Dirty middle-aged white male coal miner covered in coal dust and holding a large hammer drill to his head … [+]
Despite all the debate over how much carbon is wreaking havoc on the global climate, the Earth is surprisingly carbon-poor. Carbon is only a trace element on Earth and a trace element on the Sun, the authors write. Element 6: How carbon shapes our worldwill be released next month by Princeton University Press.
Despite the problems with humanity’s use of carbon-based fossil fuels, our entire existence is based on this element’s ability to produce rich chemistry, says co-author Theodore P. Snow ( (Professor Emeritus, University of Colorado Boulder) and Don Brownlee, Professor Emeritus, University of Colorado Boulder. According to the University of Washington in Seattle,
What’s surprising is how rare carbon is across the planet. Brownlee said in his email that the total carbon abundance is only a few hundred parts per million. But on Earth, he says, carbon has certainly been an important elixir for the evolution of the complex molecules and chemical pathways that make life possible.
Ironically, the solar system’s most carbon-rich objects are not the Sun or the planets, but small objects such as comets and asteroids, planetary configurations that have avoided collisions with planets and ejection from solar orbit for more than 4 billion years. It is the remains of an element. , Snow and Brownlee write.
Still, the Earth is layered, and carbon, the sixth element on the periodic table, is present at every level, from the top of the atmosphere to the Earth’s core.
Why is Earth poor in carbon?
Earth formed in the sun’s habitable zone, where carbon doesn’t efficiently form solids, Brownlee said. Compared to typical asteroids, Earth is very low in carbon, and comets that form further away from the sun are often thought to be preserved as building blocks of solid planets, he says.
But carbon can cause trouble.
Carbon is the only chemical element that is taxed on its own. We are spending unknown billions of dollars learning how to deal with it. And we keep hearing that carbon use is destroying the planet, Brownlee says. Fossil fuel production is nature’s gift to us, but the global warming it causes has many serious effects, he says.
6th element
Future tasks
Rising temperatures due to carbon dioxide buildup will lead to rising sea levels, shifts in crop-growing areas and global weather extremes, but nothing humans can do now will destroy the planet, he says. .
And despite its relative rarity here on Earth, carbon has the ability to combine with elements to form an almost infinite number of compounds, which is probably why we chose to talk about carbon here. But is it possible that life in our solar system took a different path and was based on elements like silicon rather than carbon?
While silicon is not a rare element in the universe (it’s the seventh most abundant element in the galaxy), carbon is about four times more abundant, Snow and Brownlee note. On Earth, silicon is much more abundant than carbon (26 percent by mass), they write.
What about finding silicon base in our solar system?
Brownlee said the warm, moist, silicon-rich primordial meteorites were heated during the first few million years of the solar system’s history. We have examined thousands of lunar samples, thousands of meteorites, and even comet samples, and we have found that the silicon in these billions of years old material is involved in some kind of process that could lead to life. He said he saw no evidence that it was.
What will happen to silicon-based life outside our solar system?
Even if we had thousands of good spectra from exoplanets, we probably wouldn’t know about silicon-based life because there’s no silicon-containing gas in the atmosphere, Brownlee said. Life on Earth has created a strange atmosphere (nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide) that cannot exist through normal chemical processes, so it would be very easy for it to be discovered by extraterrestrial life, he said. To tell.
How is carbon distributed within our galaxy?
Brownlee says there is probably an optimal amount of carbon for a planet to support life, but who knows what it is? Too much can lead to bad vibes (like Venus), he says, and too little may be too little to start life with.
basic questions remain
One such question is how carbon actually gets to Earth-like planets.
Although the Sun and early solar system contained vast amounts of carbon (the fourth most abundant element after hydrogen, helium, and oxygen), the Earth was formed from a solid material, and most of the carbon atoms are in gaseous form. It was in the form of carbon oxide, Brownlee said.
This is just kind of a conundrum. 6th element highlight. Thoroughly researched and comprehensive in scope, this book will be an asset to scientific libraries for decades to come.
