Grumpy

Turns out the Earth was a planet-sized blob 40 million years earlier than was previously thought.

I read this news story based on a Science article as part of my newscast. The funny thing is, I felt awkward stating flatly that the Earth is about 4.5 Billion years old. Journalists are more comfortable attributing facts to other sources. "Scientists say..." and so forth. Why does that not hold for what would otherwise appear to be (as scientists say) an empirical fact?

Incidentally, I did not hear any complaints about my unqualified statement, though I expected I might.

Dr.GH

Let's see. 40,000,000 years out of 4,500,000,000 years.

Yep, a correction of 1/112.5, or less than 1%. No biggy. Plus, I will be waiting for further critical review.

A major problem with the jounalistic presentation of science is that every statment is presented with an absolutism that no scientist feels. This is joined with the journalist's need to exaggerate and gain attention.

So, did you say that there was a recent "less than one percent" correction, or that there was a 40,000,000 year error?

Jimmy Higgins

Since when was a 1% change alot of time? Geesh. Atleast it went in the opposite direction that the YEC's needed.

Coragyps

From the Science article itself:
Stein B. Jacobsen
Science vol 300, Jun 6 2003: 1513-1514.

W means tungsten - tungsten 182, the isotope used for the studies reported here, in this context. So yes, he has strongly suggestive evidence, but Jacobsen himself doesn't think that the last word is said yet on exactly when and how our planet accreted.

Peez

Imagine telling someone that your house is 8 metres wide, then being told that you are wrong because it is actually 801 cm wide, 8.01 metres! This is simply a question of precision. Strictly speaking, a stated value of 4.5 billion (without any other qualification) implies a range from 4.45 billion to 4.55 billion. According to Talk.Origins: Which is to say about 4.5 billion to 4.6 billion years. I would not call anyone who stated that the earth is 4.5 billion years old wrong or even imprecise. In fact, I would not call 4 billion years wrong, but I would call it imprecise. Perhaps I would call 4.4 billion years wrong (though close), and 4.550 billion years more precise than is warranted by our current knowledge.

Peez

zwi

I have heard it said that within 40 million years of the end of the heavy bombardments of other planetary material like asteroids LIFE was well established on Earth

Can anyone add to this??

Zwi

Grumpy

As a matter of fact, I said both, though I called it a 40 Myr difference, rather than an "error." And I compared it to finding out that you were born 4 months earlier than you thought -- which is about 1% of a middle-aged person's lifetime.

Dr.GH

I don't want to drag this off topic, but the following references:

Lazcano, Antonio, Stanley L. Miller
1996 “The Origin and Early Evolution of Life: Prebiotic Chemistry, the Pre-RNA World, and Time” Cell vol 85:793-798

Levy, M and Miller, S.L.,
1998 The stability of the RNA bases: Implications for the origin of life, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 95(14):7933–38,

make the argument that due to the ocean cycling time through hydrothermal vents of about 10 million years, the chemical establishment of life would have to have taken less than 10 million years to occur. This overlooks several factors, among which is the very good argument that organic chemicals would have plated on minerals:

Parsons, Ian, Martin R. Lee, and Joseph V. Smith
1998 Biochemical Evolution II: Origin of Life in Tubular Microsrtuctures on Weathered Feldspar Surfaces. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 95 (26): 15173

Huber, Claudia, Gunter Wachtershauser
1997 “Activated Acetic Acid by Carbon Fixation on (Fe,Ni)S Under Primordial
Conditions” Science v. 276: 245-247

Huber, Claudia, Gunter Wachtershauser
1998 “Peptides by Activation of Amino Acids with CO on (Ni,Fe)S Surfaces:
Implications for the Origin of Life” Science v.281: 670-672

A. Luther, R. Brandsch, G. von Kiedrowski
1998 Surface-promoted replication and exponential amplification of DNA analogues Nature 396, 245 - 248; doi:10.1038/24343

The estimate of a 10 million year cycle is modified by:

A. T. FISHER, E. E. DAVIS, M. HUTNAK, V. SPIESS, L. ZÜHLSDORFF, A.
CHERKAOUI, L. CHRISTIANSEN, K. EDWARDS, R. MACDONALD, H.
VILLINGER, M. J. MOTTL, C. G. WHEAT, K. BECKER
2003 Hydrothermal recharge and discharge across 50 km guided by seamounts on a young ridge flank Nature 421, 618 - 621 (2003);

Hydrothermal vents themselves are likely locations for significant prebiotic molecular evolution:

Shock, Everett L.
1990 “Geochemical Constraints on the Origin of Organic Compounds in Hydrothernal Systems” Origins of Life and Evolution of the Biosphere v.20: 331-367

Von Damm, K. L.
1995 “Controls on the Chemistry and Temporal Variability of Seafloor Hydrothemal Fluids” in Seafloor Hydrodynamical Systems: Physical, Chemical, Biological, and Geological Interactions Geophysical Monograph 91 The American Geophysical Union

Imai, E., Honda, H., Hatori, K., Brack, A. and Matsuno, K.
1999 “Elongation of oligopeptides in a simulated submarine hydrothermal system“ Science 283(5403):831–833.


These references are less than 5% of the available research publications.

Coragyps

That seems to be debateable: van Zuilen et al. Nature 418, 627 - 630 (2002), claim an alternate origin for the isotopic quirks that led to that hypothesis.
Abstract:

goat37

you know...

40 Million years is quite a large difference to those fundamentalists that believe the earth is only 6000 years old.