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Microbes Sleeping 100M Years on the Ocean Floor WERE INTENTIONALLY Awakened Move along if you expected this to be a story on climate change effects.
Are the microbes themselves that old, or simply made of old material? Edit: quoting the article, it doesn't say the microbes themselves are 100M years old, only that they're in sediment which is that old. Big difference! "99.1% of the microbes in sediment deposited 101.5 million years ago were still alive and were ready to eat"
Might be a difference towards them being even older then the sediment though...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's always about how the Earth is 6000 years old [...] And likewise what came before the big bang? The mistake here is to treat both of these equally. One is a set of very specific but unsubstantiated claims about the nature of the universe, and the other is a scientific theory supported by observation and models. Since it is way easier to churn out unsubstantiated claims than viable scientific theories, relying o…
> The mistake here is to treat both of these equally. Oh, I absolutely am not, or at least did not aim to. I'm well aware that I don't have to explain where an egg came from just because I'm stating a chicken came out of it. > Consider that most religions want people to behave in very specific ways, mostly because deities and their spokespeople say so. The "god" you are describing does not fit into that. Sorry, yes,…
I know, and actually that's how I assumed/read it.
I think we both agree that nondenominational deities are not religious material (by definition). They have a certain appeal because they don't immediately contradict observation, but they're currently just as impossible to prove as, say, any of the Christian god variants. I'd argue it's a mistake to postulate non-religious gods but allow religious claims to take shelter in them, on account of some perceived common property.
It's true that making a "god" more generic increases the likelihood of existence, on a statistical level. But our scientific models do fine without any supernatural consideration at all right now. I would argue to keep it that way until we actually see supernatural agency at work. Until then there is not really a reason or need for it.
A better link (actual paper aside): https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/scientists-pull-livi...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's always about how the Earth is 6000 years old [...] And likewise what came before the big bang? The mistake here is to treat both of these equally. One is a set of very specific but unsubstantiated claims about the nature of the universe, and the other is a scientific theory supported by observation and models. Since it is way easier to churn out unsubstantiated claims than viable scientific theories, relying o…
Still, science can't explain why we are aware of the universe (i.e. we're not philosophical zombies).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The idea is that life starts on one planet and can spread from there to other planets (for example on rocks ejected through volcanic activity). We have found Martian rock on earth [1] 1 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_meteorite
I think the intended point was "and before that?".
Microbes Sleeping 100M Years on the Ocean Floor WERE INTENTIONALLY Awakened Move along if you expected this to be a story on climate change effects.
I expected it to be about Cthulhu.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And how did life start on the asteroid? :D
I don't want to derail anything. Also disclaimer that I'm not religious. Off topic: This reminds me of what annoys me about "Intelligent Design" vs science. It's always about how the Earth is 6000 years old, he/she/they created all animals separately with no evolution, etc, etc. And likewise what came before the big bang? Ultra dense, hot steady state? And before that? While If I were any denominational god, I'd have…
And imagine changing physics constants and booting a new instance just to try something out. It would be more interesting to freeze the system, change a constant and see how it would've propagated from boot to present, and to apply the patch (not that the operator would care about preserving their sims). I suppose in a different universe, a stronger gravity could've meant an ancestor hit the ground a bit harder when s/he fell off a roof and didn't survive, so I might not even be here.
> we found that up to 99.1% of the microbes in sediment deposited 101.5 million years ago were still alive and were ready to eat > But the real secret of their remarkable survival lies in their metabolic rate. It is just slow enough for them to survive for such long periods. That would imply their metabolic rate to be practically zero, 101 million years is such a long time that even the tiniest amount of activity wou…
> we found that up to 99.1% of the microbes in sediment deposited 101.5 million years ago were still alive and were ready to eat > But the real secret of their remarkable survival lies in their metabolic rate. It is just slow enough for them to survive for such long periods. That would imply their metabolic rate to be practically zero, 101 million years is such a long time that even the tiniest amount of activity wou…