimaginably long process. I’m guessing it will take another 50 to 100 years of life to close!
Why is the recovery taking so long?
The ozone-depleting CFCs simply have lifetimes of 50 to 100 years. Only then will they have disappeared from the earth’s atmosphere. This is measurable – for example with research balloons that collect air for analysis even at an altitude of 30 kilometers
Photo by ELENA POPGA, Utrecht University
Research balloons can be used to measure the concentration of ozone-depleting substances even at an altitude of 30 kilometers.
However, the highest concentration of CFCs in the atmosphere was around the year 2000, but since then we have observed a decrease of around „ten“ percent. This means that we are roughly back to the level of 1991 or 1992.
However, notable reports on the state of the ozone layer are very different and varied. Sometimes we hear that the hole in the ozone layer is closing. Then it was said that it was bigger than ever before.
However, a fundamental distinction must be made between two ozone losses, in the Arctic and in the Antarctic.
Let’s start with the biggest ozone depletion, which occurs every year in the Antarctic spring, i.e. in October! Up to 80 percent of the entire ozone layer is then lost.
Such ozone losses can also be observed over the Arctic, but these are two different phenomena, because the meteorological conditions are different, especially directly at the poles. Why is that? There is much greater climate variability in the „Arctic stratosphere“. For example, there are greater temperature fluctuations and it is generally warmer there than at the South Pole.
The question must follow: So what do these temperature fluctuations mean for the ozone layer?
Extremely low temperatures in the atmosphere and areas of low pressure, which figuratively speaking surround the ozone hole, are decisive for the thinning of the ozone layer. Ozone destruction only begins at an atmospheric temperature of 195 Kelvin or less. This corresponds to approximately minus 78 degrees Celsius. Sometimes, however, it is so warm in the Arctic that this process does not start at all – in contrast to the Antarctic, where the phenomenon recurs every year because it is generally much colder there. But the Arctic winter in 2020 was also extremely cold at high altitudes for a very long time, which led to a strong thinning of the ozone layer over the North Pole. This led to some premature conclusions, such as that the hole in the ozone layer is basically widening again. In the coming years, however, things may turn out quite differently. In short, there may always be years in which the ozone hole over the Antarctic expands or severe ozone losses occur over the Arctic. In the long term, however, we expect a recovery, as mentioned above.
If ozone destruction only begins at extremely low temperatures, one might think, then is global EARTH WARMING good for the ozone layer?
Stop, you can’t say that. ….. A clear no. And then I say: there is currently no consistent knowledge about the effects of climate change on the ozone layer.
A basic principle is already emerging and that is: the higher the CO2 emissions, the colder the stratosphere. It gets warmer down here, but colder at the top. This is due to interactions between CO2 and radiation in the atmosphere. At the same time, however, there are hypotheses that air movements in the stratosphere are increasing as a result of climate change. This could result in warmer stratospheric winters. We are therefore basically observing two drivers that could lead in different directions.
But what makes some scientists optimistic that the hole in the ozone layer will actually close again one day? I am a little more pessimistic, because I am convinced that some emporium states are still busy frying in the chemical kitchen without permission ….!
The necessary steps have largely been taken. The main cause of the hole in the ozone layer is CFCs, which we humans have been releasing since the 1930s. The Montreal Protocol and its successors put an end to this, because CFCs are simply no longer being produced. If the international community had not reacted back then, we would already be facing dramatic consequences today – and even more so in the coming decades. And not just over the poles, but in the entire stratosphere. However, it is also clear that we need to keep an eye on other ozone-depleting substances such as nitrous oxide and…. and….
How important are controls here? Is it even possible to detect illegal CFC production, for example?
There is a whole network of ground stations that monitor CFCs. You can actually determine whether and where the Montreal Protocol is being violated. For example, some stations had measured elevated levels that could be attributed to illegal CFC production in some regions in China. But as far as I know, there are currently no more incidents. The international community is clearly still open on this environmental issue!
Some people say that the inventors of CFCs cannot be blamed. I see it differently, as has always been known…..The CFC case clearly shows that people think mainly of commercial success, that the end probability of survival is close to zero is simply not conceivable or relevant for the majority of humanity. They simply say how were we supposed to know back then what effects this molecule had on the ozone layer? Today we know and have developed substitutes that spare the ozone layer, but it cannot be otherwise that these „substitutes“ lead to new problems: because they are even stronger greenhouse gases than carbon dioxide and methane. The old risk, from a purely „human“ point of view, has only been replaced by a new one. Despite the difficulties in finding harmless substitutes for CFCs, we can state that mankind actually reacted quite quickly to the global danger. The scientific facts were clear: chlorofluorocarbons were destroying our ozone layer. Two years later, the agreement was in place. It was actually decided to abolish CFCs.
According to NASA scientist Pawan Bhartia, the ozone hole over Antarctica-recorded in September r-has stabilized and is slowly improving. The task now is to ensure that it heals as expected. The amount of ozone-depleting substances (ODS) in the atmosphere has stopped increasing in recent years and is actually decreasing. CFCs and other ozone-depleting substances can remain in the air for decades. In 1979, when we scientists were just beginning to understand what destroys ozone, the extent of the ozone hole over Antarctica reached 1.1 million square kilometers, with an ozone concentration of 194 Dobson units. In 1987, when the Montreal Protocol was signed, the ozone hole extended over an area of 22.4 million square kilometers. As a result, the ozone concentration fell to 109 Dobson units. By 2006, the worst year, the expansion had reached 29.6 million. In 2011, the last year with a complete data set, the ozone hole had an extent of 26 million square kilometers and the concentration was 95 Dobson units. Even after the complete cessation of all CFC emissions, the gas will remain in our atmosphere for between 44 and 180 years. Humanity has shown that it can react quickly to challenges. This should actually give us hope for all the other serious problems that are due to our ingenuity and the ever-growing global influence of the human species, because we are Homo faber, the creative human being. This connection between photosynthesis in the distant past and chlorofluorocarbons, which destroyed the ozone layer much, much later, shows us what levers humanity has at its disposal. We are in a position to develop technologies that release substances that can permanently disrupt the Earth’s evolutionary process chains.
So the question remains :
What else is in store for us in the next 400 years?
Dear readers, I greet you properly and continue with much pessimism…