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Evolving Rocks
SpaceAdmiral notes a new study making the claim that rocks have been evolving throughout Earth's history. "'Mineral evolution is obviously different from Darwinian evolution — minerals don't mutate, reproduce or compete like living organisms,' said Hazen in a statement announcing the study's findings. 'But we found both the variety and relative abundances of minerals have changed dramatically over more than 4.5 billion years of Earth's history. For at least 2.5 billion years, and possibly since the emergence of life, Earth's mineralogy has evolved in parallel with biology,' Hazen added. 'One implication of this finding is that remote observations of the mineralogy of other moons and planets may provide crucial evidence for biological influences beyond Earth.'"
but not as we know it?
What a misuse of terms.
Our Earth's surface is overwhelmingly shaped by biology - most of the surface carbon, for example (which on Venus is in the atmosphere) is in carbonate rocks, like limestone. There are whole island chains (coral atolls) made biologically. Soil results from biological processes (in fact, I would suspect that soil has evolved over time, as the organisms that make it have evolved). The marble in our public buildings results from biology (and metamorphism).
Could this be used to look for extra-terrestrial life ? Sure. Does this mean that the rocks are evolving ? No.
They turned into Dwayne Johnson
There ain't no monkeys in MY pet rock's family tree!
No its worse than that. They are using "evolved" to mean changed. Its like saying that spring evolves into summer, or a newspaper of paper mache.
It won't be long before the "Intelligent Design" crew start bringing up evolving rocks to show that "evolutionists don't know what they are talking about".
"Dr. Smith, we want you to study this rock."
"OK, what am I looking for?"
"Well, we believe that it's changing."
"Ahhhhh....Right. OK, would you mind passing me some of that good stuff you're smoking? Rather obvious at this point I'm gonna need some too."
One word: Horta.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
'Mineral evolution is obviously different from Darwinian evolution -- minerals don't mutate, reproduce or compete like living organisms,' said Hazen in a statement announcing the study's findings.
Thereby neatly summarizing why it's idiotic to call this process "evolution".
But, holy shit! Earth's mineral composition changes over time? And here I thought that the obvious hypothesis was that it has remained completely unchanged over the last couple of billion years.
sic transit gloria mundi
There's nothing in the article saying that. It's just the usual, overly dramatic journalistic nonsense.
And I don't even understand the point of the article. *Chemical* evolution / differentiation of the minerals making up the Earth is a fundamental understanding. How could you not appreciate it when you've got a Great Barrier Reef composed of many cubic kilometres of limestone, there are thousands of comparable examples past and present, and that's only one example of the linkage? Banded iron formations (related to oxygenation of the atmosphere - oxygen produced by photosynthesis), siliceous ooze and chalk (made of the bodies of planktonic organisms), soils in vegetated areas (e.g., affected by organic acids and sediment trapping by roots) -- there are all sorts of areas of interaction, especially because the atmosphere and waters of the Earth are so profoundly influenced by life. And even in the non-biological realm chemical differentiation is why the Earth has a crust and mantle, or why the crust of the continents and oceans is different in composition, for example. People have realized molten rocks and weathered surface sediments experience predictable chemical changes over time, with and without the presence of life, for almost as long as geology has existed as a science.
I'm sure there is something genuinely new in the scientific paper, but the way it's expressed in the press article is awful. It makes it sound like this is something geologists have never thought about or appreciated before.
The Economist recently had an article about this study as well.
I wonder, is evolution, really at a fundamental level, the inverse of entropy?
If entropy, as a concept, is the movement from an ordered state to a disordered state then evolution is the concept of moving from a lower ordered state to a higher or more advanced\structured state. (The whole entropy is a measurement issue)
If things can evolve from basic to complex then doesn't that impact the concepts of our universe decaying into a cool nothingness?
Just a passing thought is all...
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
The one that the ID-ists object to is Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection-- that is, the theory of the mechanism of that change in living beings.
(and, of course, the hardline creationist object to the fact that living beings change over time, since God created them all exactly as they are now. Except for the snakes, which were originally created with legs-- that's a special case. I don't think that they have any particular problem with the idea of rock types changing, though.)
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Here's a paper from 2003 that is an excellent read, if you are really interested in a very strong, coherent, and comprehensive hypothesis of the change from geochemistry to biochemistry, that is, abiogenesis:
In a nutshell, it offers a hypothesis of life having evolved in FeS and NiS deposits around ancient deep sea geothermal vents. The nature of such rocks is that they form small compartments which acted as "cell walls" to hold early biomolecules in such concentrations to be able to begin biochemistry. Over time, the biochemistry for lipid synthesis began, at which point eubacteria and archaebacteria diverged as they evolved very different mechanisms for making lipid membranes. This gave rise to the first free life forms, prokaryotic bacteria. It is then further hypothesized that Eukaryotes evolved from archaebacteria involved in a symbiotic relationship which became endosymbiotic with a eubacteria that eventually became mitochondria. And so on and so forth. Read the paper. It lays it all out very well and the hypothesis seems to fit very well with available data, both in the geologic record and the phylogenies of various modern archaebacteria, eubacteria, and eukaryotes.
It is perhaps the most coherent, comprehensive, well-supported treatment of the idea of abiogenesis I have ever read.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
The sensational band the B-52's already discovered that rocks were evolving back in '78. Just look what they said...
We were at the beach
Everybody had matching towels
Somebody went under a dock
And there they saw a rock
It wasn't a rock
It was a rock lobster
Along the lines of evolution and rock, man didn't evolve from The Monkeys, he evolved from The Beatles!!!
One man with a gun can control 100 without one
First of all, entropy only increases with time in what is called a closed system. Nothing in, nothing out. If I mix water and salt, I increase the entropy (there are more ways the atoms can be arranged, in effect.) But if I am allowed to bring in energy from outside, I can fix this. I could boil the mixture in a flask, asnd condense the steam. Now I have the water and the salt separated again, but only because I fed "high grade" heat energy in, and I removed "low grade" heat energy from the steam. The water and salt have lost entropy, but the heat source and sink show a net gain. Overall, it can be shown that the entropy gained by the heat source alwasy exceeds the entropy lsot by the water/salt solution.
In the same way, life on Earth can use high grade energy from the Sun to reduce entropy locally, but that energy then has to be re-radiated as low grade energy, with a net gain in entropy. (If the energy wasn't re-radiated, the Earth would get hotter and hotter, gaining entropy. There is no fix for this.)
However, there is an additional point. Evolution does NOT mean evolving from a lower to a more organised state. You need to read Jay Gould on this, he explains it very well. But, in a nutshell, suppose that as a result of human or other activity the earth became unsuitable for any life forms other than high temperature sulfur bacteria. Evolution would ensure that bacteria evolved to fill this ecological niche and more complex lifeforms died out. This is the "survival of the fittest", which does not mean "survival of those with the biggest muscles".
Life maintains itself by keeping down its local entropy. It does this by, in effect, causing entropy to increase somewhere else and then getting rid of the high entropy "waste products", ultimately into space.
In doing so, life may cause geological changes by e.g. depositing calcarious skeletons in rivers and seabeds, or changing the atmosphere and rainfall patterns. You could say that some rocks are INVOLVED in the evolutionary process, and to that extent at least the article is correct.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
I, for one, welcome our new igneous overlords.
he is part of the ID crew.
According to this article:
http://cgc.rncan.gc.ca/dir/index_e.php?id=14970&_h=bleeker
He went to the "Free University of Amsterdam".
A theology school.
http://www.godgeleerdheid.vu.nl/english/index.cfm
I can get a Phd in Theology in 5 minutes on the internet, and yes it would qualify as a 'Doctorate'. Because, you know, religion always gets a special pass.
Maybe I misread, or miss interpreted some information...I certianly hope so.
I did notice he offers no falsifiable tests or evidence.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Minerals are just like any other chemical species on earth. They react with one another, and form into new and more diverse populations based on a variety of fundamental thermodynamic factors. Since the earth's processes have changed and evolved since planetary accretion, it only makes since that the assemblages of minerals we see on the earth would evolve in much the same way.
It appears that this paper focuses primarily on the biological effects on mineral speciation, but there have been a variety of geologic affects that have had equally profound impacts on the earths mineralogy (which in turns defines the variety of rocks we see). Factors such as the development of the earths core, mantle, and crust, plate tectonics, the development and evolution of our atmosphere and hydrosphere, and then of course the evolution of biota and related biogenic sedimentary rocks are all going to have an effect on the mineralogic evolution of the earth.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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Scientists are still unsure whether the common European Swallow has a sufficient airspeed velocity to assist in coconut migration.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
In the sub-discipline of igneous petrology, geologists have long been using the term 'evolve' to describe how melt mineral compositions change with time. In this usage 'evolve' refers to a predictable series of reactions that occur according to rules defined by thermodynamics and chemistry (redundancy intended). Pressure, temperature and chemistry define the 'evolution', there are no 'mutations', just reactions according to the varying conditions.
In fact, this study isn't particularly paradigm shifting, they're confirming what has long been expected: that the composition of the elements that make up the Earth has shifted from being contained predominantly in one kind of rock to another different kind of rock over time (as planetary conditions changed). Not surprisingly, biological processes have aided in this shift.
It's the fact that we're generally used to thinking of the term 'evolve' in much more controversial settings that's got everyone hot and bothered, but sorry to disappoint; like everything else in geology, this is pretty dull.
As if we don't have enough problems with people misunderstanding and quote mining about evolution without bringing rock evolution into it...
Brace for more creationist idiots.
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master.
Why should we redefine-ed-ing English words just to please-ed-ure the creationism-ist-tites?