Discussion on:

Oldest fossils found, show what life on other planets might look like

Intelligent input is good..let's clean up the language..and keep it on the 'upper' level..thank you!....yes..we all started from gases..and microbes penetrating the earth via comets and meteoric bombardment..amazing what has evolved here..and what we may find..or what is developing elsewhere in our universe!

.... Whatever.

Does look the obscenity filter is pretty permissive, doesn't it?

Even when a man walks into a crowded street and kills someone in the sight of a host of bystanders, the media are careful to speak of "the alleged gunman." Shouldn't Laura Shin have written "Sulfur formations alleged to be the oldest fossils found"? I mean, there is more than a shadow of a doubt here....

If someone has found older fossils, they would have reported it to the international scientific community. It's not the sort of thing that's kept secret.

The researchers in the article seemed to have found an ancient form of microbial life that lived in a different enviroment than we have now. This makes a case for life forms being able to exist in different environments than what we find on earth. There are also extremophiles, life that lives in extreme environments ranging from volcanic vents to super acidic waters. This shows that life can exist beyond the "Goldilocks" realm of not too hot and not too cold.

Not every calendar is based on 7 day week. In the past there have been different calendars with differing weeks. The best explaination about why the western calendar has 7 days per week is that the quarters of the moon are about 7 days long, 4 quarters give us a month.

..yes..we all started from gases..and microbes penetrating the earth via comets and meteoric bombardment..amazing what has evolved here..and what we may find..or what is developing elsewhere in our universe!
Prove that statement!

the DNA molecule program is. The real genius was the programning of this will to survive

Is infinitely greater than of there not being any other than us.

The probability of extra-terrestrials visiting this planet is extremely high given the extensive history of our ancesters carvings and writings and the shear quantity of recent sightings. Even if they are only circumstantial the shear volume of these encounters is overwheming.

Imagine that within the gas giant planets there are forms of life floating around. Deep inside it is warm enough. The pressures and gravitational fields are strong yet relatively uniform. The basic chemical building blocks are all there. There has been more than adequate time for these life forms to develop. Finally the volume of space for development is tremendous inside Jupiter and Saturn especially. I posit that there may indeed be other forms of intelligent life right here in our own solar system, inaccessible and isolated, whom do not even know of the existence of our universe, only the environment they are constrained to. They may be highly advanced in many ways and not even know there is more to their existence than their own environment. And hence it may be the same for us, everything we think we see may not really be all there really is. We are constrained by our senses. Read A Critique of Pure Reason by Kant.

Find a fossil, so let's build a whole culture around it.

To quote from the New American Encyclopedia:
"Index fossils are useful in identifying and dating rock strata."
"The age of fossils - including index fossils - is usually determined from the age of the rock in which it is found."

So the rock strata is dated by the index fossils contained therein, and then the age of index fossils is determined by the age of the rock strata in which it is found. How convenient.

As far as the Strelley Pool Formation goes, "Palaeontologists and geologists conclude that this area was once submerged under the ocean and formed a fairly flat area, perhaps the floor of a shallow ocean. As this now-arid region was once underwater, stromatolite-forming microbes would have thrived in a shallow sea where the water kept them moist but the Sun???s rays could still penetrate and fuel photosynthesis."

Fossils are most common in sedimentary rock formations - river beds, ocean floors, flood zones, watering holes - places that were underwater at some time. Many of those underwater places are now on dry land, such as the Strelley Pool.

It is absolutely inconceivable by any imagination or scientific stretch that the mega-universe and any complex life forms on earth or elsewhere just "happened". Given the extensive and exhaustive empirical studies done along with still unsolved "mysteries" that currently exist on our planet, we are still groping in the dark and "umbilically" connected to a planet we cannot escape due to the unfathomable constraints. This includes our limited intellect and physical capability..... A Fairy Tale died for our sins?? Or is this historically proven fact a fallacy or slight of hand trickery?
God knows we are easily entertained and dysfunctionally disoriented by gimmickry and illusion.... by the way, according to the story.... what was in that handful of dirt in the beginning? As the story goes.... we were the last to be created... and not very long ago in comparison.

Are they gray, 5 foot tall, with big black slanted eyes? Well then... the researchers are wrong!