#carbon cycle

[affectionatealbatross]

can someone explain the carbon cycle to me. . especially carbon sequestration and like the plant thing. and like all the different forms of carbon? I HATE IT

[fuckyeahfluiddynamics]

How CO2 Gets Into the Ocean

Our oceans absorb large amounts of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Liquid water is quite good at dissolving carbon dioxide gas, which is why we have seltzer, beer, sodas, and other carbonated drinks. The larger the surface area between the atmosphere and the ocean, the more quickly carbon dioxide gets dissolved.  (Video and image credit: S. Pirozzoli et al.) Read the full article

[drhoz]

Forty nine million years ago, the Arctic Ocean experienced a remarkable transformation known as the Azolla Event. During the early Eocene, the Arctic was warm and partly isolated, allowing vast mats of the freshwater fern Azolla to spread across its surface for hundreds of thousands of years. Fossil evidence from Arctic sediment cores shows repeated layers rich in Azolla remains, pollen, and organic carbon, indicating sustained blooms in a low salinity ocean capped by freshwater. Through photosynthesis, these ferns absorbed enormous quantities of atmospheric carbon dioxide, which was then buried as the plants died and sank to the seafloor. This long term carbon sequestration coincided with a measurable decline in global temperatures, detected through oxygen isotope records and changes in marine microfossils. The event occurred near the end of the Eocene climatic optimum and likely contributed to the gradual cooling trend that followed, reducing greenhouse conditions that had dominated Earth for nearly 200 million years. The Azolla Event shows how small organisms can reshape the entire planet when conditions allow. It is a reminder that Earth’s climate system can pivot on surprisingly fragile biological processes.

[sl-walker]

Hi, I realized that one of my favorite fics is in the unrevealed collection Eye-Dee-Kay and I wanted to know if you could reveal it, since your AO3 profile indicated that asking isn't rude. I can't remember the name (it's been a few months) but it's one centered on Booster Gold, where he remembers (somewhat) Pre-Crisis the first time he time-travels to the past. It was very emotional and interesting and I hope I can read it again.

It's not rude to ask! But you can actually find all of those stories unlocked on the CFAA. Seems like you might mean Stardust?

I'm pretty much always dying for feedback on those tales, tbh, if you feel like talking to me about them. LOL! 😅

[gxreyxrvxesi]

i made this for a science project and i BETTER be getting an A+++++++++++++++ on this😒😡🚬

wish me luck bc this took sm storage and took HOURS (never making a whole EDIT for a school project EVER again.)

[scifigeneration]

Ancient Mars may have had a carbon cycle − a new study suggests the red planet may have once been warmer, wetter and more favorable for life

by Elisabeth M. Hausrath, Professor of Geoscience at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Mars, one of our closest planetary neighbors, has fascinated people for hundreds of years, partly because it is so similar to Earth. It is about the same size, contains similar rocks and minerals, and is not too much farther out from the Sun.

Because Mars and Earth share so many features, scientists have long wondered whether Mars could have once harbored life. Today, Mars is very cold and dry, with little atmosphere and no liquid water on the surface − traits that make it a hostile environment for life. But some observations suggest that ancient Mars may have been warmer, wetter and more favorable for life.

Even though scientists observing the surface of Mars conclude that it was once warmer than it is today, they haven’t been able to find much concrete evidence for what caused it to be warmer. But a study my colleagues and I published in April 2025 indicates the presence of carbonate minerals on the planet, which could help solve this puzzle.

Carbonate minerals contain carbon dioxide, which, when present in the atmosphere, warms a planet. These minerals suggest that carbon dioxide could have previously existed in the atmosphere in larger quantities and provide exciting new clues about ancient Mars’ environment.

As a geochemist and astrobiologist who has studied Mars for more than 15 years, I am fascinated by Mars’ past and the idea that it could have been habitable.

Ancient carbon cycle on past Mars

Observations of Mars from orbiting satellites and rovers show river channels and dry lakes that suggest the Martian surface once had liquid water. And these instruments have spotted minerals on its surface that scientists can analyze to get an idea of what Mars may have been like in the past.

If ancient Mars had liquid water, it would have needed a much warmer climate than it has today. Warmer planets usually have thick atmospheres that trap heat. So, perhaps the Martian atmosphere used to be thicker and composed of heat-trapping carbon dioxide. If Mars did once have a thicker carbon dioxide-containing atmosphere, scientists predict that they’d be able to see traces of that atmospheric carbon dioxide on the surface of Mars today.

Today, Mars is very cold, with a thin atmosphere and dry climate. But in the ancient past, it may have been warmer and wetter, with a thicker heat-trapping atmosphere. NASA/J. Bell - Cornell U./M. Wolff - SSI via AP, File

Gaseous carbon dioxide dissolves in water, a chemical process that can ultimately contribute to formation of solid minerals at and below the surface of a planet − essentially removing the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Lots of scientists have previously tried to find carbonate minerals on the surface of Mars, and part of the excitement about a warmer, wetter early Mars is that it could have been a suitable environment for ancient microbial life.

Finding carbonates on Mars

Previous searches for carbonates on Mars have turned up observations of carbonates in meteorites and at two craters on Mars: Gusev crater and Jezero crater. But there wasn’t enough to explain a warmer past climate on Mars.

For the past few years, the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover has been traversing a region called Gale crater. Here, the rover’s chemistry and mineralogy instrument has discovered lots of the iron-rich carbonate mineral siderite.

The Curiosity rover has detected carbonates on Mars’ surface. NASA

As my colleagues and I detail in our new study about these results, this carbonate mineral could contain some of the missing atmospheric carbon dioxide needed for a warmer, wetter early Mars.

The rover also found iron oxyhydroxide minerals that suggest some of these rocks later dissolved when they encountered water, releasing a portion of their carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. Although it is very thin, the modern Martian atmosphere is still composed mainly of carbon dioxide.

In other words, these new results provide evidence for an ancient carbon cycle on Mars. Carbon cycles are the processes that transfer carbon dioxide between different reservoirs − such as rocks on the surface and gas in the atmosphere.

Potential habitats for past microbial life on Mars

Scientists generally consider an environment habitable for microbial life if it contains liquid water; nutrients such as carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, sulfur and necessary trace elements; an energy source; and conditions that were not too harsh − not too acidic, too salty or too hot, for example.

Since observations from Gale crater and other locations on Mars show that Mars likely had habitable conditions, could Mars then have hosted life? And if it did, how would researchers be able to tell?

Although microorganisms are too small for the human eye to detect, they can leave evidence of themselves preserved in rocks, sediments and soils. Organic molecules from within these microorganisms are sometimes preserved in rocks and sediments. And some microbes can form minerals or have cells that can form certain shapes. This type of evidence for past life is called a biosignature.

Collecting Mars samples

If Mars has biosignatures on or near the surface, researchers want to know that they have the right tools to detect them.

So far, the rovers on Mars have found some organic molecules and chemical signatures that could have come from either abiotic − nonliving − sources or past life.

However, determining whether the planet used to host life isn’t easy. Analyses run in Earth’s laboratories could provide more clarity around where these signatures came from.

To that end, the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover has been collecting and sealing samples on Mars, with one cache placed on the surface of Mars and another cache remaining on the rover.

These caches include samples of rock, soil and atmosphere. Their contents can tell researchers about many aspects of the history of Mars, including past volcanic activity, meteorite impacts, streams and lakes, wind and dust storms, and potential past Martian life. If these samples are brought to Earth, scientists could examine them here for signs of ancient life on another planet.

[appalachianfuturism]

Kelp Is Weirdly Great at Sucking Carbon Out of the Sky

The start-up Running Tide wants to use kelp buoys to fight climate change. The plan might not work, but it’s still a preview of our climate

“So I was pleasantly surprised when I met the leaders of Running Tide earlier this month. Far from having a hippie-dippie-ish enthusiasm about kelp, they spoke like engineers, aware of the immense scale of carbon removal that stands before them. While much of Running Tide's science remains unvetted, the researchers seem to be thinking about all the right problems in all the right ways—approaching carbon removal as an organization-level problem rather than a one-off process.

At its core, carbon removal is “a mass-transfer problem,” Marty Odlin, Running Tide’s CEO, told me. The key issue is how to move the hundreds of gigatons of carbon emitted by fossil fuels from the “fast cycle,” where carbon flits from fossil fuels to the air to plant matter, back to the “slow cycle,” where they remain locked away in geological storage for millennia. “How do you move that?” Odlin said. “What’s the most efficient way possible to accomplish that mass transfer?” The question is really, really important. The United Nations recently said that carbon removal is “essential” to remedying climate change, but so far, we don’t have the technology to do it cheaply and at scale.

Odlin, who comes from a Maine fishing family and went to college for robotics, founded Running Tide in 2017 on the theory that the ocean, which covers two-thirds of the planet’s surface, would be essential to carbon removal. At least for now, the key aspect of Running Tide’s system is its buoys. Each buoy is made of reclaimed waste wood, limestone, and kelp seedlings, materials that are meant to address the climate problem in some way: The wood represents forest carbon that would otherwise be thrown out or incinerated, the limestone helps reverse ocean acidification, and, most important, the kelp grows ultrafast, absorbing carbon from the land and sea. Eventually, the buoy is meant to break down, with the limestone dissolving and the wood and kelp drifting to the bottom of the seafloor…”

[seeking-knowledge]

just realized i never posted my finished project here. i didn’t love it, i struggle so much with digital painting and graphic design still. but i think i did a decent job for the time i had. and im just glad i was able to complete it and the Science Illustration Course. :)

zoom for quality!