nick lane oxygen the molecule that made the world

Jimbo Fisher is 56, a national champion at Florida State and currently one of. Oxygen takes the listener on an enthralling journey, as gripping as a thriller, as it unravels the unexpected ways in which oxygen spurred the evolution of life and death. Alabama coach Nick Saban is 70 years old and universally revered as the greatest college football coach of all time.

The interplay between Oxygen and life has led to several important developments, including possibly the end of Snowball Earth. Yet ifĪtmospheric oxygen reached thirty-five percent in the Carboniferous, why did it promote exuberant growth, instead of rapid aging and death? However, Nick Lanes Oxygen: The Molecule that Made the World (Popular Science) argues Oxygen is even more important than simply keeping almost all of life alive. Reactive forms of oxygen, known as free radicals, are thought to cause aging in people. Fruit flies raised at twice normal atmospheric levels of oxygen live half as long as their siblings. Divers breathing pure oxygen at depth suffer from convulsions and lung injury. The strange and profound effects that oxygen has had on the evolution of life pose a riddle, which this book sets out to answer. Oxygen: The molecule that made the world (Popular Science), Nick Lane, Good Cond Number of Pages. High oxygen levels may also explain the global firestorm that contributed to the demise of the dinosaurs after the asteroid impact.

Giant spiders, tree-ferns, marine rock formations, and fossil charcoals all tell the same story. Researchers claim they could have flown only if the air had contained more oxygen than today-probably as much as thirty-five percent. Three hundred million years ago, in Carboniferous times, dragonflies grew as big as seagulls, with wingspans of nearly a meter.

Nick lane oxygen the molecule that made the world