Early forms of life very likely had metabolisms that transformed the primordial Earth, such as initiating the carbon cycle and producing most of the planet’s oxygen through photosynthesis. About 3.5 billion years ago, the Earth seems to have already been covered in liquid oceans, but the sun at that time was not bright or warm enough to melt ice. To explain how the oceans remained unfrozen, it has been suggested that greenhouse gases such as methane produced warming in the early atmosphere, just as they do in global warming today.