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Scientists May Have Found the Earliest Evidence of Life On Earth (sciencemag.org)
sciencehabit writes with news that UCLA scientists have found evidence that life likely existed on Earth at least 4.1 billion years ago, 300 million years earlier than previously thought. Science reports: "When did life on Earth begin? Scientists have dug down through the geologic record, and the deeper they look, the more it seems that biology appeared early in our planet's 4.5-billion-year history. So far, geologists have uncovered possible traces of life as far back as 3.8 billion years. Now, a controversial new study presents potential evidence that life arose 300 million years before that, during the mysterious period following Earth's formation. The clues lie hidden in microscopic flecks of graphite—a carbon mineral—trapped inside a single large crystal of zircon. Zircons grow in magmas, often incorporating other minerals into their crystal structures of silicon, oxygen, and zirconium. And although they barely span the width of a human hair, zircons are nearly indestructible. They can outlast the rocks in which they initially formed, enduring multiple cycles of erosion and deposition."
Here. It's right here.
Let's not even include a link to it!
link to article
Haven't found any scientific article yet but here is the news page from UCLA:
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/relea...
In short, they found graphite in a crystal and the graphite has a carbon 12 to carbon 13 ratio which indicates biological origin.
So, the current status is "plausible" but if someone comes up with another explanation it is "busted".
We popped into existence 10ms ago and will vanish just as quickly.
Yes, metaphorically speaking.
Note that 4.1 Ga is right in the middle of the Hadean period, when the Earth was still settling into layers and the crust and oceans were just forming. No distinct core or mantle yet, and the moon was a ring of rock encircling the Earth. This is half a million years before plate tectonics, before even prokaryota (micros without cell nuclei) developed.
These clues might just tell _how_ cellular reproduction and upwards energy gradients (i.e. life) began, not just _when_.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
what passes for science, on Slashdot these days? A single celled organism or RNA strand preserved would be proof of life, not graphite imbedded in a rock. It's just click-bait.
Well, I got dressed up for nothing.
Using "mysterious" in a scientific publication. Ever.
Get it right.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Ken Ham is curling up in a ball chanting "6000 years, 6000 years, 6000 years!"
I'm not saying it was aliens, but...
You are welcome on my lawn.
And all of the people created over all the Earth outside of the Garden. Adam and Eve were a special case. The Eden tale is a flashback to a day before God created humanity; says so right at the beginning: "on the day that God blah blah blah". This also explains where Cain's wife came from. But if you're looking for a "one family to spawn them all" point, Noah is your man. Noah, his family, and his kids' spouses were the new start after the flood.
Interesting stuff! But I believe in the theory of evolution as opposed to divine creation.
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
Tis A LIE!!
The Pope (and by extension, The Catholic Church) believes in divine creation as well as a the theory of evolution. It's only a few nutjobs who actually believe that we descended from 2 single humans and that the earth is only 6000 years old.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Ok aside from the fact that it took me a few minutes to figure out where the article link was (I nearly posted some critique on the editor for not including it), how do you think this is going to work Dice? I mean it's one thing to turn Slashdot into a typical trashy blog, but even they follow conventions of inline links.
What happens when you suddenly include multiple articles or multiple sources in your posts? Who gets to go in the title, the one who paid the most?
I can't believe how hard to use this site is these days.
I sort of agree with you, in my belief it looks the most probably that Homo sapiens evolved more or less as claimed by science, and that the special case in some way was introduced into that pool some 6 millennia ago (created - for some debatable value of created) - i.e. the "genesis" of the people of the Old Testament.
But if you're looking for a "one family to spawn them all" point, Noah is your man. Noah, his family, and his kids' spouses were the new start after the flood.
And then there are claims that the Noah flood wasn't necessarily globe-spanning, perhaps limited to the area where the genesis people lived and got corrupted. Many flood stories are found around the world, but they differ in details, and many of them are more consistent with a catastrophic run-off event than with a mountain-covering water mass.
AC because non-PC.
Sadly, the number of people who believe in the literal interpretation of the Christian creation story is a lot higher than it should be. The tradition of passing on indoctrination from one generation to another is alive and well in the US. And it shows no signs of abating. What stuns me is how many otherwise intelligent people completely abandon their critical thinking skills as soon as you start to question their religious beliefs.
Didn't we come from Adam & Eve and their children, Cain and Able?
Cain and Seth. Abel was killed before he had any children.
It was Superman from Krypton. He crashed in the midwest with and egg, like Mork.
As I pointed out above, no Christians or Jews should believe that everyone descended from only two humans. On the sixth day, God created men and women all over, outside Eden. The tightest point in genetic history according to Genesis would be right after the flood, but that also includes the spouses of Noah's children, not just his children.
There are many creation myths that say we're all descended from only two people, but they're mostly Native American or European pagan.
A fucktard brazilian padawan trying to lure Slashdotters. Poor try, dumbass.
The first mutation that speciated humans was not expressed until many generation after it appeared. BY then it had become recessive in a great number of people, so Homo Sapiens could enjoy a population explosion.
The Bible does not explicitly state that God created any women other than Eve. It does say "them" in a few places, without giving a number, but that could easily refer to "Adam and Eve," and this is the most natural conclusion since those are the only two people the Bible explicitly lists as having been created.
While any reasonable person might infer that God created people in addition to Adam and Eve, any reasonable person might also realize that there is no good reason to take any of the text literally. Every word was put to paper by human hands, and humans are known to be fallible. The claim to infallibility is also made by humans, which are still themselves fallible. Human fallibility taints the entire Bible, and forces any reasonable person to regard the whole thing as ancient myth.
This "abandoning of critical thinking skills" should not stun you. It is natural for humans to do this, and it normally takes a whole lot of education and training to impart into a person the ability to remain objective when confronted with emotionally-charged material.
This *probably* has something to do with the limbic system's ability to short-circuit decision-making processes during a stressful situation. I am not a neurologist and can only speculate. But this phenomenon is nearly universal among humans, so I suspect the underlying mechanism was selected for.
Indeed, the only reason anybody does not do this is because the human brain is so adaptable that cognitive processes like this can be overcome with training.
Realize that people derive a sense of security from their religious beliefs. Most of them were indoctrinated as children, and told that if they ever abandoned these beliefs they would be tortured in fire forever, by God himself. Such emotionally-charged content, delivered at such an impressionable period, pretty much guarantees that objective and rational thought on the subject is impossible for the rest of one's life.
Why would an ancient story that some guys just made up be more relevant than a scientific theory that was the product of generations of research and refinement?
why is there no life on moon ?
Maybe God just dropped his pencil and the top broke off.
Still it's the traditional poorly referenced third party article instead of the actual source article but what else do you expect?
A lot of Slashdot's readership don't subscribe to numerous paywalled scientific journals, nor are they willing to pay $30 for a single article. Therefore, those who do take the time to read the featured article often have to rely on pop-science distillations.