Fossilized Raindrop Dimples Add to Mystery of Ancient Earth's Warmth

Its amazing to think that this rock sat, basically undisturbed, for nearly 3 Bln years.

We hear so much about how rain, wind, and minerals (sand scrapping across a surface) are corrosive. How/Why did this survive?

To be frank, this is non credible to the point of being eminently suspicious. Among other things, if the craters are caused by raindrops, they likely fell on soft ground or even mud, and would swiftly lose their shape, especially if they were covered by more rain. And, if it needs to be reiterated, fossilization generally occurs due to layering over with mud or silt. But if the craters were still in normal, not fossilized, dirt, it would blend with the rest of the mud and erase the shapes altogether. To be brutally frank, this sounds like a swindle.

The above comments to this article are present as 'Matter of Fact', but in reality is just a good scientific theory. Perhaps POPSCI like many other articles, just wants us to flap our arms and to believe we can fly.

And while you find a a square stick that fits you square hole and all seems correct in the universe, does not mean the stick you found was the stick that cause the hole in the first place. It is only a likely suspect. 2.7 billion years ago is one heck of a long time.

.............................
Science sees no further than what it can sense, i.e. facts.
Religion sees beyond the senses, i.e. faith.
Open your mind and see!

Fossil raindrop imprints are in any textbook on sedimentary geology. There are scores of scientific papers that describe them in rocks that are millions, to hundreds of millions, to billions of years old.

Glacier National Park, Montana, has 1.4-billion-year-old raindrop imprints. The US National Park Service online literature describes where tourists and kids can find them, while the US Geological Survey has online docs describing their scientific basis.

In this study, the raindrop imprints were buried in volcanic ash soon after they formed. So each mini-crater from each raindrop ended up like Pompeii. Because the rocks are in the middle an old piece of continental interior (the middle of S. Africa), which has been stable for the last 3.5 billion years, there is no problem in preserving them for 2.7 billion years ago to be partially exposed today.

It’s a pity that commentators above use the “argument from incredulity” to spout nonsense about innovative research. ( rationalwiki.org/wiki/Argument_from_incredulity ). It's the same technique used by know-nothings to dispute evolution, the link between tobacco and lung cancer, and so on. Fortunately, geology can be learnt by anyone with curiosity.

What about heat from the earth's core? The earth started hot, perhaps this heat was still present at the surface. Also, the moon was closer in orbit then. The same forces that raise and lower our tides today were even stronger then. These tidal forces would induce heat as well. The sun is not the only source of heat for the earth.

Well_Informed_Guy,
I appreciate your comments and opinion and the sources you provide. All that you say, might true.

Raindrops frozen in time in stone that as you say 1.5 billion years old.

Africa stable for 2.7 billion years, you know this to be fact? It that much course of time was all the continents one large land mass.
The world has changed so incredible much in that much time. How many world events over that time cause world extinctions?
From extreme volcanoes, extreme meteors blast all of earth and yes the ice ages and hot periods.

I have been to a little town in Missouri call Graniteville. It has a national park nearby called Elephant rock.
This park has gigantic boulders 1 to 4 stories tall of smooth round granite.
I wonder how long it took the environment to wear away those stones to be round and smooth.

Yours is an easy theory that may or may not prove to be true one day.

.............................
Science sees no further than what it can sense, i.e. facts.
Religion sees beyond the senses, i.e. faith.
Open your mind and see!

2.7 billion years and this is the only rock they found; I do not think so. This sounds like another African fallacy. In that length of time, that rock would be buried under tons of space dirt and Earth dirt, and you are not going to convince me that in 2.7 billion years, there was no activity of any kind from anything in that area of the Earth. Did you forget that humans and all the other animals and birds sprang from Africa; another fallacy? That is a lot of activity for anything to survive that long laying on the ground, unless that Meerkat was protecting that rock all that time...that is just as believable.

In the score of 2.7 billion years, how many enviromental changes have occured on earth. And I speak in years. As I look at my back yard it is not the same as yesterday, since the previous day it rained. Our whole planet is an ever changing fluid, cooked, frozen, impacted, erroded.

I have been to the Grand Canyon; it will put you in awe of how the wind and rain has changed and scored with all the odd shaped erroded land scapes.

985500000000 days of changing earth.

One hard mineral could could of mix with a softer mineral and over the scores of time the softer mineral wore away to leave a pitted surface.

..........................................
See life in all its beautiful colors, and
from different perspectives too!

What's the difference between a 'paradox' and evidence requiring a change in paradigms?

How much you feel the need to hold to your naturalists religion. ;)

@all skeptics

Trolling >__> or just stupid........

are fossils really that hard to explain? How about the dinosaurs tracks the found in *gasp* rocks? how were the not degraded?? they were out in the open too? the were made in mud too, and we can tell wit a high certatinty whether they were running or not. Yet this is an accepted truth....I just don't see the skeptisism in that rain drops could form fossils. As to why it is out in the open....i don't know earthquakes, erosion of soil, continental drift...etc. the same things that pushed Mt. Everest up(and now down)just mind boggling the skeptisism here.....

agreed, more and more people everyday don't beleive in science and just dismiss it as voodoo, very sad , where do they think their computers came from? negative cheers

i don't agree with Auroria (troll), i agree with lanredneck, cheers

It is very instructive that Well_Informed_Guy claims sources of "online literature" about raindrop fossils, yet only mentioned the web address of the reference to the informal term "argument from incredulity".
And Ianredneck talks mockingly about dinosaur tracks supposedly having been found fossilized. To begin with, their tracks will have been many times deeper than raindrop craters, and, caused by weight tens of thousands of times greater, they would be in soil much more compacted. Also, a dinosaur track, conventionally, would be no more than a quarter billion years old, likely much less, while the raindrop fossils are supposedly no less than 2.5 billion years old, more than 10 times as old as the oldest dinosaur track.
But it does bring up how suspicious, if not wholly non credible, the idea of dinosaur track fossils remaining is.

Interesting that this is a science magazine, yet most of those who comment tend to either come across as stupid or those who don't believe in the science that the magazine is reporting on. So, why read the articles on the site if you don't believe in the first place, and then comment on this? Honestly, I think most of us who read this site for the science would prefer to trade comments with others who are interested not misguided, possibly disturbed individuals.

julianpenrod wrote:
"To be frank, this is non credible to the point of being eminently suspicious"

More like eminently laughable, if you ask me.

Where do they pull these numbers from? ...their asses?

Given the FACT that the sun IS using up its fuel (what ever that my be), and shrinking in diameter at the rate of 5ft./hr (measured and verified)as a result of this FACT--you know, Cause AND Effect; where does that put the surface of the sun just 20 million years ago? Calculate that, and ponder that for a moment. And also, keep in mind that the life permitting distance from the sun is a very narrow region/band around the sun. Then ask yourself, W[here]TF do they get these numbers from?! ...can't be carbon dating.

All part of the matrix,
Mark

bfrzr082 excoriates those who disagree with items in the magazine, as if to question what "scientists" say is to be an imbecile. What "scientists" say is so obviously right, because they say it. Those who feel that way should be reminded to listen when they tell the story of "science", of those championing what is taken as "unquestionably obvious" today being thought fools because they questioned ideas long ago! And as for reading Popular Science and commenting on "science" that is suspicious, that's what someone concerned about keeping others from being misled could do.

bfrzr082 wrote":
"So, why read the articles on the site if you don't believe in the first place, and then comment on this?"

Because bfrzr082, for the most part, POPSCI.com does present science fact. It's just statements like this:

"...despite the dim sun of the day. Thanks to fossilized impressions from rains that fell down on Africa 2.7 billion years ago, the "Faint Young Sun" paradox is getting curiouser and curiouser. That’s right, 2.7 billion-year-old raindrops. And you thought spring showers were ephemeral.

During the late Archean era, around 2.7 to 2.5 billion years ago, the sun was roughly 20 percent dimmer than it is now. This lower solar radiation should have encased the Earth in ice, but geologic evidence is to the contrary, suggesting that either greenhouse gases, a different atmospheric pressure or both kept things warm. Raindrop physics can help answer the question."

...Based on pure conjecture, speculation, and/or simply not having a clue really, but there it is. About all they can really say scientifically is:

"Well, looky there, fossilized raindrops ...cool!" ALL the rest is based on pseudoscience.

So, there's your answer bfrzr082; gives people like me reason to point this pseudoscience out, that's all.

@55rebel, julianpenrod
you guys must be trolling because you have no idea what your talking about, i.e."thats impossible because i can't in my undeducated mind understand nor believe how this could happen"

and specifically @julianpenrod, your explanation of why i'm wrong about the dino tracks is at best laughable, and more realistically depressing in the words of Dr. Farnsworth "I don't want to live on this planet anymore..."

sorry one more fish to the trolls

Missouri is riddled with 1000s of caves. I spent my teenage years being a license spelunker, explorering them. The overall minerals in the ground are lime stone and with the decaying leaves from the trees and with rain and time, causes and acid to eat away and create caves.

2.7 billion years. Weather, environment, water, sun, chemistry, time,"holes", get it. Heck, the earth is said to be 4.6 billion years for that matter.

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SPOOKY!...... Life is

..........................................
See life in all its beautiful colors, and
from different perspectives too!

While many focus the descussion on the holes, I wonder how the stone was cut flat? I wonder why there are so many other broken stones around it. I see vegitation and I know vegitation is never still in life. I see an animal sitting on the stone; perhaps it will take a dump and leave a chemical stew upon the rock. Is this rock next to a mountain? Is there a valley below? Just in the small little picture of this rock a second captured in time, I see no stability at all! How does that compare to 2.7 or upto 4.7 billion years of earth?

Trading foreign chat, contracts in favor of differences, or swell bets on margin carries a prohibitive level of chance, and could not be apt in favor of all investors. The prospect exists with the intention of you may possibly sustain a loss of various or all of your deposited funds and therefore.
MT4 Pro Trader

@Amun-Ra

have you heard of slate......

you all must be trolling, because otherwise....just wow.....

lanredneck,
Well yes, I have heard of slate and is not saved rain drop holes that are billions of years old. Thank you for proven my point. Perhaps you should do a search of what slate is and is not and what this article is talking about.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slate

They even show several pictures of slate and guess what, no holes.

@Amun-Ra
Yes I know what slate is, and guess what you can fossils in those too. Weird huh. Maybe you should do some research on fossilization, because its not just animals that get fossilized. http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2009/10/fossilized-ripp.html

fake right?

Hey lanredneck,
That looks like a cool link of frozen ripples upon a stone. I imagine if there was a mud slide upon a beach and then the sun harden the mud as the ripples of current pass over it, this shape could be made. Yes that is my first instinct. YEA!
But when I read at the end it is 1.69 billion years old, I feel I have to open my mind fairly and consider a gigantic amount of other possibilities.
You just do not grasp the extreme amount of time and all that has happen on earth.
The above stones are said to be 2.7 billion years old. Now browse all the things that have happen on earth over that course of time.

Well, an odd argument to say the least. Do you realize there were millions upon million of dinosaurs roaming the Earth? Where are all their fossilized skeletons? We've only found a small number because most are destroyed with the ever changing Earth. We try to find what has survived the time. The raindrop etched rocks are no different. There could have been the equivalent of hundreds of square miles of rock etched like this all around the world, but after 2 billion years, only tiny amounts can be found ... the rest being long destroyed. Eventually some of those remnants come back up to the surface as a result of a number of geological forces.

Your arguments are like someone inspecting their home after a tornado. Everything is destroyed but they find a crystal glass untouched. They insist this is not possible no matter how many explanations are given. So yes, if you are one of those folk, bits of rock (the remnants of the original rocks) etched with raindrops cannot survive 2.7 billion years! :-D

It is unfortunate that men must make believe the earth is billions of years old so they don't need to answer to a creator because to admit that it is only 6000 years old would be to admit that the earth was created. To admit there is a creator would admit that we must answer for our actions so we mustn't do that! But answer anyway we will. "For a time will come they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because of their itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn from the truth, and be turned aside to fables." The Bible. The evidence for creation is everywhere. Just look around. It is more likely a 747 jet would come together from a grenade exploding in a junkyard then the complexity of all the universe would come into being from nothing exploding into everything. Evolution is such a lie. Paraphrasing Adolf Hitler "tell a big enough lie often enough and people will start to believe it."

@Far Out Man
Well put wel articulated thank you!

@jrayit
Why not both? Whoy not a creator that started evolution, maybe he bible miscalculated? I believe in the continuim of time "There always has been time and there always will be time"

@Amun Ra
As Far Out Man put it, why couldn't this rock have been proctected underground for all those millions of years and then in the past few thousand years, or sooner, the rock was pushed up by a geological event, which for that area is not on common? I find your reponses to by nieve, or stubborn especially for a subject that has a lot of research and is widly if nto fully accepted by the field of geologists.

I have just over stated my previous comments. It is all just propose theory and speculation and in this I agree. To call it fact, I do not. If you wish to see these things as fact, you are entitled to your opinions. See ya!;)

I'd like to hear the explanation of the non-science users here and not make it sound like a fairy tail.

"tell a big enough lie often enough and people will start to believe it."

Let a book sit around for a couple thousand years and people will start to believe IT.

@psciz
If the original authors didn't believe it they never would have died for a lie, and the evidence they died for their beliefs no rational historian contests. They claimed they saw firsthand a risen Christ and almost all of them were killed for their beliefs, no one will die defending a lie. There is much evidence for the bible if one does the research. There is no more important question in all the universe that each man must answer then is there a creator. Most people don't want to believe in God so they never do the research for a creator. Google creation science for yourself and do the reaserch. If you die and are wrong and you spurned you maker then your mistake will have been great.
@lanredneck
If the bible is so wrong on how creation came about then we couldn't believe anything it said. The bible says it is the ispired work of God. If you spend the time looking into it you truly can only believe in creation or evolution not both because they are in complete contradiction. It is hard to think outside of time because time is all we have ever known but just becuase we havn't experienced something doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

@jayrit
i didn't say it was wrong just maybe wrongly interpreted or translated or altered in the thousand years since its first words were laid to paper. I have to disagree with your black and whit presumption of creation or evolution. Why not creation then evolution. Just saw an article on the Ark, saying they found it and it was only 4800 years old, how could a few hundred even few thousand populate a world to a 100's of millions in 2000 years and spread across the entire world. I think that you can have both world and have them embrace each other. Just my thought.

@lanredneck
It only took 12 years to go from 6 billion to 7 billon people. It only took 130 years to go from 1 billion to 7 billion. That means the population has double every 18.5 years on avg. the last 130 years. There were 8 people on the ark and if the population doubled every 18.5 years for 4800 years I don't think population would be an issue. If you double the number 259 times (4800 divided by 18.5) starting with 8 the population isn't an issue.

@lanredneck
Sorry my math is a little off but I if you calculate the rate of growth of recent history then population is a non issue.

@jrayit
your statement would be absolutely true IF birth survival and infant mortality rates where the same from the past 12 years to preveious 4800 years. Only in the past 100yrs has the mortatility rate of children decreased from a 50 percent average. Also with a starting point 6 billion it doesn't take a stretch to increase the population by 1/6th. Also the fact of significantly decrease gene pool is also an issue with this logic. Look at the Amish and the inbreeding that have created tragic genetic illneses in there communties.

@lanredneck
While the infant mortalilty rate may be less that doesn't mean that people didn't have families just as large or lager in the times after the flood. If you look at the geneology in the Bible from Noah to Abraham the size of each family was pretty large considering it only lists sons and most of them had 3 or 4 sons so if they each had 3 or 4 daughters and that was common for the times then the population would have exploded. Genetic illneses may not have been an issue back then with a purer jean pool that much closer to Adam and Eve.

Adam was manufactured, created if you will. Adam had a first wife Lilith. Adam actually got to observe the manufacturing creation of Lilith right before his eyes. It was writing she was formed from the inside and grows outwardly. First game the bones and organs together, then came more fleshes fat and last the skin. It was also written Adam did not like seeing Lilith being created and was disgusted by the process.

Later on, when Adam and Lilith were having sex, Lilith decided to roll up on top and make sex. Adam rolled her to the side and said no. An argument happens between Adam and Lilith. Adam considered himself more superior to Lilith and Lilith responded saying she was creating in the same he was and was an equal.

Adam had a conversation with God and ask to have Lilith sent off someplace. So Lilith was sent off and Eve was created. Now God had Adam go to sleep as Eve was made. And told Adam Eve was made from his rib and to think of her as his own flesh. So in other words, be nice to this one, you not getting another; develop some empathy.

Generations down the road, one Adam and Eves children Cain, married Lilith. In a way help diversity the genetics.

Now let’s back up to the beginning. People were being manufactured and created. God wanted Humans, Adam and Eve to go forth and procreate. The names of Adam and Eve were chose in the sense this the first line model. What can be left out and is a great possibility, if God manufactured 2 or 3 people, he may of manufactured thousands in the beginning. Else with inbreeding you get a lot of dead babies and mutants and this did not happen. So do not think of Adam and Eve as names of a person, but a first model type in the creation of humans.

As for at the world flood, it is a story of a life of a family and a community and all they knew from any direction got flooded. It had God interwoven into story and other Godly morals, plus a new beginning for the family that survived. It may have not been the whole planet. It was their personal world that got flooded.

The bible is about feeding and growing a soul towards and about GOD. It is not a science book. They are by their very nature different things.

.............................
Science sees no further than what it can sense, i.e. facts.
Religion sees beyond the senses, i.e. faith.
Open your mind and see!

@lanredneck
I have found a pile of 67 unfossilized shark's teeth at an elevation of apx. 3000 feet in Kansas, within a few hundred feet from this spot where the ground is more limestone we found a 6 foot whole fish fossilized on top of the rocks (the limestone fossilizes the bones and the dirt does not). This is only a couple of examples out of dozens of fish and sharks we have found within a 15 mile area. That is proof I have seen with my own eyes for a 4800 year ago global flood. In Montana a un-fossilized t-rex bone was found with soft tissue and red blood cells in it. Judge for yourself if that can be 68 million years old. Do a web search on this, it is in nat-geo, the smithsonean and all over the web.
@robot
The lilith story is not biblical, it is just mythology.

@jrayit
i'm sorry i was gonna leave this alone but, by mountain in kansas do you mean a slight rise in eleveation? Moutn Flower 4000ft above sea level highest point in Kansas wikipedia description of its "heights" "The state of Kansas gradually increases in elevation from the east to the west. As such, "Mount" Sunflower, while the highest point in the state in terms of elevation, is indistinguishable from the surrounding terrain" also googled couldn't find other than "creationist" websites sorry also, geological events have raised the rockies from flat land to its current height since the dinosaurs.

jrayit,
Ok, sure you call mythology, I do not mind.

As long as my above comment was, I suppose I prefer my last sentence. The bible is about feeding and growing a soul towards and about GOD. It is not a science book. They are by their very nature different things.

Science and relgion are two completely different things with and completely different end purposes.

.............................
Science sees no further than what it can sense, i.e. facts.
Religion sees beyond the senses, i.e. faith.
Open your mind and see!

@lanredneck
I did not mention a mountain at all, I just said the elevation was about 3000 ft above sea level. The location is about 65 miles south east of "Mount" sunflower. The geological event that changed the face of the earth was the global flood found in Genesis. If you google "trex bone soft tissue" the top site is an article by national geographic and the third site is by the smithsonian. Of couse they try to pretend this bone is 70 million years old because of their blind faith in evolution but they state that it was a t-rex bone that still contained what looked like red blood cells and soft tissue. It is insane to believe red blood cells and soft tissue would last 70 million years.
@Robot
I was only stating the lilith story is not in the Bible and considered mythology. The bible may not be a science book, but it is a historical book. We must have faith to trust in God but I believe it takes more faith to believe in evolution because it is impossible according to science for anything to come into being from nothing apart from a creator. I don't think science and religion are in opposition I just believe that a large part of the "scientific" community has it's own faith called evolution because they don't want to anwser to a creator. If these scientist wanted to believed the bible and a young earth instead of evolution and set out to prove the bible is fact, they would find all the evidence they needed.

jrayit,
From Einstein to genetic science, there are spontaneous things that happen to fast and with such exact nature it has come from and intelligent source and both Einstein and genetic science has known and is becoming wiser too.

Evolution is much real as the age of Earth and the time it took for things to grow. But it is also true that an outside intelligent source in the past has intervene with the human DNA and the changes of human DNA have happen to fast to be natural with evolution.

And rain drops might of been preserve in stone in theory and it may be true in theory. I will never give it more than there, if I do not acknowledge all the cosmos around me and the history of archeology and religious sources, the vastness of time, ( 4.7 billion years Earth as we know it exist), that the possibility of little holes in stone could of been caused by so many different things.

As you look at history, you must realize a multiple of things have influence our past from a great many different directions and powers.

....................................
Science sees no further than what it can sense, i.e. facts.
Religion sees beyond the senses, i.e. faith.
Open your mind and see!

I wonder if a Meerkat can be domesticated and make a nice home pet? He looks really cute in the picture!

Yes, they are very cute and the posture they take when scanning their surroundings makes them look even cuter.

From Wikipedia:
"Meerkats make very poor pets. They can be aggressive especially toward guests and may bite. They will scent-mark their owner and the house (their 'territory')."

I suppose the same could be said for some cats and dogs though. Meerkats are quite small which would concern me somewhat.

I read somewhere every time a Meerkat takes a dump or a wizzzz, it is so acidic, that it will bore a hole in a stone!!! Imagine that!

Of course, that may seem like I taking a tinkle on POPSCI article, but really I am not.

The Meerkat did it. ;)

.............................
Science sees no further than what it can sense, i.e. facts.
Religion sees beyond the senses, i.e. faith.
Open your mind and see!