It is the Oxygen, stupid! Oxygen?

Back in 1774, on August 1st, Joseph Priestly conclusively demonstrated that the air was a mixture of many chemicals, of which there was one that made things burn and also kept a mouse alive.

Oxygen. (though, Priestly did not name it so.)

Priestley (1733-1804) was hugely productive in research and widely notorious in philosophy. He invented carbonated water and the rubber eraser, identified a dozen key chemical compounds, and wrote an important early paper about electricity. His unorthodox religious writings and his support for the American and French revolutions so enraged his countrymen that he was forced to flee England in 1794. He settled in Pennsylvania, where he continued his research until his death.
The world recalls Priestley best as the man who discovered oxygen, the active ingredient in our planet's atmosphere

Oxygen for life. Oxygen for burning and destruction.

Interesting, right, that it is the same Oxygen that sustains life and, used differently, is an accomplice in destruction of life and property.

They should have named this element as "Shiva" after the Hindu god who is simultaneously a god and a destroyer--if he opens his third eye it is like a laser to the gazillionth power that can instantaneously vaporize anything in sight  :)

And how interesting that the discoverer, Priestly, was an ardent revolutionary himself.  I wonder if he, with his knowledge of oxygen and burning, concocted a few "Priestly Cocktails" that were the ancestors of the notorious Molotovs.

Without Oxygen, no revolutions, burning, explosions.  Rockets would not have glared red for Francis Scott Key to become the accidental poet-in-chief.  Without oxygen, no Obamacare either!

Without oxygen, we humans would not have evolved on this Pale Blue Dot.

It took a long time after that Big Bang for oxygen to form on earth.

"What it looks like is that oxygen was first produced somewhere around 2.7 billion to 2.8 billon years ago. It took up residence in atmosphere around 2.45 billion years ago," says geochemist Dick Holland, a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania. "It looks as if there's a significant time interval between the appearance of oxygen-producing organisms and the actual oxygenation of the atmosphere."
So a date and a culprit can be fixed for what scientists refer to as the Great Oxidation Event, but mysteries remain. What occurred 2.45 billion years ago that enabled cyanobacteria to take over? What were oxygen levels at that time? Why did it take another one billion years—dubbed the "boring billion" by scientists—for oxygen levels to rise high enough to enable the evolution of animals?
Most important, how did the amount of atmospheric oxygen reach its present level? "It's not that easy why it should balance at 21 percent rather than 10 or 40 percent," notes geoscientist James Kasting of Pennsylvania State University. "We don't understand the modern oxygen control system that well."

Now, project your own life against this time frame. 30 years? 50? Any 75-year old reader of this blog? Won't even register a blip, right?

We should have made Oxygen our god. Well, maybe Water and Oxygen as our gods.  We would then have paid more attention to understanding the cosmos.

We would not have made a god out of the Dow Jones Index, and made the investment managers the high priests.

All of the traditional religions teach that human beings are finite creatures and that there are limits to any earthly enterprise. A Japanese Zen master once said to his disciples as he was dying, "I have learned only one thing in life: how much is enough." He would find no niche in the chapel of The Market, for whom the First Commandment is "There is never enough." Like the proverbial shark that stops moving, The Market that stops expanding dies. That could happen. If it does, then Nietzsche will have been right after all. He will just have had the wrong God in mind.

Stupid humans we are!

Celebrate Oxygen today.  Breathe!