Life is certainly still possible without the ozone layer, just not the life we’re most familiar with. After all, it was life that led to its existence in the first place. Ocean life would not go extinct, and probably not even all land life.
This natural sunscreen, known as Earth’s ozone layer, absorbs and blocks the majority of the sun’s UV radiation. Without this barrier in place, all of the radiation would reach Earth, damaging the DNA of plants and animals, like us humans. Skin cancer rates would soar, but we might not even live long enough to experience that cause of death [source: Carlowicz].
Within days of the ozone layer’s disappearance, many plants would die. The intensity of the sun’s radiation would make photosynthesis — a process by which plants convert light energy into chemical energy to fuel their growth — an impossibility for all but the largest and slowest-growing florae. And even these holdouts, primarily massive trees, would eventually die, too. Without plants, the food chain would collapse. Herbivores would starve. Omnivores and carnivores could feed off their bodies for a time, but their food supply would dwindle and cause widespread extinction [source: Vermaas].
Source, probably not the best. One of its two links is broken, but the other cites a NASA report on the effects of ozone depletion. I wound up removing this sentence after considering Simon’s critique.
Nice research!
Can you get more into this point?
Life is certainly still possible without the ozone layer, just not the life we’re most familiar with. After all, it was life that led to its existence in the first place. Ocean life would not go extinct, and probably not even all land life.
Source, probably not the best. One of its two links is broken, but the other cites a NASA report on the effects of ozone depletion. I wound up removing this sentence after considering Simon’s critique.