And you’ll never guess what it is.
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00:00Earth tilts as it spins on its axis, but in the wide range of things we find particularly
00:09unique about our planet with regards to habitability, that's not one of the most important things
00:13for life, right?
00:14Well, ScienceAlert reports, according to a new study, a specific axial tilt may be crucial
00:19for oxygen production, one of the building blocks of intelligent life.
00:24Billions of years ago, Earth was much different than it is today.
00:26Before the great oxidation event around 2.4 to 2 billion years ago, there wasn't much
00:31oxygen here at all, so the researchers created a model that would allow them to figure out
00:35how cyanobacteria, or oxygen-producing ocean life, could have come to thrive.
00:39Several factors like increased day length, continental creation, and continental movement
00:43played their part in cyanobacterial proliferation.
00:46But axial tilt, in our planet's case, a 23.5 degree offset from the sun, created the seasons,
00:52which also had an impact on the oceans, where it created currents that mixed bodies of water
00:56all over the world, mixing that also shifted and spread out nutrients, providing food to
01:01cyanobacteria, and increasing our world's oxygen production by double.
01:05But tilt may also have a Goldilocks zone.
01:07The planet Uranus, for example, has an extreme tilt, a full 98 degrees offset from the sun,
01:13creating seasons that would be far too hectic for life to survive.