Life
Life learns to use sunlight
Cyanobacteria invent photosynthesis
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Oxygenic photosynthesis was arguably the single most important invention in the history of life. Cyanobacteria learned to split water using sunlight and use the hydrogen to build sugars, with oxygen as the waste product. That gave life a practically unlimited energy source, independent of sea-floor chemistry, and let the biosphere grow by orders of magnitude. The downside was that the waste product was poisonous to almost everything then alive.
For children
Some tiny bacteria worked out how to use sunlight as food. They took in light, water and air — and breathed out oxygen. It is the same trick plants use today, and it changed the entire planet.
Connects to
Part of Terra Saga — the story of Earth on a timeline. terrasaga.org