here's an article about another origin of life on earth theory, http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/ ... rigin.html (http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/060609_life_origin.html)
and one about a really old ass tree, evidently the first kind of tree, http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/200 ... onstructed (http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20070418/sc_livescience/worldsfirsttreereconstructed)
If you've seen these already, well now you've seen them twice.
I would highly recommend anyone who is interested about origins of life research to pick up a copy of Robert Hazen's Genesis - it gives you a wonderful background into the research and the primary people involved as well as the competing ideas like the metabolism first idea, the RNA world hypothesis, the Iron-Sulfur world and so forth. I thoroughly enjoyed it and it provides a great insight into the research from a primary researcher in the field.
donkeyhoty, great stuff. In the first article, I really liked the closing remark,
QuoteWe have to let nature instruct us
Sweet.
In the second, a picture of one of the first trees. That's just plain cool. And weird. Imagine an earth filled with these forests, with no flying or crawling animals - just a vast rustling forest. Heh, if one of the trees fell, I guess there really wasn't anyone there to hear it, huh? Haha.
Quote from: "SteveS"Imagine an earth filled with these forests, with no flying or crawling animals
Or even just the first few of these trees, towering over a bunch of ferns...
Quote from: "donkeyhoty"Or even just the first few of these trees, towering over a bunch of ferns...
Yeah ... weird. Makes me wish I could go back in time and check it out firsthand.