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The first scientific analysis of images taken by NASA's Perseverance rover has now confirmed that Mars' Jezero crater -- which today is a dry, wind-eroded depression -- was once a quiet lake, fed steadily by a small river some 3.7 billion years ago.
The images also reveal evidence that the crater endured flash floods. This flooding was energetic enough to sweep up large boulders from tens of miles upstream and deposit them into the lakebed, where the massive rocks lie today.
[...] "We now have the opportunity to look for fossils," says team member Tanja Bosak, associate professor of geobiology at MIT. "It will take some time to get to the rocks that we really hope to sample for signs of life. So, it's a marathon, with a lot of potential."
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Rover Images Confirm Jezero Crater is an Ancient Martian Lake
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Q: How do you catch a unique rabbit?
A: Unique up on it!
Q: How do you catch a tame rabbit?
A: The tame way!
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday October 11 2021, @08:03PM (13 children)
At least one of those things is based wildly on hypotheticals and faith, just as much as the "controversial" side.
https://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/0_0_0/whatisscience_06 [berkeley.edu]
Okay, I'm going to start with a ball of goo, I will set it in this box and wait 500 Million Years.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday October 11 2021, @08:30PM (12 children)
I think that one thing is based on a lot of hypotheticals and faith on both sides of the argument.
For the record I believe in creation. That said, I understand the overwhelming record of evidence for evolution and the big bang. Things we can see and measure in the universe and on this planet. I find astrophysics to be more persuasive, to me, than geological evidence.
No matter how it got here, I accept the world as it is, with all of the facts that we can observe and measure. Creation is similar to me stating that the universe as we see it today, including all our memories, was all created by my cat last Thursday. Untestable.
We do observe evolution at work. In organisms that reproduce much more quickly the effect of adaptation and selection is more easily observed. Like bacteria.
If your ball of goo is Play-Doh, then nothing may happen. If your goo is very long chain complex molecules -- what we would call organic molecules -- and there is some energy in the system to keep mixing them up for 500 million years, then something might happen. By pure chance. How likely is it that I could flip a coin ten times and get ten heads? Unlikely. But if I do it enough times, it becomes almost certain to happen.
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(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday October 11 2021, @09:10PM (11 children)
There is no way to prove that life began 500 million years ago through observable science and reproduction of said experiment.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Monday October 11 2021, @09:43PM (9 children)
Reproduction of an experiment does not necessarily mean going back and redoing it completely. It's obviously ridiculous to propose that we dump a ball of goo on a planet, wait 500 million years and see if humans evolve from it. But we _can_ run smaller scale experiments and extrapolate. That's what P values are for!
What is your alternative theory, and how does it better fit the body of evidence available to us?
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday October 11 2021, @10:31PM (8 children)
My theory is a lot more magical than you are prepared to accept. Then again, I don't know you, so who am I to judge. The biblical Creation of Earth in seven days. That still begs the question, where did God come from. Yet, I am willing to take it on faith that my ancient ancestors weren't anymore akin to Gorillas than you or I.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @11:17PM (1 child)
You should, because they weren't. That's not how evolution works.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday October 13 2021, @05:57AM
You're assuming that speciation is accompanied by everlasting symmetry.
There's no reason for that, and, more importantly, there's no known mechanism for that. On top of that, there are good reasons why it should be false - read some Gould, the pressures that affect one species significantly need not effect its nearest cousins at all - if that was their evolutionary deviation. The equilibria have no reason to line up, or last as long, at all, and the punctuations thereof have no reason to be equal in effect.
It's an assumption that should not be made, and given that if you test it, it fails horribly, it should be rejected.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Mykl on Tuesday October 12 2021, @12:19AM (5 children)
I find the whole "7 Days" thing very interesting. Most people (perhaps yourself too) believe that a lot of the Bible is written in parable, rather than to be taken as the literal truth. Read that way, the 7 'days' (phases) of creation actually follows the Big Bang and theory of Evolution. The two are actually compatible. As for what caused the Big Bang, God is as good an answer as any other we have. An all-knowing God could create the rules of the universe, knowing the mechanisms that would lead to the creation of single-celled life and the adaptations and mutations that would eventually give rise to humans. In other words, he wrote the program that is currently running, but works on a much longer time-scale than humans can comprehend.
Given you believe in a literal 7 day (144 hours of work and 24 hours of rest) creation (presumably 6,000 years ago?), there are some questions that remain:
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday October 12 2021, @01:50PM
Those are all good questions. I've pondered that for much of my life. Of course, I don't know. It does seem like the creation was built as if it had a long history. If I were to create a sophisticated detailed universe as some sort of hypothetical computer simulation using technology we don't have, that simulation would probably be filled with things that had just happened yesterday, or last week, or millions of years ago, etc. If you cut down a tree in the garden of Eden, would it have rings? I think so.
I have no problem with the history of the universe that smart people deduce based on observations and measurements; ether with their own senses or instruments that augment their senses.
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(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday October 12 2021, @02:09PM (3 children)
#1 The Flood, it caused all kinds of destruction and was responsible for the weird mass graves of the dinosaurs. In the event that you believe that the fountains of the deep were broken up and the heavens opened up/poured down rain. The devastation a world wide flood could easily be the cause of the "weirdness". Ditto, #2.
#3 Why are you putting so much faith in being able to accurately determine the weathering patterns of a few thousand years or so?
#4 The belief is that the garden of Eden and Creation was perfect at the time of Creation, up until the time that humans first sinned. After which, the ground was cursed, snakes could no longer fly (yes, there is a gliding snake), etc. There are at leas two schools of thought on dinosaurs. First thought, God created them, but he knew they wouldn't be able to survive post-flood, so he let them die in the flood. (My wife's preferred version, because she likes dinosaurs.) Second thought, they were amalgamations created by evil men and/or Satan. Imagine an entire people of Geniuses who could live nearly 1000 years. The real decline in human health/vigor came after the flood, Noah lived a total of 600 years or so and subsequent generations died off much faster. Imagine what some of our geniuses have accomplished, then multiply their life span by 8-10x, then you can start to see what they might have accomplished. Then again, they didn't need computers to remember things for them, either.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 12 2021, @05:01PM (2 children)
How do you trust your religious books to be true when it's demonstrably clear that there are errors in transmission and political meddling for thousands of years? How does a book wholly produced by men propose to faithfully reproduce the message of a being beyond the comprehension of men?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 13 2021, @03:21AM
Yeaaah
Critical thinking and religion do not go together, kinda by definition. When you turn ignorance into faith, no matter how well intentioned, you eventually end up with more ignorance and often hate. Thus why we have a politicized pandemic!
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday October 13 2021, @03:01PM
When you look at the history of the bible, you might be surprised at just how accurately translated and preserved it is.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday October 13 2021, @05:43AM
We've know small steps are doable, as we're seen them done. We know of no mechanism that would prevent small steps from accumulating into large changes, and we've evidence that supports prior large changes. We have a mechanism for it to happen that we know happens, we have no way of preventing it from happening, we've seen what appears to be it happen, and we have no alternative hypothesis with any believability or support at all. If that's not good enough to be considered "proof", then nothing will be. *Nothing*.
You seem hung up on some simplistic theoretical Popperian model, one so simplified that even Popper wouldn't subscribe to it. (Finding evidence of alternatives that deny the hypothesis would disprove it, so something can be disprovable even if it's not testable.)
All of astronomy, for thousand of years, has been done this way. Do you think astronomy's not a science?
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves