Using the oldest fossil micrometeorites - space dust - ever found, new research has made a surprising discovery about the chemistry of Earth's atmosphere 2.7 billion years ago.
The findings of new a new study published in the journal Nature - led by dr. Andrew Tomkins and a team from the school of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment at Monash, along with scientists from the Australian Synchrotron and Imperial College London
According to the new researcher Earth's upper atmosphere contained about the same amount of oxygen as today and that a methane haze layer separated this oxygen rich upper layer from the oxygen-starved lower atmosphere.
Dr Tompkins said, "This was an existing result because it is the first time, anyone has found a way to sample the chemistry of the ancient Earth's upper atmosphere."
The next step of this research will be to extract micrometeorites from a series of rocks, covering over a billion years of earth's history, in order to learn more about changes in atmosphere chemistry and structure across geological time. This research will be focusing particularly on the great oxidation event, which happened 24 billion years ago. When there was a sudden jump in oxygen concentration in the lower atmosphere.
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