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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: 2) by frojack on Friday October 23 2015, @06:52PM
How did they date the Zircon?
From a population of over 10,000 Jack Hills zircons, we identified one >3.8-Ga zircon that contains primary graphite inclusions.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Informative) by RedBear on Friday October 23 2015, @07:43PM
Isn't the only way to date things older than a few hundred years to look at ratios of unstable isotopes vs. stable isotopes, or ratios of elements with known half-lives vs. their decay products? Perhaps that's even restating the same thing using different words. Carbon-14 has a relatively short half-life and can only be used to date things up to about 60,000 years old. But many other isotopes have known half-lives in the millions or billions of years, and looking at how much of a radioactive element present in a sample has already decayed into its known decay products can provide relatively accurate readings of how old something is, within the bounds determined by each isotope's half-life.
There may be other methods I'm not familiar with.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday October 23 2015, @08:02PM
True, but that assumes no remelt occurred over the interval.
One out of 10,000 seems pretty suspect to me. I'd be looking for later inclusion events, perhaps associated with eruptions or impacts.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday October 24 2015, @12:07AM
I think that zircons are pretty resistant to remelts. Not that they couldn't if they went into a subduction zone, but then it's hardly the same stone afterwards.
OTOH, I believe that zircons are generally dated by the rocks that they are embedded within, so if you want to argue that the stone is older than they think, that would be reasonable.
IOW, they think the stone is 4.1 billion years old, but it could be older.
FWIW, I tend to believe in Panspermia, so older wouldn't bother me. In fact older than 5 billion years wouldn't bother me, as I believe that proto-life evolved out in space. Nothing so sophisticated as a virus, however, but sharing some characteristics in common. (No cell wall, depending on the environment to build the energetic molecules that it depends on, often crystaline in form, etc.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 23 2015, @10:57PM
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zircon#Radiometric_dating [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 23 2015, @09:45PM
Like they do everything, presupposing what they want and making a WAG
(Score: 2) by morgauxo on Tuesday October 27 2015, @01:11PM
lots of flowers and sweet talk
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 23 2015, @07:26PM
That changes everything then.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 23 2015, @07:50PM
when are we going to admit that "science" is a lot of guess work and we really know so little. The bible tells us that life began very shortly after the creation of the earth.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 23 2015, @08:04PM
There are sciences and there are sciences - e.g., mechanics vs cosmology. And then there are wannabee sciences, "social sciences", and pseudosciences.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Friday October 23 2015, @08:58PM
The bible tells us that life began very shortly after the creation of the earth.
To be specific, that is claimed to have happened the very next day. The Sun and Moon were then created after plants. And humanity was created a day after animal life. We may not ever know the full details of the creation of Earth and life upon it, but we know this is wrong as claimed.
To use the Bible as some sort of representation of physical reality or its origins is to ignore a lot of contradictions and outright error. It is a highly inappropriate and irreverent (assuming you care about such things) use of the Bible. It's like using a physics textbook for determining your ethics or spiritual beliefs. After all, in Gravitation [wikipedia.org], the exaulted prophets Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler would have mentioned God, if he truly existed, right?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 23 2015, @09:12PM
...and if you actually knew *anything* at all about the bible, you would know that the original hebrew translation for what is *day*, was *eon*, which is significantly longer than a day.
...you would also be aware that the bible (old testament) refers to itself as an allegory.
keep pretending to be an authority though, 'cos haters will always hate...
enlightenment sure can be hard, no?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 23 2015, @10:00PM
What? References please
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 23 2015, @10:42PM
...and if you actually knew *anything* at all about the bible, you would know that the original hebrew translation for what is *day*, was *eon*, which is significantly longer than a day.
Don't buy it. Still doesn't explain how Earth and the plants got in before the Sun did.
...you would also be aware that the bible (old testament) refers to itself as an allegory.
Not true and not important. Most allegories don't refer to themselves as such.
keep pretending to be an authority though, 'cos haters will always hate...
I have never claimed to be an authority on the Bible. But I can look up verse just fine. Funny how the people with the faults accuse others of having those faults. What's that saying on motes and beams again?
My view on this is that it was quite clear that the original poster didn't bring this up to talk about the allegory. Here's the original quote:
when are we going to admit that "science" is a lot of guess work and we really know so little. The bible tells us that life began very shortly after the creation of the earth.
You might as well bring up the creation story from the Silmarrillon. It's just as relevant and just as allegorical.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 23 2015, @08:00PM
State governments in the USA are going to look into this, to see if there are back real estate taxes that need to be collected.
(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.