Earth's oxygen levels declining: Is this the end for human life?

New Earth's activity has puzzled out scientist these past few days. Though this threatening issue is not enough to cause any harm to life forms, it is still triggering some people that concern.

For the last 800,000 years, oxygen's amount in the atmosphere has lowered down up to 0.7 percent. Up to now, scientist are clueless on its cause.

Where would this oxygen possibly go? Does it just disappear or what?

According to a report from IFLScience citing a new published study, researchers from Princeton University looked at the air bubbles that are trapped in old ice Greenland and Antarctica. Because of this, the research team estimated the past atmospheric pressure of oxygen to measure the ratio of oxygen to nitrogen in these prehistoric bubbles.

Oxygen also plays a role in many chemical processes all over the Earth. And scientist defines that a change of 0.7 is the equivalent drop off going from zero to about 100 meters above sea level.

Two hypotheses come up from the scientist on this matter.    

"The first is that global erosion rates may have increased over the past few to tens of millions of years due to, among other things, the growth of glaciers grind rock, thereby increasing erosion rates," as Daniel Stolper, Princeton University Professor told in an interview in Live Science.

He also added, "Aside from the first hypothesis, when the ocean cools, as it has done over the past 15 million years, before fossil fuel burning, the solubility of oxygen in the sea increases. That is, the ocean can store more oxygen at colder temperatures for a given concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere."

However, these hypotheses are the only unofficial guess and are not yet supported by scientific evidence, for there are also other materials that also cause for this oxygen decline in the atmosphere just like pyrite and organic carbon.

The good this is, the scientist will now test the "silicate weathering thermostat", a possible solution to end this lost for oxygen.