News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Time flies in Google Earth’s biggest update in years. Parent comment

Re:Time flies in Google Earth’s biggest update in years by D-Coder on Thursday April 15, 2021 @07:56PM (#26827638)
Agent Smith is wrong. Every organism does this — that's how life works. Population crashes are common among many species, rabbits to rats. Trees produce a million seeds. Grasses expand into areas that juuuust barely support them. The "natural equilibrium" is not at all steady.

And let's remember that Agent Smith is itself attempting to take over the world.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Time flies in Google Earth’s biggest update in years by tediousdemise on Thursday April 15, 2021 @10:07PM (#26828558)
I don’t think other organisms have the capacity to destroy the planet and make it uninhabitable. That attribute is uniquely human.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Time flies in Google Earth’s biggest update in years by joycian on Friday April 16, 2021 @02:28AM (#26830305)
There's some evidence that around 2B years ago microbes decreased the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere so much by overpopulation that 99% of the biosphere died.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Time flies in Google Earth’s biggest update in years by memorysafety on Friday April 16, 2021 @05:00AM (#26831378)
I guess you mean The Great Oxygen Extinction Event (2.4-2.0 Ga).

In that case, it's presumed it was indeed a massive extinction (but no data to quantify any % over, due to no microbial fossils preserved).

... But for a different reason. It wasn't due to decrease in oxygen levels; contrary to that. At that time, oxygen was being first ever introduced into the atmosphere. This has left a unique geological trace we observe everywhere across the planet: the white sedimentary + red rust striped 2 Ga rocks.

The "microbes" were the first photosynthesisers. The oxygen was a toxic byproduct. Resistance to it had to be learned by evolution, and that learning took ~1e8 years. Many of life didn't manage to and went extinct.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Time flies in Google Earth’s biggest update in years by joycian on Saturday April 17, 2021 @03:17PM (#26846701)
Yes, I think you're right, I should've written increased. Thanks for the correction :).
[ Parent | on HN ]