For those who are fastidious in scheduling on their iPhone planners, you might want to set one of those ten-minute alerts for 1.75 billion years to address any remaining items on your to-do list. Scientists have determined that, absent a nuclear holocaust, catastrophic asteroid or new William Shatner album, the Earth could continue to support life for at least another 1.75 billion years.
Indeed, the calculation is not exactly precise. With a strong wind at our planetary back, we could go as long as 3.25 billion years before the Earth will travel out of the solar system’s habitable zone and into the “hot zone.” We have only been around for 200,000 years, that is still a fairly generous amount of time.
The research can be found in the journal Astrobiology where the total time for the Earth in the habitable zone is calculated at 7.79 billion years. (Earth is estimated to be about 4.5 billion years old unless you are a creationist where you still believe we are only a few thousand years old.)
It’s also confirmation bias writ large. Just sayin’.
Dredd: Apparently not, since the dictionary authors are obviously experts. You only go with experts that agree with you, which is not accepting their expertise, it is just falsely justifying your own mistaken preconceptions by cherry-picking a few quotes that make the same mistake as you. It is incompetent egoism, no wonder you can’t ever get anything right.
Tony C. 1, September 24, 2013 at 9:36 am
Dredd: Apparently you need tutoring in English, Dredd.
Three definitions of dominate:
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You can have as many as you like there in Tony Cyence heaven, with your whips and leather.
But I always go with experts:
Dredd: Apparently you need tutoring in English, Dredd.
Three definitions of dominate:
1) To govern, rule or control by superior authority or power
2) To exert an overwhelming guiding influence over something or someone
3) To enjoy a commanding position in some field
As I said, I used “dominate” in the sense of control, over nature, and the dinosaurs did not “dominate” the Earth in that sense. The word “dominant” is not the same as the word “dominate.” As used in your quote, it means predominant, common, or prevalent. That is also the sense in which “dominated a niche” is used; it means they were found in every niche. Not that they controlled nature.
They did not “rule” nature, or the world, or guide it, or anything else. They just existed. They did not “dominate” nature.
Tony C. 1, September 22, 2013 at 4:28 pm
Dredd: But that would mean the dinosaurs were intelligent since they dominated.
No they didn’t. They spread across the planet, they did not control it, they did not control other species. They did not dominate, they hunted for whatever they ate and survived, if nature did not provide it they did not survive. Domination, as I use the term, is control: We control animals, any animals we care to control, and we largely control nature.
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Dream on with that magic thinking.
“Dinosaurs are a diverse group of animals of the clade Dinosauria. They first appeared during the Triassic period, 231.4 million years ago, and were the dominant terrestrial vertebrates for 135 million years, from the beginning of the Jurassic (about 201 million years ago) until the end of the Cretaceous (66 million years ago),” (Wikipedia)
“Now, researchers have uncovered details on how this extraordinary diversity evolved so ancient crocodilians could survive in a world dominated by dinosaurs.” (Live Science).
“Dinosaurs constitute one of the most successful groups of terrestrial vertebrate animals ever to inhabit the Earth. For over 160 million years in the Mesozoic Era, large dinosaurs dominated every terrestrial niche, appearing during the later part of the Triassic, flourishing through the Jurassic, and surviving until the very end of the Cretaceous.” (Natural History Museum).
They need your tutoring Tony C. They are starving for dominating enlightenment.
Hurricanes and tornadoes and monsoons, oh my! Does anybody remember John Varley’s “Heavy Weather”? You don’t have to make up names for category 5+ tornadoes, there is already a name for a storm that large, large enough to be a permanent or semi-permanent weather artifact with which the earth, or physics, attempts to equalize or moderate global heat energy: The Great Red Spot. Read the book. Now, 20 years later and mindful of global warming it’s even more entertaining than when I first read it.
Gene: Yes indeed. I am quite “credit where credit is due” sensitive myself, and although I knew Wallace was working on parallel arguments at the same time as Darwin, I mistakenly thought they were more minor contributions than they actually were. After watching that show and learning some of the details of the letters and interactions and the contents of Wallace’s notebooks, I think I was wrong; some of Wallace’s ideas are central to the theory, in particular his geographic explanation of the Wallace Line involving the evidence of prehistoric sea levels; that was genius.
I do suspect it is true Darwin thought of the Natural Selection idea first and deserves name priority, but Wallace contributed essential innovations and I think I need to train myself to call it by its original name: The Darwin-Wallace Theory of Evolution. Credit where credit is due.
Tony,
Wallace was the man.
oops: survive without them [atoms]. My typo.
Dredd: But that would mean the dinosaurs were intelligent since they dominated.
No they didn’t. They spread across the planet, they did not control it, they did not control other species. They did not dominate, they hunted for whatever they ate and survived, if nature did not provide it they did not survive. Domination, as I use the term, is control: We control animals, any animals we care to control, and we largely control nature. Not weather; so we are still primitives in that sense, but neither Rome nor New York City is “natural.”
Dredd says: You also said we don’t need nature, which includes microbes.
You misinterpret on purpose, I suspect. Atoms are a part of nature too, I obviously do not think we could survive with them, either. So you draw the line at a ludicrous point.
Unlike wild plants and animals, we do not have to rely upon natural systems to grow our food, provide us water, or keep us clothed or warm (or cool) or dry. A jungle tiger abandoned in an empty desert would likely die, when an intelligent person with her wits about her could very well survive. Not because she is stronger than the tiger, or faster, but because she is smarter, and can manipulate and control nature and natural systems in ways the tiger is incapable of understanding. She can dominate her environment in a circumstance where the tiger can only be subordinate to it.
Dredd says: They are famous because they deserve to be
Fame is luck, and only loosely correlated with being “deserved.” Paris Hilton is famous, does she ‘deserve’ it? She did nothing for it, she isn’t beautiful, she isn’t talented, she doesn’t even have decent taste. She was born rich because her great grandfather DID deserve to be famous, for being the founder of a stellar Hotel brand and chain.
As PBS showed recently (The Secret Life of Evolution), Alfred Wallace independently discovered both Evolution and coined the phrase “The Fittest Survive” before he even knew Darwin was working in the same area; and Wallace was the originator of the metaphor of a “Tree of Life” with species branching out. Wallace discovered over 5000 species, originated the Wallace Line, and Darwin first published his theory as the Darwin-Wallace Theory of Evolution; yet Wallace has been nearly forgotten. He “deserves” to be famous, even Darwin thought so, but is not.
Fame is a result of capturing people’s imagination and / or attention. In science, fame is a usually the result of solving a tough or ground-breaking problem, or originating a new view of an existing problem (like Bohr’s atom, or Wegener’s Continental Drift), which captures (eventually) the attention of scientists and sometimes laymen.
But Fame does not confer infallibility. Einstein was fantastically famous, and Einstein totally wasted the last twenty years of his career on a hopeless quest, because he was wrong about particle physics and he stubbornly refused to abandon the dead end rabbit hole of research he insisted upon pursuing because of his distaste for Quantum Mechanics, the most successful theory of atomic matter ever devised.
Even if Fame was deserved for solving one problem or succeeding at one task, one should not allow that to lessen the barrier of examination of future claims or statements. Just as illogical as ad hominem attack is ad hominem support.
People are fallible. Particularly scientists speaking in conversation or off the top of their head: It is not uncommon in my field for a paper to go through a dozen drafts, one of ours went through thirty drafts before publication and three rounds of peer review (not three reviewers, three rounds of three reviewers each). That level of scrutiny is not applied to conversation, or even well considered commentary or summary, and you should take all such commentary or summary with a few grains of salt.
Nope. I’m just not interesting in logging in just to retrieve more of you inane babble that totally avoids the fact that an explosive ending is simply not in the cards for the sun and only someone ignorant about the basics of physics and astrophysics would think it was a possibility.
But you go ahead and ramble on about another topic you don’t understand.
It’s funny.
Cut my comment loose and delete parts 1, 2, and 4.
I will say noting if you stop saying nothing so much.
Why are you censoring part three Genie?
You sure talk a lot when you’re not saying anything.
Now we know which part of my comment the Word Press Priests do not like.
As I said repeatedly above:
They do not like part three.
That statement “the illusion” is telling.
The attitude that we it all with our exclusively evolved talents is questionable, fringe stuff isn’t it?
–end of part four–
But that would cut off 98% of the genetic material at work in us, very little of which is human:
(The Human Microbiome Congress). Some of the greatest scientific accomplishments (e.g. human genome project) which the “finalised version of the human genome deprived us of the illusion that we are one of the most complex creatures on Earth”.
–end of part three–
That assumes intelligence is the key to another key: domination.
But that would mean the dinosaurs were intelligent since they dominated.
Until the asteroid wiped them out … which brings up the asteroid again … which you also mentioned.
You also said we don’t need nature, which includes microbes.
–end of part two–