The Right Planet: How Earth's Properties Allowed Us to Make Fire.

The Right Planet: How Earth's Properties Allowed Us to Make Fire. *Note: This article is from the book Firemaker: How Humans Are Designed to Harness the Power of Fire. The size of the Earth is very appropriate; it is not so small that its gravity is weak and unable to preserve the atmosphere, nor is it large so that gravity is stronger and has a stronger atmosphere with toxic gases. Frank Press and Raymond Siever, Earth (New York: W. H. Freeman, 1986), 4. Figure 2.1: Earth as seen from the World Space Station in 2016. That path cannot be man-made, but it is the product of great facilities from nature and the compatibility of things; the voluntariness of metals, the presence of their raw sources, and the fact that heat was sufficient to melt these metals from their raw sources by fire from charcoal. But nature has provided another very important contribution to mankind and to its adaptation to fire; that is, to preserve the Earth's atmosphere with proper fire-setting qualities. The right atmosphere The right planet for fire and its use by beings like us should have an atmosphere that supports breathing and fire. Although not properly appreciated, the weather conditions necessary to breathe are different from those needed to ignite fires, and it may seem more likely that there will be a planet with an atmosphere that supports fires but not breathing (such as the top of Mount Everest chains), or that supports breathing but not burning, or neither. The key point is that the “spread” (sustainability) of fire is determined by different atmospheric factors than those that ensure oxygen enters the lungs. In a NASA-funded paper, the authors comment: “The flame propagation mechanism consists of a complex reaction of heat diffusion and transfer, as well as chemical processes within the fuel material itself and the surrounding gaseous state...The rate of flame propagation on a flammable solid surface is reduced by the presence of inert gases in the atmosphere....” In another NASA-funded paper, "A habitable atmosphere that does not support combustion," McHale commented: "It has been discovered that if the heat capacity of the atmosphere can rise to about 50 kcal/h for the mass of combustion, this atmosphere does not support the combustion of any ordinary material. Many properties in the environment determine the rate of spread of the flame, and a simple relationship with the heat capacity can be obtained because the material used is inert and physically acts to inhibit the combustion process. In any case, the atmosphere plays more different roles to sustain life than to support combustion. Its function as a life-supporter requires pressure (2.5 Pa - 130 mmHg - or more) of oxygen sufficient to maintain oxygen pressure in the blood. Other dilute gases, if physiologically inactive such as nitrogen, have little effect on this process. Because the factors that influence the introduction of oxygen into the lungs (such as atmospheric pressure of oxygen, currently 160 mmHg) and the factors that influence the spread of fire (including oxygen, currently 21%, and the presence of other gases in the atmosphere) are different, it is possible to design an atmosphere capable of keeping oxygen drawn through the lungs but not allowing combustion. Douglas Drysdale says: "It is possible to design an atmosphere that supports life and not ignition. If the oxygen level drops by about 12%, it will not support human activities (except for high-altitude nations), but if the pressure of this atmosphere rises to 1.7 units of atmospheric pressure, the oxygen pressure will rise to 160 mmHg. The use of these atmospheres has been considered for use on spaceships for example. Nitrogen is a very effective mitigating agent, and tests by the U.S. Navy suggest that fire can be extinguished if the oxygen/nitrogen mixture changes by adding more nitrogen to the atmosphere, even while maintaining an oxygen pressure of 160 mmHg, but ideally supporting human breathing. Because combustion is fundamentally different from pulling oxygen through the lungs, the fact that the atmosphere supports both has major implications. It is the consistency that allowed the human race to use fire for the first time, and then make its technological journey from the Stone Age to the 21st century. It is important to note that the thermal capacity of nitrogen cannot be lower than it is or it is difficult to control fire in ambient conditions. Because nitrogen is important to give the atmosphere density as well as to protect the oceans from evaporation, its thermal capacity is one of the elements granted by nature and made man able to control fire. In summary, the current atmosphere is suitable, for a variety of reasons, for sustaining fire and supporting human oxidative metabolism. On the one hand, total atmospheric pressure (currently 760 mmHg) cannot increase or the effort to breathe will increase very much.5 And on the other hand, the risk of fires happening.6 On the other hand, it cannot be of lower origin because the oceans will have evaporated for a long time. Automatic combustion Taking into account the enormous heat generated by combustion, as well as the fact that our bodies are made up of reduced carbon compounds, a question has been raised recently in previous chapters: Why don’t we burn automatically? The fires in the forests are strong evidence of the huge amount of positional energy (hydrodynamics) that hides in them. It is claimed that in the wet era – the Carboniferous – when the land was made up of huge swamps and early amphibians crawled into the water margins of lakes and streams – the oxygen level was 30% or slightly higher. This is a large percentage compared to what it is now. Image 2-2: Fortunately, our planet is suitable for fire, but not for spontaneous combustion. James Lovelock found that the level of oxygen in the atmosphere if more than 25%, as well as 30%10 can cause fires today even in tropical rainforests. So controlling atmospheric fire ideally pressurizing with oxygen over 25% would be problematic. Current ambient levels of close to 21% are almost ideal for fire control, high enough to catch fire, but not too high to make the fire uncontrollable.11 The reason why humans or trees don’t spontaneously burn 21% oxygen (oxygen pressure ?160 mmHg) is because it was mentioned earlier in Chapter 1 that both oxygen and carbon are relatively inert at ambient temperatures due to their characteristic atomic shape, which significantly impairs their effectiveness.12 Weak oxygen activity makes it possible to maintain high metabolic rates in mammals on our planet. This means that 21% oxygen in our atmosphere is required to provide energy-hungry organisms that breathe air (such as mammals, birds, flying insects, etc.) with enough oxygen to meet their metabolic needs.13 At the same time, it does not lead to spontaneous combustion. As Roman Boulatov says, “The biosphere benefits greatly from oxygen inertness because it allows highly reduced organic matter to exist in a highly oxidized atmosphere.”14 Ironically, chemical oxygen inactivity is a problem for life as well as a benefit. "This inactivity also means that rapid aerobic oxidation will only occur if the energy placed in the system exceeds internal kinetic barriers (such as heat used to initiate fire) or that the reaction is catalyzed"15 by enzymes containing iron or copper ions at active sites.16 Another element of coincidence in nature is that atoms of transition metals, such as iron and copper, have the exact right atomic properties to activate oxygen – gently – for chemical reactions. In fact, all the enzymes that deal with oxygen in the body, even those that do not include in the activation of oxygen in particular, like hemoglobin (which plays a role in oxygen transport), use atoms of transition elements. So the body was able to overcome the inactivity of oxygen at ambient temperatures by means of unique properties. Oxygen inertness is suitable in many ways for organisms that breathe air to obtain oxygen in its gaseous form from the atmosphere: it allows oxidative energy to be used in the body and prevents us from spontaneous combustion, and allows the use of controlled fire. It is important to note that the inactivity of oxygen at ambient temperatures is a coincidence of nature and is particularly relevant for air-breathing organisms like us. It prevents us from spontaneous combustion and at the same time allows fire to be controlled. The right size planet. All the unique elements that have co-ordinated in nature to contribute to the development of technology and fire would not have been feasible without the presence of a rocky planet of a suitable size as Earth. If the planet has a stable water atmosphere and an atmosphere suitable for life as we have talked about before, it must have a size and mass as well as a gravitational field very close to Earth19, and with a similar initial geophysical loss of time, its gravity should be strong enough to permanently maintain heavy gas elements such as nitrogen and oxygen. Figure 2-3: The ground is the right size to support the fire and the two-footed animals using the fire. But one thing is even more remarkable: a planet called Golilocks that is just as massive and even as attractive as our current planet would be in terms of gravity, enough to sustain an atmosphere that supports fire and bio-breathing, and also suitable for carbon-based organisms of our size and design that are erect and run on two lists. Planets the size and mass of the Earth are suitable for the coincidence of designing two-footed animals with the same dimensions as humans capable of exploiting fire as well as providing the appropriate atmosphere that supports combustion and breathing.20 Metal Availability and Use Technological development requires not only a planet of suitable size and a supportive atmosphere to breathe and ignite fire, but also abundant and easy use of minerals. Although some complex civilizations have achieved breakthroughs without the use of minerals, including the Mayan civilization, it is highly suspicious that there are organisms anywhere in the universe capable of developing a technological civilization remotely similar to ours without the use of minerals. At normal temperatures on the ground, metals have high tensile strength such as copper and iron (which almost means that the surrounding is hard to form21) but are also remarkably flexible (meaning that they can be formed under the influence of tensile strength, or the ability to pull metal in the form of wire22). At temperatures above ambient, the metal becomes malleable (including steel where tensile strength is lost at temperatures above 400oC), while at temperatures below zero percentile it becomes much brittle. Not only did metals – because of tensile strength – pour into powerful tools useful for multiple purposes, but also as electrical conductors. Because of their flexibility, they could be pulled into strong thin wires. A range of features made it possible to build generators and electric motors. Without the dual characteristics of ductility and electrical conductivity there would be no electric era, and it is doubtful that human society evolved from the steam era in the early 19th century. Its versatility is unlimited, including transportation, heating, lighting, communications, and calculations. Electric power is now the cornerstone of modern industrial society.”24 Figure 2.4: Copper wire, a requirement in the development of electric motors. The whole electrical age has been a gift of the physical properties of metals, especially copper metal. The convenience of the metal conductor due to its combination of ductility and electrical properties is a remarkable fact. Not only does its useful strength and rigidity at ambient temperatures make a lot of metals – especially copper is the best conductor ever – work as conductors at ambient temperatures better than high temperatures. Copper, for example, which is still important for generators and electric motors, delivers electricity 10 times more efficiently than it does. Copper really has the perfect fit for applications in electrical appliances: self-strength, rigidity, and flexibility of copper wires make it easy to work with. Copper wires are easy to manufacture without the need for special tools or connecting wires. Its flexibility has made it easy to integrate, and its rigidity has contributed to keeping the connections in place accurately. Its good strength has made it easy to pull the wire through compressed places, including wire ducts. It can be bent or folded without breaking. It can cut and is less dangerous. Copper also resists cracks more than aluminum or iron. In an article about copper published on the site about its use: The characteristic properties of copper made it a valuable compound for our future. It has good ability to regulate heat and electricity, irreplaceable in standing power – from solar panels to wind turbines. It can be recycled 100% – making it an eco-friendly material. It is a shame that only 1 trillion pounds of copper can be mined since the beginning of human history – and it is mostly recycled. Almost half of the amount of recycled copper comes from used tools that have been recycled for thousands of years. In fact, one of the wonders of the ancient world, the Colossus of Rhodes, is an ancient sculpture on the entrance to Rhodes Harbour in ancient Greece, and is said to be made of copper, but no small amounts remain since it was recycled to make other tools.27 Figure 2.5: There is an abundance on Earth of some minerals that have helped In the making of the modern present perhaps by the use of fire. Nature provided a helping hand in the development of mining. Minerals were not discovered in the first place, and their magical properties would not have been known had their ores not been abundant and accessible in crustal rocks. Their abundance and presence in crustal layers depend on multiple tectonic processes to be fully compatible, such as magma, hydrothermal processes and metamorphic processes.28 If the properties of mineral ores were to be formed, then the mineral atoms in the Earth's crust, if the density were to be different from the crust, etc. More than a century ago, Alfred Russell Wallace alluded to the same opportunity: “The 7 oldest minerals are gold, silver, copper, iron, tin, lead, and mercury. They are all widely found in rocks. Most of them are present in their pure form, and can be easily obtained from their ores, leading to their use from very early on... Each of the seven metals (and a few others of common use) has a very distinctive quality that has made it useful for certain purposes, so it has entered into our daily lives and become difficult to dispense with. Without iron or copper it would not have built an efficient steam engine. Every machine system we use now would not exist.”29 1. USAF School of Aerospace Medicine, The Combustibility of Materials in Oxygen–Helium and Oxygen–Nitrogen Atmospheres, Clayton Huggett, Guenther Von Elbe, Wilburt Haggerty, SAM–TR–66–85, Brooks Air Force Base, 1966, 7 and 14, accessed on April 1, 2016, http://archive.rubicon–foundation.org/xmlui/bitstream/handle/123456789/4600/SAM_66_85.pdf?sequence=1. 2. NASA, Habitable Atmospheres which Do Not Support Combustion, Edward McHale, 30, Alexandria, Atlantic Research (1972), https://archive.org/details/nasa_techdoc_19720014620. 3. Douglas Drysdale, An Introduction to Fire Dynamics, 3rd ed. (Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley, 2011), 377. 4. Drysdale ibid.; Clayton Hugget, “Habitable Atmospheres which do not support combustion,” Flame and Combustion 20, no. 1 (1972): 140–142; Vytenis Babrauskas and Stephen J. Grayson, Heat Release in Fires (London: Interscience Communications, 2009). On page 316 the authors comment: “The effects of pressure on the burning of combustibles has become of great interest to the U.S. Navy as a means of extinguishing fires… In a landmark paper entitled Habitable Atmospheres Which do not Support Combustion… Huggett explained that for survival humans depend on there being a minimum partial pressure of oxygen, and a minimum concentration. By contrast, the combustion process requires a minimum flame temperature to avoid extinction. This minimum flame temperature can be related to a minimum heat capacity per mole of O2, this being about 170 to 210 J/C per mole of O2. Thus, if the total pressure of the atmosphere is increased by the forced injection of an inert gas into a sealed atmosphere, it may be possible to extinguish a fire without injuring persons… In small scale pool fire tests extinction was typically achieved when the nitrogen dilutent raised the total pressure to about 1.6 atmospheres. Subsequent, engineering details have been pursued in an ambitious program of large scale tests.” 5. Richard Maynard Case and D. E. Evans, eds., Variations in Human Physiology (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1985). The work of breathing increases with the density (pressure) of the atmosphere. As the authors comment on pages 105: “The maximum voluntary ventilation is approximately proportional to the reciprocal of the square root of the density. This means at a depth of 30 m (4 bar) the maximum voluntary ventilation is only 50% of that at sea level. … [The work of breathing is increased for another reason] as the density of the air breathed increases, so the flow of air in the airways becomes more turbulent, resulting in an increase in airway resistance. In addition, an increased density of gases hinders their intra–alveolar diffusion … As a result of these factors, whereas maximum work capacity at sea level is normally limited by cardiovascular transport of oxygen, the limitations [of increased pressure/density] are largely ventilatory.” 6. Increasing atmospheric pressure much above the current level of 760 mm mg (1 bar) at sea level (keeping the composition the same i.e., 21 percent oxygen and 79 percent nitrogen) also increases the danger of fire. As reported in the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) hand book section 6.5.2: “The burning rate when the pressure is equivalent to [3 bar] is twice that of sea level air, and is 2.5 times as fast at [6 bar].” (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce, NOAA Diving Manual: Diving for Science and Technology, 1991, section 6–14.) In effect hyperbaric atmospheres have a similar effect as increasing the percentage of oxygen and render the control of fire highly problematical. 7. Sanjoy M. Som, Roger Buick, James W. Hagadorn, Tim S. Blake, John M. Perreault, Jelte P. Harnmeijer, and David C. Catling, “Earth’s Air Pressure 2.7 Billion Years Ago Constrained to Less than Half of Modern Levels,” Nature Geoscience (2016). doi:10.1038/ ngeo2713. 8. “This is one mystery I’m asked about more than any other—spontaneous human combustion,” says Arthur C. Clarke, author of 2001, in the episode “The Burning Question” of his 1994 TV series Mysterious Universe. “Yet some cases seem to defy explanation, and leave me with a creepy and very unscientific feeling. If there’s anything more to SHC, I simply don’t want to know.” 9. Nick Lane, Oxygen: The Molecule That Made the World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). 10. James Lovelock, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), Chapter Five. 11. Ibid. 12. Monika Green and H. Allen Hill, “The chemistry of dioxygen,” Methods Enzymology 105 (1984): 3−22. 13. David C. Catling, Christopher R. Glein, Kevin J. Zahnle, Christopher P. McKay, “Why O2 Is Required by Complex Life on Habitable Planets and the Concept of Planetary ‘Oxygenation Time,’” Astrobiology 5, no. 3 (June 2005): 415–38. doi:10.1089/ast.2005.5.415. 14. Roman Boulatov, “Understanding the Reaction That Powers This World: Biomimetic Studies of Respiratory O2 Reduction by Cytochrome Oxidase,” Pure and Applied Chemistry 76, no. 2 (2004): 303–319, doi:10.1351/pac200476020303. 15. Ibid. 16. Corinna R. Hess, Richard W. D. Welford, and Judith P. Klinman, “Oxygen–Activating Enzymes, Chemistry of,” in Wiley Encyclopedia of Chemical Biology (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2008). http://doi.wiley.com/10.1002/9780470048672.wecb431. The authors comment: “Nature has developed a diverse array of catalysts to overcome this kinetic barrier. These dioxygen–activating enzymes are divided into two classes: oxygen–ases and oxidases. Oxygenases incorporate directly at least one atom from dioxygen into the organic products of their reaction. Oxidases couple the reduction of dioxygen with the oxidation of substrate. Typically, enzymes that react with dioxygen contain transition metal ions and/or conjugated organic molecules as cofactors.” 17. Catling et al. 18. Thomas Gold, The Deep Hot Biosphere (New York: Copernicus, Springer–Verlag New York, Inc., 1999). 19. “Surface Gravity,” Wikipedia, May 12, 2016, accessed May 17, 2016, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_gravity. Gravity = M/R2 where M = mass and R = radius of the planet. 20. NASA, “NASA’s Kepler Mission Announces Largest Collection of Planets Ever Discovered,” 16–051, Kepler and K2, May 10, 2016, accessed May 16, 2016, http://www.nasa.gov/press–release/nasas–kepler–mission–announces–largest–collection–of–planets–ever–discovered; In Nature’s Destiny, Chapter Eleven, I wrote (some time before the Kepler mission was launched): “If the cosmos is indeed uniquely fit for life as it exists on earth then the existence of [rocky, earth–like planets] capable of harbouring life should be relatively common.” (Michael Denton, Nature’s Destiny, 95.) Although to date no planet exactly like the earth has been detected (see Mike Wall, “1st Alien Earth Still Elusive Despite Huge Exoplanet Haul,” Space.com, May 11, 2016, accessed May 16, 2016, http://www.space.com/32852–alien–earth–search–nasa–kepler–space–telescope.html), there is a widespread and growing belief that they will eventually be found (Sara Seager, “Searching for Other Earths,” The New Atlantis (Fall 2015), accessed May 16, 2016, http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/searching–for–other–earths). 21. Often defined as: “Tensile strength is a measurement of the force required to pull something such as rope, wire, or a structural beam to the point where it breaks. The tensile strength of a material is the maximum amount of tensile stress that it can take before failure, for example breaking.” From “Tensile Strength,” Wikipedia, May 1, 2015, accessed on May 23, 2016, https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensile_strength. 22. “In materials science, ductility is a solid material’s ability to deform under tensile stress; this is often characterized by the material’s ability to be stretched into a wire.” From “Ductility,” Wikipedia, May 2, 2016, accessed on May 23, 2016, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ductility. 23. Roy Beardmore, “Temperature Effects on Metal Strength,” RoyMech, November 11, 2010, accessed on April 4, 2016, http://www.roymech.co.uk/Useful_Tables/Matter/Temperature_effects.html. 24. “Electricity,” Wikipedia, May 16, 2016, accessed May 23, 2016, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity. 25. Glenn Elert, “Electric Resistance,” The Physics Hypertextbook, 1998–2015, accessed on April 4, 2016, http://physics.info/electric–resistance. 26. “Copper wire and cable,” Wikipedia, April 24, 2016 accessed on May 23, 2016, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper_wire_and_cable. 27. “About,” Copper Matters, accessed on April 4, 2016, http://www.coppermatters.org/about. 28. “Ore Genesis,” Wikipedia, May 9, 2016, accessed on May 23, 2016, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ore_genesis. 29. Wallace, The World of Life, 359–360. - Dr. Michael Denton - Translated by Rahaf Zeidan — Source: Brahin Center website - Posted on 2018-01-21 (archived at the Internet Archive) https://braheen.com/articles/fine-tuning/الكوكب-المناسب-كيف-سمحت-خصائص-الأرض-لنا-بصناعة-النار