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posted by martyb on Friday February 14 2020, @04:41PM   Printer-friendly
from the creation dept.

Our solar system is thought to have begun billions of years ago as a protoplanetary disk. Over time, gravity caused this matter to clump together and eventually form planets. There is debate over the process and its duration, with previous studies suggesting several ten million years until the initially dry Earth was formed. Water was delivered at the end of this period.

A new article in Science Advances (open) describes Iron isotope evidence for very rapid accretion and differentiation of the proto-Earth.

Moreover, new planet formation models based on the rapid accretion of pebbles onto asteroidal seeds suggest that Earth's main accretion phase may have been completed within the ~5–million year lifetime of the protoplanetary disk.

The authors find that the ratio of iron isotopes 54Fe to 56Fe in most meteorites differs from the Earth, and deduce that the planet formed rapidly with little material from the outer solar system, where those meteorites originated. The terrestrial iron isotope ratio does match that of a rare class of meteorites known as CI chondrites.

The only epoch in the history of the solar system when the CI-like material is readily available within the terrestrial planet–forming region is during the lifetime of the protoplanetary disk. This period represents the time when the in-falling envelope material of CI composition is channeled through the disk to fuel the growth of the proto-Sun and is estimated to have lasted approximately 4.8 ± 0.3 million years (Ma).

This conclusion has implications for where the Earth's water and oxygen came from:

An initially more reduced proto-Earth relaxes these constraints and only requires that Earth oxidized (i.e., acquired most of its mantle iron budget) by the accretion of CI-like dust. Water is the key ingredient for oxidation, and as such, our results are consistent with the accretion of a component of Earth's water and other volatile elements during the protoplanetary disk's lifetime. This may be achieved via the direct accretion of water adsorbed to dust or reflects the fact that the snowline will be inside of Earth's orbit toward the end of the protoplanetary disk's lifetime, allowing direct accretion of ice during this stage.

Regarding the Moon:

Critically, the rapid timescales proposed here can be reconciled with Earth's mantle 182W isotope composition if the Moon-forming impact occurred at least 40 Ma after the main accretion and differentiation of the proto-Earth.


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  • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 14 2020, @05:40PM (14 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 14 2020, @05:40PM (#958206)

    At the current rate of progress, scientists' estimate of Earth's creation time will coincide with that given in the Bible.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 14 2020, @05:45PM (5 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 14 2020, @05:45PM (#958210)

      wait did't they figure 5000 years in the bronze age?

      • (Score: 3, Funny) by Osamabobama on Friday February 14 2020, @05:49PM (4 children)

        by Osamabobama (5842) on Friday February 14 2020, @05:49PM (#958211)

        There's age and there's creation time. The Earth is estimated to be 6000 years old,[citation needed] but it was created in one day.[citation needed]

        --
        Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
        • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 14 2020, @06:36PM (3 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 14 2020, @06:36PM (#958235)

          Citation: "The Bible", Moses (with assitance from God), circa 1300 BC.

          • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday February 14 2020, @09:26PM (2 children)

            by maxwell demon (1608) on Friday February 14 2020, @09:26PM (#958312) Journal

            Actually the bible doesn't tell how long it took to create the Earth. All it tells about it is: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Everything else happened afterwards.

            --
            The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 15 2020, @02:49PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 15 2020, @02:49PM (#958514)

              So we know "the beginning" already existed. The earth came later. Agreed - no mention of how long either of those took.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 16 2020, @05:10PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 16 2020, @05:10PM (#958842)

              Also if a physicist takes 6 days to make a virtual universe that appears to be billions of years old, how old is that virtual universe and how long did it take to be created?

              Similarly I could start/create a VM now based on a template and the VM could appear to be years old according to the stuff inside it.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 14 2020, @06:14PM (4 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 14 2020, @06:14PM (#958222)

      At the current rate of progress, scientists' estimate of Earth's creation time will coincide with that given in the Bible.

      I have to admit when I saw the headline my first reaction was that this had to be a paper from a skeevy journal written by a religious nutter. But, this is coming from Science Magazine published by AAAS. It also looks like the authors and their affiliations are legit. Of course, that doesn't mean their research finding are legit, but at least there isn't anything I see obviously wrong. Not yet, anyway.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Friday February 14 2020, @06:21PM (2 children)

        by DeathMonkey (1380) on Friday February 14 2020, @06:21PM (#958226) Journal

        Turns out, figuring out exactly what was going on millions of years ago is kinda hard. Go figure!

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 14 2020, @08:38PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 14 2020, @08:38PM (#958298)

          Turns out, figuring out exactly what was going on billions of years ago is kinda hard. Go figure!

          FTFY

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 15 2020, @02:50PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 15 2020, @02:50PM (#958515)

            > Turns out, figuring out exactly what was going on 4 years ago is kinda hard. Go figure!

            FTFY

      • (Score: 2) by Coward, Anonymous on Friday February 14 2020, @08:20PM

        by Coward, Anonymous (7017) on Friday February 14 2020, @08:20PM (#958289) Journal

        Science Magazine and Science Advances are different titles published by AAAS. Science Advances is their new open access journal, while Science Magazine is older but paywalled.

    • (Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday February 14 2020, @07:44PM

      by fustakrakich (6150) on Friday February 14 2020, @07:44PM (#958263) Journal

      Well yeah, the earth was spinning real slow back then.

      I'm just happy it was there when I got here.

      --
      La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
    • (Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday February 14 2020, @07:56PM (1 child)

      by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us (6553) on Friday February 14 2020, @07:56PM (#958274) Journal

      6 days. On the Sabbath, God rested.

      --
      This sig for rent.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 15 2020, @12:27AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 15 2020, @12:27AM (#958355)

        The rest was filling in the paperwork.

  • (Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Friday February 14 2020, @05:57PM

    by nobu_the_bard (6373) on Friday February 14 2020, @05:57PM (#958218)

    If we start on Earth-2 with this kind of time table, that'll coincide with around when I'll be able to retire there.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 14 2020, @07:36PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 14 2020, @07:36PM (#958256)

    A mistake was made.

  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 14 2020, @09:46PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 14 2020, @09:46PM (#958317)

    make me think they interviewed God.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 14 2020, @11:07PM (12 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 14 2020, @11:07PM (#958333)

    Robert V. Gentry has done interesting research on the matter and has interesting arguments.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_V._Gentry [wikipedia.org]

    It's been years since I've actually read this in depth and I don't remember much of it by now but I found the argument to be interesting and I remember most of the attempts to address it by the scientific community have been very unconvincing at best.

    At the same time I know young earth creationists that absolutely refuse to acknowledge any possible scientific evidence exists that the earth is over about 6K years old no matter what.

    I'm not sure what to believe myself. While personally I'm a Christian I try to separate my Christian beliefs from scientific interpretations but I find that no one really has a good scientific explanation of our origins (including myself). It's as though the scientific evidence is meant to be mystifying.

    OTOH I find that the very existence of science to support my belief in the existence of GOD for a universe that can support a scientific model must have a degree of non-random predictability that would be unlikely to result from randomness.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 14 2020, @11:22PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 14 2020, @11:22PM (#958336)

      (the same poster, just wanted to add some things but I got interrupted).

      (to be added to the fourth paragraph)
      Some of arguments that young earth creationists come up with to fit the evidence within their model can be quite hilarious (that's not to say that I am or am not a young earth creationist, I'm not sure, I just think that their attempts to fit the evidence within their model have many problems).

      (to be added to the last paragraph)
      The secularists try to use the multiverse argument to explain things away but I find the multiverse argument to be an unscientific faith based explanation for why science even exists in the first place.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 14 2020, @11:35PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 14 2020, @11:35PM (#958340)

        Oh, and his website can be found here

        http://www.halos.com/ [halos.com]

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday February 15 2020, @01:49PM (9 children)

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday February 15 2020, @01:49PM (#958497) Journal

      I'm not sure what to believe myself. While personally I'm a Christian I try to separate my Christian beliefs from scientific interpretations but I find that no one really has a good scientific explanation of our origins (including myself). It's as though the scientific evidence is meant to be mystifying.

      You're missing the obvious - nobody we know was conducting scientific observations back then. Everything has to be puzzled out indirectly from peculiarities we observe today.

      OTOH I find that the very existence of science to support my belief in the existence of GOD for a universe that can support a scientific model must have a degree of non-random predictability that would be unlikely to result from randomness.

      But could you exist in a universe that wasn't highly structured?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 15 2020, @11:18PM (8 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 15 2020, @11:18PM (#958622)

        "You're missing the obvious - nobody we know was conducting scientific observations back then. Everything has to be puzzled out indirectly from peculiarities we observe today."

        I would say that our understanding of science and our models have evolved since then but to say that no one made scientific observations back then maybe a bit short sighted. Even children make observations, come up with hypothesis, ask questions and experiment with things, and draw conclusions. You may or may not consider their version of 'science' more primitive and ours more advance but to say that they aren't doing science seems odd. It's possible a thousand years from now future generations could just as easily look back and say the same thing about us, that we didn't do science back then just because our understanding of it is much more primitive. They had limitations back then that we don't have now and we have limitations that future generations may not have.

        "But could you exist in a universe that wasn't highly structured?"

        Probably not. Then I suppose one can argue that our very existence evidences God.

        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday February 16 2020, @01:22AM (7 children)

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday February 16 2020, @01:22AM (#958647) Journal

          Even children make observations, come up with hypothesis, ask questions and experiment with things, and draw conclusions.

          Keep in mind that the present theory is that there wasn't any Earth life, much less children who could record things, during the alleged formation of Earth 4.5 or so billion years ago.

          "But could you exist in a universe that wasn't highly structured?"

          Probably not. Then I suppose one can argue that our very existence evidences God.

          Only if God is mere structure in the universe.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 16 2020, @07:15AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 16 2020, @07:15AM (#958722)

            "Keep in mind that the present theory is that there wasn't any Earth life, much less children who could record things, during the alleged formation of Earth 4.5 or so billion years ago."

            So. There still existed a universe that's unlikely to be a product of chance. A universe that allows for science to exist.

            "Only if God is mere structure in the universe."

            The structured universe resists the possibility that the universe is a product of random chance. Instead it suggests that it's the result of an intentional effort.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 16 2020, @07:31AM (5 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 16 2020, @07:31AM (#958725)

            "Keep in mind that the present theory is that there wasn't any Earth life, much less children who could record things, during the alleged formation of Earth 4.5 or so billion years ago."

            Let me respond to this again. You're kinda missing the point in favor of nit picking at semantics and grammar. Yes, 'science' is a human endeavor invented by humans. However for science to exist, for us to be able to observe and describe the consistency and structure in the universe, the universe must have consistency. The existence of science evidences the existence of God because the fact that the universe allows for science to exist tells us that the universe is not a product of random chance.

            If the universe is a product of random chance I would expect the universe to be a random universe with no consistent or predictable laws, properties, or characteristics. But it's not. It's a universe that continues to allow us to predict future events within a consistent tolerance. I throw a ball into the air and it comes back down. I do it again, it comes back down again. At no point in the future will it just randomly disappear instead of coming back down. Past instances of the universe aren't random, neither are present instances, and future instances continue not to be non-random.

            In a random universe the production of future instances should not depend on past instances so even if a low entropy set of events did randomly occur over a specific time interval future time intervals should not be affected and should continue being highly random. Yes, if I throw a ball in the air enough times it's possible for me to get three instances in a row that it comes back down by chance. But if the universe is a product of random chance those three instance should not affect future outcomes and I should not be able to reliably predict that throwing the ball in the air a fourth time will result in it coming back down again.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 16 2020, @07:33AM

              by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 16 2020, @07:33AM (#958726)

              Errr ... typo

              and future instances continue to be non-random. *

            • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday February 16 2020, @04:04PM (1 child)

              by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday February 16 2020, @04:04PM (#958816) Journal

              Let me respond to this again. You're kinda missing the point in favor of nit picking at semantics and grammar. Yes, 'science' is a human endeavor invented by humans. However for science to exist, for us to be able to observe and describe the consistency and structure in the universe, the universe must have consistency. The existence of science evidences the existence of God because the fact that the universe allows for science to exist tells us that the universe is not a product of random chance.

              So what? That would be the case whatever "God" happens to be: for example, random chance, some intern's computer simulation, and/or sentient omnipotent being with purpose. The anthropic principle is enough. Further, whatever structure the universe has would be considered of significance no matter how much or what that structure happened to be.

              What's important here is evidence - observation or whatever that distinguishes between hypotheses. The observation that things are structured doesn't tell us anything since we can't exist otherwise and as of yet, we have yet to observe anything else other than our particular neck of the woods.

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 20 2020, @08:41PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 20 2020, @08:41PM (#960435)

                "The observation that things are structured doesn't tell us anything since we can't exist otherwise"

                This is a non-sequitur. Just because we can't exist in the absence of structure doesn't mean the existence of structure doesn't tell us anything.

                "we have yet to observe anything else other than our particular neck of the woods."

                Imagining other universes exist isn't science.

                "Further, whatever structure the universe has would be considered of significance no matter how much or what that structure happened to be."

                Which isn't an argument for or against design and misses the argument being made.

            • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday February 16 2020, @04:27PM (1 child)

              by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday February 16 2020, @04:27PM (#958824) Journal
              More commenting on this.

              You're kinda missing the point in favor of nit picking at semantics and grammar.

              This isn't about whether processes are sufficiently science-like to count semantically or your grammar. It's about simply not being there to observe the beginning of the universe, the Solar System, or almost the entirety of the creation and evolution of Earth. By necessity, we have to piece this together from the few clues we have now.

              And I think you're kinda missing the point by dwelling on semantics and grammar rather than the actual disagreement.

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 20 2020, @08:49PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 20 2020, @08:49PM (#960438)

                "And I think you're kinda missing the point by dwelling on semantics and grammar rather than the actual disagreement."

                I was arguing that the existence of science is strong evidence for a designer because if there were no designer I would expect a random universe with no consistency. Your argument was that science is man created and if there is no man there is no science. That's missing the point and making a slight grammatical correction.

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