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I just had to pass this along. While some will take it the wrong way I just thought it was a fabulous example of the self correcting nature of science.
news.yahoo.com/s/livescie...esnotoceans
news.yahoo.com/s/livescie...esnotoceans
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Massachusetts
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Re: Too Cool Not To Share
Tue, July 28, 2009 - 12:52 PMQuite an interesting read. A general question I'd have is what defines a lake v. an ocean. I know this may sound simplistic but a good friend of mine did her PhD here at Stanford on what was basically 'reconstruction of pre-cambrian ecosystems.' She noted that back during the time that a good portion of the globe was - as far as her research could tell - pocked with large bodies of water that were 'lakes in the sense that the large bodies of water that comprise the Great Lakes are 'lakes' -
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Re: Too Cool Not To Share
Tue, July 28, 2009 - 4:41 PMIn fact, a good number of some soft-bodied fossils are from these small lake/oceans. They define the newest 'period' to be added to the geologic time scale which is now called the Ediacaran and slips into the period between the Cambrian and the pre-Cambrian. -
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Re: Too Cool Not To Share
Wed, July 29, 2009 - 8:57 AMAgain all this shows science in progress.
I don't know what the ultimate answer might be but I love the face that with more answers you get more questions. -
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Re: Too Cool Not To Share
Wed, July 29, 2009 - 1:59 PMWith more answers you indeed get more questions. Most of them deal with the minutia and the specificity of the larger question(s) at hand. I also prefer to look at things from a slightly different angle. The more solid answers we have regarding questions answered within the 'hard' sciences the more solidified the theory/law/supposition becomes regarding those specific (and non-specific) mechanisms that are in place.
The more questions asked (and answered) the quicker and harder the cement cures.
This is what is so very, very different from the creationist perspective. The creationist has their end game answer anchored in belief and faith and little else. The challenge for them has been - and will remain - presenting a plausible explanation to basically justify (and explain) their belief within a framework that is very unaccommodating because science doesn't function on faith or belief.
Witness an example albeit an extreme one of how trying to use the tools and language of science can get you into very, very deep water. It can also make for a tragically comedic few minutes of self-debasement. I mean cutting and pasting the language of science into a video to explain the fossil record according to Christians is like letting a chimpanzee at the wheel of an 18 wheeler and calling it a trucker.
Have a look: www.youtube.com/watch
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Re: Too Cool Not To Share
Tue, August 4, 2009 - 10:53 AMFrom the article: "The most popular explanation for the evolution of animals has to do with the increase in oxygen in Earth's atmosphere at that time," Kennedy told LiveScience. "It's possible that lakes were the first to benefit from that increase in oxygen."
What is this increase in oxygen attributed to? -
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Re: Too Cool Not To Share
Tue, August 4, 2009 - 12:24 PMI'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that *initially* it had less to do with an increase in the oxygen level itself and more to do with the lighter inert gasses (hydrogen, helium, all the noble gasses, etc.) dissipating into the higher atmosphere and space. Doing so would slowly change the ratio.
As for the article, an increase in the oxygen ratios might very well have contributed to the genesis of early life. Certainly the ratios are small ones. The Echiaran period saw the very first of the soft and semi-soft bodied lake/ocean dwelling animals but even back then the O2 level is estimated to have been no more than 4%.
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Re: Too Cool Not To Share
Wed, August 5, 2009 - 8:12 AMNotice that they say, "increase in oxygen". The reason is because we learned during Millers experiments that a reducing atmosphere was necessary for evolution since the chemicals of life are unstable in the presence of oxygen. Yet most researchers prior to the 1930's postulated that the early earth's atmosphere was much like todays. Unfortunately for evolutionists, no observations support the notion that the early earth was reducing (contained little oxygen), evolutionists embrace this view for no reason other than the fact that this story is necessary for evolution to have a starting point.
www.answersingenesis.org/creat...re.asp -
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Re: Too Cool Not To Share
Mon, August 10, 2009 - 12:06 PMThe reason that the early atmosphere is thought to be anoxic is that oxygen is quite reactive, and will chemically react, removing itself from the atmosphere, unless it is continually renewed.
Algae is the original source of this continually renewed oxygen. We can even see the results of the first increases in production in the banded iron formations. Eventually, the production of oxygen overwhelmed the easily reacted compounds, and it began to saturate the air and the water.
Oxygen, a byproduct of one type of life chemistry, allowed another type to flourish.
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