Scientists Propose Solution to ‘Gaia Puzzle’
The ‘Gaia’ hypothesis proposed that living things interacting with inorganic processes somehow keep the planet in a state where life can persist – despite threats such as a brightening sun, volcanoes and meteorite strikes.
The puzzle of how this might work has divided experts for decades, but a team led by scientists from the University of Exeter have proposed a solution.
Credit: NASA
Once this happens, the system has more time to acquire further traits that help to stabilise and maintain it – a process known as “selection by survival alone”.
“We can now explain how the Earth has accumulated stabilising mechanisms over the past 3.5 billion years of life on the planet,” said Professor Tim Lenton, of the University of Exeter.
“The central problem with the original Gaia hypothesis was that evolution via natural selection cannot explain how the whole planet came to have stabilising properties over geologic timescales.”
“Instead, we show that at least two simpler mechanisms work together to give our planet with life self-stabilizing properties.”
Biosphere as a system containing lithosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere and, in the middle of those : ecosphere. Picture created according to the Gaia hypothesis’s theory.
Credit: Prosopee / Wikimedia Commons
He added: “Our findings can help explain how we came to be here to wonder about this question in the first place.”
Professor Dave Wilkinson, of the University of Lincoln, who was also involved in the research, added: “I have been involved in trying to figure out how Gaia might work for over 20 years – finally it looks like a series of promising ideas are all coming together to provide the understanding I have been searching for.”
Dr James Dyke, of the University of Southampton, also an author on the paper, said: “As well as being important for helping to estimate the probability of complex life elsewhere in the universe, the mechanisms we identify may prove crucial in understanding how our home planet may respond to drivers such as human-produced climate change and extinction events.”
Creating transformative solutions to the global changes that humans are now causing is a key focus of the University of Exeter’s new Global Systems Institute, directed by Professor Lenton, who said: “We can learn some lessons from Gaia on how to create a flourishing, sustainable, stable future for 9-11 billion people this century.”
The Gaia hypothesis, first put forward by James Lovelock in the 1970s, was named after the deity who personified the Earth in Greek mythology.
The paper, published in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution, is entitled: “Selection for Gaia across multiple scales.”
Contacts and sources:
University of Exeter
Citation: “Selection for Gaia across multiple scales.” published in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution
Source: http://www.ineffableisland.com/2018/07/scientists-propose-solution-to-gaia.html
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Come on Nasa, you can do better than that. Another CGI and different again to the rest?