He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh... Psalm 2:4
"The latest record-breaking claim for preserved life is so off the
charts that even one staunch evolutionary biologist calls it
“outlandish” and “bombastic.”
But the GSA (Geological Society of
America) published it, so it must be true, right? It passed peer review.
Isn’t that the gold standard for scientific credibility? You can laugh
now – or later, after you read the quote below.
Ancient Microorganisms Found in Halite May Have Implications for Search for Life (GSA, 11 May 2022).
Boulder, Colo., USA: Primary fluid inclusions in bedded halite from the 830-million-year-old Browne Formation of central Australia contain organic solids and liquids, as documented with transmitted light and UV-vis petrography. These objects are consistent in size, shape, and fluorescent response to cells of prokaryotes and algae, and aggregates of organic compounds. This discovery shows that microorganisms from saline depositional environments can remain well preserved in halite over hundreds of millions of years and can be detected in situ with optical methods alone. This study has implications for the search for life in both terrestrial and extraterrestrial chemical sedimentary rocks.
The paper in the GSA’s prestigious journal Geology
6 May 2022 is titled “830-million-year-old microorganisms in primary
fluid inclusions in halite” and is authored by Sara I. Schreder-Gomes,
Kathleen C. Benison, Jeremiah A. Bernau.
These three claim that little round objects they looked at in their
microscopes are cells, and they might still be alive!
Q: How do they know
they are 830 million years old?
A: Because they are found in
830-million-year-old rocks.
Q: How do they know the rocks are that old?
A: Because that’s what the evolutionary timeline requires.
Darwin, you see,
needs lots of time for lucky accidents to add up and create brains from
lifeless chemicals.
Evolutionary biologist Dan Graur isn’t buying it. He tweeted a link to a similar claim published in October 2000 by Nature
that he says has been discredited: “Isolation of a 250 million-year-old
halotolerant bacterium from a primary salt crystal” by Vreeland,
Rozenzweig and Powers. Suspecting another pushback is needed, he tweeted
a suggested title for it: “The Neoproterozoic Microbe That Isn’t.”
If
the claim of a living bacterium from Permian rock is outlandish, how
much more one over three times older?
Needless to say, rational thinkers are going to wonder how anything
could remain alive for such a huge amount of time.
Q: Wouldn’t cells
trapped in rock have died and decayed a long time ago?
Q: How could they
survive in salt?
Q: How could they carry on metabolism and keep their DNA
repaired?" CEH