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Scientists Discover the World's Oldest Colors (phys.org)
1.1 billion-year-old bright pink pigments extracted from rocks deep beneath the Sahara desert in Africa are the oldest colors on record. They were discovered by scientists from The Australian National University (ANU), with support from Geoscience Australia and researchers in the United States and Japan. Phys.Org reports: Dr. Nur Gueneli from ANU said the pigments taken from marine black shales of the Taoudeni Basin in Mauritania, West Africa, were more than half a billion years older than previous pigment discoveries. The fossils range from blood red to deep purple in their concentrated form, and bright pink when diluted. The researchers crushed the billion-year-old rocks to powder, before extracting and analyzing molecules of ancient organisms from them.
"The precise analysis of the ancient pigments confirmed that tiny cyanobacteria dominated the base of the food chain in the oceans a billion years ago, which helps to explain why animals did not exist at the time," Dr. Gueneli said. Senior lead researcher Associate Professor Jochen Brocks from ANU said that the emergence of large, active organisms was likely to have been restrained by a limited supply of larger food particles, such as algae. "Algae, although still microscopic, are a thousand times larger in volume than cyanobacteria, and are a much richer food source," said. The study has been published in the journal PNAS.
"The precise analysis of the ancient pigments confirmed that tiny cyanobacteria dominated the base of the food chain in the oceans a billion years ago, which helps to explain why animals did not exist at the time," Dr. Gueneli said. Senior lead researcher Associate Professor Jochen Brocks from ANU said that the emergence of large, active organisms was likely to have been restrained by a limited supply of larger food particles, such as algae. "Algae, although still microscopic, are a thousand times larger in volume than cyanobacteria, and are a much richer food source," said. The study has been published in the journal PNAS.
Probably more correct to say "oldest rock color". Colors are meta data. It'd be like saying "We discovered gravity is the oldest force in the universe". The statement is nonsense.
We'll make great pets
Back when I was young, the world was still in black and white. Color wasn't invented yet.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I think we can accept part of the linked article - that pigments have been identified in very old rocks.
However, the phys.org piece then seems to claim that this is somehow "pigmentation", inferring that this is an aesthetic feature of the life form at the time. There is no suggestion that these life forms had developed organs capable of what we recognise today as "sight".
The simple fact is that chemicals generate colours. Copper sulphate solution? It's a cyan-blue. Potassium Permanganate solution? Tha's purple. But copper sulphate isn't blue for aesthetic reasons, it's blue because of the way that light interacts with the molecular structure of the compound. It is a direct result of the physical properties of the compound in question.
Treating this as though it were somehow a remarkable discovery is complete nonsense. We know that chemical reactions - inorganic as well as organic - produce compounds of given colours and pigments. I can put chunks of metallic copper in to sulphuric acid and get blue copper sulphate, but that isn't some pigment created by a life form. That's just chemistry.
In other words, what this article is establishing is not some aesthetic pigment produced by an ancient life form. It is, instead, identifying a potential range of chemical processes that the life forms could have used as part of their metabolism. Well, having a metabolism is one of the identifiable features of "life". It doesn't imply that the "colours" that result come from anything beyond that basic chemistry.
Nothing to see here. Move along, move along.
Only on Slashdot you could make a bad joke about the technological development of television and it gets modded "insightful".
Mods? What the fuck is wrong with you?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Probably more correct to say "oldest rock color".
No, the oldest confirmed rock on Earth at 4.4 billion years old is a nice blue zircon.
However, the oldest "colour" in the Universe though is technically the Cosmic microwave background. Some of those photons used to be in the visible spectrum but are so old, dating from 300k years after the Big Bang, that the expansion of the universe stretched them into the microwave region. So, if anything, the oldest colour is what we now perceive as the black between the stars and galaxies.
I just google "purple tree" and I'm thinking of how awesome it would be if all the trees were purple. I think that many science fiction writers (movies and books) often don't seem to have as much variation in terms of what could really be out there. It kind of bothers me when everyone looks like humans and every planet looks like earth. Some of them definitely get it better than others, but I think even in the ones that tend to have lots of variety don't really stretch it too far from what we find on earth.
There are two answers why they do this. One is for pulp-sci fi; and the other is for more indepth scifi.
Novelists don't have this excuse- but for pulp Sci Fi on TV it's a lot cheaper to have aliens that can be played by humans with bits of plastic stuck to their faces to form ridges and bumps than it is to have non-humanoid aliens. Also for world sets- if the plants look earthlike, it's a lot cheaper and realistic looking to make a set.
There is another dimension to this though. A lot of the better Science Fiction novels are really critiques on society. By taking an alien futuristic world and changing one or two things you can make a social commentary about OUR society by exaggerating one of it's features. Most (good) science fiction isn't REALLY about other planets- it's about us on our planet; if you change too much and make it too unrecognizable it's harder to make your point.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Because they were color pictures of black and white, remember?
The world is a complicated place, Hobbes.
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Color was invented 15 minutes after the start of The Wizard of Oz.
Have gnu, will travel.
I took it as a Calvin and Hobbes reference.
It's a Calvin and Hobbes reference, as are the replies.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.