World's Oldest Rocks Found

Smivs writes "The BBC reports that Earth's most ancient rocks, with an age of 4.28 billion years, have been found on the shore of Hudson Bay, Canada. Writing in Science journal, a team reports finding that a sample of Nuvvuagittuq greenstone is 250 million years older than any rocks known. It may even hold evidence of activity by ancient life forms. If so, it would be the earliest evidence of life on Earth — but co-author Don Francis cautioned that this had not been established. 'The rocks contain a very special chemical signature — one that can only be found in rocks which are very, very old,' he said."

Comments

Worlds oldest found rocks found!

[narcberry]

Isn't it inaccurate to say "World's oldest rocks found" ? I'm a fan of Schroedinger and all that, but just because their the oldest we've observed doesn't mean they are the oldest.

Re:Worlds oldest found rocks found!

[Anonymous Coward]

The 'oldest' (or largest, smallest etc...) is always based on known measurable things. It isn't the the oldest person is the absolute oldest person in the world, just the oldest known. There could have been one person who lived long before we recorded it who lived longer than anyone today, albiet unlikely. It is likely there are older rocks, in fact it is almost inevitable there are older ones, especially if they find traces of life in them. These are just the oldest verified and recorded that we know of.

Re:Worlds oldest found rocks found!

[Anonymous Coward]

Radiometric methods give the date of a *rock*, not the date of the formation of its constituent atoms (which you can't measure because of the "memoryless" property of exponential decay). The idea is that if samarium desintegrates on its way from space to the Earth, it stops being samarium. So by definition, all the samarium found in a rock is "fresh" when the rock is formed. When it desintegrates its products (such as neodymium-142) are trapped in the rock.

Re:There is hype in the article

[cbreaker]

No. Intelligent Design cannot be taught in a scientific manner, unless it is to say "There was no Intelligent Design."

The whole "teach the controversy" is an attempt to trick people into teaching ID, and is a means of validating it.

Ah, bible explained after all.

[tjstork]

Looks like ancient shamans used a DWORD in the Good book to represent the age of the earth. When it was downloaded, the figure of 4.3 billion years overflowed and wrapped around to around 6000 years.

Problem solved.

It's funny though, because, you know, as much as everyone deservedly knocks the 6000 year old figure, few actually probe the ancient conceit that drove it - that is, the universe could not exist without mankind, and so, it more or less exists to serve mankind, and therefor we can spread out across the world and conquer it.

Now, with all of our fancy science of course, we know much better. We know that the universe is billions of years old, and that, we've not actually found a shred of life within it that is not from our planet. Not a peep out of SETI, a hello from another world - not even a cell on Mars- nothing. So, it really looks like, that, we can spread across the world and conquer it.

So, the upshot is that ancient man and today's scientists drew exactly the same conclusion. If we can see it, we can take it. All of this mumbo jumbo about the age of the thing doesn't matter a bit. In the mind of the Pope and Goddard alike, its -ours-.

Re:4 Billion years old? I don't think so.

[tehcyder]

According to any religion-respecting Christian, the rocks are only 5,000 years old.

No, it's only the fundamentalist Christians who would think that, in the rest of the world you can be a Christian without believing every single word in the Bible is the absolute truth.

BTW, I'm not a Christian, I'm just saying you shouldn't judge a faith or set of beliefs by the crazy extremists, otherwise you end up with the "because most suicide bombers are Muslims, most Muslims are suicide bombers" type of argument.

Re:4 Billion years old? I don't think so.

[Cowmonaut]

Disclaimer: At best I'm agnostic though truth be told I don't think about religion 90-92% of the time because it seems to cause nothing but misery. Also I tend to be suspicious of anything that is "The Word of the Creator" but written by man.

"If your Bible says that people were made from mud, then either: that Bible story is utterly and completely mistaken; or it is deliberately lying to you."

Spoken like someone who wishes this to be true and in his arrogance claims it must be true.

Why do you have a problem with someone having faith in a religion if they don't let it screw up how they view the world?

Behold! You have someone who believes in God AND thinks evolution is a right clever idea! But rather be grateful that not everyone is insane, instead of seeing hope for the future, you have to attack the person.

You sir, are a moron.

If you are *ever* going to begin convincing people that science has nothing to do with religion (which it doesn't) then STOP attacking them on theological grounds.

Embrace this guy's beliefs the next time some archo-conservative nut tells you the universe is 6000 years old and the world was made in 3 days and that there is no point planning for the future because the world is going to end anyways.

"Any story that tries to tell it otherwise is simply incorrect. Wrong. Utterly mistaken. There is nothing else to it."

You've never heard of allegory then have you? Take a literature class and learn something. There is a reason civilizations have myths and legends they tell stories about, and its NOT because we like to be entertained (though it helps).

Some atheists need to stop treating everything as a personal attack. The egotism sets my teeth on edge.