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Banded iron rocks, formed before oxygen saturated the atmosphere but after photosynthetic bacteria started releasing oxygen into the ocean, alternate layers of different iron-containing minerals that may reflect changes in bacterial population.
#geology #prehistory
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/banded-iron-formation-stone
Archaeologists have found the oldest known recorded story, painted on the walls of an Indonesian cave.
Stumbled on this again after seeing it a long time ago:
Photo-realistic renderings of Earth as it might have appeared from space during various prehistoric eras, with different continental arrangements, climate and vegetation (or lack thereof, as in the case of pre-multicellular-life Rodinia).
A binary star system passed within one light year of our solar system only 70,000 years ago. It may have jostled a bunch of comets out of their orbits at the time.
Did a close pass by an alien star system millennia ago rain down comets on the solar system?
Comments on Facebook:
Brion Vibber: The Red Star…!
Mar 22, 2018, 12:52 PM
Kelson Vibber: Yeah, I was thinking that too! Sadly, the red dwarf system would have still been too faint to see without a telescope even at its closest approach.
Mar 22, 2018, 4:53 PM
Kelson Vibber: Wish I had time to re-read some of the Dragon Riders books, though.
Mar 22, 2018, 4:54 PM
Jim Vibber: Well, strictly speaking, the “Red Star” in McCaffrey’s series was a red planet, kind of like Mars — with an eccentric orbit harmonically linked to the orbit of Pern — so it LOOKED like a star in the sky, just like Mars does. The one time they tried to travel “between” to that planet, the description sounded more volcanic or like Venus than anything else — winds, heat, acidic atmosphere… kind of an odd source for spores of a fungus-type life form (but I trust her to have done lots of research to justify it). Humans without telescopes have very limited perceptions of just how far away those “lights in the sky” really are.
Mar 22, 2018, 5:05 PM