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Living organisms may have existed on Earth as long as 4.1bn years ago – 300m years earlier than was previously thought, new research has shown.
If confirmed, the discovery means life emerged a remarkably short time after the Earth was formed from a primordial disc of dust and gas surrounding the sun 4.6bn years ago.
Researchers discovered the evidence in specks of graphite trapped within immensely old zircon crystals from Jack Hills, Western Australia.
Atoms in the graphite, a crystalline form of carbon, bore the hallmark of biological origin. They were enriched with 12C, a "light" carbon isotope, or atomic strain, normally associated with living things.
It suggests that a terrestrial biosphere had emerged on Earth as early as 4.1bn years ago, said the scientists writing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by RedBear on Friday October 23 2015, @08:09PM
Life never began. Or, it started at the Big Bang. Or, the beginning of Time, if you prefer.
Sounds crazy? I'm not so sure anymore. There have been more and more clues in recent decades that seem to be leading to the inevitable conclusion that there never was a "beginning of life". We've been pushing back the supposed beginning of life on Earth by hundreds of millions of years every decade or so. We're now virtually down to the Hadean period, when the Earth was basically a ball of molten rock and steam. We've also observed many of the precursor molecules, amino acids and alcohols and such, hanging around out in space, in nebulas and the tails of comets. And then there's the fact that we can't actually decide exactly what constitutes "life" versus inanimate matter.
In light of all of this, I have a sneaking suspicion that eventually all of the scientific world will reach the conclusion that the universe has basically been "alive" since very shortly after the Big Bang, and that even if there's nothing in space that would fit what we would generally call "life" at the moment, the precursor molecules that allowed "life" to quickly develop on our planet in a geological blink-of-an-eye after it was formed came from space, thus at least partially fitting into the Panspermia theory. In other words, life literally had no beginning and we are just incredibly complex sets of self-organizing molecular systems, based on earlier, simpler self-organizing molecular systems. From a certain perspective you could even say that life doesn't exist. Or, again, that the universe has simply always been alive, just in a less organized way than it is currently.
Put that in your pipe and ruminate on it.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Friday October 23 2015, @09:28PM
A broad definition of life could include viruses and proto-RNA. Molecules or collections of molecules that can make more of themselves. That at least requires some stars to go supernova and produce heavy elements. So there is a lower bound on when "life" can begin.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 23 2015, @09:51PM
Water is very abundant in the universe. Cosmic background radiation made the entire universe warm enough to hold liquid water in the plain old "vacuum" of space long before it cooled to the levels of today. Perhaps primitive chemical replication systems emerged in this primordial universe. This would support the theory of Panspermia as pockets of life froze in their watery capsules then eventually fell upon rocky worlds and moons, some of which capable of continuing life.
Also, there is Earth ejecta on Mars and the other planets. There is Mars ejecta on Earth. Life may have bounced around this solar system for quite some time. That life emerged almost immediately after the planet was cool enough to support life is either in support of the ease of its emergence, or its existence prior to Earth's ultimate formation.
What may also blow your mind (or maybe not) is that there appears to have been civilizations long before the 5000 year old mesopotaimian valley. Seek out "Gobekli Tepe", "Water Erosion of Sphinx", "Lost ice age civilization", esp. note the under sea structures last above water before the last ice age off the coasts of Japan and Indonesia. Not to mention the African looking Olmec statues that also depict light skinned bearded travelers who were great builders, long before even Leif Erikson came to the Americas.
Atlantis could have been a sea faring Coastal empire. Pharaohs have European DNA. China has European mummies and buried pyramids which the government pays farmers to farm atop, to maintain the myth that their culture developed in isolation and conceal the identity of the blue eyed "sun gods" in their ancient legends. South America has red haired European mummies, North America has European stone tools and neolithic European bodies. Oceanic migration via boat was far more common than today's academia wants to admit, because the apparent sea faring race who influenced the world with their free knowledge sharing of building and astrology goes against the "evil European invaders" social justice narrative.
Some evidence suggests that ancient builders the world over 10,000 years ago knew of the precession of the stars (a 26,000 year cycle).
The suppression of historical truth in order to inflate the local religious and cultural pride is an ancient and ongoing practice. You can see it today as Netanyahu uses the holocaust myth to shame any convenient cultural enemy. Today he blames Muslims for Hitler's plan to eradicate Jews, when in reality the typhus epidemic and starvation got out of control in Nazi work camps after their supply lines were cut off, and the entire Jewish Holocaust (historic meaning: Sacrifice by fire) was fabricated. The true extermination of entire German cities, such as Dresden, which were full of woman and children and artistic works via weeks of carpet bombing followed by incendiary bombs which rendered those hiding in cellars into pools of liquid fats made some American airmen squeamish. The post war camps where surrendered German soldiers had to drink their own urine to survive despite streams in visible proximity, and were slowly starved while "Allies" burned rations rather than feed prisoners -- all in violation of Geneva conventions were so bad that General Patton even spoke out saying that he couldn't believe how low America had sank. He finally came to believe that, "We defeated the wrong enemy". To say nothing of the cossacks and their raping and murder of countless German women and girls.
Hollywood cranks out tear jerking tale after tale of the evil Nazis (who merely rejected unjust reparations and in 5 short years created an economic system avoiding the centralized banking system that threatened to free the entire world from debt based currency -- and thus had to be exterminated and shamed for eternity). Meanwhile there are no Hollywood blockbuster movies about the 12 to 20 million Christians killed after the Bolshevik revolution. There are some stories of the atomic bombs destroying Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but none in the west want to recognize the far greater tragedy of the many German cities completely burned in incendiary super fires that were even more complete in their destruction that A-bombs would have been.
TL;DR: You're right to distrust all the rubbish in mainstream media. Go do some independent research. Our history has been stolen from us and propagandized for tens of thousands of years.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 24 2015, @02:08AM
Interesting post, but I have to point out that the holocaust is not a myth. Saying this makes you look foolish. It may be better described by the word genocide but the fact is that millions of people (not only Jews) died, either directly or indirectly (due to illness or starvation etc), because of Nazis.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 24 2015, @03:20AM
This is almost exactly what I came up with over the years. It is the most elegant and logical answer to the question what (and also why) is life. I couldn't word it so nicely as you do so thank you for that.