Posted on 10/10/2012 8:32:08 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
By comparing the specimens' ages and degrees of DNA degradation, the researchers calculated that DNA has a half-life of 521 years. That means that after 521 years, half of the bonds between nucleotides in the backbone of a sample would have broken; after another 521 years half of the remaining bonds would have gone; and so on.
The team predicts that even in a bone at an ideal preservation temperature of -5 °C, effectively every bond would be destroyed after a maximum of 6.8 million years. The DNA would cease to be readable much earlier -- perhaps after roughly 1.5 million years, when the remaining strands would be too short to give meaningful information.
"This confirms the widely held suspicion that claims of DNA from dinosaurs and ancient insects trapped in amber are incorrect," says Simon Ho, a computational evolutionary biologist at the University of Sydney in Australia. However, although 6.8 million years is nowhere near the age of a dinosaur bone -- which would be at least 65 million years old -- "We might be able to break the record for the oldest authentic DNA sequence, which currently stands at about half a million years," says Ho...
"I am very interested to see if these findings can be reproduced in very different environments such as permafrost and caves," says Michael Knapp, a palaeogeneticist at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand.
Moreover, the researchers found that age differences accounted for only 38.6% of the variation in DNA degradation between moa-bone samples. "Other factors that impact on DNA preservation are clearly at work," says Bunce. "Storage following excavation, soil chemistry and even the time of year when the animal died are all likely contributing factors that will need looking into."
(Excerpt) Read more at nature.com ...
Let them be. If they want to believe that billions of years ago there was a bunch of chaos in the form of a big bang, which somehow became and amoeba in the middle of something that they don’t tell you where it came from, and that amoeba landed in some water and started swimming, and that swimming thing grew bigger and became a fish, or a tadpole or some sort of sea creature, and it decided to sprout legs one day and grow fur and turn into a land animal which eventually turned into an ape which eventually stood up and put on a suit and got a degree from Harvard and became a scientist - let them have at it. Personally, I think they have a lot more faith than we do. Too bad it doesn’t end well for them.
So who's the bigger implied idiot? Your god apparently knows how bad mankind was in keeping god-delivered, hard-copy "commandments", personally god-penned, and yet, it continues along to arrange the circumstances in such a way that to believe in your god, you first need to believe in men who are the only source for you about your god. Your god could easily have used the wireless telecommunication system that it used with the "prophets", with all of the rest of humanity, invalidating the need for you to rely on second, third, nay n-teenth hand testimonies, but doesn't. So, here you are, today, with your faith in your god totally subservient to your belief in the words of men. Funny, isn't it?
I believe in God, but this six or ten thousand year old Earth stuff is crazy. Just like you said, the Bible is full of good stories, but right now I’m doing electromagnetic fields work. I’ll be using the text.
Lots of people seem to think you can’t be a scientist and believe in God. (or vice versa)
In God I trust, in 'man', not so much.
Which 'version' of the Bible do you go by ?
Or... since that is not really the an issue (at least to me), then why are there different versions ?
Have you ever read the Bible with the most popular versions, side by side, along with the original Greek and Latin and Hebrew with the various translations for particular words or phrases annotated and listed ?
What doesn't end well for who?
The people that disagree with you about how God created the universe?
I expect that those that profess a belief in Christ are redeemed, regardless of what they think about science.
/johnny
Amen, brother or sister. You have given me the strength to move on from this thread.
You certainly can site plenty of historical precedence.
Caliph Umar, for example, destroyed the Library of Alexandria shortly after the conquest of Egypt in 639 AD.
The caliph, when informed about the institution, declared that if the books it contained agreed with the Koran, then they were superfluous, and if they disagreed, then they were heretical. In either event, they were worthless and should be obliterated. The books of the Library were put to the torch.
He sounds a LOT like you.
You cannot have my Grove.
Blogger is obviously a great Christian. Gloating of our burning in Hell over a differing opinion on the origins of the Universe.
"Study to show thyself approved, a workman that need not be ashamed" doesn't sound like asking questions and studying the universe is a mortal sin.
Even if I'm wrong about my conclusions. As I'm most likely to be.
I just see through a glass, darkly. As do we all.
/johnny
Long tradition of that too. Medieval churches often had frescoes of people in Heaven enjoying the spectacle of their former friends and neighbors roasting on the fires of Hell.
Think WWF meets Thunderdome...
so then, what does this do to the supposed 90 Million year old soft tissue/blood with recoverable DNA found that supposedly belongs to T-REX?
If you believe this report, it can’t be 90 million years old, but if you believe other reports, the T-REX is 90 Million years old.....
Bad problems for the old-earth “billions and billions” crowd.
You are a very clever Eukaryote.
Telomeres...Kind of like the fuse on a time bomb?
It's also important to realize that DNA is also chemically modified - without changing its sequence.
I.E. by certain genes being turned on or off. I thought this was a given.
Your last paragraph...DITTO!
With the “Jurassic park” movie the first thought to cross my mind was the passenger pigeon and the moa. They have not been extinct very long so DNA could be obtained. Scientists could try to reintroduce them instead of velociraptors.
God is most jealous over his role as creator. Jesus Himself validated the Creation story. If you don’t believe it, you put yourself against Christ, not for Him. Re-read Romans 1.
We don't hold that we have the absolute, immutable truth of things. We'll get closer, as we study the Universe that God gave us. That's the difference.
We don't conflate salvation with the observed universe and specific beliefs in when and how it occurred.
Salvation is pretty simple. And it has NOTHING to do with agreeing with you on how God did it.
/johnny
Who said anything about gloating about burning in Hell? I just said it doesn’t end well. Either you will go to Heaven or you will go to Hell. In either case, I’m sure God is going to want to know why you disbelieved His Word. What will you say? Scientists told you different? The same scientists who change their mind about what the story actually IS every 15 minutes? The evidence was in your favor? Sorry, the evidence for design and creation is everywhere. God Himself put it there for you and per Romans 1 will judge you as without excuse if you choose to believe something other than what He told You to begin with.
May I point something out ?
One’s belief in how long the Earth has been around , and how life evolved is irrelevant to one’s faith in the Bible.
I know you both would disagree, but the Bible is about concepts, and getting lost in arguing ‘scientific’ data seems to be a bit hypocritical, if one rejects so called ‘science’.
Does God care if you think it took 6000 years, or 6 days to create the Universe, or (make up any random number) to do this or that?
Or is it his wish that you only appreciate the work?
Good luck with that. How many converts did you win to Christ today?
/johnny
I never said I didn’t believe in creation. I don’t think the world is 10,000 years old, and I don’t think the Bible is literal truth.
You can have the last word, as this can just go on forever.
/johnny
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