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Meteor Seen as Causing Extinctions on Earth
An anonymous reader writes "From the NY Times (I think you may have to register): About three dozen minuscule shards of rock unearthed in Antarctica may be the fragments of a meteor that killed most life on Earth 250 million years ago, scientists are reporting today. These rocks have yielded soccer-ball-shaped molecules known as buckyballs containing extraterrestrial gases, as well as grains of quartz with fractures that indicate a tremendous shock. The extinction 250 million years ago, in a period known as the Permian-Triassic boundary, was the largest of all. About 90 percent of species disappeared."
No this was not the extinction that killed the dinosaurs. This occured earlier in time.
The policy of the United States is worse than bad---it is insane. -- Ludwig von Mises, Economic Policy(1959)
I thought it took precise conditions to get them to form. And for these to have captured gases inside...
Weird...
GTRacer
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Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
The BBC had an article on this also.
"When I grow up, I want to be a weirdo"
Something to note is that both cases here involves a meteor impact on the opposite side of the earth from the eruptions. Coincidence?
... that these really really large extinctions happen all the time throughout history and we're essentially in a cycle. Ie... nothing.. then something.. then more somethings.. then dinosaurs then us... then we all die somehow (meteor ... nuclear war... etc) and it starts all over again.
Technically I see no reason why this can't be true, since the time span is so long between mass extinctions (not like the dinosaurs one but more like the one described in this article where almost all life is destroyed), that any evidence of a previous civilization or life forms would eventually degrade into basic elements.
Heh just an idea I've always had.
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I know slashdot is slow on getting news but...
250 million years?
I couldn't fail to disagree with you any less.
what you can smuggle through customs.
So much to do, so little bandwidth.
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The article itself emphasizes the speculative nature of the conclusion by rating the probability of the P-T extinction/asteroid link as a 3 or 4 on a scale of 10, as opposed to a solid 10 for the dinosaur-killing K-T extinction 65 million years ago.
And bringing evolution into the discussion qualifies your post as a bona fide troll. If you don't believe the earth is billions of years old, why did you even bother to read the story? The dating techniques are the best available; in the future we may develop better methods. What sort of accuracy would it take to convince you that the technique is accurate and the earth really is older than Bishop Usher calculated?
+ or - 5 in 10^6 for accuracy for 250*10^6 is still only 5% error - that's 95% accuracy if I read the best of intentions into your post.
To believe in a technique whose calibration results are incorrect by six or more orders of magnitude is so absurd that it defies comprehension.
The number of years in orders of magnitude really doesn't matter if the total years is similarly scaled.
If you are suggesting the entire technique gives results that have errors that are off by that order of magnitude for all results, you are wrong.
Subduction leads to orogeny
5% error - should be 2% error
Subduction leads to orogeny
Oh - a calibration sample - used to check equipment and the results get tossed.
How ah -
("comforting, you were thinking?")
- but then again -
I was hoping for something to turn my head around.
As a person with a sense of adventure, I am always hoping for results that don't 'fit' - I think you'll find most scientists think that way - Quite the opposite of having a - what is it a faith at the center of their belief system (quite the oxymoron there - eh?)
You can start here. (Follows pre-Enlightment model by placing conclusion in middle)
And perhaps you will claim understanding these only comes through faith. Perhaps for you it will.
Perhaps you may it of interest that many students at CalTech often pass a sign that says - 'The truth shall make you free.'
Perhaps you will not.
I suspect that you will want to have the last word here, in some from or another - Something about a certain need I perceive.
Sufficient references that you seek are provided in the link above. Post Modern simplification by restating the obvious.
Subduction leads to orogeny
This animation shows the known minor planets in the Inner Solar System presently.
This page updates regularly on newly discovered objects.
There are many more to be found. Though the risk of an impact like the one believed to have been involved is very slight.
Subduction leads to orogeny
from the site you referenced
and
Another claim:
Maybe you found a different link?
Discussion obviously ended - Perhaps you're writing to/for someone else?
Subduction leads to orogeny
I suspect that what you are alluding to is the K-Ar dating of Hawiian and St Helens Basalts/Andesites.
There are two explanations you haven't mentioned. One is that we are measuring the ages of crystallisition of xenocrysts (crystals incorporated from the country rock) or xenoliths (rock fragments from the country rock). Without references and thin sections, we can't know this.
The other is that we are measuring the amount of Ar incorporated at formation, giving a falsely old age. If this is the case, then the error (say 3 million years) becomes less significant the older the rock is; this would be a 1% error in a 300 million year old rock.
I have to wonder why you didn't point that out
That is a good possibility too - the person you're responding to has such a wild eyed zeal - It's not worth it - I was thinking they were talking about something to do with calibration - But you may be right. If you want to see how poor their logic becomes - follow the other thread - Then we have to admit - Perfectly self-contained - and bullet-proof. Truth be damned!
Subduction leads to orogeny
An ad hominem is an attack against the person. My posting says follow the thread to see the fallacy in the argument, just as you have failed to see it again. Thinking perhaps that by wasting my time you have done some royal service for the creator by distracting a scientist. Instead this same technology, you may someday be looking towards to save a life. Sad person. Toodles.
Subduction leads to orogeny
In general - thousands or more samples are run to assess a method.
When a *strange* result comes back - it's looked at. Not simply chucked for a dogma - in fact - finding a flaw in an established procedure would be the biggest break a 'tenure-minded, publish or perish' researcher could hope for. A break to a new methodology - early in their career - sounds good to me.
Choosing a *flawless* (in your context) method instead of choosing something the data can back up is a sure way to *perish* in the research environment.
Subduction leads to orogeny
Take known age rock. Test it radiometrically. Answer is absurd.
Fair enough - since the answer is not absurd, there is no problem.
Try this:
Take a 1 meter rule.
Use it to measure the width of a hair, previously measured with a microscope micrometer, using your eye and rounding to the nearest mark. (say, 1cm or 0cm)
Answer is 'absurd', or inaccurate.
Therefore this concept of 'Meters' is useless!
Potassium-argon dating is accurate from 4.3 billion years (the age of the Earth) to about 100,000 years before the present.
So using it on 10 year old rocks would be absurd, then.
By the way, radiometric dating (and 'old earth geology', as you would put it) is used commercially by the oil industry. Do you think that they would be willing to waste 10s of millions of dollars drilling dry wells just to prop up some conspiricy?
How can you miss a point that is so simple?
How can you continue to ignore the explanations? A more complete reference if here.
They miss the point because their religion (humanism) and its core value (evolution) demand it of them.
This is called 'projection'. And by the way; humanism is a set of values, not a religion, and evolution is a scientific theory, not a value.
she needs prayers, lots. Won't go into why.
Oh. Please do.
I answered that, explaining why it was precisely the method we must use to falsify K/Ar dating.
No; using a technique inappropriately does not falsify it. You could falsify it by finding a place where the relative ages of rocks as determined by structural geology failed to match K-Ar ages on those rocks.
Regarding the more recent one.. you really should read the papers you cite. ALL it is saying is that phenocrysts (Which are slowly grown crystals in the magma chamber) will date older than the groundmass of a volcanic rock, thus giving an anomolusly old age to a 'new' volvanic rock.
This is, of course, well known and covered in Geology courses. Indeed, it offers a way to date the history of magma prior to eruption.
It also cites some other examples. You will note that all of the ages obtained are small relative to geological time; after 50 million years, the errors thus caused will be insignificant.
But Humanism is a religion by its own descriptions. From here:
Ther're talking rubbish, or just trying to make it palatable to a US audience.
You may not like the fact that humanists call humanism a religion, but they do.
No, some American humanists want to call it a reliegon. Certainly I wouldn't, and many people who describe themselves as humanist wouldn't.
I take it that you've abandoned your uninformed attack on radiometric dating, since you've started witnessing. Out of interest, if you are so protected and stuff, why do you have to post anomously? To me that reeks of cowardice and insecurity.
First, your analogy is wrong; it's more a case of the speedomoter saying 10 when you're doing less than 10.
Second, you haven't demonstrated radiometric dating doing what you claim; as I have repeatedly pointed out, IF you want to date something, you have to know exactly what it is you are dating. If you date a crystal in a volcanic rock, you are dating the time of crystalisation, NOT the time of eruption. Do you understand this? Do you realise that in a course on radiometric dating, the majority of the work concentrates on sources of systematic error and how to avoid them?