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Earth Recovered Quickly From Extinction Event
jmoloug1 writes "Traditional theory is that the earth took up to 10 million years to recover from the dinosaur extinction event. However a newly discovered site has revealed that this estimate may be way off. CNN has the article describing how quickly a tropical rain forest grew after the catastrophic event 65 million years a go."
Good news guys, if we manage to trigger a nuclear winter, it will only take 1.4 millions years to have forests back instead of 10 !
...Plan accordingly for the food into your nuclear shelter guys.
[Pruneau
In other news, a crack team of researchers led by world-famous physicist Mister Wizard, have been found guilty of pulling numbers out of their ass.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Krakatau volcano blew it's top in 1883. It has a ring of rainforest girdleing it's base despite it's continuing eruptions. Krakatau's explosion is still considered to be the most energetic single event in civilized history. Krakatau is now home to many species of birds, monkeys and smaller cousins of the komodo dragons.
I'd venture that life did not take 1.5 million years to recover from the extinction event. We just have not looked in the right places for the right fossils. I'll bet that someday we will find a meteoric Vesuvius/Pele, and right on top of it we will find the fossils of life that came back immediately after the event.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
Yeah, but Krakatau was still limited in magnitude, despite being the largest recorded eruption in civilized history ( I think Toba in Sumatra was the largest if you include less civilized history.)
I think the rapidity with which life regenerates has a lot to do with the magnitude of the event.
The supervolcanoes, despite their devastating effects, don't seem to be quite as potentially catastrophic as collisions with space debris.
A sufficiently large comet or asteroid really could wipe out so much of higher life forms that Earth might have to re-start with single cell organisms.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Let's presume this is the case. Belief in a god has lead to a lot of violence, and Christianity (and Judaism and Islam) is based on the belief of the not-too-far-away end of humanity and all creation as we know it.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
On a ridiculously smaller scale, after Mount St. Helens erupted on March 20, 1980, the surrounding forest was devastated. However, it started regrowing a lot faster than most scientists predicted.
The site was discovered in 1994 by a state highway worker. It is scheduled to be demolished later this year in a road-widening project.
Hopefully now that this finding is out they'll be able to postpone the demolition. Wouldn't it be dissapointing to have a discovery of this magnitude and not be able to check it out to the full extent because you're rushing to beat the demolition crew?
I stole this Sig
... the extinct animals were still extinct, right? For them, there was no recovery.
First of all, I'd say that if anything agnosticism is more likely to be followed than anything. An atheist is sure that there is no god. An agnostic claims there is no way to know.
Given all the evil that's done by supposedly "holy" men in the name of "god". I'd say that agnosticism is a far better choice. That way we can hate and kill each other because of skin color, political leanings and editor choices (those evil, terroristic emacs users suck!!!).
I don't worship myself (although my wife and daughters do).
Given all of the nutburger religious zealots out there, I'm posting this anonymously.
Almost right. What you mean to say is, "the natural conclusion of rational thought is atheism".
BTW, no, I'm not agnostic. Any resemblance to their ideas is a misunderstanding on your part about what agnosticism really is.
Proudly AC
To dispute my point, you'd have to describe a deity that can withstand rational analysis. If such a deity solves the problem of our existence, so much the better, but that's a different issue.
BTW, it can be a little misleading to worry about things like the "cause of existence". This kind of question often tends to arise from a mistaken understanding of what science tells us, which is less than most people imagine. Science tells us how things work, but it very rarely answers any real "why" questions, or at best, it pushes them back a level.
For example, Newtonian physics didn't tell us anything about what gravity "is" - it's simply a mysterious force generated by mass. Similiarly, we still have no real clue as to what mass is (elusive Higgs bosons notwithstanding). General relativity did no better at explaining gravity, it simply shifted the mathematical explanation to warping of an imaginary spacetime continuum which apparently has very similar mathematical properties to the spacetime we occupy, but says nothing about what spacetime "is" or what warping of it "means".
An easy way to solve all the mysteries of existence is via a more Zen-like approach, which recognizes that we can never solve any of the mysteries of existence and is simply satisfied with what we can determine about the world. The purpose of science is not to explain the mystery of existence; it's extremely doubtful that this is even remotely possible.
That may be "quick" from some points of view, but if it takes 1.4 million years for our forests to regrow, we are in trouble...
Are there any links or more detailed analyses of the archaeoligical find? I'd like to know what methods of dating they were using to be able to throw around 1.4 million year numbers.
Generally the dating methods used are quite unfalsifiable. We have no way to prove any of the data that they return.
BTW, on a related note, where is the crater from the extinction event they refered to? Anyone have links for that?
Yes and no. Many philosophers spent their lives trying to prove existence through the use of the proof of dieties. Descartes merely managed to prove a questioning being exists as that which questions, and kant rationalized that a fact (a more useful component of existence, or truth) is something that can be traced to a time and a place. They both heavily delved into theological proofs, but I've been utterly unimpressed by those approaches. My point is merely that the two questions are usually intertwined.
I disagree. And further return the finger of misleading back towards you. It's possible to phrase a question such that an obvious (but incorrect) answer manifests itself.
Newton quantified gravity, and you say he was incapable of saying why gravity is or works. But another point of view is to say that he created gravity to say "why" things fall. "why" do planets orbit the sun (or the moon the earth). "why" are there tides? Why is there the phrase "all things that go up, must come down". Further, the science of force tells us "why" a bird can fly, and more importantly, an understanding of this question allows us to formulate theories on how we too can fly.
Science is filled with questions and answers for why. Relativity, quantum physics, string theory, and ethereal-theory all attempt to answer questions left after Newton. That is the beauty of science, we're never left with a lacking of questions of why. Most importantly, it constantly finds answers to many of them; Just maybe not the ones we're interested in at the moment. Many of the answers are to questions we didn't even know we needed to ask (such as with nuclear science).
As for the "why's" of existance. It may be a useless question; much like asking, what is the significance of a roll of 3 comming immidiately after a roll of 2. Perhaps in some particular context the question is important, but outside that context it's patently useless. We ask why do we exist for several reasons (actually, I personally don't ask the question because I don't fall into that context; I don't have a need to know that why. Life seems to make sence without it); We ask it because we feel empty and need some purpose / challenge / destination. This mentality easily manifests itself in a society based on conquest / advancement / rewards and punishment. But this is much like looking at some distance, noticing that it's finite, then assuming that if a finite length can exist, it's opposite, an infinite, must also exist. Thus we can speculate that distance can be infinitely long (though much scientific logic and evidence contradicts this for our universe; e.g. the logical thought that the universe can not be both infinitely old and infinitely large which requires a white sky instead of a black one.). Likewise, we can see the pattern that short durations of life can be made more meaningful through accomplishment and the over-comming of hardship and thus attempt to apply it to the entirety of not only one's life, but all existance. There is, likewise, no evidence that this is the case, and further, the rampant proliferation of rewarded evil-doers and abused altruists poses tremendous evidence contrary to such a mechanism. e.g. people that don't work hard get rewarded, people that never endure hard-ships have triumphs, those that strive for what is right are made to look bad, stolen from, started over, die young, etc.
Note that this doesn't disprove why-filled existance, but merely says that those that have faith in a particular "why" have no empirical evidence, and are thus imagining things (even if their imagry turns out to be true in the end).
What's more, the point of science for eyons (e.g. zillions of moments.
The "whys" of today are no more determined by theology than by science. Theology can say when it's all right to have an abortion, e.g. some theological figure can make some analogy / parable / declaration which provides difinitive direction for their flock. Likewise science can say when there is a self sustaining level of biological activity within the fetus or pre sex-cells. Both approaches are heavily subject to interpretation, but do offer mechanisms for truths. And as with our discussion here, provide some satisfaction that we understand "why" something is right or wrong. i.e. I might understand that a sex-cell is not a whole person, and thus morally accept any abuse of sex cells, so long as they're not mated. Thus would argue that all abortion is illegal. Though religious conservatives tend to make this claim, they use science - NOT theological dogma - to make this claim. And of course, this is a dangerous game, because I can say that the half cell has all the required elements to "live" as a skin cell or a neuron or a heart cell; It can process food into energy and atuate that energy in a self-promoting fashion. It can regenerate it's cell walls, etc. etc. Thus I personally would argue that all life is equally valuable, no matter it's insignificance; from a sexless ameoba to a multi-cellular televangelist. Most importantly, this implies that plants are just as alive and valuable as animals, so I'd argue that vegans are completely deluded (as opposed to vegetarians, who may simply prefer the more delecate diet). The counter-balance to this is that my use of science says that ther is no hardened line for such a moral question. The "why" is this law valid blurs away, just as "why" does gravity work fades. My answer to both is that we're not spoiled little humans that have all the answers presented on a silver plate. We're going to have to work hard (individually or as a group) to resolve these unanswered questions. What is the appropriate threshold between killing and murder? What is the extent that we can discern and utilize cosmology?
Why do we live? Personally, I say this is another useless question. I say that to "live" is scientifically ambiguious and thus a misnomer. More properly, if categorized with consistent labels such as compatible with organic molecular structure, or at a higher level, obtaining self-consciousness, we can easily answer many moral questions. Unfortunately, science must constantly revise it's categorizations.. From "what goes up must come down", to "force fields, which include gravity", to "relativity, which handles high velocities or massive bodies", to quntum physics which redefines small spaces to string theory, which redefines the number of dimensions in which we live. When dealing with science, we simply have to "live in the moment" and trust our current understandings. With religion, we have to "let go of our self" and give in to another's interpretation of divinity. Similarly with faith (which is more general than organized religion), we have to place values on experiences that often frustrate our desired courses in life (e.g. historical "profits" and "saints" had experiences that made them believe not only in an almighty, but in the almighty's plan which required timultuous life styles from them, such that others would follow and benifit).
-Michael
-Michael
*: Feel free to disagree with my restriction on subgroup of gods that atheists reject. But keep in mind "any god" is an ambigious phrase, would you reject existance of yourself if someone (say, members of a primitive civilization) called you a god?
Descartes merely managed to prove a questioning being exists as that which questions,...
I hate to nitpick, but Descartes did not thing with his "cogito ergo sum" argument. Rather than try to make my own argument, I'll use Bertrand Russell's. This is an exerpt from "The Problems of Philosophy:"
"... [S]ome care is needed in using Descartes' argument. 'I think, therefore I am' says rather more than is strictly certain. It might seem as though we were quite sure of being the same person to-day as we were yesterday, and this is no doubt true in some sense. But the real Self is as hard to arrive at as the real table and does not seem to have that absolute, convincing certainty that belongs to particular experiences. When I look at my table and see a certain brown colour, what is quite certain at once is not 'I am seeing a brown colour', but rather, 'a brown colour is being seen'. This of course involves something (or somebody) which (or who) sees the brown colour; but it does not of itself involve that more or less permanent person whom we call 'I'. So far as immediate certainty goes, it might be that the something which sees the brown colour is quite momentary, and not the same as the something which has some different experience the next moment. "
Earth was destroyed to make way for an interstallear bypass, so why shouldn't something as insignifigant as scientific progress stand in the way of a road?
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
I can't understand the insatiable need of athiests to "in-your face" others that do not necessarily agree with them. Why? Not feeling exactly comfortable with yourself? Feeling the need to disparage others? Superiority complex? Compensating for other shortcomings in your life?
No one on Earth can reliably conclude if there is a God or not. That is the very definition of faith. If you don't believe in God, good for you... Have a nice day. If you do believe in God, good for you... Have a nice day.
You can't argue against history though. Religon gave birth to civilization (not that it doesn't contribute to problems- look at the Radicals), and Religon gave birth to Science (which has both benefited and harmed mankind). Would we be as civilized as we are if religon had not existed?
It was Einstein that said the more he studied science, the more he believed in God. Of course, I'm sure some athiest out there would berate him for saying that as well (again why?).
If someone believes in God, and lives their life accordingly, how does that hurt you?
I'm not particularly Religous myself, but I'm not as arrogant and self-absorbed to PRETEND that I completely understand the universe either. Pascal's bargain would seem to apply here. I'll live my life accordingly, and teach my family to do the same.
Have a nice day. If this upsets you, get therapy.
I was responding to a religious nut who was "in-your-face"-ing me. Tit for tat has been proved to be the best strategy in the Prisoner's Dilemma, perhaps it'll work on /. too...
Offtopic? Eat counter moderation fools!
Excellent points! Thank you.
I think it's more like 99.999%. Beside the point. Yeah, most species are extinct, but those aren't the ones we care about. We care about the ones that are around now, and that we're interdependent on. If the ecosphere gets fucked up, and we lose our current biodiversity to mass extinction, we can't just wait around for their replacments to evolve. By the time that happens, we'd certainly be extinct ourselves. Maybe you don't mind being extinct, but I do!
Do men who believe in evolution worship what is created? Talk to any atheist and see if they don't worship themselves. Sagan referred to 'Cosmos' as his god and even said in His book 'Cosmos' that it is more accurate to worship the sun than God. Just a little research and you will see that many leading evolutionists worship creation even though they may not call it worship.
www.exchangedlife.com
www.carm.org