From: wolverine01@charter.net
On 11/20/2025 10:43 AM, RonO wrote:
>
>
> Science News claims that they used AI analytics to identify the traces
> of photosynthetic life. 3.3 billion years is around the time that there
> may have only been two surviving lineages of eubacteria and archaea both
> would have contained the genes for both chemotrophic and photosynthetic
> life.
>
> The last common ancestor of eubacteria and archaea supposedly existed
> with these atributes 4.2 billion years ago, so if they can find the
> right rocks they may be able to detect photosynthesis in rocks that old.
Also, the original link also points to further reading at the bottom of
the article with a link that was here awhile back.
"These minerals may have formed on the rock when ancient microbes used
chemical reactions to produce energy. But chemical reactions not related
to life can also produce these minerals under certain conditions."
And this commendable sentence:
"Now, scientists are looking into the explanations that wouldn't require
life to form these features on the sample."
My point is, the subject of this piece, "Earth's earliest life 3.3
billion years ago revealed by faint biosignatures" is the kind of thing
I object to. Not the work, but the way it gets framed. Reading the
title, you would think they have found evidence of life from 3.3 billion
years ago. But when you dig in, they simply have not and are continuing
their work. One has to wonder why they omitted the "potential" in their
description in the recent article? This is a far too common way of
doing things where previous work is cited and used to further the
importance of a finding, without having to repeat the problems. It's
dishonest.
--
Science doesn't support Darwin. Scientists do.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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