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The atmosphere of Earth is composed of a layer of gas mixture that surrounds the Earth's planetary surface (both lands and oceans ), known collectively as air, with variable quantities of suspended aerosols and particulates (which create weather features such as clouds and hazes ), all retained by Earth's gravity.
The Earth's atmosphere was also vastly different in composition from today's: the prebiotic atmosphere was a reducing atmosphere rich in methane and lacking free oxygen. The earliest known life , mostly represented by shallow-water microbial mats called stromatolites , started in the Archean and remained simple prokaryotes ( archaea and ...
Earth formed around 4.54 billion years ago, approximately one-third the age of the universe, by accretion from the solar nebula. [4] [5] [6] Volcanic outgassing probably created the primordial atmosphere and then the ocean, but the early atmosphere contained almost no oxygen.
The atmosphere of the early Earth is not well understood. Most geologists believe it was composed primarily of nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and other relatively inert gases, and was lacking in free oxygen. There is, however, evidence that an oxygen-rich atmosphere existed since the early Archean.
The experiment. The Miller–Urey experiment [1] (or Miller experiment [2]) was an experiment in chemical synthesis carried out in 1952 that simulated the conditions thought at the time to be present in the atmosphere of the early, prebiotic Earth. It is seen as one of the first successful experiments demonstrating the synthesis of organic ...
Early Earth is loosely defined as encompassing Earth in its first one billion years, or gigayear (Ga, 10 9 y), [1] from its initial formation in the young Solar System at about 4.55 Ga to some time in the Archean eon in approximately 3.5 Ga. [2] On the geologic time scale, this comprises all of the Hadean eon, starting with the formation of the ...
Earth has a dynamic atmosphere, which sustains Earth's surface conditions and protects it from most meteoroids and UV-light at entry. It has a composition of primarily nitrogen and oxygen. Water vapor is widely present in the atmosphere, forming clouds that cover most of the planet.
The pale orange dot, an artist's impression of the early Earth which is believed to have appeared orange through its hazy methane rich prebiotic second atmosphere, being somewhat comparable to Titan's atmosphere. The prebiotic atmosphere is the second atmosphere in the geological history of Earth, present almost entirely during the Archean eon.