since i cannot post again/necro the other thread, i'm making this thread. if a mod wants to copy this info over into my last post in the old thread, feel free. that's what i wanted to do originally anyway.
and so they're going to drill into the gulf of mexico. 2,600ft to 5,000ft deep. anyone else thinking this is:
A. a tremendous waste of cash and manpower?
B. another unneeded abuse of the earth's crust, possibly leading to even more catastrophic changes in atmosphere as pressure is released from beneath the earth; as well as creating more sinkholes as substance beneath the earth shifts?
C. deliberately poking a stick at some intergalactic microbes(read: disease) that could have killed the dinosaurs, however unlikely?
the first two i'm certain on. the last one is highly unlikely, as i'm nearly positive it was the impact which caused cloudy stratosphere which brought on the ice age that actually killed the dinosaurs, etc...
but the whole idea just reminds me of what happens in horror movies, when a group of scientists unearth something that supposedly wiped out a race of whatever. that "thing that wiped out the race of whatever" usually ends up wiping everything out again.
only this time, it isn't a movie; so there's no one-man-scientist-cure from the u.s.(or group-of-brightest-scientists-from-around-the-world-working-together-for-the-common-good).
if i had to CHOOSE a way for the human race to go out, i wouldn't choose a contagion. it might be the most effective, but it doesn't let us have any final boss battle to end all battles, that i'm greatly looking forward to.
d/ none of the above because this is EXTREMELY EXCITING!
Imagine all we can learn from this regarding not only about the meteor finishing off the dinosaurs but so much more! What of possible microbes that might've made it? or materials and how this kind of stuff impacts our planet? There is absolutely nothing to be afraid off besides and the cost/manpower is minuscule compared to the knowledge we might obtain.
kiryu133 said:d/ none of the above because this is EXTREMELY EXCITING!
Imagine all we can learn from this regarding not only about the meteor finishing off the dinosaurs but so much more! What of possible microbes that might've made it? or materials and how this kind of stuff impacts our planet? There is absolutely nothing to be afraid off besides and the cost/manpower is minuscule compared to the knowledge we might obtain.
If there are microbes this deep, most likely they would be anaerobes, which probably would not fare well on Earth's surface. At best they'd be inactive or noncompetitive with the rest of the microbiome. At worst they'd die. You've watched to many science fiction movies, I think.
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I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're goin', and hook up with them later. -Mitch Hedberg
The thing that amazes me is how they somehow expect to find blood and DNA in fossils millions of years old, when before that was thought impossible and still poses a challenge even now. Not only has the prediction power of long age amounted to nothing, but when irrefutable evidence to the contrary gets presented, they don't even hesitate to switch the story around as if it was somehow expected, never even daring question the paradigm instead.
artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
posted March 07, 2016 06:53 PM
What irrefutable evidence? Dinosaurs are millions of years old. Nobody in any scientific field disputes that fact. The possibility or efficiency of analyzing DNA that old may have developed in the last few decades but that really has nothing to do with the main paradigm that suggests life on earth is very old and it transforms according to the conditions.
It is also beyond reasonable doubt that sometimes a sudden shift in those conditions causes mass extinctions.When it comes to details, it is still a debate among scientists if the dinosaurs would go extinct had it not been for the meteor impact. As far as I read, most say the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was already getting to a dangerous level for them and even without the meteor they would have faced a slower but certain extinction, especially the big ones. They are not sure why some smaller dinosaurs also went extinct and there are many hypothesis about that. Unlike what you suggest, it is a field of constant research and fresh information and people "dare" to bring new ideas. Of course, questioning the existence of the paradigm (evolution) itself with today's amount of data, would be not much different than questioning the heliocentric theory in the 19th century. So no, nobody, at least nobody who wants to be taken seriously does that for many many decades.
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Are you pretty? This is my occasion. - Ghost
You've watched to many science fiction movies, I think.
i'm absolutely against people boring into the earth.
as for the last part, you can't tell me it didn't cross your mind. the snow actually sounds like it's straight out of a movie script. and, i watch a lot of movies, not just sci fi.
Remember when people thought that the atom smasher was going to destroy the Earth? Same situation here.
I would probably agree that the money would be spent elsewhere (I personally believe that we should be finding a way to reliably harvest energy from undersea geysers and thermal vents).
However, people really, really underestimate Earth's resilience and the sheer size of it. Earth is mind bogglingly large, so much so that it is almost impossible to comprehend it. Drilling a hole of the size they are talking about is about as large in the grand scheme of things as getting a shot (smaller than that even, just the quickest analogy that popped into my head).
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Creature Quest: HaltWhoGoesThere
About the research, I don't know will it give more answer than some new questions and hypothesis. Still it will be interesting what will they come up whit, if anything. Hoped these sink holes today gived some new info but so far not so much.
It's interesting that most things in this planet is considered coming from space. Meteors had water and dna what produced oxegene but what maked these fiery rocks carry such things and where they came from?
Raenus said:However, people really, really underestimate Earth's resilience and the sheer size of it. Earth is mind bogglingly large, so much so that it is almost impossible to comprehend it. Drilling a hole of the size they are talking about is about as large in the grand scheme of things as getting a shot (smaller than that even, just the quickest analogy that popped into my head).
i never said the earth couldn't recover from our foolishness. i'm saying that, eventually, we won't(and many other species).
although, that's not my motivation, entirely, for me being against drilling. moreover, i just think it's incredibly rude, to abuse what gives you life.
although, that's not my motivation, entirely, for me being against drilling. moreover, i just think it's incredibly rude, to abuse what gives you life.
Drills used for scientific research are small. They're the same size as an average mug. If it does even cause an inflow of lava (which it won't, because Earth's crust is ten times thicker that the deepest of planned drills,) the amount of it that flows out would immediately cool down and become a solid rock after it makes a contact with water. Also, the amount of crust taken for research is minimal. It can be compared to taking a teaspoon of sand out of a beach. Does that make a difference?
Secondly, no ancient diseases or anything like that would be exposed. Samples of the crust just after getting to the ground will be closed in a sterile environment, so nothing will come in or out or otherwise a sample would become useless for future research. Additionally, the temperature at the collision's site would render this environment sterile, so nothing, even microbes, would stay alive and pose any threat to people that may be exposed to that crust. Even if some bacteria survive, are pathogenic and infect someone, they will be easily terminated by antibiotics. They haven't been exposed to the surface for over 65 million years, so they have no immunity to antibiotics, because they didn't need to.
Thirdly, you say it would be a collosal waste of money, probably because you believe that it won't have any practical implications. It will, like all scientific research does. By knowing the reasons of one of the greatest mass extinctions in the history of Earth we will know possible threats to our civilization and eventually, we will get to know how to counteract against them. Sixty five milkion years isn't that much in the history of Earth, so possible threats to living forms haven't changed that much.
artu said:What irrefutable evidence? Dinosaurs are millions of years old. Nobody in any scientific field disputes that fact. The possibility or efficiency of analyzing DNA that old may have developed in the last few decades but that really has nothing to do with the main paradigm that suggests life on earth is very old and it transforms according to the conditions.
It is also beyond reasonable doubt that sometimes a sudden shift in those conditions causes mass extinctions.When it comes to details, it is still a debate among scientists if the dinosaurs would go extinct had it not been for the meteor impact. As far as I read, most say the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was already getting to a dangerous level for them and even without the meteor they would have faced a slower but certain extinction, especially the big ones. They are not sure why some smaller dinosaurs also went extinct and there are many hypothesis about that. Unlike what you suggest, it is a field of constant research and fresh information and people "dare" to bring new ideas. Of course, questioning the existence of the paradigm (evolution) itself with today's amount of data, would be not much different than questioning the heliocentric theory in the 19th century. So no, nobody, at least nobody who wants to be taken seriously does that for many many decades.
Here's the whole story:
The idea that soft tissue could be found in dinosaur bones supposedly tens of millions of years old was considered preposterous, let alone a prediction of any kind. It was by any means regarded as impossible and if anyone upheld it as a scientist, they would have been frowned upon and treated with derision. The same was the case for Dr. Mary Schweitzer, who tried to explain fragments of hemoglobin molecules in samples of fossils and said "the most likely source of these proteins is the once-living cells of the dinosaur" in an 1997 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) article ref 1. Disbelief and ensuing discredit attempts left her research on minimal funding, her conclusions being also put under scrutiny because of her religious background. Her supervising university professor, famous paleontologist Jack Horner, was recorded to say "Most people were very skeptical. Frequently in our field people come up with new ideas, and opponents say, 'I just don't believe it.' She was having a hard time publishing in journals."ref 2.
In 2003, further study on a Iguanodon fossil dated 120 million years old revealed enough of the protein osteocalcin to trigger an immunological reaction in test subjects ref 3.
It would all change with the 2005 article in the prestigious Science magazine, "Soft-Tissue Vessels and Cellular Preservation in Tyrannosaurus Rex" ref 4, where Schweitzer presented strong evidence for flexible ligaments and blood vessels that made the scientific community recognize the validity of her research results. At that point the narrative switched from using words like "impossible" to "improbable" or "highly unlikely". It was a radical discovery that would forever change the way people thought about dinosaurs, paleontology and molecular biology. This excellent video from PBS's Nova Science Now perfectly illustrates just how great of an impact Dr Schweitzer's research had (ref 5):
In 2009, fragile proteins like elastin and laminin along with further evidence of collagen have been reported by Dr. Schweitzer in the fossil remains of a hadrosaur, commonly known as the duck-billed dinosaur, in another Science article, "Biomolecular Characterization and Protein Sequences of the Campanian Hadrosaur B. canadensis" ref 6.
By the year 2012, osteocytes, actin and tubulin proteins were also reported, but perhaps the most incredible of them all was the discovery of DNA, as written in "Molecular Analyses of Dinosaur Osteocytes Support the Presence of Endogenous Molecules" ref 7.
So the evidence to date for soft tissue, proteins and even DNA is considerable and fascinating, to the point of being surreal to many (and a delicious area of speculation for sci-fi aficionados), but you don't hear too much noise in the media about it. As Dr. Schweitzer rightfully points out in the video, "the laws of chemistry and biology and everything else that we know say that it should be gone, it should be degraded completely", which is obviously not the case. And that begs the question: how is it possible for such incredibly fragile tissue to have lasted for periods of up to 65 million years or even longer? That is a major point of debate because believing proteins could remain preserved for that amount of time would take a colossal amount of credulity. On the other hand, the commitment to long ages is all but unquestionable. Just to further emphasize the difficulty of the issue, an article in the science journal The Biochemist affirms that even in conditions of 0°C, collagen would degrade within 3 million years ref 8.
To address this, Dr. Schweitzer proposed that the iron carried by hemoglobin helped with preservation, such as formaldehyde would, by cross-linking and stabilizing proteins and also acting as an anti-oxidant. In her article "A Role For Iron and Oxygen Chemistry in Preserving Soft Tissues, Cells and Molecules from Deep Time", she says "Haemoglobin (HB) increased tissue stability more than 200-fold, from approximately 3 days to more than two years at room temperature (25°C)"ref 9. The forte of the argument is in it's apparent simplicity that would satisfy most lay people and dissuade any more pursuit of inquiry, but a closer look reveals that the conditions were uncharacteristic to those where the dinosaur bones were found, as pure hemoglobin would hardly be a good substitute for authentic carcass decomposition. Furthermore, iron would be a weaker embalmer than formaldehyde which creates direct covalent cross-links in protein chains, something which iron can't do, and even if granted such potency it would still be insufficient to amount for tens of million years preservation. Even given the complete absence of any enzymatic and bacterial decomposition, proteins and DNA would eventually succumb to ordinary chemistry, mostly in reaction with water, as one study on the half-life of DNA decay rates shows in Nature magazine: "The team predicts that even in a bone at an ideal preservation temperature of -5°C, effectively every bond would be destroyed after a maximum of 6.8 million years"ref 10. So whatever merits the preservation Dr. Schweitzer shows with regards to iron it is still a far cry from a sufficient explanation of how the observations can fit the current theory.
So while scientists are doing their jobs and all, you cannot help but notice how interestingly they go about it, how the paradigm dictates the direction of science more than the evidence does. The better approach would have been to let the amount of decomposition speak for itself instead of grasping at straws to fit the observations into the long age dogma. The obvious implications of finding soft tissue, proteins and even DNA to which evidence points that are subjects to rapid decay would more readily suggest shorter ages - so a change in storytelling. But for the secular culture in which we live in, the ideological impact of that would be that of a nuclear warhead.
On the topic of ancient atmosphere, what reading I had done suggested that the early atmosphere was richer in oxygen compared to today (correlating with lower carbon dioxide levels) which was shown with a study on resin preservation that I can't find right now, only this article from Geology ref 11. But it seems that they came back on it with different values indicating lower richness in oxygen levels after more samples were examined ref 12.
As for your last words on how the "paradigm (evolution)" resembles heliocentrism, I couldn't agree more. In fact, I'd go a step further and say it can even be compared to geocentrism. Understand why? Because no theory, no matter how well supported or not it is, should ever stop falling under scrutiny, because inquiry and falsifiability are pivotal pylons of good science. "The important thing is not to stop questioning" - Albert Einstein.
____________ Guide to a Great Heroes Game The Young Traveler
I do not much care in any fashion about drilling the hole because a while back I read they were digging up skeletons from mass graves of people that died during the Black Death (or some plague) wanting to extract the pathogen. Now there's brilliance for you. It was probably funded by one of the insanely rich Big-Pharma companies to create it again but make a vaccine before releasing it...then Wham! It's time to live "The Stand" and all those Elites don't have to bother with the poor masses anymore. There's the sequel!
Fred I'm surprised at you, you should be numb to this stuff by now.<L> After all while you and about everyone else you know is trying to make ends meet (and often losing) and reading nothing but bad news about job losses, environmental plundering and destruction or mal-functioning governments, you can watch a 1,000+ Documentaries of teams of <ahem> experts standing in various exotic/vacation locations standing about a hole and passing around a bone and pondering about the life of the dead. Funny thing about many people today, dead people, dead planets and dead dinosaurs are more important than the living masses.
markkur said:I do not much care in any fashion about drilling the hole because a while back I read they were digging up skeletons from mass graves of people that died during the Black Death (or some plague) wanting to extract the pathogen. Now there's brilliance for you. It was probably funded by one of the insanely rich Big-Pharma companies to create it again but make a vaccine before releasing it...then Wham! It's time to live "The Stand" and all those Elites don't have to bother with the poor masses anymore. There's the sequel!
Vaccine for plague was developed 100 years ago a d because of it that disease was erradicated among human beings. Why would anyone bring back an old pathogen? If it truly is that old then:
a) there is already a vaccine for it and if not
b) it can be easily cured with modern drugs.
If someone wanted to destroy humanity, he/she would create a GM bacterium or a new virus instead of reviving an old one. An "ancient plague" would be erradicated as soon as it would have started.
Both the Soviet Union and USA worked on lethal virus weapons (Soviet Union took interest in Ebola), so I doubt that anybody would bother with an extinct plague as a weapon when virus weapons (probably genetically engineered to an extent - what would they be doing for 50 years with it otherwise?) are readily available.
However, viruses itself always have "flaws" - they are either hard to acquire, hard to spread, or their lethality is insufficient. From the ones known to mankind (thus not genetically engineered), there is no "ultimate" virus out there.
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We reached to the stars and everything is now ours
This thread is pages long: 1 
posted March 07, 2016 01:46 PM
