Oxygen was not one of the essential gasses on planet Earth. From the beginning, about 3 billion years ago, the gasses present on planet Earth were limited to two types of gasses: CO2 and CH4.
Until the axis of transformation began on planet Earth 1.2 billion years ago, when the unknown soldier appeared, which is cyanobacteria, which then carried out a process that can be called according to today's concept that it polluted the atmosphere by producing a new gas, which is oxygen gas, although oxygen was a deadly poison to most anaerobic animals, it rose into the atmosphere to provide a layer of protection against the ultraviolet rays of the sun, which threatened the water on the planet's surface.
- The Great Oxidation Process:
The number of cyanobacteria began to increase in large numbers, which caused the percentage of oxygen to increase at high rates at the expense of carbon dioxide gas.
The process can be likened to a chemical or biological attack in our current era, due to the large number of animals and organisms that were killed as a result of the increase in the percentage of oxygen on planet Earth, which led to imposing a new reality on the organisms at that time, as some of them headed to the bottom of the ocean.
- The beginning of a new era:
The increase in the percentage of oxygen at the expense of carbon dioxide and methane turned our planet into a freezer. It was the beginning of the ice age on planet Earth, in addition to the effect of oxygen on the living organisms that were living on planet Earth at that time, including dinosaurs, a quarter of living organisms became extinct as a result of the increase in oxygen.
- Life gas, but it is a dangerous gas:
If we move to the modern era with the beginning of diving in the nineteenth century, cases of poisoning began to appear among divers as a result of the pure oxygen they were inhaling, in addition to other dangerous cases such as epileptic seizures and others. After that, the British Navy began mixing oxygen with nitrox to make the oxygen gas less pure and thus ensure the safety of the divers’ lives, this remained a military secret until recently.
Oxygen gas is the gas of life, there is no doubt about that, but its excess leads to poisoning and thus dangerous conditions, and its deficiency leads to suffocation.
Oxygen gas constitutes 21% of the gasses on the surface of the Earth, which is the ideal percentage, as increasing the percentage of oxygen beyond that may lead to disasters for living organisms and nature around us as well, and may even lead to the destruction of our planet, likewise, a decrease in that percentage.
The nature of oxygen gas can be summarized as a colourless gas that turns blue when it turns into a liquid. Its source is divided into two parts: plants (50%) and seas (50%), it is one of the most important reasons for life and we cannot do without it.