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Effect of a giant meteorite impact on Paleoarchean environment and life

chemistryworld.com

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Re: Effect of a giant meteorite impact on Paleoarchean environment and life

#41
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skepticism should begin with the skeptic's own motives. A skeptic's second question (after "Really?" or "Why?") should be, "Why am I asking?" Do they want to test the claim to learn something, or to dismiss it, just to dismiss it? If they're asking questions which are literally answered as part of the claim, they need to start over, and start with themselves.

The article claims that 363 billion tons of phosphorous were dropped on earth 3.26 billion years ago during a decade of darkness. I’m completely incapable of making sense of that claim because it’s so far outside of my expertise. But my fundamental problem is that I don’t trust the source’s incentives to deliver reliable information and I want someone independent to help me understand if this is a how strong or weak…

I meant that "you" like the general you, not iambateman you. Sorry if that wasn't clear. I couldn't figure out a better phrasing at the time. Hopefully it's better now.

I'm nobody to lecture people. I don't matter. I just really dislike seeing epistemic nihilism framed as skepticism, and that's the vibe I was getting from the top of the thread.

Science is the proven process for investigating nature while dealing with questions like "What if you're wrong about everything?" The comment at the top reads, out of context, like an absolutely wild example of someone asking, "What if you're wrong?" as if it's something new that's never been asked.

Re: Effect of a giant meteorite impact on Paleoarchean environment and life

#42
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skepticism should begin with the skeptic's own motives. A skeptic's second question (after "Really?" or "Why?") should be, "Why am I asking?" Do they want to test the claim to learn something, or to dismiss it, just to dismiss it? If they're asking questions which are literally answered as part of the claim, they need to start over, and start with themselves.

The article claims that 363 billion tons of phosphorous were dropped on earth 3.26 billion years ago during a decade of darkness. I’m completely incapable of making sense of that claim because it’s so far outside of my expertise. But my fundamental problem is that I don’t trust the source’s incentives to deliver reliable information and I want someone independent to help me understand if this is a how strong or weak…

> And my starting point for that is “it’s very hard to know anything specific about the deep past. And I’m tired of scientific retractions.”

There's no way to prove the past without doubt. It's always going to be conjecture.

What people do is that, they observe current phenomenon, and see what kind of artifact it produces and leaves behind. They then work backward from that, if we see the same artifacts, they connect that back with a similar cause from the past.

Generally, people consider this even more reliable than human written artifact, because, well, human write a lot of BS. But when there are also written texts or drawn glyphs, those are looked at for corroboration.

All of that is added up to gain some level of certainty, but it'll never be for sure, because we'll always be working with incomplete information, and we'll use today's assumption to interpret the information from the past, but even the wildest things might be possible, like that the very nature of physics was different 1 billion years ago, and the same phenomenon would not result in the same kind of artifact as they do today for example.

You have to decide for yourself if this inherent uncertainty makes you more skeptical of historical claims, or if you feel the methodology is still reliable enough for practical purposes.

And I'd like to contrast this with science about the present, where once we assume something to be true, we can test it by predicting the future with it, and then seeing if that future materializes. If it does, it reinforces the validity of our truths, the more it can accurately predict the future, the truer it is, and where it fails to do so, we know it's not as accurate as it needs to be.

Science is about using the best methodology to get us as close as possible to the truth as we can be. Historical sciences have less to work with, but this might still be the best methodology if you want to be as close to the truth. Experimental sciences are able to have even better methodology that allows us to be even closer to the truth.

Re: Effect of a giant meteorite impact on Paleoarchean environment and life

#43

I love this type of articles where we can reconstruct what happened so long ago just based on careful observations. Some other instances I've come across: * The K-Pg extinction event that wiped off dinosaurs had the impact it did because the asteroid happened to impact a shallow water region. This kicked up a lot of sulfur (in gypsum) that further affected global climate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_crate…

Not to nitpick but the dinosaurs were on already on the way out, the asteroid merely finished them off early. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/09/dinosau...

To the best of my knowledge not everyone agrees to that hypothesis. One of the strongest arguments against it is that paleontological evidence is always incomplete. Holes in it that are treated in favor of the hypothesis are actually smaller or comparable to holes that appear just due to incompleteness.

Re: Effect of a giant meteorite impact on Paleoarchean environment and life

#44

When is the next one coming? Or what is the probability distributuon like?

It's a poisson distribution.

Likely it isn't, because the Solar system today and 3Bln years ago are two very different systems.

Re: Effect of a giant meteorite impact on Paleoarchean environment and life

#45

I love this type of articles where we can reconstruct what happened so long ago just based on careful observations. Some other instances I've come across: * The K-Pg extinction event that wiped off dinosaurs had the impact it did because the asteroid happened to impact a shallow water region. This kicked up a lot of sulfur (in gypsum) that further affected global climate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_crate…

The dinosaurs were not “wiped off”, by which I mean they are not extinct. This is an extremely widespread misconception that popular science articles like this one keep perpetuating. We should do better and help people understand that (some) dinosaurs survived and evolved into modern birds. Birds are dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are alive today.

Re: Effect of a giant meteorite impact on Paleoarchean environment and life

#46
The article perpetuates the widespread misconception that dinosaurs are extinct. In reality, (some) dinosaurs survived and evolved into modern birds. Everything from penguins to ostriches, hummingbirds to albatrosses and woodpeckers to eagles is a dinosaur.

Science communication should do better and clear up this misunderstanding.

It would be so much cooler to say that the asteroid killed the pterosaurs. Not only is it factually correct, it also opens doors to more curiosity. Why do they say pterosaurs instead of dinosaurs? Turns out they are separate clades. The pterosaurs, plesiosaurs and mosasaurs are all extinct as best as we can tell. The dinosaurs are not.

Re: Effect of a giant meteorite impact on Paleoarchean environment and life

#47
post #46

The article perpetuates the widespread misconception that dinosaurs are extinct. In reality, (some) dinosaurs survived and evolved into modern birds. Everything from penguins to ostriches, hummingbirds to albatrosses and woodpeckers to eagles is a dinosaur. Science communication should do better and clear up this misunderstanding. It would be so much cooler to say that the asteroid killed the pterosaurs . Not only is…

Dinosaurs are delicious. They taste like chicken.

Re: Effect of a giant meteorite impact on Paleoarchean environment and life

#48
post #45

I love this type of articles where we can reconstruct what happened so long ago just based on careful observations. Some other instances I've come across: * The K-Pg extinction event that wiped off dinosaurs had the impact it did because the asteroid happened to impact a shallow water region. This kicked up a lot of sulfur (in gypsum) that further affected global climate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_crate…

The dinosaurs were not “wiped off”, by which I mean they are not extinct. This is an extremely widespread misconception that popular science articles like this one keep perpetuating. We should do better and help people understand that (some) dinosaurs survived and evolved into modern birds. Birds are dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are alive today.

When referring to dinosaurs, most people are thinking about non-avian, teethed dinosaurs anyway.

Re: Effect of a giant meteorite impact on Paleoarchean environment and life

#49
post #45

I love this type of articles where we can reconstruct what happened so long ago just based on careful observations. Some other instances I've come across: * The K-Pg extinction event that wiped off dinosaurs had the impact it did because the asteroid happened to impact a shallow water region. This kicked up a lot of sulfur (in gypsum) that further affected global climate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_crate…

The dinosaurs were not “wiped off”, by which I mean they are not extinct. This is an extremely widespread misconception that popular science articles like this one keep perpetuating. We should do better and help people understand that (some) dinosaurs survived and evolved into modern birds. Birds are dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are alive today.

https://www.google.com/search?q=bike+shedding

Re: Effect of a giant meteorite impact on Paleoarchean environment and life

#50
post #47
post #46

The article perpetuates the widespread misconception that dinosaurs are extinct. In reality, (some) dinosaurs survived and evolved into modern birds. Everything from penguins to ostriches, hummingbirds to albatrosses and woodpeckers to eagles is a dinosaur. Science communication should do better and clear up this misunderstanding. It would be so much cooler to say that the asteroid killed the pterosaurs . Not only is…

Dinosaurs are delicious. They taste like chicken.

Proof we live in a simulation. Everything tastes like chicken!
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