Revelation, Rationality, Knowledge & Truth — Page 410
SURVIVAL BY ACCIDENT OR DESIGN? prevailed, had any freely available oxygen, the type of organisms which must have preceded biotic evolution should have been completely destroyed by their interaction with oxygen. If precise steps were not taken to protect them from oxygen, no organism could survive on earth. The discovery that during that period there was no free oxygen was, therefore, an epoch-making discovery. To conceive the surrounding atmosphere close to earth as completely empty of free oxygen was a great breakthrough. Yet at the same time other problems arose out of this solution which were even more puzzling. . The solution suggested by Haldane took care of unlocked oxygen roaming about freely in the atmosphere close to earth. But what of the preventive measures against constant bombardment of cosmic rays, a problem which was further highlighted by the absence of free oxygen. How could they be taken care of? The cosmic radiation could only be prevented from destroying organisms on earth if free oxygen had existed in the earth's atmosphere. This presents an apparently insoluble paradox. The choice is simple but lethal either way. If you decide to protect organisms by removing free oxygen altogether from the atmosphere this will naturally result in their being destroyed by lethal cosmic rays instead. . As will be presently shown, it is the presence of free oxygen in the atmosphere which becomes indirectly instrumental in preventing destructive cosmic rays to reach the earth. It should also be remembered that like all other gases oxygen contains only two atoms to each molecule being lighter by one atom to its allotrope ozone. One should normally expect that, being heavier, ozone should be close to earth, while oxygen, even if present, being ‘lighter' should have been hurled to the higher stratosphere. That is one dilemma, but another even more perplexing is the fact 399