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Oldest-Known Terrestrial Rocks Unearthed

wdavies writes "There are various news reports (see this Google search) Oldest Rocks University Quebec that are reporting the discovery of the oldest sedimentary rocks ever found. There are older rocks, but they are extra-terrestrial, and apparently these Earth-local rocks will give a lot more information about the early stages of life on our planet. IANAG so I can't judge any more, but seems significant"

20 comments

  1. Obligatory by TwistedKestrel · · Score: 1, Funny

    Wow! That totally rocks!

  2. Re:Obligatory tsarkon reports. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    shit piss cunt cocksucker motherfucker piss fart tird and twat. I FUCKED YOUR MOM. Also, fuckerhead: I would like to take this opportunity to put to rest the animosities that have kept various groups of people from enjoying anything other than superficial unity. Here's my side of the story: Kestrels Mother shouldn't spew forth ignorance and prejudice. That would be like asking a question at a news conference and, too angry and passionate to wait for the answer, exiting the auditorium before the response. Both of those actions play the blame game. We don't have to stand for this! Once people obtain the critical skills that enable them to think and reflect and speculate independently, they'll realize that I have a dream, a mission, a set path that I would like to travel down. Specifically, my goal is to debunk the nonsense spouted by Kestrels Mother's deputies. Of course, he and execrable prophets of cannibalism are cut from the same cloth. That fact may not be pleasant, but it is a fact regardless of our wishes on the matter. We could opt to sit back and let Kestrels Mother fight with spiritual weapons that are as morally crippled as they are boisterous. Most people, however, would argue that the cost in people's lives and self-esteem is an extremely high price to pay for such inaction on our part. He says that he has achieved sainthood. This is at best wrong. At worst, it is a lie. Kestrels Mother's cause is not glorious. It is not wonderful. It is not good. I wouldn't even mention that I am making an appeal to the intelligence of the reader not to be fooled by Kestrels Mother's demagoguery if it weren't true. Kestrels Mother is not just stupid. He is unbelievably, astronomically stupid. If he thinks that he can make me swallow whatever he dishes out, then he's barking up the wrong tree. If I didn't think Kestrels Mother would subvert time-tested societal norms, I wouldn't say that it has been said that we mustn't tolerate the likes of Kestrels Mother. I believe that to be true. I also believe that Kestrels Mother claims that university professors must conform their theses and conclusions to his wishy-washy prejudices if they want to publish papers and advance their careers. Well, I beg to differ. Although the historical battle between good and evil is exemplified in the philosophical division between Platonic order and Aristotelian chaos, Kestrels Mother says that cultural tradition has never contributed a single thing to the advancement of knowledge or understanding. But then he turns around and says that the laws of nature don't apply to him. You know, you can't have it both ways, Kestrels Mother. All of the foregoing information has been served up as a necessary prelude to understanding the motive and force behind the current mad rush by him and his adulators to make people suspicious of those who speak the truth. Surprisingly, the courts and our elected officials are way ahead of him in embracing this simple fact. It takes more than a mass of money-grubbing, careless braggarts to put to rest bad-tempered and besotted reports such as Kestrels Mother's. It takes a great many thoughtful and semi-thoughtful people who are willing to shatter the adage that things have never been better. I like to think I'm a reasonable person, but you just can't reason with goofy, dirty ratbags. It's been tried. They don't understand, they can't understand, they don't want to understand, and they will die without understanding why all we want is for them not to create new (and reinforce existing) prejudices and misconceptions. I had thought the world was free of effete pothouse drunks. So imagine my surprise when I discovered that Kestrels Mother wants to trade fundamental human rights for a cheap "guarantee" of safety and security. He spouts the same bile in everything he writes, making only slight modifications to suit the issue at hand. The issue he's excited about this week is sadism, which says to me that Kestrels Mother decries or dismisses capitalism, technology, industrialization, and systems of government borne of Enlightenment ideas about the dignity and freedom of human beings. These are the things that he fears, because they are wedded to individual initiative and responsibility. Just like dirty clothes on the floor and cluttered closets, his mess won't go away if we simply look the other way. When Kestrels Mother hears anyone say that pretending to be a victim is his impertinent attempt to portray laughable worrywarts as drug addicts, his answer is to twist our entire societal valuation of love and relationships beyond all insanity. That's similar to taking a few drunken swings at a beehive: it just makes me want even more to announce that we may need to picket, demonstrate, march, or strike to stop Kestrels Mother before he can have more impact on Earth's biological, geological, and chemical systems during our lifetime and our children's than all preceding human generations had together. His taradiddles are based on a denial of reality, on the substitution of a deliberately falsified picture of the world in place of reality. And this dishonesty, this refusal to admit the truth, will have some very serious consequences for all of us in the immediate years ahead. Why does Kestrels Mother want to supplant national heroes with misinformed profiteers? Psychologists might suggest that widespread exclusionism is the price we'd pay for making "parasympathomimetic" a dirty word. Counselors might insist that shooting one's mouth off in a public forum on the basis of flimsy facts is neither prudent nor smart. Sociologists might point out that you'd think he would see how dim-witted and presumptuous he appears. I agree with the above assessments, but Kestrels Mother's self-fulfilling prophecies serve no purpose other than to court a yawping minority of the most duplicitous suborners of perjury you'll ever see. As long as I live, I will be shouting this truth from rooftops and doing everything I can to argue about Kestrels Mother's half-measures. If you delve deeply into his schemes and thus, in tranquil clarity, submit to contemplation the declamations of scummy, directionless tyrants, you will unequivocally discover why I'm willing to accept that I must protest his use of cold-blooded vermin to offer hatred with an intellectual gloss. I'm even willing to accept that he refuses to do anything for himself. But he accuses me of being narrow-minded. Does he claim I'm narrow-minded because I refuse to accept his claim that the Eleventh Commandment is, "Thou shalt advocate Kestrels Mother's reinterpretations of historic events amid a hue and cry as officious as it is illogical"? If so, then I guess I'm as narrow-minded as I could possibly be. Kestrels Mother is the embodiment of everything petty in our lives. Every grievance, every envy, every incoherent, vexatious ideology finds expression in Kestrels Mother. He says he's going to harvest what others have sown faster than you can say "phenomenalistic". Good old Kestrels Mother. He just loves to open his mouth and let all kinds of things come out without listening to how eccentric they sound. While the question of who is right and who is wrong in this case is an interesting one, it is also something that I cannot and will not comment on, and not just because he has convinced a lot of people that everything is happy and fine and good. One must pause in admiration at this triumph of media manipulation. If you want to clear up these muddied waters with some reality, then tell everyone you know the truth, that Kestrels Mother keeps telling us that women are spare parts in the social repertoire -- mere optional extras. Are we also supposed to believe that black is white and night is day? I didn't think so. If he has spurred us to bring strength to our families, power to our nation, and health to our cities, then Kestrels Mother may have accomplished a useful thing. If he ever claims that he is known for his sound judgment, unerring foresight, and sagacious adaptation of means to ends, we must answer only one thing: "No, the reverse is true." I've tried explaining to his lackeys that my empirically validated theory is that his habitu*s are profoundly influenced by what he says and does, but it is clear to me in talking to them that they have no comprehension of what I'm saying. I might as well be talking to creatures from Mars. Kestrels Mother would not hesitate to extinguish the voices of opposition if he felt he could benefit from doing so. Who is he to decide what is morally acceptable for us and what is not? A necessary first step towards recovery is to look at Kestrels Mother with new eyes, unclouded by a lifetime of false information and deception propagated by the most drugged-out conspiracy theorists I've ever seen. To pretend otherwise is nothing but hypocrisy and unwillingness to face the more unpleasant realities of life. Until we address this issue, we will never move beyond it.

  3. Re:Obligatory tsarkon reports. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    the use of He for his mother is intentional. He has no classical mother, something like two fuckin gay dads and a chemistry set.

  4. I'm confused by darthBear · · Score: 5, Funny

    Why exactly is this in developers?
    Please don't tell me this is considered an early beta of rock or something.

    1. Re:I'm confused by the_other_one · · Score: 4, Funny

      They found some fossilized developer manuals, hair dresser equipment, and a telephone sanitizer license.

      --
      134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
    2. Re:I'm confused by larry+bagina · · Score: 2, Funny

      i don't know, but i think this is an Open Source success. After all, many eyes make all rocks unearthed. If this had been an MS rock, it would have remained buried for who know how long!

      --
      Do you even lift?

      These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.

    3. Re:I'm confused by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, no shit. wtf is it doing in developers?

    4. Re:I'm confused by TheDauthi · · Score: 3, Funny

      Analysis 1: The rocks give amazing insights about the early phases of life on this planet. Most developers hate lawyers, and thus need to get as much information about them as possible.

      Analysis 2: The submitter and editor were making a subtle comment toward how God was the first developer.

      Analysis 3: The rocks are thought to be extra-terrestial in origin. Just like most developers.

      Analysis 4: The editor that placed it is stoned, no pun intended. If they are smoking up, that would also explain the duplicates, the other mismatched columns, and perhaps even CmdrTaco's 3 hour hiatus between typing up the note on Mozilla and hitting the save button.

    5. Re:I'm confused by Randolpho · · Score: 1

      Come on... somebody mod that post up!

      You are personally responsible for coke all over my keyboard, I hope you're happy. :)

      --
      "Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
      -Marilyn Manson
  5. Slashdot Editors on Crack again. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    In an effort to avoid duplications, now stories are being out into random categories.

    Er, editors try "Science".

  6. It's not a rock... by stubear · · Score: 3, Funny

    ...it's Strom Thurmond's head.

  7. You're not the only one... by handsomepete · · Score: 1

    Maybe they thought the submission was about Rox...?

  8. not significant by wojie · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    i quit geological engineering after three years. geology is not significant. despite what some geologist may say. by their own word "geology is not an exact science". and nothing could be more true, it's a collection of hikers looking for a reason to visit the latest 'geological' hot spot... like hawaii, or chile.

    1. Re:not significant by DaveAtFraud · · Score: 2
      ...despite what some geologist may say. by their own word "geology is not an exact science". and nothing could be more true, it's a collection of hikers looking for a reason to visit the latest 'geological' hot spot... like hawaii, or chile.

      ...and there's a problem with this? Keep it quiet before too many other people get in on the scam.

      --
      They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
      Ben
    2. Re:not significant by sc7007 · · Score: 3, Interesting
      i quit geological engineering after three years. geology is not significant. despite what some geologist may say. by their own word "geology is not an exact science". and nothing could be more true, it's a collection of hikers looking for a reason to visit the latest 'geological' hot spot... like hawaii, or chile.

      Well, I am a geologist and I can say that it is definately significant. Most every resource mined on this planet comes to you through the work, if not always discovery, of geologists. Not to mention all of the work done by other branches of geology such as geochemists and paleontologists to explain the origin and deveopement of life on earth. Now, as for geological engineering, that may be another story. They are usually, in my experience (with no offense meant to any engineer), engineers who took some geology classes because they figures two or three would teach them all the geology they would need to know. Nothing could be further from the truth. Engineers, also in my experience, have a very difficult time understanding geology. Has something to do with not being trained to look at the big picture, as well as the smallest possible detail.

    3. Re:not significant by wojie · · Score: 1

      in three years of engineering i completed 9 geology courses, several in igneous, a couple sedimentary, mineralogy, and several field courses, which is as much as any geology major -- especially since i specialised in exploration. the only useful geology i found is being done across the street from the geology department, in the physics building, by geophysicists. who actually develop exploration and excavation techniques. geologists are recruited as lackeys who do the manual labour -- no offense. three years was plenty to give a very detailed dose of geology. and there isn't a single group of people anywhere else who refuse to look at the big picture, or the really small one, as much as they do.

      there were masters students in geology trying to figure the optical theory of why rose quartz is pink, and they hadn't bothered to ask anyone in the physics department whether that had already been done (this even i can now explain with basic undergrad physics). there were profs whose life's work had been determining whether lake superior is a crater or not, and then charting the bedrock underneath it.

      i compare that to walking around with measuring tape and notepad and measuring everything you come into contact with because some of it might be useful some day. no underlying purpose.

      geochemists? yes, a better bunch. geophysicists, even better. but geologists? glorified polsters.

  9. this is in Developers why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    In other news:

    God was seen earlier creating Earth, probably in COBOL.

  10. Editors, Editors, Editors, Editors! by ENOENT · · Score: 1

    Yes! If /. is going to dominate the universe, we need Editors! Preferably ones that will reject crap articles that have no actual information, and the only link is a google search. Then again, at least this story hasn't appeared four times in the past week.

    --
    That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
  11. Sedimentary rocks that old? by mikerich · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Almost all rocks of similar ages have been through one or more periods of metamorphism and have undergone physical and chemical changes. Their age just makes it nearly inevitable that they will have been through a mountain-building phase or two. Those rocks that weren't just recycled get heated up, squeezed and exposed to hot reactive fluids. Naturally they don't come out that well.

    The Isua Complex in Greenland which appears to be older than these new samples has undergone several metamorphic episodes during which igneous and sedimentary rocks have been converted into new rocks like gneiss.

    Sadly that process tends to destroy all of the potential fossil evidence. There are blobs of carbonaceous material in the Isua rocks which some people have ascribed to early life.

    If these new rocks really do contain sediments it could be a fascinating chance to see if life had been kick-started by this time.

    Thanks for posting!

    Best wishes,
    Mike.

  12. ...huh.? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Like, how old do you tell a rock is?

    It's not like rocks have little labels on them or anything.

    I mean, the whole world is like five billion years old or something, right? So technically all the rocks in the world are that old.

    Am I missing something?