From the cosmic and evolutionary vantage point with our current level of knowledge, we have identified the Great Oxygenation Event (GOE) of some 2.4 billion years ago on Earth as a fundamental cataclysmic event that simultaneously wiped out most of life on Earth－except for a select group－and improved and diversified the remaining life.
GOE lasted a few hundred million years, but at the end of it, Earth’s atmosphere became what it is today, with its 21% oxygen. And that announced bad news for the majority of creatures living on it at that time. You see, most life at that time lived on an atmosphere of hydrogen, nitrogen and methane, for whom oxygen was a toxic killer. But for the cyanobacteria, that was no sweat. They loved it and through photosynthesis, they produced a lot of it (oxygen).
As this oxygen expanded in the atmosphere, a number of events took place: most non-oxygen (anaerobic) life disappeared, the cyanobacteria expanded, which brought more oxygen, and finally a long ice-age settled in. All because of the oxygen expansion. As if, most life was destroyed in a flood of oxygen, except for a select group of creatures, which became stronger, more diversified, and fully organized into what we know today. Even though I have taken a lot of shortcut, this is basically the Standard Model, which corresponds to the observed evidence－often called ‘smoking gun’ proof. In an abstract way, with a little twist and turn, this is the Noah’s Ark event depiction; isn’t it?
In Genesis, we read that God was not happy with humanity and wanted to destroy all life. At the same time, he came to appreciate Noah and his family, and in addition, he wanted a diversity for the future Earth. So he let Noah and his family, plus a pair from each specie selected by Noah, survive a flood that lasted almost a year－even though most people say that it lasted 40 days. And afterwards, all life restarted from the seeds that were on Noah’s Ark.
So is the GOE the homomorphic equivalence* of Noah's Ark event depiction, within our Dual Cosmic Singularity theology? The Life singularity proposes the Great Oxygenation Event (GOE) to explain the destruction and rebirth, just as Noah’s Ark event proposes the flood to explain God’s wrath on humanity.
So if we compare the flood to the ice-age oxygenation, the death of most anaerobic creatures－which were dominant at that time－and the emergence of life and diversity from the select creatures－including cyanobacteria and chloroplast algae－we have our homomorphic relationship between the Great Flood and the Great Oxygenation.
We just do not know what/who would be the homomorphic equivalence of Noah?
* Homomorphic equivalence between two structures implies that the relationships (defined by the operations) in two groups (or graphs, or similar expressions) are equivalent.
May 17, 2024, Cambridge,
Berta Seintan, PhD & Charlene Wardin, PhD