Fuzzy and Nutz are helping us discover our
own past- from the worst jobs in history to
living alongside dinosaurs, it's time to take
a look at the worst natural disasters in Earth's
history...
The earth is the only planet we know of that
supports life, but throughout its history
that life has had some really close calls.
But life never came closer to being wiped
out completely than it did during the Permian-Triassic
extinction event.
Because it took place over 250 million years
ago it's been difficult for scientists to
pinpoint the exact cause, but most agree that
an event known as the Siberian Traps eruptions
was a huge culprit in what scientists call
'the Great Dying'.
The Siberian Traps were a huge volcanic formation
in what is present-day Siberia that began
to erupt towards the end of the Permian period
just over 250 million years ago.
The exact cause for the eruptions remain unknown,
though some scientists think that they were
triggered by a massive asteroid impact like
that which may have killed off the dinosaurs,
while others believe it was a ticking time
bomb all along just waiting to go off.
Whatever the cause, the Siberian Traps eruptions
lasted for 2 million years, and left behind
720,000 cubic miles (3 million cubic kilometers)
of lava and volcanic rock- that's more than
enough to cover the entire United States in
several feet of red-hot magma!
To make matters worse, the underground volcanoes
erupted underneath several hundred meters
of coal deposits, the remains of millions
of years of plant and animal life, which ignited
the largest firestorm the world has ever seen.
This resulted in an environmental catastrophe,
and acid rain with the PH of raw lemon juice!
An incredible 96% of all marine life and 70%
of all land creatures died in the years that
followed, and it is the only known mass extinction
of the most robust of all animal life: insects.
Life got off lucky, and despite the devastation
the dinosaurs would evolve from the survivors
and come to rule the world.
But way, way back in Earth's history life
ended almost before it even got a chance to
begin!
In a disaster known as Snowball Earth, the
Earth's climate begun to suddenly cool 850
million years ago, and as the ice grew it
reflected more sunlight back into space, which
resulted in even more cooling.
In what scientists believe was a runaway process,
the earth became a giant snowball with ice
up to 1 kilometer thick in places!
Though life consisted mostly of single-celled
organisms, it was almost completely eradicated
and it wasn't until the discovery of deep-sea
hydrothermal vents that scientists could explain
how any life survived to evolve at all.
Taking refuge in deep-sea vents though life
did survive, and a gradual increase in volcanism
began to release more and more CO2 into the
atmosphere, warming the planet out of its
icy death grip.
Volcanoes, acid rain, ice ages... the earth
has been through a lot, but it has never been
through anything more violent than it did
when it was just freshly formed.
As a young planet over 4.5 billion years ago
the Earth was still in its formative stage,
under a constant rain of asteroid impacts
known as the Heavy Bombardment Period.
Devastating as they were, all these comet
and asteroid impacts actually helped bring
water and a precious metals to earth to make
it the world we know today.
But then one day the young earth suffered
the greatest natural disaster in its history,
an event known as the Theia impact.
With a second, smaller proto-planet sharing
a very close orbit to the Earth, only one
of the two planets would end up surviving,
and about 4.5 billion years ago Earth's smaller
companion, called Theia by scientists, was
on a collision course with the Earth.
The force of the impact knocked the earth
into its current tilt, and the debris of the
explosion would form into the Earth's moon.
Devastating, but it's thanks to Theia that
we have seasons, and a moon that helps stabilize
our orbit as we travel through space!
The Earth has taken some pretty bad hits,
and lucky for us we weren't around to see
the greatest natural disasters in its history.
But we're actually pretty lucky to be here
at all, and it's worth taking a closer look
at those times life almost went extinct completely...
