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Science 3 August 2001:
Vol. 293. no. 5531, pp. 839 - 843
DOI: 10.1126/science.1061976
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Reports

Biogenic Methane, Hydrogen Escape, and the Irreversible Oxidation of Early Earth

David C. Catling,12* Kevin J. Zahnle,1 Christopher P. McKay1

The low O2 content of the Archean atmosphere implies that methane should have been present at levels ~102 to 103 parts per million volume (ppmv) (compared with 1.7 ppmv today) given a plausible biogenic source. CH4 is favored as the greenhouse gas that countered the lower luminosity of the early Sun. But abundant CH4 implies that hydrogen escapes to space (up-arrow space) orders of magnitude faster than today. Such reductant loss oxidizes the Earth. Photosynthesis splits water into O2 and H, and methanogenesis transfers the H into CH4. Hydrogen escape after CH4 photolysis, therefore, causes a net gain of oxygen [CO2 + 2H2O rightarrow  CH4 + 2O2 rightarrow  CO2 + O2 + 4H(up-arrow space)]. Expected irreversible oxidation (~1012 to 1013 moles oxygen per year) may help explain how Earth's surface environment became irreversibly oxidized.

1 Mail Stop 245-3, Space Science Division, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA 94035, USA.
2 SETI Institute, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA.
*   To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: catling{at}humbabe.arc.nasa.gov

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