The first fire on planet Earth... when and how did it happen?

Arabia Weather - Earth is the only planet we know that has been exposed to fires in its life. Although there may be volcanoes pushing hot magma on the surface of Venus, the hottest planet in the solar system, there have never been fires on Venus. Mercury, Jupiter, or any of the other planets surrounding our giant star, the Sun, did not witness any fires throughout its life.

Billions of years ago there were no fires on Earth

In fact, for billions of years of Earth's history, there was no fire either. It took billions of years before conditions became possible for fires to occur, as Earth's first inhabitants lived in a fire-free world for longer than could be imagined. While volcanoes would have produced "fire fountains" like those likely to be produced on the Moon - and there may have been exotic flames from a volcano spewing gas - this is magma being pushed up and released from the volcano's vent, rather than actual fire.

The Great Oxidation Event "Oxygen Catastrophe"

About 2.4 billion years ago, Earth's atmosphere was likely a thick haze of methane, the result of the emergence of bacterial life on the planet.

Then the great oxidation event occurred, as ancient cyanobacteria began to produce energy from sunlight, releasing oxygen into the atmosphere, and here molecular oxygen began to accumulate in the atmosphere for the first time, although there was not enough concentration for combustion to occur. The Great Oxidation Event, sometimes known as the Oxygen Catastrophe, likely plunged the Earth into a global deep freeze, as this oxygen destabilized methane, leading to a collapse of the greenhouse effect. The earth became cold, as well as fireless.

Our first fossil record of fire dates back to the Middle Ordovician, billions of years later. Regarding fire, there is a good point. Anything less than 13 percent oxygen, and plant material will not burn. Anything above 35 percent will burn so well that the forests will not be able to grow and sustain themselves.

In the Ordovician period 470 million years ago, the first land plants — mosses and liverworts — produced more oxygen, eventually creating enough of it to start fires themselves. Ultimately, about 420 million years ago, we have the first fossil evidence of fire on Earth, which is charcoal found in rocks from this period. However, with oxygen levels still fluctuating greatly, large-scale forest fires did not occur until about 383 million years ago. The fires have been a real thrill since then.

Source: iflscience