Mikko Tuomi<p>Once upon a time, long ago, the world was encased in <a href="https://scicomm.xyz/tags/ice" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>ice</span></a>. Hundreds of millions of years ago, glaciers and sea ice covered the globe. The most extreme scenarios suggest a layer of ice several meters thick even at the equator.</p><p>But when seawater gets cold, it gets viscous.</p><p>This fact could explain how single-celled ocean creatures became <a href="https://scicomm.xyz/tags/multicellular" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>multicellular</span></a> when the planet was frozen during “Snowball Earth,” according to experiments.</p><p><a href="https://scicomm.xyz/tags/evolution" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>evolution</span></a> <a href="https://scicomm.xyz/tags/biology" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>biology</span></a> <a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-physics-of-cold-water-may-have-jump-started-complex-life-20240724/" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">quantamagazine.org/the-physics</span><span class="invisible">-of-cold-water-may-have-jump-started-complex-life-20240724/</span></a></p>