Earth's first microbial life inhabited a world with hardly any dry land, study says
Discovery is based on study of rocks in Northwestern Australia's outback
Scientists compare the ancient Earth with the future in 1995 film Waterworld

Earth was once a 'waterworld' just like the one depicted by Hollywood in the Kevin Costner blockbuster, according to new research.

A global ocean covered the planet 3.2 billion years ago, when the first primitive microbes were emerging.

There would have been hardly any dry land – mirroring the way it looked in Waterworld, the 1995 post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie.

US scientists studied the ancient rocky Australian outback for traces of oxygen to form a picture of the ocean water from billions of years ago.

The finding could shed light on the evolution of life on Earth and explain how single-cell organisms first emerged.

'Kevin Costner, eat your heart out – you may want to start planning the prequel,' said the research team.

'Early Earth, home to some of our planet's first lifeforms, may have been a real-life "waterworld" – without a continent in sight.

'It may even have looked a bit like the post-apocalyptic, and land-free, future imagined in Costner's infamous film Waterworld.'

In the film, humanity struggles to survive after the ice caps melt and inundate the planet with water.

But, unlike in the movie, there were no fish – only tiny aquatic organisms called cyanobacteria.

The discovery, reported in the journal Nature Geoscience, is based on an analysis of rocks from Northwestern Australia's outback.

They date back to a period known geologically as the 'Paleoarchean' – spanning a period 3,600 million to 3,200 million years ago – when life consisted of nothing more complex than bacteria.

'The history of life on Earth tracks available niches,' said co-author Professor Boswell Wing, of the University of Colorado Boulder.

'If you've got a waterworld, a world covered by ocean, then dry niches are just not going to be available.'

It was identified from the chemical signatures of an ocean in a chunk of crust that's been turned on its side in the Panorama desert in the Aussie outback.

It is possible to walk across what used to be the hard, outer shell of the planet in the space of a day.

It will take you from the base to spots where water once bubbled up through the seafloor via hydrothermal vents.

The researchers described it as a 'once-in-a-lifetime opportunity' to pick up clues about the ocean water from billions of years ago.

'Today, there are these really scrubby and rolling hills that are cut through by dry river beds,' said lead author Dr Benjamin Johnson, now at at Iowa State University.

'It's a crazy place. There are no samples of really ancient ocean water lying around, but we do have rocks that interacted with that seawater and remembered that interaction.'

He likened it to looking at coffee grounds to gather information about the water that poured through it.

The researchers analysed data from more than 100 rock samples from across the dry terrain.

They were looking, in particular, for two different flavours, or 'isotopes', of oxygen trapped in stone – Oxygen-18 and the slightly less heavy Oxygen-16.

The ratio may have been a bit off in seawater 3.2 billion years ago – with just a tiny bit more Oxygen-18 than you'd see today.

Professor Wing said these are 'super sensitive' to the presence of continents.

Today's land masses are covered by clay-rich soils that disproportionately take up heavier oxygen isotopes from the water – like mineral vacuums for Oxygen-18, he explained.

There simply weren't any soil-rich continents around to suck the isotopes up, but there could have been tiny spots of land dotted about.

'There's nothing in what we've done that says you can't have teeny, micro-continents sticking out of the oceans,' Professor Wing said.

'We just don't think there were global-scale formation of continental soils like we have today.'

The researchers are now planning to scour other, younger rock formations at sites from Arizona to South Africa to see if they can find when the land masses we know today first roared onto the scene.

'Trying to fill that gap is really important,' said Dr Johnson said.

Source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8066051/Early-waterworld-3-2-billion-years-ago-without-continent-sight.html

Are u serious

I love science
I've studied science all my life but this new...
Where did the water go to? Cos according to biogeochemical cycle, nothing on earth is ever wasted cos it's a closed system.

And human beings where fishes then.. and evolution later took place abi?

I don't know why Nigerians don't like geography and earth science. I wonder if they still teach that in Secondary Schools

Interesting!!

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It’s easy to be on front page on this kind of thread.

You wey Dey type , wetin u know say u wan type for this news?

Genesis 1:2
Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the Waters!!

I forsee In the Future, The death of atheism Science and Religion working hand in hand to transcend human experience into a higher level..

It's a lie the earth is only 6 thousand years old

CHAII

The Bible don talk am before na

Genesis 1:1-2
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.

"...And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the DEEP. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the WATERS." Gen 1:2

The bible is very clear in the book of Genesis that the earth was a 'waterworld'

Reading Genesis 1: 6 - 10 will make you understand how God separated the waters on the earth from the waters in the firmament, and how he demarcated the waters on earth to bring about dry ground.

6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
9 And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.

I don't have anything to say

As it is written Gen 1:2

Gibberish, don't bother reading

G

Before opening this thread, i knew if the OP is not Explorers, it has to be Macsjebs.. Only those 2 are capable of creating threads like this.

As for the topic, i thought there was nothing like earth until around over 2000 years ago but this research says 3.2 Billion years ago?. What a wawuu! Well sha it's not my business. All i wanna do is live for the moment and enjoy my own time on earth as much as i can. This moment will still become history for the upcoming ones in years to come...

Gccf

even tho i am agnostic . we cant deny someone or something created this world. too bad we cant know his reason or though process. he cleary ain't the one described in all the world religions

Hmmmmm. Another story

na una papa papa papa papa papa tell una d story?

FuckThaMod:

Where did the water go to? Cos according to biogeochemical cycle, nothing on earth is ever wasted cos it's a closed system.

Water can turn to gas

SoftChordz:
And human beings where fishes then.. and evolution later took place abi?

According to evolutionary.science, humans evolved from rodent like creatures that arose some 65-70 million years ago.

1.In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2.Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

The Bible has said it all but ppl choose not to believe. People have seen the attributes of God especially in this age. I wonder what excuse they will give on the last day.

And one idiot will tell me there's no God
Mtch3ww

FuckThaMod:
I love science
I've studied science all my life but this new...
Where did the water go to? Cos according to biogeochemical cycle, nothing on earth is ever wasted cos it's a closed system.

Reserve your "love" for God.

Some of the things people call science today are not actually science but propaganda.

Actual science basically stands for four things: Observation >> Hypothesis >> Experiment >> Theory. But today they like to bypass some of these things and teach us nonsense with projected, manipulated simulations.

Now going back to the case of the Earth being totally covered by water. Why is this a new fact? Is this not what God has already told us thousands of years back through the Bible? In the very second verse of the Bible - Genesis 1:2 "Now the earth was formless and empty, and there was darkness upon the surface of the watery deep, and God's spirit was moving about over the surface of the waters."

See? 1) The earth was empty. 2) And there was only darkness then. 3) The earth was covered by a watery deep. And 4) God's spirit started working on the waters in other to shift it one side so that the land can appear, and creating other things.

Coming to your question "Where did the water go?"

The answer is that the water didn't go, but God caused high mountains and hills to rise and deep ocean and sea levels to descend thereby creating large "earthen bowels" to hold in the waters while given much space for bare land. (Water space is still much larger than land space. They say water cover 70% of the Earth surface)

That was what the Bible said In Genesis chapter 1

if only equal devotion and attention could be given to sea exploration just like space exploration...science would've record more milestone and breakthrough, i strongly believe all all the answers we need is down there in the deep seas...

the bible holds account of the destruction of the earth by water, which means all aquatic biology was preserved during this period and we were meant to understand by archeological findings that human beings that existed that time were super humans (thats explains the technology of Noah's ark and his ability to gather all animals in two).

Just imagine for a second the kind of power this aquatic life have preserved through this period and still in existence...the powers and knowledge these biological enclave in the seas holds could change the way we perceive life on earth.

Genesis 1:1 King James Version (KJV)
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth