5 ms·
Sharks are older than trees
by zaken 8mo ago
Sharks are older than trees
- colechristensen 8mo agoAnd the north star, Polaris, is a fraction the age of sharks at only 50-70 Mya (it's a trinary star system but the other two stars are much dimmer and not visible to the eye)
- echelon 8mo agoI love this fact. Also: life on earth is almost as old as the universe itself, within the same order of magnitude. 4.1 GYA (billion years ago) vs 13.8 GYA. We're old and intelligence is hard.
- baxtr 8mo agoI think there is a theory that we’re not seeing any aliens simply because life on Earth started so early.
- ssl-3 8mo agoOr there are many planets with life, with each harboring their own equivalent to our sharks. (And none of those shark-equivalents have developed a space program.)
- baxtr 8mo agoThat would be unfortunate. I’d love to see some space sharks!
- ssl-3 8mo agoWe'd almost certainly find some way to kill them if we ever ran across any of them. We're pretty good at accomplishing things like that. One day, there's some space sharks swimming in a sea of liquid helium and doing deep dives to get to the smaller creatures that devour the seabed of diamonds. The next day, we're figuring out how to use space shark squeezings in our fusion reactors. Unless, of course, the space sharks figure out how to kill us first. They will probably try if that's useful to then. It's the circle of life.
- JumpCrisscross 8mo ago> We'd almost certainly find some way to kill them if we ever ran across any of them There is a credible argument that what the literature terms genocidal tendencies—where conflict isn’t resolved when it ends, but when the enemy is destroyed—is a precondition for conquering a world. So if we met space sharks, barring enlightenment, they’d probably seek to destroy us, too.
- computerex 8mo agoThere is life, then intelligent life like humans. Plus you have physical constraints like the speed of light.
- alex1138 8mo agoI would love a "chatty" universe like Mass Effect but the problem is we'd probably be fighting Reapers
- readthenotes1 8mo agoLight is slower in water. I think that explains why we are still waiting
- BurningFrog 8mo agoI think this is clearer: Since we're not seeing any aliens, life on Earth must have started very early.
- simmerup 8mo agoIt’s more inaccurate as it’s stating an assumption as fact
- Ericson2314 8mo agoYes I love it too, wish more people appreciated it
- yread 8mo agoThat's not that early, no? There was probably enough C, H, N, O, P, S, Na atoms for life to start 10B years ago. You probably couldnt rely on iron being everywhere though but that's not such a hard requirement.
- echelon 8mo agoIt's fascinating to ponder, for sure. The universe still has plenty of time to burn, especially red dwarfs. It's sad to think about starless skies, though. The heme is pretty magical. Probably not a hard requirement, but it sure has been useful for us here.
- gusgus01 8mo agoAnother Fun Fact: the Appalachian mountains formed before sharks existed, the rings of Saturn existed, and before bones existed.
- sethammons 8mo agoI think you misstated your fun fact
- abc123abc123 8mo ago...but younger than the mountains. There you go!
- readthenotes1 8mo agoICYMI: https://youtu.be/IUmnTfsY3hI?si=WuUcwv_LLYh8gX4u https://youtu.be/IUmnTfsY3hI?si=WuUcwv_LLYh8gX4u Good call, abc123
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- dredmorbius 8mo agoBut they're (possibly) younger than the New River! <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_River_(Kanawha_River_tributary)#Geology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_River_(Kanawha_River_tribu...> (Blew my mind when I first encountered this a few years back.)