The Earth’s oldest fossil?
The uncertainty of science: Geologists this week announced the discovery of what they think is the Earth’s oldest fossil, approximately 3.7 billion years old.
While the press as usual is going gaga over this announcement, it should be noted that many others in the field have expressed significant doubts.
But the discovery involves some of the most physically tortured rocks on Earth, which have been squeezed and heated over billions of years as crustal plates shifted. The pressure and heat recrystallizes the rocks, erasing much of the fine-scale detail that researchers normally use to identify fossilized stromatolites — so the work is already triggering heated debate. “I’ve got 14 queries and problems that need addressing before I’ll believe it,” says Roger Buick, a geobiologist at the University of Washington in Seattle.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
The uncertainty of science: Geologists this week announced the discovery of what they think is the Earth’s oldest fossil, approximately 3.7 billion years old.
While the press as usual is going gaga over this announcement, it should be noted that many others in the field have expressed significant doubts.
But the discovery involves some of the most physically tortured rocks on Earth, which have been squeezed and heated over billions of years as crustal plates shifted. The pressure and heat recrystallizes the rocks, erasing much of the fine-scale detail that researchers normally use to identify fossilized stromatolites — so the work is already triggering heated debate. “I’ve got 14 queries and problems that need addressing before I’ll believe it,” says Roger Buick, a geobiologist at the University of Washington in Seattle.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
I remember this speculative discovery from last year. Not fossils, but identified as the product of life by carbon isotope dating, puts origin of life as early as 4.1 billion years. Not well confirmed that biology is the cause, but it doesn’t seem to be far out.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28365-life-may-have-begun-300-million-years-earlier-than-we-thought/
Carbon isotope dating is good to about 50,000 years at best due to the relatively short half life of C14.
Dating is speculative at best and depends upon the theory people adhere to.
They measured carbon-13 which is radioactively stable (so I don’t know how that helps).
Proxima Centauri is older than our Sun at 4.85 billion years old compared to our Sun that is 4.6 billion years old. That is a difference of our Sun being 250 million years younger than Proxima Centauri. Two hundred and fifty million years after Proxima Centauri was born our Sun was born.
Our Sun which provided solar energy and elements that spurred life here on Earth.
Starting with each planet here are their ages compared to our Sun’s age.
Mercury – 4.503 billion years – 97 million years younger
Venus – 4.503 billion years – 97 million years younger
Earth – 4.543 billion years – 67 million years younger
Mars – 4.503 billion years – 97 million years younger
Jupiter – 4.503 billion years – 97 million years younger
Saturn – 4.503 billion years – 97 million years younger
Uranus – 4.503 billion years – 97 million years younger
Neptune – 4.503 billion years – 97 million years younger
Pluto – ?
The age difference of Earth is most likely attributed to the fact that science is able to determine the age of Earth better than other planets due to years of studying samples and radioactive decay found in those samples.
Approxiamtely 300 billion years after Proxima Centauri was born the planets in the Sol System were born 97 million years after our Sun was born 250 million years after Proxima Centauri.
The interesting question is; what could have caused our Sun to be born 250 million years after Proxima Centauri? Was it a rupture thate caused the Big Bang to take place? Or was our Sun born from Big Bang ejecta still traveling through space?
If our Sun was born due to rupture in space-time seeing as how Proxima Centauri is only 4.2 ly away the light from our Sun would have taken 4.2 ly to reach the Proxima Centauri system and might augment the solar energy that is needed by life on Earth possibly allowing life to exist.
With our Sun possibly being born from a rupture in space time the explosion would have sent a large amount of ejecta hurlting towards the Proxima Centauri system tht because life exists on Earth the same life building components might have been carried with an explosion to any of the planets orbiting Proxima Centauri.
If Sun was born of Big Bang ejecta that passed by the Proxima Centauri system before settling into the shell’s center then life building material might have been trapped on the planets in Proxima Centauri as well.
What I have noticed from life in general is this. All life is born within the womb. A womb is a protective shell. A woman’s womb, the shell of an egg or the slimy goop that protects critters like tadpoles. They are all a shell that protects and promotes life from within. Some life doesn’t make it but that is the design of the Universe and how the Universe interacts with the womb and reproduction. If we look at the closet planets to Earth out to a distance of 50 ly there is a trait. The farther we get away from Earth the solar systems become relatively close to one and each other basically forming the shell of an egg or the womb around the Earth. The outer planets from zero to 50 ly would form The Shell or Womb of Life as I call it and would be similar to the egg of the woman that sperm found and then impregnated.
When looking for solar systems that might have life in them I suggest looking for signs of shell solar systems tht have a lot of planets in the system and are packed relatively close together that would create the shell or womb that would protect the planet with life on it at the center from natural space phenoms like asteroids, comets radiation, etc.
I would be almost certain that if you studied the layers of the goop inside of a womb around a fetus that the layers distance to each new layer should coincide with the distances from Earth to each solar system within a 50 ly distance from Earth.
Dwight Huth–
I’m confused as to what is your main point. (You’re losing me with the “space-time ruptures.”) Please expand slightly.
My intent is not to pick apart your post, but I would like to clarify two points–
Our Sun & Planets, are made up of material that was, in part, previously inside older stars that formed & eventually exploded, before our Sun formed.
Stars can produce all the Elements but they don’t always do so; they can “burn” Elements up to Iron, all the other Elements are created when the star explodes, and are spewed into the surrounding space.
(one last point; “There is no center of the Universe, and our location isn’t at the center. On large enough scales, the Universe is isotropic & homogenous.” and… Space appears to be flat to a high degree of certainty.)
Proxima Centauri is 4 light-years away from us, but it’s not 4 light-years further away, from the “origin point.” (there is no “center” of the Universe. There is no inherent reason stars near or far from us, should necessarily be older or younger, just on that alone.)
tangentially- I suspect you might enjoy these two lectures–
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/galactic-archaeology
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-first-stars
and this rather technical one– (1 of 10 total for the class) (lots of Maths)
Cosmology | Lecture 1
Dr. Susskind at Stanford
https://youtu.be/32wIKaLkvc4