world is the only planet we have it away of that has ever had a fire . While there may be volcanos push out hot magma on the Earth’s surface ofVenus , the hottest major planet in the Solar System , there has never been a fire there . Nor on Mercury , nor Jupiter , nor any of the other planet wall our or any other star .
In fact , for billions of years of the Earth ’s history , there was n’t any fire either . It took 1000000000000 of yr before the condition for blast were possible , with the major planet ’s first inhabitants live in a cosmos without fire for longer than it ’s possible to suppose . While vent would have produced " fervidness fountains " like those likely produced on Io – and there may have been the uneven flame from a gassyvolcanobelch – this is magma being forced up and spray out a vent , rather than actual flame .
Around 2.4 billion years ago , the Earth ’s ambiance was likely a thick daze of methane , the outcome of bacterial biography emerge on the major planet . Then theGreat Oxidation Eventhappened , where ancient cyanobacteria began to produce vigour from sun , let go O into the atmosphere . Here molecular O began to accumulate in the atmosphere for the first time , though still not in enough concentration for combustion to take blank space . The Great Oxidation Event , sometimes known as the Oxygen Catastrophe , likely dunk the Earth into aworldwide inscrutable freezeas this O destabilized methane , unclutter it and collapsing itsgreenhouse event . The Earth became dusty , as well as fireless .
The first fossil criminal record we have of fire amount from the Middle Ordovician period , billions of years after . In term of fire , there is a sweet position . Any low than13 per centum oxygen , and industrial plant affair will not combust . Any higher than 35 pct it will combust so well that forests would not be able to produce and sustain themselves .
In the Ordovician period of time 470 million years ago , the first land plants – mosses and liverworts – produced more oxygen , eventually produce enough concentration of it to visit fire upon themselves . Eventually , around 420 million years ago , we have the first dodo grounds of fire on Earth , charcoalfound in rocks from this catamenia . However , with oxygen levels still fluctuate wildly , the first extensive wildfires did n’t take place until around383 million twelvemonth ago . And fires have been a real jerk ever since .
