Oldest fossile ever found shows alien life on mars likely

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/03/01/oldest-fossil-ever-found-earth-shows-alien-life-mars-likely/

If we do find life elsewhere I'm voting for a alien life subforum

it fascinates me how much we still have to learn..

Mad to think that there's evidence of life pretty much literally as far back as there are rocks. Even if that life is just squiggly microbe stuff

yeah i was reading this last night and i'm (slightly) skeptical about that dating. another thing i dislike doing is comparing it to life on another planet- because we're still assuming that life somewhere else will have evolved under the same conditions as life here (a starting point yes, but also a generalization no?)

just watching planet earth 2 makes me think the universe is teeming with life- the problem is that we're only looking for something we can recognize. speak of, did anyone ever watch this? twas a great speculative documentary which i think gave cameron a lot of ideas for avatar

Somewhat OT, but I finally just figured out why the supposed age of Earth is the same as the half life of uranium-238 (something I've been wondering for years)
 

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The best estimate for Earth's age is based on radiometric dating of fragments from the Canyon Diablo iron meteorite. From the fragments, scientists calculated the relative abundances of elements that formed as radioactive uranium decayed over billions of years.

Actually though, the fossil in question suggests that organisms thrived 4.2 B years ago, so on the grand timeline that's not too far off.

Yeah the fossil find in and of itself is great, but the "this means there's life on Mars!" part is just clickbait bullshit.

Finding a fossil of prior life there would be bad news imo: it means there was life, but we missed it. No chance at possible interactions due to them checking out before we came into being. Drats.

wo w i relly luv dem fossile

  On 3/3/2017 at 1:34 AM, auxien said:

Yeah the fossil find in and of itself is great, but the "this means there's life on Mars!" part is just clickbait bullshit.

Yeah from what I can tell their claim that Mars had a similar biological history to Earth remains speculation.

Now if one of NASA's rovers were to stumble upon a Martian fossil, then there would be an uproar.

but what if martians look like rocks... makes you think doesn't it?

could be a trick tho!

  On 3/2/2017 at 6:38 PM, ambermonk said:

Somewhat OT, but I finally just figured out why the supposed age of Earth is the same as the half life of uranium-238 (something I've been wondering for years)

 

 

It's a coincidence (altough they only roughly line up anyway). The Solar System as a whole is dated using chondrite meteorites, and a variety of isotope systems are used including 238U-206Pb, 235U-207Pb, 87Rb-87Sr,147Sm-143Nd, 187Re-187Os, 40K-40Ar - all of which have long (~1Ga) but differing half lives. You normally do a bunch on the same sample to ensure accuracy. Carbonaceous chondrites are generally considered (for many good reasons) to represent the raw material from which the planets were formed.

Only tiny scraps of the Earth's surface come anywhere close to that age thanks to its dynamic nature. And when you get to rocks as old as at Nuvvuagittuq, they've been reworked plenty of times so you have to be careful which minerals you date, since most of them won't be primary. But it's definitely older than 3.7Ga which is still old as fuck

I've actually been somewhere close-ish by (well about 200km north of there lol), it's well pretty

Sweet!

NO. The earth was made 6000 years ago. You're drunk, getoutahere