Word: carbonizing
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That does not mean the evolution of intelligence has ended on the earth. Judging by the record of the past, we can expect that a new species will arise out of man, surpassing his achievements as he has surpassed those of his predecessor, Homo erectus. Only a carbon-chemistry chauvinist would assume that the new species must be man's flesh-and-blood descendants, with brains housed in fragile shells of bone. The new kind of intelligent life is more likely to be made of silicon...
Emphysema results in slow smothering since it destroys the inner walls of lungs and hampers the exchange of carbon dioxide for oxygen in the blood...
...candidates for the oldest-form-of-life title are organisms that scientists have dubbed "archaebacteria." They are found in airless recesses like Yellowstone National Park's hot springs, thrive in temperatures ranging from 65° to 70° C. (150° to 170° F.), take in carbon dioxide and hydrogen, give off methane gas, and have been known to scientists for years. But it took the efforts of a team led by Geneticist Carl Woese of the University of Illinois in Urbana to demonstrate that the archaebacteria had an extraordinary characteristic. Using enzymes, or chemical catalysts, they broke...
...unique genetic structure suggests that there may be a third line of evolution. It also provides an important clue to the earth's early environment. Scientists have long believed that for about the first billion years after the formation of the earth, the atmosphere consisted largely of hydrogen, carbon dioxide and other gases, but virtually no free oxygen. The life-style and genetic structure of Woese's archaebacteria tend to support the theory; because the strange bugs now live only in remote, airless niches of the environment and die when exposed to free oxygen, they may be little...
Barghoorn and Knoll believe that their primitive fossils-the oldest direct evidence of terrestrial life-are the ancestors of modern blue-green algae or photosynthetic bacteria, both of which convert carbon dioxide into food and oxygen. If they are correct, these organisms 3.5 billion years ago were already pumping into the atmosphere the oxygen upon which most of today's terrestrial life now depends...