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The Elsa Age, a frozen Earth


Can you imagine what would happen if Elsa didn't learn to control her powers? If you didn't have seen "Frozen", nevermind, it's just a joke, but for the people who did see the film, that's a pretty close idea of what the Earth would look about 600 million years ago. An immense snowball. How did it happen? Why? Well, we are still not sure about how those extreme phenomenon started, but we know a few things about this period where the Earth was completely frozen. - We know that our climate is controlled by some feedbacks and cycles, particulary in this case we talk about the ice albedo feedback, the water cycle and the carbon dioxine cycle. - We know that normally during an ice age, ice can't reach the tropics, which remain warm.

- We know that about 600 millions years ago there was life on Earth, like cyanobacterias.

So, how was possible that all Earth was covered in ice, with life under it?

As we said before, normally during an ice age the tropics remain warm, but there are plenty of proof that during "The Elsa Age" there was ice in Namibia, in the form of dropstones. Those stones were formed in that specific period and time, as shown by Kirschvink. But how?

Prof. Mikhail Budyko proved with models and calculus that there's a breaking point of the ice albedo feedback. There's a point where the ice that cover the earth reflect so much heat that it's impossible to unstop the ice from growing, covering the entire Earth, creating a runway freeze that can never stop. This is called the Budyko's paradox. So, what did make the Earth warmer?

The answer is in one of the most powerful force in nature: volcanos. Volcanos stayed hot even during "The Elsa Age", and we know volcanos release carbon dioxine in the atmosphere. What happened? Volcanos released toons of carbon dioxine in the air, but since there wasn't liquid water there was no clouds and no rain, so carbon dioxine coudn't drop. This caused a global warming much more powerful that what we expereince today, so powerful it could melt the ice. With the return of liquid water, rains and storms began to flow over earth, causing the carbon dioxine to fall, mixing with the soil, which explained the thick layer of calcium carbonate right above the dropstones, as we can see in Namibia. The theory of Hoffmann and Schrag was proved.

And what about life? How could life survive with such a sequence of exstreme events?

Life is powerful. It can adapt to whatever environment. Chris McKay found evidence of cyano-bacteria in the lat place you can imagine: the Antarctica. Which has almost the sam condition of the Earth during "The Elsa Age". So, it's possible for life to survive, but how? McKay found also that when ice freeze very slowly it became trasparent as glass, therefore sun can maintain its optical proprieties, making possible for cyano-bacteria and other photosynthetic life to live and thrive, ready to evolve when the ice was finally gone.

All this can be synthesize with this diagrams:

The lessonsunderneath this important time in our climate story is that Earth is capable of selfregulating, with a series of mechanisms that work together, can we say the same for us?

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