My Life on this planet.

Gaia theory To me, the previous two articles already demonstrate that the Gaia theory may exist although there are still many sceptics (e.g. New Scientist 26 October 2013, " Gaia: the verdict is ... ", p. 30-31). The Earth, animals and plants interact with each other to try to reach an balance (we don't undergo the system passively while the system adjust to our changes) and when the equilibrium is disturbed then there are consequences. But we should also consider the age of the Earth, and thus not only what it does to individuals in a short period (from the perspective of Earth: what is a thousand years?). The system works as long as there is an equilibrium so that what comes replaces what goes. The dinosaurs may have become too powerful and this may have led to their collapse, helped with natural disasters while smaller animals and plants survived as they were better able to adapt to the new environment. Scientists (and many people) fear this may happen soon wi...

Determining our destiny by changing our planet The article " Life gave Earth its continents " (New Scientist, 23 November 2013, p. 10) goes even further and claims that even the first life shaped (unknowingly) the way our planet looks like and thus our destiny: bacteria eroded land and the sediments were then washed away and sunk elsewhere to the ocean floor and deeper in the earth by plate tectonics. As these sediments contained water and in contact with the heat of the inner Earth formed steam (lots of energy), the seafloor could rise so land and continents appeared while it seems if there was no life, our planet may have looked more like one giant water planet with a few volcanoes. Thus, it seems life even shapes unknowingly its own future because, as a result of the rising of land, land organisms such as plants could emerge from bacteria that were pushed above the sea and had to adapt to a life in dry conditions or die. Also plants and animals influence ...