There are a couple of interesting articles related to the Length of Day (LOD) of Earth as affected by the Moon. In particular, Mid-Proterozoic day length stalled by tidal resonance (Mid-Proterozoic day length stalled by tidal resonance | Nature Geoscience), indicate that the production of oxygen, and the resultant ozone, primarily by cyanobacteria, caused the moon to enter and then exit a period of resonance-stabilized day length. From the article, “On Earth, the prolonged interval of stalled day length corresponds closely with the interval of similarly stalled biologic evolution, and geochemical and tectonic quiescence known as the boring billion (Fig. 2).”
I’m fascinated by how Earth’s habitability and ability to sustain complex life has changed throughout geologic time. In particular, it’s just amazing that the existence of oxygen-producing microbes could actually change the astronomical characteristics of our solar system, i.e. affect a planet and its moon.
I have seen that the tidal resonance was indirectly broken by cyanobacteria. The massive burial of the biomass produced by cyanobacteria left a lack of CO2 in the atmosphere leading to the ‘snowball’ (or perhaps more plausibly the ‘slushball’) glaciations during the cryogenian. Exactly why the burial occured around this time is uncertain. Perhaps plate tectonics started to be more active during this time (it coincided with the breakup of Rodinia), creating large shallow passive margins and new mountains (leading to erosion of nutrients and sediments promoting biomass burial). This lead to blooms of cyanobacteria and their subsequent burial.
Maybe I misunderstood. Please check and feel free to correct me.
Thanks for replying Nesslig20. Thank you for your interest and explanation. As I understand it, according to the first article, the tidal lock was entered (in theory) when ozone, produced by cyanobacteria, built up sufficiently so that the atmospheric thermal tide balanced out the lunar oceanic tide. Interestingly, that atmospheric thermal tide accelerates the rotation rate of the earth and the oceanic tide slows it. With more ozone, the thermal tide increased to match that of the oceanic tide. There is an additional stabilizing effect not mentioned in the article: photosynthesis in cyanobacteria becomes more efficient and productive with longer day lengths, thus producing more oxygen to become ozone. But, with the day length stabilized, photosynthetic efficiency would also have stabilized, and thus not increasing oxygen production.
It’s fascinating to me to see how complex the Earth-Moon system is and to ponder these effects which ultimately influence the habitability of planet Earth. If any factors had been slightly different, Earth might have reached peak habitability with the advent of cyanobacteria and algae and never moved beyond.
In other materials I’ve written, I compare the period of time between the Great Oxidation Event and the Cryogenian with the second day of creation, during which the protective firmament was established, enabling some of the first above-water habitable conditions on Earth.