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More Evidence For An Extinction Comet
Andy_Howell writes: "There is more evidence that a comet or an asteroid is believed to be the cause of another mass extinction. This one happened 250 million years ago, long before the one that killed the dinosaurs, it and wiped out most of the life on earth, including the trilobites. The evidence comes from buckyballs with unusual isotopes trapped inside -- isotopes that were apparently created in carbon stars."
Doesn't surprise me either.. I knew that this whole Open Source Linux thing was a Communist conspiricy all along. Why do you think they call it "red" hat? It's all so obvious and I'm glad that someone like Allchin finally got the balls to stand up against it. Maybe this whole spy thing will get the attention of the lawmakers. Did you know that Finland (Where the communist who started it all and is now spying on high tech companies in Silicon Vally) is right next to Russia? Coincidence? I think not!
The question would be, in this case, whether or not this can be considered part of the normal evolutionary process.
The article quotes one of the researchers saying that life has to adapt or die. In this case, does that indicate to us that the world is better for it in the end? The life that has adapted - perhaps it is stronger. Less affected by change in its environment.
Perhaps it's the very reason why human beings are able to colonize the majority of this planet. An amazing ability to adapt, brought in through the evolution caused by the nature of the universe itself.
I know you're probably just trolling but some idiot might read this shit and take it seriously. Lets go at this one at a time. First of all the moon. Yes, the moon is receding from the Earth but it is NOT receding at a "constant rate" as you say. Furthermore no current theory places the formation of the earth of the moon at the same time! So the limit you mention (the "Roche limit") does not even come into play. But then when was the last time that a creationist could do math.
Your comet example is even more ridiculous. You assume that the solar system was poofed into existence with comets in their current orbit. The truth about comets is that they burn up all the time and are constantly resupplied from sources like the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud. Look at all the comets that we know of, their ages all VARY, just like you said! If they were all created at once don't you think they would all be the same age? Short period comets have short lifespans, astronomically speaking! The fact that we see lots of comets with lots of different ages is proof that they are resupplied and perturbed into solar orbits with time.
In short you are either a troll or you have been duped by televangelists. Try thinking for yourself once in a while. You'll be a lot happier.
The important thing to realize is that the article talks a meteorite as a mere initiator of a whole series of events which would ultimately be responsible for a mass extinction. You wouldn't believe the possible chain of events which would occur after the right trigger. Assuming that science has a very good and clear view of the eventual outcome is nonsense. This also implies that a (possibly human-inititated) global warming might lead to (a very) unpredictable outcome. Once there is enough fresh water around the poles the global re-distribution of warmth/energy by means of the major ocean currents stop (there is evidence for this). And europe/northern america might just get very very cold indeed. As for the PT boundary, i have those chinese samples here on my desk, getting "noble gasses out of a buckyball" is a major achievement, not easily done in most labs. Congrats. Wouldn't even think of starting experiments like that myself.
They killed the trilobites! You bastards!
>>...the moon. The moon is receding from the Earth by a small amount every year.
Yup. Consistent amounts? Predictable amounts? Guaranteed to continue to receed?
>>There is a minimum distance that the moon must be from the Earth in order to remain in orbit.
Yup. Otherwise it'll zoom off into space, or crash into us. Thankfully, we need not prep any miners anytime soon.
>>If the Earth is billions of years old as evolutionists say, there is no way that the moon could exist as it does today.
Wrong. Mayhaps the moon isn't as old as the earth. Or perhaps the orbit of the moon varies over time, and it will come closer again in the future. There are many sources of gravity that can come into effect. Orbits are never are simple as we like to imagine.
>>Another example is comets. Comets have a limited lifespan. Every time they pass by the sun, they burn up some of their mass.
Yup. Ice, typically.
>>If the universe was billions of years old, comets would have long since exhausted themselves of their own mass.
Unless they pick up more mass on their travels. Perhaps small comets combine into larger comets in the (?postulated?) Oort cloud.
>>Yet we still see comets and can tell by their rates of decay that they are young (their ages are in the range of 1,000 to 6,000 years.)
Really? Evidence for this would be nice. Rate of ice-burnoff relates to age? Sounds implausible on the face of it.
>>None of this even comes close to a 13 billion year old universe.
Assuming your 'evidence' is acceptable, true. But comets != entire universe. Even if all the comets we've seen are young, that says nothing about the age of the universe as a whole.
Evidence to the contrary:
1. Extremely distant galaxies. To be as far away as they are, given your proposed timescale, they would be unexplainable given all our current knowledge. They simply couldn't possibly travel that fast. Maybe they were made like that? You want to tear away all accepted science for your baseless premise? Science is always ready to be turned on its head, but better evidence is required. Observing these galaxies is thebasis for most predictions of age. We can tell how fast they are moving away from us, due to the joys of red shift (doppler).
2. Craters. That fucking huge crater in America (name escapes me, it's late here in the UK). If it were recent, within a few thousand years, life wouldn't exist. The dust possibly wouldn't have even settled yet. The GMST would be near zero. (Combined effect of end of ice age and sunlight blocked out by dust, resulting in MORE ice forming, resulting in MORE sunlight being reflected rather than absorbed) Maybe the crater was made too? Maybe all the fucking huge craters on earth that invalidate your theory were made?
3. Cave paintings (France, also Aboriginal painting in Australia). Located in places where they have been well preserved. Accurately dated to have been made before the universe existed, according to you. Maybe all dating technology is hopelessly inaccurate? If so, your comet theory is thrown out also. Did your 'Creator' paint on cave walls? Blueprints, perhaps.
To the loony bin with you.
The makers of Zero Wing should have hired you.
Could you provide pointers to some of that "lots of evidence"?
Will someone, ANYONE, explain to me what this 'all your [something] are belong to us' phrase, that everyone seems to find so funny, means?
That is, if it actually means anything?
Sure ... that was the Chinxulub event. The crater and ripples are still visible (mostly via satellite imagery) in the Yucutan peninsula and Gulf of Mexico
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Probably all delivered in one big hunk....WHAM!
If it weren't for metamod, I'd abuse "informative" and "insightful" moderations for just this purpose.
I thought that one of the main points of evolution was that "Better" == "more fit to survive". Is this wrong?
actually, they aren't so sure whether the later dinosaurs were all cold blooded (wish i had a link)
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------- Oh damn.... the Sigfile escaped... -Great OM
> The truth is that lots of evidence suggests that the universe is very young, on the order of less than 10,000 years old.
No way, man. 10Kyears isn't nearly long enough to explain the divergence between homo sapiens and homo trollens.
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
What have you been smoking?
The theory of natural selection doesn't suggest that bacteria are the pinnacle of evolution. It doesn't include value judgements of any kind.
If you want to go around claiming that bacteria are the "pinnacle of creation" because there are more of them living in more diverse environments, that is your business, but don't pretend Darwin is on your side.
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Refuting the moon argument
Refuting the comet argument
My work here is done.
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Radiolarians yes, fishes no. The fishes did not get started until the ordovician, and did not become important until the silurian ( aka the age of the fishes).
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crazy dynamite monkey
Actually, there are many "largest" extinction periods in earths history. Its a subjective matter in which you have to take into acount the number of species involved and the duration of the event. Perhaps the biggest would be the anarobic extinction caused by the saturation of the oceans and the atmosphere with O2. Most anarobic life was killed off and replaced with arobic life. That happend way back (1.5 billion yrs?) and it is impossible to accurately say whether it was 95 to 99% of species killed.
Someone you trust is one of us.
One KILOGRAM per YEAR ?!? Your estimate is very low, I believe the earth gathers many TONS per DAY, all in cosmic dust and micrometeorites. And even at that rate, that represents a very very tiny percentage of the earth's total mass.
The comet in the artists conception is a little larger than 7 miles across...
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The question would be, in this case, whether or not this can be considered part of the normal evolutionary process.
To say that a mass extinction is normal would be stretching the point. Having conditions suddenly become very hostile will allow for rapid evolution. Rapid evolution should lead also to rapid specialization. I believe there are some interesting studies about life AFTER these mass extinctions and how there is a proliferation of new different species.
Think about it. If the Earth suddenly became alot more hostile, alot of the "weaker" species would die. ("Weaker" in quotes because certain conditions would favor some species more than other. It's not necessarily that one species is better. But I digress.) This would certainly qualify as an acceleration of the evolution process.
Where the wind blows, the tumbleweed goes.
It was the Charonians! They killed the dinosaurs. ;)
Right you are. And as a matter of fact, all discontinuities between geologic eras/periods/epochs are mass extinctions of varying magnitude. After all, thats what the different strata were named for originally; their fossil content. A sharp discontinuity and you use another name, e.g. Triassic-Jurassic-Cretaceous...
The primary division is between eras: Precambrian, Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic, with as you might expect big extinctions between. The Pracambrian-Paleozoic (or Proterozoic-Cambrian if you wish) the biggest, the Paleozoic-Mesozoic (Permian-Triassic) not quite as big but still incredible, and the most famous one, the Mesozoic-Cenozoic (Cretaceous-Tertiary) that killed the dinosaurs, the smallest of those three.
In between there were smaller mass extinctions between geological periods; e.g Jurassic-Cretaceous or even smaller between epochs, like for instance Miocene-Pliocene. All mass extinctions were not necessarily caused by comet/asteroid impacts, directly or indirectly. Large igneous provinces (flood basalt) are another option, as are large climate fluctuations caused by continental drift.
/Dervak
And BTW, any alien geologists examining the rock strata of the Earth in, say, 100 million years will find a very pronounced and extremely fast mass extinction right at the current time. Lots of animal and plant species disappearing in a very short time, especially big ones and predators, but many smaller species too.
The rocks will contain a significant portion of carbon, that is, soot, and many heavy metals (probably buckyballs too). It is likely the aliens will put it down to an impact from space, but the big crater is strangely missing...
/Dervak
-Legion
3. I know it is accurate for older items because: a.) decay rates are well known from direct observation, and b.) as another poster mentioned in this very thread, several other dating methods corroborate radiometric dating quite well. When you see three or four different dating methods all agreeing on the age of an object, do you dismiss them all as flawed?
And saying we had ice age, then stone age, then this age & that still doesn't tell you the exact happenings to each specific artifact, nor can it ever!
Well, you can argue that all you want, but it's not what we were talking about.
-Legion
-Legion
You have no idea how much that pleases me.
-Legion
-Legion
3. Carbon dating is only shaky when used to date fairly "recent" (geologically speaking) items. It is quite accurate for older items. Or are you implying that your god made the cave paintings look old just to fool us poor stupid humans?
And unless any of you know of dinosaurs or people living here millions of years ago with cowboy boots on, I'm pretty sure that shoots down the dating process pretty well. I think I shall have to talk to that friend & figure out where he got this info.
Presumably he found it in his ass or on Art Bell's website.
-Legion
In fact, all the evidence tells us that it is billions of years old.
I'm going to get modded down for redundancy, I can feel it.
-Legion
I think it's:
"Mom, Dad... Don't touch it... It's EVIL!!!"
Probably in 'The Dinosaur Heresies' by Ken Bakke (a great book, guarenteed to bring the 8-year-old in all of us). He did buckets of analysis on pedator-prey ratios and other ecology-type stuff and concluded that dinosaurs were in a moderately rapid decline before the comet hit. Another of his main points was that smaller, less mobile critters seemed to survive better than big, wide ranging critters in general, just the the opposite of what you expect if massive, sudden climate changes were the killer. He leaned more towards new infectious diseases encountered by the dinos as the moved from landmass to landmass over newly created landbridges as the killer. I'm hardly qualified to argue with him, but one thing I got from my BS in biology and 3 years of grad school was that very few things happen for only one reason, so if the dinos are running around gettings exposed to new pathogens while trying to avoid lots of geological activity and the effects of a big-ass comet strike, it's retty hard to point a finger and say 'This is the killer'.
"Bugger this, I want a better world." - Jenny Sparks
Well, it sounds like you're saying (chance to protect) != (guaranteed survival).
So how do you know that earlier species didn't have the same (or better) chances, but also failed to survive for some reason? The fact is, we really have no clear idea of the state of trilobite or dinosaur technology.
Not to mention Lovecraft's accounts of advanced civilzations preceeding the Trilobites!
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
I`m sure i`ve read somewhere that dinosaurs started to die out before such an impact.
http://www.earthpulse.com/haarp/background.html
Talking of fish, i always find it funny that people always say `we evolved from apes`. Well, no we didnt - we evolved from single celled organisms, into fish, up through apes to what we now call Humans.
Saying humans came from apes is like saying toast is made out of bread.
" Better" == "more fit to survive". "
:)
Yep, survival of those more suited for survival. Thats that cleared up
"Furthermore, Darwin specifically pointed out that by "survival of the fittest" he meant "survival of those most suited to the environment"" It seems that the famous Darwin quote has made its way into everyday vernacular as to insinuate a premeditated competition. So, you are fighting an uphill battle I gave up on.
I'm no astrochemist, so could someone tell me how they can be so sure that these isotopes were created from carbon stars that they can be used as evidence?
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The other unanswered question is where is the iridium? The KT layer is loaded with iridium which was one of the signposts of an extra-terrestial delivery that ended the Cretacious. The Permian event doesn't have any iridium associated with it. Iridium dust is presumed to be abundant in space and rare on earth.
It may be that the hypothetical Permian asteroid was iridium poor and buckyball rich but it's going to take more than HE3 rich buckyballs to make a convincing case.
There is a new computer-telescope system that is capable of using sensitive light detectors and detection algorithims that have proven effective at finding and tracking asteroids. I can't remember what the system is called but I know they have one installed and are planning a few more. This is good, it's a good first step. Perhaps a next step is a network of these around the globe that can constantly scan the sky in all directions. That sounds feasable even in the short term. Then we can ask "What is next?"
Ok, we have our network of "eyes" and can see the potential doomsday rocks coming. What's the next step? One option would be to come up with a plan to deal with the threating asteroids or comets on a size and reaction-time basis. (send a team of oil-rig workers?? launch nukes?? use solar sails?? build large ground based repulsor beams?? build starships with photons torpedos??) Another option is to plan a survival strategy. (dig caves?? colonize the moon and/or Mars?? build large-scale space stations??) Yet another option could be working on a next generation of detection capability to increast the amount of warning time. (invent large powerful scannars?? "scanning...indications negative at this time." use intelligent meandering robot probes??)
Anyway... we can pick an option or combination of options and set a large scale, long term plan into motion....a human preservation and defence initiative. Who knows how much time we have? We should not procrastinate on this issue. The stakes are too high.
well, in just today we've gotten tons of evidence supporting all sorts of fun things (like darwinism). GO DARWIN!
Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, not just chemistry, reality!
Well, I think god hates them on an entirely different level.
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Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
God must really hate people who live near plate faults and active volcanoes.
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Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
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Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
The same reason everyone around you starts using that new word you just learned. It's not that they didn't use that word before, it's only because it is fresh in your mind that you take notice of it.
I think that people who see God's hand in everything tend to be very religious. If you are constantly thinking about God, you are bound to look at things with the perspective that He created everything. You are most likely to interpret a "coincedence" as God's presence.
Likewise, if you think religion is junk, you're going to take more notice of scientific studyies that support your opinion. If someone presents evidence that they claim proves that God exists, you are going to try to find an explanation that doesn't require the existence of God.
A lot of people are so intent on getting their point across that they don't stop to consider alternate explanations. They see things through the filter of what they believe and have experienced and find it unbelievable that someone else could disagree with them in light of the facts they've presented. We tend to believe and remember the evidence that supports our beliefs, and we tend to minimize and forget explanations and evidence to the contrary.
(It's too bad things don't work that way with insults and compliments. Everyone seems to remember my insults and forget the compliments. You'd think they'd want to focus on the positive. :)
You sir(or madam), need a little hubris. Flood, Famine Earthquake, all can destroy us in less than a geological eye blink. The energies released in the average hurricane are immense, the energies involved in a large meteor impact are beyond comprehension. Yes, one can talk of so many megatons tnt equivalent, that does not mean one can understand what that really means. Nature aside, we have existed for a tiny fragment of the history of life and have proven ourselves to be the greatest threat to our continued existance.
Given the complete lack of political interest in practical space exploration, its going to be a couple of hundred years before we get even a tiny fraction of the species off this rock. Even then, that may simply be the catalyst to destroy the earth, since once we are in space, the earth based population becomes more expendable.
But then, I am a pessimist.
Cheap troll
If we have six minutes (or even six months)to work with, I'll trust statistics more than a patriot missile.
My handle breaks slashcode, what does your handle do?
heh, who says they'll be T shirts? Maybe they'll be W hirts or something by then - the dominant species might not have two arms and a head!
it and wiped out most of the life on earth, including the trilobites.
Unfortunately, the tribble, a distant cousin of the trilobite, survived the impact and is now multiplying at a phenominal rate. Scientists predict that Earth's days are numbered. If we don't die from an asteroid, scientists say, the tribbles will take all of our food, water, and air supplies. Mankind's reign as kings of the world are over. Long live the tribble!
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eudas
p.s. the lameness filter sucks.
eudas
Blessed is he who expects the worst, for he shall not be disappointed.
That's because Windows sux.
That doesn't necassarily mean the evolved creatures would be any smart does it? I mean, they didn't really need any intelligence to survive, they just had to be hardier creatures that could survive extreme climates. Look at insects... They are highly evolved creatures and there are trillions in every possible environment imaginable on this planet. But does this mean they are intelligent?
Wouldn't *intelligent* creatures that were more than likely not "as suited" for extreme environments been likely to evolve into an intellectual species sooner, had there not been any cataclysmic events that wiped them out?
Very interesting though, Thanks for the insight.
(PS. I'm asking a question! Give your thoughts, not a flame war!)
This is not just to you athlon02, but to the rest of this little portion of the thread.
If there was no sun or moon, how could there be a day? Day is a rotation from light to dark, that happens to be practically 24 hours. If they were using 24 hours as the basis for a day, how did they come up with that number exactly?
PS. These are question. Answer, don't flame.
It's very interesting to think how these cataclysmic events have shaped the evolutionary path of the life on earth.
:(
I'm wondering what life would be like if they never happened?
Just imagine it, Intelligent life such as ourselve would have evolved much longer ago. Along the evolutionary path all the higher-level thinking species that aren't fit for a rigorous lifstyle wouldn't have been killed.
Anyways, this is kind of a scary article. We haven't had any devastating asteroid impacts for a while and there tends to be one every few hundred-million years
THINKGEEK LIVES!!!
:)
They should make some mass-extinction t-shirts
Actually science and God go hand in hand and there are quite a few notable scientists who work in the field of showing proof for God through science... the 2 that come to mind are:
Science and Nature - 2 Votes for God (I forget who does these off hand)
Apologetics Press (www.apologeticspress.org) where Bert Thompson helps out...
He's had articles on things like... Isn't it interesting that the Bible says to circumcize a baby boy on the EIGHTH day after their birth... why in the world would the 8th day matter? Because biologists (and I'm not talking just religious folk) have found that on the 8th day is when the amount of Vitamin K (I think it is) is at its highest in the life of the child. Vitamin K is what helps blood to clot... before that time the blood can't clot properly & circumcizing a child would have caused a lot of bleeding & perhaps kill the child...
This written in a book 1000's of years old which means the people of the time couldn't have had the scientific facilities to know this themselves... Coincidence? I would think most with an OPEN mind & willing to find out for themselves wouldn't believe so. God has every right to be considered in science because he created it. Even if scientists won't accept it, it matters not... If He does indeed exist, as I and so many others believe, all the theories in the world to try to disprove Him matters not when all is said & done.
Regarding your "Evidence to the contrary"...
1. Yep, the ever so popular way for us to try & prove the universe is billions of years old or so... use things like stars and *assume* that their light is travelling the exact same speed throughout, or perhaps allow for some margin of error just for scientists to TRY to cover themselves.
Have we not seen experiments in the last year or 2 about slowing light a lot or speeding it up a lot? Are you going to say that can only be done in a lab? "Oh, but it's rare." So? Are you saying we know the universe so well to know what all the light goes through to reach earth & conclude the age that way?
"Ok, but the Bible can't account for such things & we still know it would take millions of years even with light being sped up by an incredible amount!" How could the Bible not account for it? If you were God, and you were creating the universe with stars to rule over the day & night to help in sea navigation & as part of the signs of seasons too, and of course, being all-powerful to create the laws of science, would it be so hard for you to make light from these stars already appear on earth, so that the light we see from them now is really only a few 1000 years old for even the most distant stars?
I'll skip #2, not worth worrying about in light of what I said above.
3. Hrmm, how in the world could religious folk account for this one? It uses science to show they've been preserved for amazing amounts of time and why would God put such paintings on the wall before we found them, almost like what I said about light from stars & such... Ok, how about this: How are we so sure carbon dating & uranium dating & such are so accurate? NO! Seriously, before you shutdown on me, really think hard about this... How are carbon/uranium/whatever dating done? Under controlled conditions & certain assumptions right? Since when is nature a controlled environment with such assumptions? Such dating processes work on the idea that we know enough about the past to know that there was no possible way for nature to intervene & either help preserve paintings, or in the case of fossils & such, weather them & interact chemically with them & such to "taint" the results of dating!
Here's something more to consider as proof for God... Scientists often date layers of rock & soil on earth, as though some layers are older than others by millions of years or what not, which would suggest evolution, big bang, whatever else someone can dream up. However, there are areas in Texas (not small either!) of some 70 square acres or more I believe, where 2 layers are basically inverted... to where the YOUNGER layer is BENEATH the OLDER layer, which makes no sense if you hold to evolution, big bang, etc...
Now this one I'd have to ask a friend on to find out where he got the evidence... but there was a cowboy boot found in Texas somewhere with a man's leg in it (he long since being dead I would imagine) perfectly FOSSILIZED! And unless any of you know of dinosaurs or people living here millions of years ago with cowboy boots on, I'm pretty sure that shoots down the dating process pretty well. I think I shall have to talk to that friend & figure out where he got this info. It's almost 1AM my time though, time for bed.
Before I scoot to bed... the original word used there in Hebrew for 'day' means a LITERAL 24HOUR PERIOD OF TIME, not billions of years. If you'd like to see what I mean, you can grab a copy of Strong's Concordance and look up 'day' in Genesis.
Ok, then let's consider this... How in the world did these people with their lack of scientific knowledge (we're talking a few 1000 years B.C. here when it first started) decide they should circumcize a child at all? I mean the people would be well aware of what would hurt a child and so if just any ol' person said "Hey, go cut your child like this" they'd think the person off their rocker and wonder what advantage that could possibly have. The advantage (and this I remember hearing in a high school health class a few years ago) is that there's A LOT of bacteria in that area, and while it won't kill anyone not to have it removed, removing the bacteria from that area can be beneficial too. Now how can you try to explain away someone just experimenting on cutting up babies to see if it would help their healt in a time when technology (including medical science) was not anywhere close to what it is today?
How about the evidence (it was in National Geographic a 2-3 decades ago) that was hushed up about a Chinese fishing freighter off the coast of China or Japan or something that caught something large in their nets and it was bleeding (a general sign it hasn't been dead for too long :) and it turned out to be a plesiosaur (aka - a dinosaur species) ? Or can we silently ignore this evidence because it happens to combat the theories that dinosaurs are totally extinct either by comets or whatever else someone can dream up?
1) Forget that experiment... can you say 100% that light cannot be sped up whatsoever by nature? The experiment is just an example, we don't know everything contained in the universe to know when it is slowed down or sped up, so you can't base ages & scientific facts on it, as much as many would probably like to.
3) How do you know it is accurate for older items? Because they say the halflife is such & such time & therefore no matter what chemistry & physics & everything else happens to a painting, fossil, etc... we know carbon dating must be correct! how? you have no control over nature from the past & only limited control on it today. The dating process makes too many assumptions that it can't make because it wasn't there to watch all the environmental changes on the item. And saying we had ice age, then stone age, then this age & that still doesn't tell you the exact happenings to each specific artifact, nor can it ever!
Which translation are you reading from? The one I have agrees with the original text pretty well in that area & all others.
As it happens BBC's `Horizon' last night was completely devoted to the theory you just described/pasted. It was a nice program.
You misinterpteted my point. Humans are that catalyst for a mass exstinction, not falling victim to is.
"Cornflakes are not the innocent critters they seem"- Sterling Morrison
GAH! i forgot. it was on the discovery science channel, i cant offer much more info but it did focus on some wierd evolutionary paths of fish. i checked their website and got nothing, but if i ever see it again i'll email you with info
"Cornflakes are not the innocent critters they seem"- Sterling Morrison
i belive it is. awhile ago i was watching a program on evolution, and it talked about 6 or seven major extinctions in the history of life on earth, wiping out 70-90 precent of life, causing more species to evlove faster. an expert was talking about how we may be in the middle of another one right now, based on the rate of extinction of species.
"Cornflakes are not the innocent critters they seem"- Sterling Morrison
Think about it this way: extinction and the following evolution has come up with us. There you go, proof that it does work. If any of past extinctions hadn't taken place, we just may not be here. Mother nature has succeded in making a species that can trancend evolution's rules. We can leave the planet, (soon) force our own evolutions, and we can think. Bravo mother nature.
"Cornflakes are not the innocent critters they seem"- Sterling Morrison
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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Only, assume that only 1 kg of dust, meteorites, etc. per year fell to earth.
:-).
Current figures are around 40 tons per year (or maybe even 40.000, I don't remember very well. Anyway, I'm sure that there were a "40" and a "ton" in it
Dinosaurs were almost definitely warm blooded, and were certainly not the only group knocked out at the KT boundary. Most mammals were lost, too, not to mention most of everything else. It's quite likely that surviving the impact was a matter of luck.
Millions of different species against one? That's not a particularly fair comparison.
For the record, they have never found a crater associated with the Permian-Triassic extinction. However, they have found the large igneous province that tends to form opposite an impact, and it seems it should have been pretty close to where Pangaea split up. Maybe it was even a cause, although there have been other supercontinents (Rodinia) before...
The advantage (and this I remember hearing in a high school health class a few years ago) is that there's A LOT of bacteria in that area, and while it won't kill anyone not to have it removed, removing the bacteria from that area can be beneficial too.
Advantage? Mutilation is an advantage? When did you go to high school? The seventies? Gimme a break. If there ever was a hot bed of bacterial infection, it's a female. You don't see us rushing out to mutilate them now do ya?
I guess soap and water is such a bother that it's simpler to just slice off some tissue.
That's right soap and water... Plain soap and water... not anti-bacterial soap either. All that stuff does is compromise your immune system.
I tell ya what... before you choose to mutilate your child, I suggest that you go observe a circumcision. It is one of the most brutal, unneccessary things I have ever witnessed.
Defecation occurs.
There's another option... expire.
Here's my pseudo-religious argument... If there is a god and he throws an planet-killing asteroid at your planet. Are you going against the will of god if you try to survive it?
I hear that sucking sound, it's my karma points going fast.
Defecation occurs.
Let me see if I follow... by stating, "There is no god", I am then God.
Wow... that really worked... I can feel the omnipotence flowing through my veins already.
Defecation occurs.
Alot of dead babys would point to the best time as well
They didn't wash well so the bact. was a BIG problem, once again alot of dead babies/people brought the point accross, not god whispering in some pedophiles ear. They didn't have facts but they weren't dumb and evidence can be understood without awareness of the underlying facts.
Actually I read somewhere that the Earth is slowing down on average a second every 80 years or so. That would make it a 22 hour day at the time of the dinosaurs.
Well, there is a conjecture that a large, extinction level asteroid hits the earth approx. every 26 million years. This conjecture stems from the fact that a large number of species go extinct with that interval. Both the Permian and the Triassic extinctions fit into that pattern. Fortunately its been 13 million years since the last major extinction, and therefore we have quite a while to wait.
Think about it:
Dinosaurs were cold blooded. Mammals are warm blooded. Mammals have fur. With an impact like this, you KNOW you're going to get wide spread, global climate changes. Mammals are better suited to these extremes as opposed to reptiles. Granted, it IS amazing, and you are seeing how this older impact affected lower life. We're living proof. Point to ponder: what if these climatic changes occured over a looooong period of time? Would the dinosaurs have adapted? Surely I think they would have.
Complete and utter nonsense. There is no evidence at all that the Universe is 10,000 years old. In fact, all the evidence tells us that it is billions of years old. Just because this particular creationist doesn't like facts doesn't mean that he is allowed to tell lies, for that is what he is doing. Best Regards, Dave.
Complete and utter nonsense. All these tired old creationist arguments have been disproved time and time again. See http://www.talkorigins.org. Best Regards, Dave
Yours is a point I agree with entirely. When most people talk about preserving the Earth what they usually mean is preserving an Earth where Man can thrive. The Earth doesn't need protecting. It'll manage in the same fashion it has for millions of years. Man on the other hand is, in the cosmic measure, probably a flash in the pan like so many other species who have faded into dust. We'll have our day, and it will end, and something else will move to the top.
- Sig this!
So what you're saying is that God created the universe?
Explain this to me then: who or what created God? Who or what created that "thing?" Who or what created that thing? And so on, and so on, and so on...
There's no clear-cut answer either way you look at it. There is one thing fairly evident, though: creationists have the "easy" explanation, or the one that takes the least amount of reasoning to explain ("It was God's will to do so..."), and scientists work at a feasible explanation, trying to give intellectual reasoning (based on what we know for fact).
UNIX: Find it, fsck it, forget it.
Wrong, Science is the search for DATA. Philosophy is the search for truth, but Religion is not superstition. Take for example Atheism some people who are Atheists say Religion: None. That is incorrect, Atheists say there is no God, however to say that something does NOT exist you must be in all places at all times and be able to see everything. there's a problem with that... that would make you god. Therefore Atheists cannot belive their "Religion" therefore it is not a Philosophy. Religion simply differs with Philosophy in that noone belives that more than one religion is correct. Religion is better described as "A way of Life" than superstition. Everyone has a Religion, just like everybody has an operating system (even BIOS is a simple operating system).
While I consider myself to have some faith, I have to disagree with you. I am not a bible schoolar, but one thing I consider is this: For the first six "days" of the universe, how long is a "day"? If you give a value of a few million (billion?) years to each "day", then you might say it fits the big bang fairly well, including for the most part the order of how things appeared. Before Adam was created, who was keeping the stopwatch going to time those days? If the sun and moon wern't even created until the 4th day, the how could you know how long a day was?
I'm not questioning God, but if there was nobody there watching, how long was it?
By the way, don't use google. Dogpile is much nicer.
Drummer beat & piper blow,Harper strike & soldier go,Free the flame & sear the grasses,Till the dawning Red
But surely as our (genetic) ancestors had to suvive in arctic wastes that would mean that within us the capability exists to live in those sorts of conditions.
Look at eskimos they do it.
I wanted a funny
Likewise, if you think religion is junk, you're going to take more notice of scientific studyies that support your opinion.
As the saying goes: "To a hammer, the world is a nail." This is not just about religion, but about everything in a persons life. A programmer will view the world as an algorithm, an artist will view the world as a painting, etc. Look at the nail someone is pounding on and you will get a pretty good idea as to what kind of hammer they are.
This is where Darwin would pop in and mention that due to a random fluke of nature, someone was probably just born with the inclination to cut their child as such. Their children prospered more than the children of others due to being slightly healthier than the other children. Over time, the offspring of the healthier children became the dominant social group. This is not the result of scientific experimentation, but a random fluke of nature and survival of the fittest. Over time, the practice became imbedded in the local dogma. And here we are today still circumcising.
You are right in that it has been shown that with todays health standards in industrialized nations, circumcision is no longer beneficial to your health. The point is that people living thousands of years ago did not have soap. And that it is pretty amazing for them to come up with a method, brutal as it may be, that makes a person more healthy without the use of soap.
I surely grock those geodesic domes. Hoopy frood, indeed.
Maybe the towel can be used as a shield or shelter after the comet strikes.
Just then the floating disembodied head of Colonel Sanders started yelling Everything You Know Is Wrong!-Weird Al
There was a fossilized dino heart that someone put in an MRI or some such imaging device. It turned out ot have a four chambered heart, which implies that dinos are warm blooded.
Which doesn't tell us anything worth a pair of dingos kidneys. Even accecpting the theory that dinos were warm blooded, you've still got a several hundred ton chunk of dino to feed.
So when a several thousand ton chunk of rock slams into the earth at speeds aproching R23 (see HHGTTG Chap 34 for explanation of the R unit of velocity) you've got to assume that its going to dispurse a fair amount of energy. Waves of fire spreading over whole continents, a sudden ice age, lots of snow, dark skies for 30 years, you know, real wrath of God type stuff.
Anyhow, so what I'm getting at here is that what probably killed off our large perhistoric friends wasn't the cold climate, it was the fact that the cold climate wiped out some insane portion of all the plant species on earth. No plant life = no large herbavores. No large herbavoes = No large carnisores. And in no time flat the dino population is down to pretty much nill.
And if you like Michael Critton the little ones survive and turn into birds.
But then... I could be completely wrong.
This has been another useless post from....
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
Couldn't tell if you were serious, but anyway, that argument ignores the fact that the earth is really, really big.
Hushed up? Wouldn't the Chinese government want to trumpet that as a triumph of Chines Communist blah blah blah? More likely, it turned out not to be whatever-it-was, and was "silenced" to let the issue die, out of sight, out of mind, rather than admit the embarassing error that it was a mutilated dolphin or whatever.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
> you are aware that non-judeo-christians also
> circumsize....so explain that.
The perverted desire to mutilate a child's sex organs without their consent for ritualistic religious reasons is universal?
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
Hmm, it occurs to me that comets and asteroids can be detected months in advance of their potential collision with earth. 6 minutes, eh?
-- Nerds on toast in the new millenium
"Curses! Our plan to launch Near-light-speed rocks at the earth foiled by DUBYA"
Seriously, could a rock big enough to cause mass extinction (on a global scale) really sneak up on us? Yes, I know smaller rocks have, but hence the term smaller... I can live with losing a city to a sneaky ball of dirt.. but a texas sized comet (asteroid, whatever) would have to be able to switch speeds pretty quick for us to miss it coming at us..right?
Dr. Evil Moment: Six Minutes? Feh, launched from the moon a rock the size of a voltswagon could flatten...(your city here) in under three. I shall call it a cata-pult and using this cata-pult, I can flatten any city I wish, as long as it is visible form the moonEND DR EVIL MOMENT
Hello Kettle,
You, my friend are as black as pitch.
With love, Pot.
Obviously this will happen again and obviously the chances for human survival are less than positive.. So forget that useless line of thought - won't happen in your lifetime anyway.
I just like the pictures, take this site - the astroid depicted is about half the size of the United States - hardly the 3-7mile wide "pebal" these guys are actually talking about. They're really trying to drive home this thought of mass destruction aren't they?
Ohh well, maybe the next "intellegect" species to rule this planet won't be as greedy as the last.
---
This massage was prevewwed for inacccuracy.
Anyone have any information on this program that the parent post mentioned?
The reason I'm asking is because now it got me thinking. Humans are a pretty versatile species, having spread all over the planet. Most major natural disasters couldn't possibly destroy us all, although the extinction of all other life on the planet might make it close.
The interesting thing about this is that as a species, we've created ourselves an advantage over all of our predecessors. It seems that if it became absolutely necessary, we could probably move on to grow and harvest all of our food ourselves (or indoors, if need be). We've gained the ability to genetically modify crops, and it seems that we're coming close to being able to create sealed, self-contained environments.
Given the advancements we've made, (and I don't want to get cocky), but it looks promising that we'll be able to survive a major catastrophe like this through our own creative thinking.
Nowadays, it doesn't even seem so farfetched that some day in the future (perhaps in the 21st century even) we might colonize Mars, or somewhat less ambitiously, the Moon. Should a disaster happen, would we be destined to become cosmic Nomads, or would we settle down somewhere?
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
The question would be, in this case, whether or not this can be considered part of the normal evolutionary process.
The article quotes one of the researchers saying that life has to adapt or die. In this case, does that indicate to us that the world is better for it in the end? The life that has adapted - perhaps it is stronger. Less affected by change in its environment.
Perhaps it's the very reason why human beings are able to colonize the majority of this planet. An amazing ability to adapt, brought in through the evolution caused by the nature of the universe itself. (repost - I forgot to log in)
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
[ To blow a huge gaping hole in every atheist's personal beliefs and theories... ]
God == the Universe... an concept many have no doubt considered. Many atheists even. How does it blow a hole in an atheist's beliefs though? Couldn't it just be that 'god == universe' means a lot of people who don't want to use the specifics (that is, math) use god as a metaphor for that which they don't understand? It would seem to me that an atheist who agrees 'god == universe' is just saying "Ok, since you don't want try for a deeper understanding of what's going on in this world that we perceive, you can call math + science god, if you want."
Well, that's the way i look at it anyway... at least sometimes.
And if I am? If God wants to stop me, he knows where my aorta is.
I don't know what is more funny - comments or moderations made on them.
I don't know whether to laugh or to cry.
Will work for bandwidth
They are not biased against people with faith. If they post news about scientific results and new evidence, is that *wrong* because there are people out there with faith, who would rather believe something with NO evidence?
Will work for bandwidth
All your comets are belong to us.
Is your company running tools written by ma
Analysis of stromatolites from the Precambrian suggest that the length of a year was about 450 days. Precambrian is > 570 million years ago. If it took more than 570 million years to change the length of a year by less than 100 days, the only way the dinosaur extinction could be explained by a rapid change in the length of a year is by some catastrophic event forcing that change.
and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt On sale today, for only $19.95 (Get one before you're gone!)
This is a point by the almighty Goerge Carlin... "It isn't the planet that is fu*!ed,...WE ARE!!!" I am a Geologist (yippie hooray, I know). I can take you to the points of impact on 4 extinction events (provided you pay). We are fleeting. The Earth will be around loooong after wer're gone. At best we can hope some of our skeletons can be dug up by roaches and Clinton (he is bullet-proof) when we go. Pack your stuff guys,the planet stays, we're going away. The universe will go on as if we never happened, what have we done to/for the universe?? We have made no dent out there We''re not going to leave a trace that we've been here, except the "garbage" we have transmitted out in the great beyond. Notable exceptions are The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, and some plastic. Besides the Vogons are supposed to destroy us anyways, not a comet, pollution, ect. Who cares?!? Hope the end comes fast and furious.
We All know God is undefeated. He has never lost a football game, sports award, promotion, ect. God has never lost... it is in the Bible. If we can't explain..."God's Will" is is filed under. The depraved Trilobites, and scum sucking amphibians deserved it b/c thier wayward ways...in accordance with prophacy.
you are aware that non-judeo-christians also circumsize....so explain that.
----------------
-The American people have overpaid; I am here to ask for a refund.
Sure ---- science always follows art, namely science fiction books and movies. Probably because scientists read a lot of science fiction. Actually the search for the killer asteroid with the iridium layers followed the animated movie Fantasia. A lot of budding scientists were traumatized by the staggering dinosaurs dying in a suddenly hot, flaming world. They went out to "prove' it.
Radiocarbon dating also isn't the only dating scheme. It works quite a ways back, but you can also cross-reference it with "dendrochronology". It requires trees in certain conditions, but when you can do it, you can get dates down to the year. For really old stuff, you can use potassium-argon dating, which watches the decay of an isotope of potassium into argon. Scientists who do this junk don't usually settle for one line of evidence to give them a date. They apply as many methods as possible to increase their certainty in the value.
ironic, since comets are also thought to be the source of the complex organic molecules that eventually assembled into life in the first place. See amara.com for a layman's introduction to the cosmic dust that comprise comets, and space.com for a discussion of the possible link to life.
For those of you without CS backgrounds, hill climbing is a general strategy for finding a solution to a problem. You basically characterize the problem in terms of a set of variables that define a multi-dimensional "surface", then define some function that maps these variables to a "goodness" value. Then you tell the computer to "climb the hill" until it finds the maximum (i.e. best) solution.
Of course, the problem is that you reach local maxima--locations that are peaks, but not the highest peak. So what do you do? You can do a random restart, where you start in a new location and start climbing again, then compare the new peak to the old. Another thing you can do is perturb the existing path a little and start climbing in a new direction.
Now, what if life on earth is a big hill-climbing experiment run by mice? The mice were unhappy with the simple ocean-dominated life of the Permian period, so they arranged to have a "random restart" in the form of a meteorite. Then they weren't happy with the dinosaurs in the Cretaceous period, so another meteorite.
Now, we've been giving mice AIDS and cancer for years. And we've been squishing them in mousetraps as part of a concerted effort to eradicate them. How long before they decide it's time for another restart?
[Apologies to Douglas Adams...]- ----------------
--------------------------------------
Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews
There is genetic variety evidence that some species
appear to be descended from a very small population.
Chetahs are one example, with all current individuals
nearly clones of each other.
Humans are another example, with evidence of an
Adam/Eve population about 200,000 years ago of
less than 10,000.
These bottlenecks, such as caused by meteors,
may drive rapid periods of evolution.
This discovery concerns the Permian extinction
300 mya. Only fishies then. Lot fewer afterwards,
The dinosaur extinction is 65 million years ago.
The Snowball earth is 600 mya.
There could be dozens of these catstropic events
in Earth'd four billion years.
Nader voters will be unaffected however.
> coincidence != causation
Maybe mass extinctions cause comet impacts.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I have to ask - is the atmosphere actually boilng off?
If we perform a mass balance around the exosphere, yes, meteors do rain down an contribute mass. But, does the earth "shed" a sufficient amount of gaseous matter to even things out a bit?
If not, maybe we should just catapult old Buicks out of the exosphere?
.
As Darwin himself often pointed out, his theory of natural selection implied a general trend for later generations of creatures to be better suited to the environment of their ancestors (and thus to their own, assuming things hadn't changed much).
"Better" is a value judgement that has no place in discussions of evolution.
There is no "normal process of evolution". Some things die, some live, some reproduce, some don't; mutations occur, and either spread or disappear. Lifeforms today are different from lifeforms that were around a million years ago, due to these chance occurances. That's all there is to evolution.
---
To blow a huge gaping hole in every atheist's personal beliefs and theories:
What if God and the Universe were literally the same thing?
Think about it for a second.
Rebuttal in advance: "So if God created the universe.. you're saying the universe created itself?" Maybe I am, maybe I'm not. Anybody who's ever studied the `big bang' realizes that the universe never actually was created, never actually started; time simply goes as far back as a certain point, and that's all there is. It's not like before that there was empty space; there *isn't* any "before that." It didn't exist!
God could be lots of things. God could be number theory. God could be the laws of physics. Who is anybody to say that God has to be some majestic humanoid? "And God created man in His image." Image... who's to say image means physical image? Maybe it's why we're conscious and no other species appear to be.
If God was the universe... then anything that anyone does, anything that anyone discovers by the scientific method, anything that happens to promote evolution and the big bang... would still be God.
Try picturing all of time and space as a single instant in a higher dimension.
If you're inside a vacuum, how do you know it's a vacuum? Because every environment pushes in on the walls, implying higher outer pressure? What if you went somewhere where the walls were pulled outwards?
You can't know anything from inside the bubble, nor from outside the bubble, so don't pretend to.
And a question to throw out there: So many scientific theories rely on general acceptance by the majority of the scientific community to be considered truth. These are often based on other widely-accepted postulates.
Suppose that these theories and postulates are partially correct; correct for the majority of applications.
What's 2/3 of 2/3 of 2/3 of 2/3? A majority of a majority of a majority of a majority, right? But that isn't a majority anymore... 16/81 is actually a pretty small fraction.
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
"Comet hits Glasgow ned creating isotope of Buckfast Tonic"
I wonder if any research has been done as to whether the evolutionary changes brought about by this impact had similar effects as the impact that killed the dinasours. Some researchers claim that without this impact, mammals would never have become the dominant life form on the planet. It would be interesting to see how this older impact may have affected lower level life. It's rather amazing that these impacts, at just the right time could be responsible for the develpment of life as we know it.
The oort cloud.
--
Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
We are the only species to ever inhabit Earth that has a chance to protect itself against an event as catastrophic as a comet/meteor/asteroid slamming into the planet and ending life as we know it.
However...
Our species also uses its spare time to do things like this, this, and even this so I wouldn't exactly get my hopes up if a comet was screaming our way...
Why do users with IDs under 100,000 or over 700,000 usually have the most worthwhile comments?
All of your bases belong to us!!
This has been going on for quite some time, and I hope that all you trolls and crap-flooders heed my words and correct your grammar in the future.
Remember, just because you like to defecate all over slashdot, you can still sound intelligent while you do it.
Keeping
It's unfortunate that NASA amongst others are so eager to publicize this as a finding of the cause of the permian extinction. This wouldn't be the first time they've been prone to Time Magazine-like exaggeration.
The scientists who've done this work have certainly done a good job in showing that there were interstellar asteroid collisions with the earth at that time which is interesting. However, there are also many other factors that could have played into the permian collapse (where an estimated 90% of species were eliminated), namely a tromendous amount of volcanic activity which I've heard would have been enough to bury the entire planet in 30ft of lava if it were spread evenly. As it is, the ash clouds could have blotted out the sky and killed plants, leaving animal species to wither. then again, there also could have been a fatal cross-species virus that wouldn't be detected in geological surveys. Who knows, really?
As the scientists who've done this work themselves would be happy to point out, it's relatively easy to prove that asteroid collisions and the permian extinction were coincident when compared to the daunting task of proving it was a major cause, if a cause at all. As of now we have knowledge of a number of catastrophic occurences at the end of the permian era along with an extinction, but what's needed is evidence other than perjorative that links the two and describes to what extent each catastrophe was playing a role, if any.
Just because the sun rises when I get up in the morning doesn't mean I make the sun rise by getting up in the morning.
The only tool you've got against psychosis is experience.
The important thing to remember is that, like all disasters, extinction level events are the will of god. Ditto for that bit earlier today about evolution. Sure, it doesnt make sense, but I've been assured that everything is gods will. Really! I swear!
the best part here is some people are going to take me seriously!
___
The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason. --Ben Franklin
Hopefully the new Bush administration will increase the priority of this. Its a non-political issue really because it doesn't matter if you're Republican or Democrat when that big-assed asteroid hits you will be toast!
This theory was refuted in 1982 (from what I can rememeber) at about the same time that satellite images of the Yucatan Peninsula strengthened the hypothesis that a meteorite caused that (less severe) global extinction. I am incertain how good the online archives are on Scientific American but maybe somone else can chime in?
1) comets come from the oort cloud located just outside the solar system. The oort cloud is full of fresh new Ice chuncks just waiting to be knocked toward the sun so they may become a comet.
2)The moon is moving away from the earth at an infintesimal rate, and Yes if it was a constant rate then it would have been long gone; however there is a thing called physics(I know you Fundimentalists don't think that is true either).
when the moon was closer to the earths gravity was much more powerful and while the centripital force of the moon pulled it away from the earth, the net force was actualy vary small, infact it was nearly non-existant. Over time the moon, with this small net force, began to move away from the earth, however, because of the small magnitude of the force, the moon moved at a much slower rate than it does today. therefore it could not have gotten any further from earth than it already is.
btw, the moon is not the same age as the earth and the earth is not the same age as the universe. please don't try placing all three on the same time table like the bible does.
-The American people have overpaid; I am here to ask for a refund.
was a frood who really knew where his towel was. Here's the Fuller FAQ, as well as a coupla other (+1; Informative) links to Bucky/Buckyball info...
props to all dead homiez
A likely scenario has been suggested by Hermann Burchard (at okstate.edu):
To summarize the above--a comet crashed into Earth, which triggered massive volcanism, which in turn led to extinctions.Nice article explaining what a Buckyball is.
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I bet it'll happen again sometime. Maybe not in our lifetime, but it'll happen, and someone will be there to sell t-shirts.
Douglas Adams
1952-2001 :(
In answer to the question, you have to ask where are you going to get a lot of He/Ar (old stars) where carbon is abundant at a high enough density to create the Buckyballs, at a low enough temperature that it isn't destroyed in the stellar atmosphere, and mass outflow from the star to cause it to end up in comets -- q.e.d. Carbon stars.
This written in a book 1000's of years old which means the people of the time couldn't have had the scientific facilities to know this themselves... Coincidence? I would think most with an OPEN mind & willing to find out for themselves wouldn't believe so.
....
No, it's not a coincidence. And I think that you don't need ANY scientific "facilities" to discover that the 8th day is the first good one, it just takes a little experiment:
- circumcize on the 1st day: lots of blood and a death child.
- circumcize on the 2nd day: same thing happens.
- 3rd day, etc.
- 8th day: oh well, it works.
I don't understand why people keep seeing God in everything.
An even more interesting catastrophe is the collision with our then closest neighbor, which created the Moon. This planet, called Oberon IIRC, was supposedly located between the orbits of old Earth and Mars, and intersected the orbit of Earth.
At one point, old Earth and Oberon grazed each other, liquefying most of both planets and spinning a lump of rock off into orbit. The lump became the moon. The Discovery Channel devoted most of their "What if we had no Moon" program to this theory.
It is also speculated that the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter is the remnant of another such collision, where the planets involved did much more than graze each other.
The REAL jabber has the /. user id: 13196
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
According to this Space.com article, there would have been a bigger mass exinction that happened 600 to 700 million years ago, or 350 to 450 million years before the collision described in the article above, which would have killed about 95% of all life forms on the planet. Here's a short version of the Space.com article:
In the 1960's, geologists were unable to explain the evidence of glacial deposits found in the rock strata of every continent, including those at sea level aroung the equator. Was it evidence that ice had covered the entire planet at one time (i.e. a "super ice age")? Continental drift could have been responsible as well. Plus, how could the Earth get so cold as to have ice sheets covering it entirely?
A recent theory suggested that for every drop in global temperature there is an increase in surface snow and ice. As more snow and ice builds, more heat is reflected away, and it gets colder and colder. If ice glaciers had progressed as far as 30 degrees to the equator, a runaway ice age would have frozen the Earth completely. The massive cold snap would easily triggered an extinction like no other. The theory only had one problem, though: how did the Earth eventually thaw?
According to modern-day geologists, the levels of CO2 in the air are directly related to volcanic activity (which puts it there) and global temperature. As volcanoes erupt, they give off CO2 which is washed back to the Earth via rain. In turn, this CO2 is deposited back into the oceans where it settles on the sea floor as carbonate sediment. It is reheated to liquid, then gas, and the process starts anew when it is ejected again by volcanic activity.
If a frozen Earth was still geologically active (tectonic and volcanic action), all the CO2 thrown off my erupting volcanoes would have nowhere to go. As the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere rises, the global temperature rises as well. A few million years later, ice begins to melt, the water vaporates into rain where some of the CO2 is redeposited back onto the ice where the process is repeated. Complete thaw would be quick, happening in less than a couple of hundred years due to the excessive amounts of CO2.
As with the Permian-Triassic Boundary event (the meteor/comet incident 250 million years ago) that triggered the evolutionary process of the rise of the dinosaurs, the great freeze of 600 million years ago also triggered its own evolutionary growth: the Cambrian explosion. The massive dip in population followed by millions of years of harsh environments would have favored the birth of many new forms of life.
UNIX: Find it, fsck it, forget it.