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World's Oldest Fossils Found In Greenland (washingtonpost.com)
schwit1 quotes a report from Washington Post: Scientists probing a newly exposed, formerly snow-covered outcropping in Greenland claim they have discovered the oldest fossils ever seen, the remnants of microbial mats that lived 3.7 billion years ago. It's a stunning announcement in a scientific field that is always contentious. But if confirmed, this would push the established fossil record more than 200 million years deeper into the Earth's early history, and provide support for the view that life appeared very soon after the Earth formed and may be commonplace throughout the universe. A team of Australian geologists announced their discovery in a paper titled "Rapid emergence of life shown by discovery of 3,700-million-year-old microbial structures," published Wednesday in Nature. The report adds: "Subsequent laboratory analysis established that the formation is 3.7 billion years old, and turned up additional chemical signatures consistent with a biological origin for the conical structures, Allen Nutman, a University of Wollongong geologist, said. These scientists determined the age of the rocks through radiometric dating, measuring the abundance of elements created by the steady decay of uranium."
With more evidence that planets with life will form by the trillions, it's only math to theorize that we recycle the universe by observing the higgs particle, otherwise the odds of us being on this planet rather than the trillions to come are astronomically against us. Only by destoying the possibility of these trillions of planets forming can we rationalize the odds of us being here now.
A slashdot meme... any story on evolution and someone will post something inane about 6000 years with the first 5 posts.
World's Oldest Fossils Found In Greenland
...where they were observed using VAX 8600's.
And he didn't even have the audacity to say 60XY years old. eventually the creationist universe estimation with be within the margin of error of the actual age of the universe
Both of them - George and Barbara.
At least we now have proof of anthropogenic global warming. After all, the current global warming must be unprecedented otherwise previous generations would have found the toys God hid under the glaciers when he was creating the world.
P.S. Only 6000 years old? What are you a caveman? Wake up and smell the 6020s dude.
See that "Preview" button?
The Earth is only 6,000 years old and I can see Russia from my house.
Jesus went around like Johnny Appleseed and planted fossils to fool the non-believers.
Right. Levinthals paradox makes the Earths age a DONTCARE. Order-of proton life-time to form one amuzing polypeptide. Since life can't happen at all, it can only happen once.
Actually it's about folding into a specific configuration rather than "forming". Also it assumes no mechanism other than chance, which is where lots of these arguments go astray.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Don't trouble yourself over global warming. There is a clear and easy solution. Build giant rockets on the equator to push the planet into a more distant orbit.
Pardon me sir, do you have any Grey Poupon?
Monstar L
You're a bit early. By Bishop Ussher's chronology, the world will be 6019 years old in about 7 weeks.
That said, although Ussher's chronology is the best known, other biblical/historical chronologies exist varying by decades or more from this.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
I've seen the "it's just a theory" meme repeated so many times by Americans that I'm really starting to question the education level of most of the Americans. Most? Yes, most (meaning the majority).
I love Tina Fay quotes! She's snarky, so she must be smart.
The numbers are always inflated for click-baiting.
I can see Russia from my house.
So, hows the weather on Little Diomede?
According to Almighty Zeus, the world is 80,000 years ood.
Who am I to believe, you, or the Lord of Olympus?
...Cowboy Neal.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
The conical structures are fossils of the Great Race of Yith.
Stupidity of this magnitude should make you too poor to be able to waste your time on trying to export stupid beliefs like that onto other people.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
I do believe this a serious article.
That said, the commentary is a little speculative. With a sample size of one, the conclusions we can draw about life across the universe are very limited.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
"Ha ha ha! I am a prankster God. I am killing me!" - Bill Hicks
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
Using straw-man arguments as you do, do not say much about your level of education either.
That an editor here (with a long shameful record of idiotic mistakes in summaries) resorted to a false quote about seeing Russia, and a straw-man argument about 6000 year old earth(borrowed from an obvious troll), says a lot about the ignorance and irrationality prevailing at slashdot now.
Pity! This was once a great website.
That's stupid, everyone knows the Earth isn't flat. The poles are there to hide the entrances to the INSIDE of the earth where the lizard men live. How could the earth have an inside anyway if it was flat? That makes no sense, see.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
This is the kind of contribution that some cum-guzzler makes to a scientific conversation when they don't know shit about real science.
You're hallucinating straw men. Scary stuff. Seriously, nothing he said is a straw man. Go learn what the hell that means.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Literally have no idea what you're complaining about.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Where did those people get the 6000 year old earth from? I always thought they used the Byzantine calendar which set the year 1 on the presumed creation of the earth according their bible. Since the ancient Greek were the inventors of the Catholic church and all the sects after many schisms I think they had the authority to choose a 'starting point of the universe'. It isn't anything scientific, it is just pure dogmatism. But the Byzantine calendar is now in the year 7525. So according to the 'inventors' of Christianity the world is exactly 7525 years old.
But I only hear about 6000 years and never about the 'exact date' of 7525 Byzantine calendar = 2016 in our calendar. How did they get to the number 6000?
. . . .are found in the United States Senate. . . .
Stupidity is one of our biggest exports. See also: drug and alcohol prohibition.
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
One consistent thing I've noticed about people who call others "stupid" is that they very often are making the very mistake they're calling out. And if not that, their post will be full of grammatical, logical, and/or spelling mistakes. I have a theory about that, but unfortunately, I have to get to work right now.
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
"Yeah, and now they are exporting this shit in other countries. There are now antivaxers with public stands on european markets."
And need I mention the anti-GMO sentiment all over Europe, and Germany with its nuclear hysteria? If there is one thing Hollywood is good at, it's spreading ideas.
I've seen the "it's just a theory" meme repeated so many times by Americans that I'm really starting to question the education level of most of the Americans.
Why, have you seen "most" Americans repeating this crud? These idiots are widely mocked here. But your one example makes me question the education level of most overly-smug Eurotrash.
Read up on it. It's interesting.
Bishop Ussher, along with many others, were curious to know how old the universe was. So he went to The Bible and started figuring things out. We knew dates - the razing the Temple, Babylon Captivity - but how to figure out the beginning.
Go to The Bible and add up the dates. 6 days for creation + one day of rest + this lifetime + that lifetime until you get to a known date. Then, voila, you have the age of the universe.
Simple really.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Oh I've been modded up. Doesn't say why. C'mon slashdot give me an "Informative"!
SJW n. One who posts facts.
That and Brawndo, It's got Electolytes!
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
It's just a theory anyway
And so it begins.
But the Earth IS flat. Well, locally flat. Sort of. A manifold, at any rate. Except for all of the fractally scaled bumps that extend down to the molecular level.
Come to think of it, the Earth isn't flat. In fact, it doesn't even have a surface. Just a highly irregular atomic-scale semi-fractal zone of Pauli-electrostatic intermolecular repulsion. The best that can be said is that at some particular coarse-grained scale, it is locally highly reminiscent of a truly flat planar surface osculating to a point in the average, sometimes.
Now the 6000 year bit -- yes, the earth has been around for 6000 years. Just like I've been around for 100% of the last two minutes. Unless one gets really serious about quantum fluctuations, where one could argue -- not necessarily perfectly reasonably -- that every elementary particle in my body flickers in and out of existence on the Heisenberg scale where \delta (mc^2) \delta t \approx \hbar. Following that argument, there is a near certainty that you could pick any instant you like and insist that the Earth "came into being" within an teeny bit of that instant...
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
The Ood are not a unit of time. The Ood are not amused by this.
Pushing back the evidence of life implies one of the following is true.
1) Life (abiogenesis) is easy to get started and the Universe is full of life.
2) It was an extremely rare event for life to start on Earth.
3) Life started somewhere else and ended up on Earth.
4) Life had outside help in getting started.
I personally believe that life is extremely hard to get going and with the evidence of life showing up even earlier, it makes it more likely that there was some outside help, i.e. a supernatural event.
You choose to remian ignorant and lick editor's arse? Feel free!
"... nothing he said is a straw man ..."
Well, you are free to remain willfully blind, ignorant, and irrational.
What! thats before GNU Hurd was started.
Sure, why not? You seem to have already decided this is the way to go. Every case that dargaud mentioned are real cases, not made-up examples to be defenseless against an argument.
Straw-men arguments involve fictional people who can't be defended, not arguments pushed by actual real live people.
Evolution implies death before sin. If there was death before sin, then “original sin” and Jesus’ atonment for that sin are meaningless. They’re not going to accept something that breaks their religion, because they have a deathly (no pun intended) fear of not having a life after death. They are also wrapped up in fear over some mythical “moral decline” that they believe is caused by moral relativism that they seem to think evolution implies.
What’s interesting is to uncover the inconsistences in their beliefs. They claim to read the Bible literally or “at face value.” But when it comes to original sin, the Bible is only clear about HUMAN SPIRITUAL death as a result of original sin. They extend this to physical death of all animals. But when pressed, they cannot identify specific Bible verses that speak to this. Rather, they fall back on an assumption they make about the meaning of “very good” which they ASSUME (a tendency they say is a problem with evolutionists) means there could have been no animal death before human sin. They presume too much to know the mind of God and what God may have thought was “very good” beyond what their Bible claims while trying to convince us that the primary source of truth should be the Bible.
They go on to create a subculture where evidence is something we can take or leave as we like as it fits or doesn’t fit our preconceptions. Then they turn around and call evolution a preconception. It was Christians who came up with the idea!
A slashdot meme... any story on evolution and someone will post something inane about 6000 years with the first 5 posts.
Somehow I can't reconcile that statement coming from someone with a 5-digit UID, Did it seriously take you that long to figure it out, or were you sitting on it all this time, finally deciding to unleash upon us an explosive demonstration of your intellectual prowess?
Seriously, weren't we all thinking the same thing?
One thing is for sure, Mr. Obvious - I will put in a recommendation that you be promoted to Captain.
Two words: Pita Earth
Yes, just like pita bread the earth is in fact flat AND hollow. Old theories get out of the way!!!!
They presume too much to know the mind of God...
No. They recognize the direct word of God in Christ's teachings against evolution, not wasting all his time just telling us to love one another.
What? Oh, nevermind.