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Early Earth Atmosphere Formation

Earth is like our incubation sphere, we live and we breathe beneath the atmosphere of our lovely home planet, all the energy within our planetary atmosphere get recycled in sustainable way. It is indeed exciting to know more how our atmosphere works.


Atmospheric Composition

It is no longer surprising that our atmosphere consists of various chemical and comes with multiple layer with each layer have different characteristics, yes we have atmosphere like our own partly because of earth gravity itself, that the closer we are to the center of the earth, the more dense air and atmosphere.

The overall earth atmosphere consists of 78% Nitrogen, 21% Oxygen and the rest 1% are for other gas chemical including Carbon dioxide, Helium, Argon, Water Vapor, etc.



Image Source : bbc.co.uk


Early Atmosphere of Earth

We cannot separate the formation of the Earth's atmosphere from the beginning of the process of forming the planet itself. It is estimated that the beginning of the formation of this earth, in the form of a rock mass that is surrounded by gas and does not contain water. Earth's gravity increases the pressure. This results in heavy materials such as iron being compressed and sinking into the earth, while lighter materials will emerge and float to the surface to form the Earth's crust.


Earth was formed around 4.6 billion years ago from gases and solids, there was almost no atmosphere at first and the surface was molten, lava oceans everywhere and of course the temperature was so hot but eventually cooling down. Then about 3.5-3.6 billion years ago when the solid crust was starting to form in the planet surface, the atmosphere mainly formed through gases spewed from volcanoes including methane, ammonia (NH3), hydrogen sulfide, water vapor steam and CO2 about 10 up to 200 times as much carbon dioxide as today’s atmosphere and perhaps Nitrogen.



As the water vapor produced by volcanoes condensed,along with the formation of the atmosphere, clouds began to exist when they were swept by the solar wind towards Earth. Then the Earth cools down and the water vapor forms thick clouds in the atmosphere.


Over time and in the period of millions of years the cloud cools, water vapor condenses, then becomes a very heavy rain that floods the earth and then cools the rocks on the surface of the planet earth. That was the initial process of the formation of the premier atmosphere on planet Earth.

The rain creates body of water which allow the CO2 to dissolve within the body of water, resulting in the formation of carbon sediments in the seabeds and eventually become the foundation of organism and other chemical reaction sufficient to support the emergence of plant and animal life started about 2.7 billion years ago.



Image Source : Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc


In this stage photosynthetic organisms that can survive the amount of dissolved CO2 and sun radiationemerged that release oxygen into the atmosphere. The first organisms that carry out photosynthesis on this earth are cyanobacteria which slowly increase the level of O2 atmosphere to 20% as it is today while decrease the CO2 .


Source : gramedia.com


When the organism die it trapped the carbon component along with the sediments of their body creating sedimentary rock and fossil fuels.


Okay..But that still doesn’t explain why Nitrogen (N) is the most abundance element of earth atmosphere?

The simple answer to this is because Nitrogen (N) is very stable in the atmosphere and it has to do with bonds of the N atom because of its ability to form a triple bond with its self, and other elements and therefore there are a lot of energy in the bond that it hard to breaks and so it’s not reactive with other element in the surface even with solar radiation compared to oxygen(O) which more reactive.


“It is also important to know that both N and O are intimately involved with the cycle of life on the planet, but that chemicals cycle through this material on a short time scale relative to the geological processes that have, over time, made the earth what it is today (compositionally and physically). N and O are found in the living biosphere and fossil organic matter (and both are soluble in sea water too)”

-Dr. Ken Rubin, Assistant ProfessorDepartment of Geology and Geophysics University of Hawaii


Sources :

  1. Seeds, Michael A. Dan Dana E. Backman. 2010. Horizons: Exploring The Universe Eleventh Edition. USA : Brooks/Cole Cengange Learning.

  2. Admiranto, A. Gunawan. 2000. Menjelajahi Tata Surya. Yogyakarta : Kanisius.

  3. https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/7839/atmospheric-temperature-trends-1979-2005

  4. "Earth’s Atmosphere: Layers, Composition and Formation." (n.d.). Dashamlav.com. Retrieved 30 April 2022 from https://dashamlav.com/earth-atmosphere-layers-composition-formation/


 
 
 

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