Astronomers Find Oldest Known Asteroids 72
Researchers from the University of Maryland have recently discovered three asteroids that appear to be roughly 4.55 billion years old, dating back to the formation of the Solar System. The scientists say that the asteroids have survived relatively unchanged since that time, and make good candidates for future space missions.
"'The fall of the Allende meteorite in 1969 initiated a revolution in the study of the early Solar System,' said Tim McCoy, curator of the national meteorite collection at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. 'I find it amazing that it took us nearly 40 years to collect spectra of these [CAI-rich] objects and that those spectra would now initiate another revolution, pointing us to the asteroids that record this earliest stage in the history of our Solar System.'"
Re:Old News (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Leads to doom... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wow that's almost 6000 biblical years! (Score:1, Informative)
Name one. That's all I want to see. One single creature that you claim wouldn't have survived to reproduce to its current state.
Bombardier beatle [wikipedia.org] - read the defense mechanism section. Without having a series of explosions it would blow itself up. Without the catalysts it would blow itself up. It needs everything it has at once so it doesn't blow itself up.
Giraffe [wikipedia.org] - read the circulatory system section. Without the rete mirabile in the giraffe's skull it would get too much blood in its brain when it lowers its head to drink or faint when it raises its head at the sight of a predator. It needs that rete mirabile for it's existence otherwise evolution kills it off.
Woodpecker [wikipedia.org] - read the Physiology and behavior section. There is one thing that isn't listed there which is that a woodpecker closes its eyelids in between every peck. Scientists state this is not to prevent debris from hitting the eyes but to prevent the force from pecking from knocking the eyes out of the bird's skull. With that requirement and it's need for a special skeletal structure it would kill itself when it pecks on a tree without all those features at once.
There are others but I won't take the time to list them. I'll move on.
I would also like to see a citation for the Great Flood claims made above as well. I've never seen a geologist claim there was one, though I've seen them talk about substantial flooding in the areas surrounding Mesopotamia. The only person I know personally that believes in a great flood is also rigid in his belief that the earth is 6000 years old and dinosaurs are a trick played on us by God.
You actually think a scientist would stake his reputation on saying the Great Flood caused the Grand Canyon to form which would make evolution impossible? No wonder you can't find a claim for this but if you look hard enough you can. Rock formations such as those in Monument Valley, Zion Canyon, and Bryce Canyon in the US southwest show various evidence of rapid formation. There are also sub-surface problems:
1. flat layers of sediment such as coal indicate those layers were never the surface of the earth if they are flat (i.e. level) because the earth isn't level. Even with rock above pressing down on the lower layers there should be major undulations, indicative of millions of years of erosion but there isn't. "A puzzling characteristic of the erathern boundaries and of many other major biostratigraphic boundaries is the general lack of physical evidence of sub-aerial exposure. Traces of deep leaching, scour, channeling and residual gravels tend to be lacking, even if the underlying rocks are cherty limestones. These boundaries are paraconformities that are usually identifiable only by palaeontological evidence."[1]
2. rock doesn't require millions of years to form. New rock material is added everyday to stalactites and stalagmites in caves and it is visible enough of change to be measurable over a few months time frame. Calcium-rich water can easily form new rocks over a few months' time frame. Gem stones like malachite can be formed on demand by humans. Humans can now make diamonds in the lab without waiting millions of years so why are we told it takes millions of years for rocks to form in Nature?
3. At the present average rate of erosion and measured over billions of years, all the continents should have been washed into the oceans by now. "Even if it is accepted that estimates of the contemporary rate of degradation of land surfaces are several orders too high to provide an accurate yardstick of erosion in the geological past, there has surely been ample time for the very ancient features preserved in the present landscape to have been eradicated several times over. Yet the silcrated land surface of central Australia has survived perhaps 20 million ye
Re:Old News (Score:3, Informative)
Itemized refutation (Score:4, Informative)
this sort of impossibility twaddle is easily discredited. For example, tall buildings or arched/suspended bridges could not be erected without a scaffold or crane. But once erected those are removed. Just because there is no evidence to be found that they were there does not mean the buildings sprung into existence fully formed.
Same with sophisticated organisms.
Recently Behe's claim that the flagella motor protein could not have evolved because it's inoperable without one of it's many parts and thus has no function was shown to be wrong. SPikes used by some bacteria to penetrate others turn out to be almost identical to the motor protein assembly but with a few proteins removed. it's not a motor it's a syringe.
Bombadier beetle.
Oxidative enzymes and fizzy action are good ways to digest something in your mouth cavity. It would be no surprise if the bombadier's enzymes were developed for digestion and then later recruited for defense. Many animals regurgitate or spray digestive juices as defensive or offensive weapons. Even single celled organisms secrete highly indesructable proteases to destroy the competition. Others, like the Spike bearing ones have cannons they can shoot this from. If single celled organisms can evolve this its not a stretch to imagine a beetle pulling it off.
Giraffe.
Many animals, like diving douplhins, seals, whales pull off similar stunts at orders of magnitude greater pressure differentials. Thus not only had such mechanisms evolved while we were all sea-bred creatures, and vestigal mechanisms potentialially latent in our DNA, but the specific machanism in Giraffes is not the only way to skin the pressure cat. For example, airplane pilots who work at High-Gs know that clenching muscles can prevent vaso-dialiation consequently fainting. It's not hard to imagine that early long necked creatures could survive without this adaptation, and the means to re-evolve it was possible in DNA
Woodpeckers:
this one can be dismissed. There are lots of birds that eat tree bugs by whatever means they can dig them out. trees come in all denisities. You don't need to evolve to be a wood pecker in one go.
Rapid Canyon formation.
I happen to live on the base of a caldera. My house is perched 200 feet over a straight drop to the steep walled canyon bottom. This was carved by a combination of massive floods and slow erosion. Simmilar examples abound around the area. But the origin of the massive floods is well known too. The caldera would periodically block it's outflows and then fill with water. when these dams burst torential fllods would scour the soft volcanic ash and aleufial sands into canons that would harden to rock. Similar stories can be said about the hells canyon area.
I've seen it happen in a small way in my own life time when forest fires glazed the mountain soils turning run-off trickles into 40 mile per hour flash floods digging 10 foot channels.
You really need to not assume the first silliness someone pours in your brain is the truth.