Friday, June 19

Gaia's evil twin: Is life its own worst enemy?
A number of recent discoveries have cast serious doubt on the Gaia hypotheses. Two lines of research are especially damning: one comes from deep time - the study of ancient rocks - and the other from models of the future. Both overturn key Gaian predictions and suggest that life on Earth has repeatedly endured "Medean" events - drastic drops in biodiversity and abundance driven by life itself - and will do so again in the future.