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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."

5 of 76 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Wrong by dargaud · · Score: 3, Informative
    Yeah, and now they are exporting this shit in other countries. There are now antivaxers with public stands on european markets. Fake schoolbook publishers with anti-evolution agenda who send free books to public schools. Hell, I've a website with plenty of Antarctic pictures and I recently received email from a guy who was trying to get me to admit that at the poles there are hidden proofs that the earth is flat !!!

    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.

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    Non-Linux Penguins ?
  2. Re:Wrong by serviscope_minor · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.

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    SJW n. One who posts facts.
  3. Re:More, and more by NotAPK · · Score: 3, Interesting

    There are two trivial ways to do powers of ten in ASCII characters. 10^6 is one way, and can even be written long hand such as: 1.2345 x 10^6. The more compact form uses "e" for exponent and is called "scientific" or "engineering" notation, though some insist that "engineering" notation only allows multiples of 3 for the powers of ten. Anyway, I digress, use exponent notation like this: 1.234e6 or be explicit with the sign 1.234e+6 and for small values use 1.234e-6.

    I think you were writing the range: "figures like 10^10 to 10^120 universe diameters"

  4. Re:Wrong by serviscope_minor · · Score: 4, Funny

    Oh I've been modded up. Doesn't say why. C'mon slashdot give me an "Informative"!

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    SJW n. One who posts facts.
  5. Why fundamentalists can’t accept deep time by Theovon · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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!