Could Natural Nuclear Reactors Have Boosted Life on This and Other Planets? | Nuclear Reactions Might Have Sparked Life | Natural Nuclear Reactors Earth & Alien Planets
Reactions similar to those inside this nuclear power plant in Georgia arose spontaneously around 2 billion years ago in the Oklo region of Gabon, Africa.
CREDIT: U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
While modern-day humans use the most advanced engineering to build nuclear reactors, Nature sometimes makes them by accident.
Evidence for a cluster of natural nuclear reactors has been found on Earth, and some scientists say our planet may have had many more in its ancient past. There's also reason to think other planets might have had their own naturally occurring nuclear reactors, though evidence to confirm this is hazy. If they did exist, the large amounts of radiation and energy released by such reactors would have had complicated effects on any life developing on this or other worlds, experts say. [...]
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This story was provided by Astrobiology Magazine, a web-based publication sponsored by the NASA astrobiology program.
Of course there've been huge natural nuclear reactions in and on Earth, and of course, in introducing genetic 'mutation', they encouraged bursts of evolution. Every once in a while one of those mutations was sure to prove beneficial, and they would've arisen more quickly in a radiated environment than before it got radiated or after it had settled and broken down. We've created a few of our own, but I suspect nature can dole out the radiation in amounts and to degrees we can't even really imagine. Or we'll just have WWIII. Either would probably irradiate everything to the point where we'd be pushed headlong into a new breed and era of humanity (or an era after humanity, depending upon our ability to adapt and survive, as individuals and as a specie). :)
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