Anushka C Current Event

Anushka Canfield

Ducks

Rocks Hold Clues to Ancient Die-Off

or

https://student.societyforscience.org/article/rocks-hold-clues-ancient-die-offs

Kathiann Kowalski

Science News for Students

7:00AM, December 29, 2015

How did you think Earth would die? By the sun exploding from its own mass or aliens invading? No. Climate change (Global Warming) is a big problem facing Earth right now. The gas that we use to fill fuel for our cars, heating up our houses, factories, etc. Is killing the Earth we call home. Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses are getting trapped in the atmosphere and raising the temperature by 2 degree celsius every time carbon dioxide doubles. That may not sound like a lot, but you have no idea what this damage is doing.                                                                                                                        

Ever heard of Prasinophytes? They are microscopic, algae like organisms, that only appears in huge groups in fossils when a huge amount of die-offs happen. Geologists from UCLA found an ancient rock in Great Britain that contains huge clusters of fossilized Prasinophytes. With so many fossilized Prasinophytes found that would mean a huge amount of organised died around 200 million years ago. With all of the Prasinophytes in the ancient rock, geologists have found a way to predict why it happened and when It did. The predicament was climate change.

What we know so far about Global Warming; ice glaciers melting, unstandable lack of oxygen, and polar bears dying, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. With the air temperature rising higher each time due to all of the carbon dioxide released into atmosphere, the more lack of oxygen we have, more forest fires due to the new heat, less vegetation for plants meaning organisms at the lower part of the food web who are herbivores would die out causing a huge trophic cascade and create the start of a mass-extinction all over the world. All of this catastrophe would only happen if people found a new way to travel/do things without using so much carbon dioxide we would probably have way more time on Earth. Aradhna Tripati stated that the geologists have estimated that we have “only 50-100 years” until mass climate change will occur unless the 400 ppm level of carbon dioxide goes down tremendously.

Geologists got their data for estimating the huge climate change from the ancient rock they found in Great Britain. By gathering this rock they hoped they could try an experiment to testify why all of these Prasinophytes were found and why there was a huge mass extinction approximately 200 million years ago. In order to find out, they measured the sea temperature by finding the mass of the rock. Their first step was drilling holes. Aradhna Tripati’s student drilled holes in different areas and gathered different piles of dust to weigh. Next they calculated the share of dense to light calcium carbonate (CaCO3) molecules found in each sample of rock powder. After they created a equation from the data they collected from the ancient rock they created a experiment. Once they tested out their equation they went to the ancient rock and they figured out the temperature the rock levels in the rock they found, which actually was pretty close to a computer simulation.

This article is outstanding. I chose this article because I thought that as a future scientist and astronomer I would have to learn how it all started from, the Earth. I also chose this article because I wanted to know what is happening to our Earth and how we could stop it, also because I love fossils! The fact that the world is dying due to all of the carbon dioxide left into the sky is terrifying, yet at the same time intriguing. I agree with what Kathiann Kowalski, the author, has written. This article taught me so much about learning about Prasinophytes all the way to learning about how the world’s going to die because of humans.

This article of rocks led me to new ideas about pros and cons. Since the world is set on a timer would that mean that scientists would have enough time to see if Mars is sustainable to live on or would that mean we would destroy that planet just like we are going to with Earth? The only pro I can think of having the knowledge of knowing when we are going to die is that, we could try to lower the amount of carbon dioxide, but knowing humans that’d probably never happen.  

Ancient Rock founded in Great Britain