universe solar system freedman

universe solar system freedman

Faint young Sun paradox

Early solar output

Early in the Earth's history, the Sun's output would be only 70% as intense during that epoch as it is during the modern epoch. In the current environmental conditions, this solar output would be insufficient to maintain a liquid ocean. Astronomers Carl Sagan and George Mullen pointed out in 1972 that this is contrary to the geologic and paleontological evidence.

According to the Standard Solar Model, stars similar to the Sun should gradually brighten over their main sequence life time. However, with the predicted solar luminosity 4 billion (4 109) years ago and with greenhouse gas concentrations the same as are current for the modern Earth, any liquid water exposed to the surface would freeze. However, the geological record shows a continually relatively warm surface in the full early temperature record of the Earth, with the exception of a cold phase about 2.4 billion years ago. Water-related sediments have been found that date to as early as 3.8 billion years ago. Hints of early life forms have been dated from as early as 3.5 billion years, and the basic carbon isotopy is very much in line with what is found today. A regular change between ice ages and warm periods is only to be found since one billion years.[citation needed]

Greenhouse hypothesis

When it first formed, Earth's atmosphere may have contained more greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide concentrations may have been higher, with estimated partial pressure as large as 1,000 kPa (10 bar), because there was no plant photosynthesis to convert the gas into oxygen. Methane, a very active greenhouse gas which reacts with oxygen to produce carbon dioxide, may have been more prevalent as well, with a mixing ratio of 104 parts per million by volume.

Based on a study of geological sulfur isotopes, in 2009 a group of scientists including Yuichiro Ueno from the University of Tokyo proposed that carbonyl sulfide (OCS) was present in the Archean atmosphere. Carbonyl sulfide is an efficient greenhouse gas and the scientists estimate that the additional greenhouse effect would have been sufficient to prevent the Earth from freezing over.

Following the initial accretion of the continents after about 1 billion years, geo-botanist Heinrich Walter and others believe that a non-biological version of the carbon cycle provided a negative temperature feedback. The carbon dioxide in the atmosphere dissolved in liquid water and combined with metal ions derived from silicate weathering to produce carbonates. During ice age periods, this part of the cycle would shut down. Volcanic carbon emissions would then restart a warming cycle due to the greenhouse effect.

According to the Snowball Earth hypothesis, there may have been a number of periods when the Earth's oceans froze over completely. The most recent such period may have been about 630 million years ago. Afterwards, the Cambrian explosion of new multicellular life forms started.

Astronomical considerations

Phanerozoic Climate Change

A minority view, propounded by the Israeli-American physicist Nir Shaviv, uses climatological influences of solar wind, combined with a hypothesis of Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark for a cooling effect of cosmic rays, to explain the paradox. According to Shaviv, the early Sun had emitted a stronger solar wind that produced a protective effect against cosmic rays. In that early age, a moderate greenhouse effect comparable to today's would have been sufficient to explain an ice-free Earth.

The temperature minimum around 2.4 billion years goes along with a cosmic ray flux modulation by a variable star formation rate in the Milky Way Galaxy. The reduced solar impact later results into a stronger impact of cosmic ray flux (CRF), which is hypothesized to lead to a relationship with climatological variations.

An alternative model of solar evolution has been proposed as an explanation for the faint young sun paradox. In this model, the early Sun underwent an extended period of higher solar wind output. This caused a mass loss from the Sun on the order of 510% over its lifetime, resulting in a more consistent level of solar luminosity. (As the early Sun had more mass, resulting in more energy output than was predicted.) In order to explain the warm conditions in the Archean era, this mass loss must have occurred over an interval of about one billion years. However, records of ion implantation from meteorites and lunar samples show that the elevated rate of solar wind flux only lasted for a period of 0.1 billion years. Observations of the young Sun-like star 1 Ursa Majoris matches this rate of decline in the stellar wind output, suggesting that a higher mass loss rate can not by itself resolve the paradox.

See also

Isua greenstone belt

Paleoclimatology

References

^ a b Sagan, C.; Mullen, G. (1972). "Earth and Mars: Evolution of Atmospheres and Surface Temperatures". Science 177: 5256. doi:10.1126/science.177.4043.52. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/177/4043/52?ck=nck. 

^ Gough, D. O. (1981). "Solar Interior Structure and Luminosity Variations". Solar Physics 74: 2134. doi:10.1007/BF00151270. Bibcode: 1981SoPh...74...21G. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1981SoPh...74...21G. 

^ Windley, B. (1984). The Evolving Continents. New York: Wiley Press. ISBN 0471903760. 

^ Schopf, J. (1983). Earth Earliest Biosphere: Its Origin and Evolution. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691083231. 

^ Veizer, Jan (March 2005). "Celestial climate driver: a perspective from four billion years of the carbon cycle". Geoscience Canada 32 (1). 

^ Walker, James C. G. (June 1985). "Carbon dioxide on the early earth". Origins of Life and Evolution of the Biosphere 16 (2): 117127. doi:10.1007/BF01809466. Bibcode: 1985OLEB...16..117W. http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/43349/1/11084_2005_Article_BF01809466.pdf. Retrieved 2010-01-30. 

^ Pavlov, Alexander A.; Kasting, James F.; Brown, Lisa L.; Rages, Kathy A.; Freedman, Richard (May 2000). "Greenhouse warming by CH4 in the atmosphere of early Earth". Journal of Geophysical Research 105 (E5): 1198111990. doi:10.1029/1999JE001134. Bibcode: 2000JGR...10511981P. 

^ "Geological sulfur isotopes indicate elevated OCS in the Archean atmosphere, solving faint young sun paradox Ueno, Y.; Johnson, M. S.; Danielache, S. O.; Eskebjerg, C.; Pandey, A.; Yoshida, N.". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106 (35): 1478414789. August 2009. doi:10.1073/pnas.0903518106. Bibcode: 2009PNAS..10614784U. 

^ Veizer, J. (1976). B. F. Windley. ed. The Early History of the Earth. London: John Wiley and Sons. p. 569. ISBN 0471014885. 

^ Zeebe, Richard (April 28, 2008). "Before fossil fuels, Earth minerals kept CO2 in check". University of Hawaii at Mnoa. http://www.hawaii.edu/cgi-bin/uhnews?20080428100407. Retrieved 2010-01-30. 

^ Walker, J. C. G.; Hays, P. B.; Kasting, J. F. (October 20, 1981). "A negative feedback mechanism for the long-term stabilization of the earth's surface temperature" (PDF). Journal of Geophysical Research 86: 97769782. doi:10.1029/JC086iC10p09776. Bibcode: 1981JGR....86.9776W. http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~archer/JournalClub/walker.1981.WHAK.pdf. Retrieved 2010-01-30. 

^ Hoffman, Paul F.; Kaufman, Alan J.; Halverson, Galen P.; Schrag, Daniel P. (August 28, 1998). A Neoproterozoic Snowball Earth. 281. pp. 13421346. doi:10.1126/science.281.5381.1342. 

^ Shaviv, N. J. (2003). "Toward a solution to the early faint Sun paradox: A lower cosmic ray flux from a stronger solar wind"]. p. 1437. doi:10.1029/2003JA009997. http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0306477v2]. 

^ Gaidos, Eric J.; Gdel, Manuel; Blake, Geoffrey A. (2000). "The faint young Sun paradox: An observational test of an alternative solar model". Geophysical Research Letters 27 (4): 501-504. doi:10.1029/1999GL010740. Bibcode: 2000GeoRL..27..501G. 

Further reading

Bengtsson, Lennart; Hammer, Claus U. (2004). Geosphere-Biosphere Interactions and Climate. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521782384. 

v  d  e

Earth-related topics

History

Age of the Earth  Geologic time scale  Faint young Sun paradox  Formation and evolution of the Solar System  Timeline of evolution  Geological history of Earth  Evolutionary history of life  Future of the Earth

Geography

and geology

Continents  Geology of solar terrestrial planets  Timezones  Degree Confluence Project  Earthquake  Extremes on Earth  Plate tectonics  Clairaut's theorem  Equatorial bulge  Structure of the Earth

Art and

Civilization

Earth in culture  History of the world  International law  Landscape art  Lexicography of Earth  List of countries  World economy

Ecology

Earth Day  Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

In fiction

Hollow Earth  A Journey to the Center of the Earth

Teleology

Creationism  Creation myth

Imaging

Google Earth  Google Maps  OpenStreetMap  Bing Maps  Nokia Maps  Yahoo! Maps  NASA World Wind  Bhuvan   Remote sensing   WikiMapia

Earth sciences portal  Solar System portal

Categories: Sun | History of climateHidden categories: All articles with unsourced statements | Articles with unsourced statements from January 2010
About the Author

I am an expert from China Hardware Suppliers, usually analyzes all kind of industries situation, such as ge terminal block , pluggable terminal blocks.

POWERS OF TEN... the unimaginable size of our universe