Something Other Than Oxygen and Water? Is There Another Planetary Feature Necessary for Life?

And you’ll never guess what it is.

Transcript

00:00Earth tilts as it spins on its axis, but in the wide range of things we find particularly

00:09unique about our planet with regards to habitability, that's not one of the most important things

00:13for life, right?

00:14Well, ScienceAlert reports, according to a new study, a specific axial tilt may be crucial

00:19for oxygen production, one of the building blocks of intelligent life.

00:24Billions of years ago, Earth was much different than it is today.

00:26Before the great oxidation event around 2.4 to 2 billion years ago, there wasn't much

00:31oxygen here at all, so the researchers created a model that would allow them to figure out

00:35how cyanobacteria, or oxygen-producing ocean life, could have come to thrive.

00:39Several factors like increased day length, continental creation, and continental movement

00:43played their part in cyanobacterial proliferation.

00:46But axial tilt, in our planet's case, a 23.5 degree offset from the sun, created the seasons,

00:52which also had an impact on the oceans, where it created currents that mixed bodies of water

00:56all over the world, mixing that also shifted and spread out nutrients, providing food to

01:01cyanobacteria, and increasing our world's oxygen production by double.

01:05But tilt may also have a Goldilocks zone.

01:07The planet Uranus, for example, has an extreme tilt, a full 98 degrees offset from the sun,

01:13creating seasons that would be far too hectic for life to survive.