Ancient Comet Fragments Found In Antarctic Snow 92
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Cosmos Magazine:
"Two tiny meteorites recently recovered from Antarctic snow contain material dating back to the birth of our Solar System, and may provide clues about the delivery of organic matter to Earth. Researchers believe that these micrometeorites likely came from the cold, comet-forming outer regions of the gas and dust cloud that comprised the early Solar System, and sample its composition. Discovered in 2006, the particles measure less than 0.25 mm across and survived their journey through Earth's atmosphere relatively unscathed. More importantly, scientists found that they contain unusually high amounts of organic matter."
How do you find it (Score:5, Interesting)
To find these sub-millimetre-scale particles, Duprat and colleagues melted and sieved untainted snow that fell near the French-Italian CONCORDIA station in central Antarctica between 1955 and 1970.
I suppose since there isn't much dirt in Antarctica, any that you find has as good a chance of being a meteorite as anything else.
It's turtles all the way (Score:5, Interesting)
Organic matter can mean a lot of different things. Simple organic molecules may form in the gas clouds in space which give origin to planetary systems.
More complex molecules are a different thing, many of those require liquid water to form. The most plausible answer is that compounds such as methane were formed in space and accreted into earth and the other planets.
Then chemistry in the earth atmosphere and oceans built those into more and more complicated structures until life began.
Re:Nah, not really a problem, no matter the detail (Score:2, Interesting)
This is science. We disprove things for a living. Positive proofs are for math. There will never be a scientific discovery that proves the Bible is, like you imply, a completely true book. Instead, there will continue to be discovery upon discovery that--no matter what the book's place as a fantastic piece of history, the collected stories and an artifact of the gestalt of a bronze-age-era tribe--simply proves the asserted facts as untrue.
If the assertion that upon your death you will experience an eternity of unchanging consciousness doesn't scare the ever-loving shit out of every sane person here, the belief that this looming eternity is the only reason to even go on living should. You and I are the most advanced product of a process that has been ongoing for trillions of years. We are Star Stuff made into a thinking and reasoning being. My species is the ultimate in local technology: There is literally nothing superior to the noble homo sapiens. Science is no more than the process of asking how that happened and trying to answer that question. Your neo-barbarian cult papers over every question with "Ghost man inna sky dunnit."
This is enough of a weasel phrase that nearly any passage could fit it, and it's barely worth considering. But how about this: I assert that you cannot find one single true statement of unambiguous scientific fact in the Bible that goes against the contemporary prevailing beliefs of the society that produced it. Even something as simple as referring to an orbit would qualify, but I'm certain that even that mild of a truth is missing from the Bible.
Yes. You have a life to live. But you're expecting heaven as soon as you die, and here you are suffering through the drudgery of day-to-day life like a sucker. Serious question: Why do Christians not en masse undertake suicidally hazardous activities? Surely offing yourself would be a stronger message than the currency your kind uses today, like pedophile priests, abusive pastors, shouting TV charlatans, and proven fraudulent faith "healers".