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Certainty in Science
Topic Started: May 23 2009, 10:21 PM (270 Views)
Deleted User
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Mike, you argued science makes statements with certainty. Here's how uncertain science is, reported fairly accurately I think: Life on earth may have started 4.4billion years ago, according to asteroid study
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Underground microbes survived the multiple impacts, which only scorched part of the planet's surface and went on to thrive as water temperatures increased, scientists found.

This helped life's emergence and early diversification, according to researchers who have modelled how the Earth's crust changed during this time.

Although many believe the bombardment, which is believed to have lasted for up to 200 million years, would have sterilised Earth, the new study shows it would have melted only a fraction of it and that microbes could well have survived in underground habitats, insulated from the destruction.

Dr Oleg Abramov, of Colorado University, said the findings suggest the microbes could date back to well before the asteroid storm.

"These new results push back the possible beginnings of life on Earth to well before the bombardment period 3.9 billion years ago.

"It opens up the possibility that life emerged as far back as 4.4 billion years ago, about the time the first oceans are thought to have formed."

The researchers, whose findings are published in Nature, used data from Apollo moon rocks, impact records from the moon, Mars and Mercury, and previous theoretical studies to build three-dimensional computer models that replicate the bombardment.

The 3-D models allowed them to monitor temperatures beneath individual craters to assess heating and cooling of the crust following large impacts in order to evaluate habitability.

The study indicated that less than 25 percent of Earth's crust would have melted during such a bombardment.
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ngc1514
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The "certainty" in science resides only in the minds least attuned to science.

Even stating "The sun will rise tomorrow" is assigned a degree of probabilistic uncertainty. While we may be sure that the chances of tomorrow's sunrise (no, it doesn't rise... we all know that) is highly probably, it is not assigned a probability of 1.0 because science knows that a day will come when the sun doesn't rise.

It might (although the probability is low) go nova in before dinner today or (probability even lower, but not reaching 0.0) be swallowed up by a passing black hole.

Science does not deal in certainty which is why every good scientific number is accompanied by error bars.

From the Wiki article on the Age of the Earth:
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Modern geologists and geophysicists consider the age of the Earth to be around 4.54 billion years (4.54 × 109 years ± 1%).

It's that "± 1%" that moves it from dogmatic certainty (like that found in religion) to science.
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Deleted User
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Another creationist misunderstanding of probability is their arguments the universe is so complex it is improbable to have emerged and evolved without a creator. Yet, regardless the minuteness of that improbability, it allows for the possibility.
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ngc1514
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The universe, taken as a whole, is surprisingly uncomplex. A bit of hydrogen and some gravity is, apparently, all that's needed to get the stars going and the galaxies built. Complexity comes with those wonderful self-replicating organic molecules - DNA.

Arguing complexity as a basis for a creator is a bit odd. One might expect the creator to be more complex that the creation, so we are back to the First Cause, if complexity needs a creator, who created god?
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Deleted User
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Exactly, but creationists aren't that logical.
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ngc1514
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Well.. THAT'S a given, isn't it?
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