Origins of photosynthesis dated to 1.25 billion years

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Origins of photosynthesis dated to 1.25 billion years

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Post by Gee.S »

Agave
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Re: Origins of photosynthesis in plants dated to 1.25 billio

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Post by Stan »

Its looking more and more like Panspermia started life on Earth. Don't you find it weird that we can't make anything living? Not even the most basic lifeforms out of chemicals. I saw in the news Russians claim they found bacteria not of the Earth on objects exposed to the vacuum of space. Maybe they did.
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Re: Origins of photosynthesis dated to 1.25 billion years

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Post by Gee.S »

Not strange at all. I know there were high expectations from early primordial goo experiments, but amino acid production is a far cry from the spark of life. Deep sea vents? Maybe...I have long since found it likely that life on our planet is of extraterrestrial origin.

Except for Agaves, of course. :))
Agave
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"Some talk the talk, others walk the walk, but I stalk the stalk"
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Re: Origins of photosynthesis dated to 1.25 billion years

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Post by KLC »

Gee.S wrote:I have long since found it likely that life on our planet is of extraterrestrial origin.
My thoughts exactly for about as long as I've had them.

Going off topic here but that's ok, this is the off topic section ( ::roll:: )

I was surfing through documentaries on Netflix one evening and ended up watching one about the Voyager spacecraft. They have both left the outer limits of our solar system and are travelling at a very high rate of speed and won't encounter the nearest star for another 40,000 years. I'm not talking the closest galaxy, I'm talking about the closest star to our own sun in the Milky Way. So it would take eons of time to go from one end of the Milky Way to the other. Our galaxy is but just one of an estimated billions of galaxies in the viewable universe. There has to be something about our physical universe that we are missing or cannot comprehend yet. There are too may hieroglyphs that depict visitors in fiery craft for it to be just science fiction. In human time, it is an impossibility to travel beyond our solar system and visit other potentially habitable worlds. There must be a way around the distance.

Anyone ever studied the similarities of pyramids on the different continents? It is believed that humans were not capable of crossing the oceans at the time the pyramids were built, yet all of the structures around the globe have similar diminsions and are positioned similarly on the ground. How were civilizations with no knowledge of one another able to build them with such similarities? And why? It's crazy stuff.

That started me thinking about how big the universe is, does it end somewhere? How long has it been here? When did it begin? Before it began what was here? There cannot be nothing-ness, even nothing would be something. The inhabitants of Earth cannot possibly be the only life in the universe. Makes my head hurt to ponder those things. Not looking for a Sunday activity, just scientific discussion.

Anyone see the movie 'Arrival'? After some intense scenes, it was actually pretty interesting.
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Re: Origins of photosynthesis dated to 1.25 billion years

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Post by Gee.S »

^ Not sure about all that, I just find it likely that the origins of life may have reached our planet via celestial body. Anyway, gotta go, Stargate is coming on. :))
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"Some talk the talk, others walk the walk, but I stalk the stalk"
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Re: Origins of photosynthesis dated to 1.25 billion years

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Post by mcvansoest »

The problem with thinking about this is that on a human scale the distances and time in our solar system/universe are pretty close to inconceivable. I manage a laboratory at ASU in the School of Earth and Space Exploration that is mainly geared towards establishing the ages of rocks and minerals. So I handle rocks that can be as young as a few thousands of years old to meteorite samples that were formed during first few hundreds of thousands of years of the lifespan of our solar system, so on the order of 4.56 billion years old. At that point in the scheme of things something like 40.000 years is geologically speaking not even yesterday compared to a human life span.

I think that recently astronomers observed what had to be an asteroid/comet with in all likelihood an extra solar system system origin based on its trajectory, which at some point must have been captured by the sun's gravity and now is on a crazy elliptical orbit around the sun.

There are also several known meteorites that contain 'pre-solar' grains. Very small grains of 'cosmic dust' that predate the formation of our solar system. In addition, many of the heavier elements in the periodic table tend to only get formed in super nova explosions. This all suggests that despite the scale of the universe significant mass transfer between, on a human scale incredibly far locations, has occurred / can still occur. On top of that the solar system itself is not stationary in space our whole solar system travels at not insignificant speeds through space.

Many meteorites also contain organic compounds with among others amino acids, which are important building blocks for life. So delivery of those to Earth in its early stages of development may at least have been important if life got its start on Earth. As far as I am aware, so far there has been no confirmed evidence for any kind of life in any of the meteorites that have been found and studied for it. Any claims that have been made so far regarding evidence for life in meteorites have all been shown to be incorrect.

I am a geochemist by background so my knowledge of astronomy/astrophysics is very limited, and I myself can easily get to the point when my head starts hurting when thinking about these things and trying to imagine the (time)scale of all this, but if you are interested our department has frequent events where you can meet people who work on this stuff and are experts who can tell you much more about all this. The schedule and info on upcoming events can be found here:

https://sese.asu.edu/public-engagement/events" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Astronomy open house (this is in the evening so almost always with several telescopes set up to make some observations), night of the open door (or now just open door) which is an open house for the complete tempe campus, the new discovery lectures, and in the Fall Earth and Space Exploration Day are all free to the public. There is a great meteorite exhibit on the Tempe Campus and at most of these events the center for meteorite studies will have people present with touch specimens and to answers questions.
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Re: Origins of photosynthesis dated to 1.25 billion years

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Post by Stan »

I did read that in our own space junk returned to Earth- bacteria from here had survived many months in a cold vacuum. Its why we sent that orbiter into Saturn. Scientist were worried if it crashed on to the Saturn moons- they may actually survive and grow contaminating long before we get there.

So to me,it all seems done before someplace. Even if we turn out to be the highest form of Intelligence- yeah,sure- I have to believe photosynthesis has to be somewhere out there also. Stars are common. :lol: Not hard to find them for energy making.
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Re: Origins of photosynthesis dated to 1.25 billion years

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Post by Gee.S »

Stan wrote:I did read that in our own space junk returned to Earth- bacteria from here had survived many months in a cold vacuum. Its why we sent that orbiter into Saturn. Scientist were worried if it crashed on to the Saturn moons- they may actually survive and grow contaminating long before we get there.

So to me,it all seems done before someplace. Even if we turn out to be the highest form of Intelligence- yeah,sure- I have to believe photosynthesis has to be somewhere out there also. Stars are common. :lol: Not hard to find them for energy making.
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"American aloe plant," 1797, from Greek Agaue, proper name in mythology (mother of Pentheus), from agauos "noble," perhaps from agasthai "wonder at".

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Re: Origins of photosynthesis dated to 1.25 billion years

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Post by Stan »

Think about it..in about 100 years of technology we figured out how to turn melted sand grains into powerful solar collectors.
But- we aren't close to making a living thing from the proverbial building blocks. Go figure.
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Re: Origins of photosynthesis dated to 1.25 billion years

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Post by KLC »

I never put geology and the cosmos together Thijs, but I now see how they are related. One of Carl Sagan's famous lines was "we are all made of star stuff".
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Re: Origins of photosynthesis dated to 1.25 billion years

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Post by mcvansoest »

KLC wrote:I never put geology and the cosmos together Thijs, but I now see how they are related. One of Carl Sagan's famous lines was "we are all made of star stuff".
Yep, exactly, once we have a meteorite or lunar rock sample here on earth to study we apply the same methods we would apply to study earth rocks.
Some of the astronomy and astrophysics is a bit more of a reach in terms of overlap with the exact stuff that I do, but to really try and figure out how some of the processes worked that were essential in for example the formation of our solar system, it turns out you need input both from the geochemistry/geochronology side and the astronomy/astrophysics side, so there are people in the department who straddle that divide to figure out how those processes worked. In addition the school has a strong engineering group which works on anything from developing better detectors for radio telescopes to the development of mini satellites for use in solar system exploration.
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