Evolving Rocks 172
SpaceAdmiral notes a new study making the claim that rocks have been evolving throughout Earth's history. "'Mineral evolution is obviously different from Darwinian evolution — minerals don't mutate, reproduce or compete like living organisms,' said Hazen in a statement announcing the study's findings. 'But we found both the variety and relative abundances of minerals have changed dramatically over more than 4.5 billion years of Earth's history. For at least 2.5 billion years, and possibly since the emergence of life, Earth's mineralogy has evolved in parallel with biology,' Hazen added. 'One implication of this finding is that remote observations of the mineralogy of other moons and planets may provide crucial evidence for biological influences beyond Earth.'"
Re:Misuse of words (Score:4, Informative)
Misuse of words it isn't. Saying rocks evolve is like saying technology evolves : of course it doesn't do it by itself, but it does nonetheless.
Re:Misuse of words (Score:1, Informative)
That's specious. There's an obvious (and inappropriate) allusion to biological processes here. Rocks don't 'evolve' in any way, shape, or form, your weasel-words notwithstanding.
Re:Misuse of words (Score:2, Informative)
Also reported by The Economist (Score:2, Informative)
Evolution is change over time (Score:5, Informative)
The one that the ID-ists object to is Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection-- that is, the theory of the mechanism of that change in living beings.
(and, of course, the hardline creationist object to the fact that living beings change over time, since God created them all exactly as they are now. Except for the snakes, which were originally created with legs-- that's a special case. I don't think that they have any particular problem with the idea of rock types changing, though.)
Re:On A Serious Note (Score:2, Informative)
Actually the perpetual growth of entropy is only true for closed systems, like the universe.
That means that there is no law against having decreasing entropy in one corner of the universe (earth), as long as the rest of the universe compensates for that drop in entropy.
In more detailed terms, earth takes up a few (relatively speaking) low entropy photons from the sun (~6000K), and exports a lot of entropy to the surrounding universe by exporting the same amount of energy as A LOT of low energy photons.
Another example that could, superficially, seem to contradict that entropy grows perpetually is the egg of a chicken (a closed system?). It starts out in a high entropy state (homogenous goo), and end up being a highly structured chicken.
In actuality the egg is in no way a closed system - there is exchange of gasses over the membrane, and the egg exchanges large amount of heat with the surroundings (i.e. the laying hen).
Re:On A Serious Note (Score:1, Informative)
Your view is too myopic. But it's a nice idea. In a closed system the more complex things are in fact better and faster at increasing the total entropy than the basic things.
No,it isn't (Score:4, Informative)
First of all, entropy only increases with time in what is called a closed system. Nothing in, nothing out. If I mix water and salt, I increase the entropy (there are more ways the atoms can be arranged, in effect.) But if I am allowed to bring in energy from outside, I can fix this. I could boil the mixture in a flask, asnd condense the steam. Now I have the water and the salt separated again, but only because I fed "high grade" heat energy in, and I removed "low grade" heat energy from the steam. The water and salt have lost entropy, but the heat source and sink show a net gain. Overall, it can be shown that the entropy gained by the heat source alwasy exceeds the entropy lsot by the water/salt solution.
In the same way, life on Earth can use high grade energy from the Sun to reduce entropy locally, but that energy then has to be re-radiated as low grade energy, with a net gain in entropy. (If the energy wasn't re-radiated, the Earth would get hotter and hotter, gaining entropy. There is no fix for this.)
However, there is an additional point. Evolution does NOT mean evolving from a lower to a more organised state. You need to read Jay Gould on this, he explains it very well. But, in a nutshell, suppose that as a result of human or other activity the earth became unsuitable for any life forms other than high temperature sulfur bacteria. Evolution would ensure that bacteria evolved to fill this ecological niche and more complex lifeforms died out. This is the "survival of the fittest", which does not mean "survival of those with the biggest muscles".
Life maintains itself by keeping down its local entropy. It does this by, in effect, causing entropy to increase somewhere else and then getting rid of the high entropy "waste products", ultimately into space.
In doing so, life may cause geological changes by e.g. depositing calcarious skeletons in rivers and seabeds, or changing the atmosphere and rainfall patterns. You could say that some rocks are INVOLVED in the evolutionary process, and to that extent at least the article is correct.
Re:No its worse than that (Score:2, Informative)
Is this not what the word "evolved" means? To change slowly with time. My understanding is that Darwin simply used a word which meant "gradual change" to describe his biological theory of mutation and selection.
Perhaps the authors of the current study made a poor word choice simply due to the connotations associated with "evolved" but technically are they not correct?
Borrowed terminology (Score:2, Informative)
In the sub-discipline of igneous petrology, geologists have long been using the term 'evolve' to describe how melt mineral compositions change with time. In this usage 'evolve' refers to a predictable series of reactions that occur according to rules defined by thermodynamics and chemistry (redundancy intended). Pressure, temperature and chemistry define the 'evolution', there are no 'mutations', just reactions according to the varying conditions.
In fact, this study isn't particularly paradigm shifting, they're confirming what has long been expected: that the composition of the elements that make up the Earth has shifted from being contained predominantly in one kind of rock to another different kind of rock over time (as planetary conditions changed). Not surprisingly, biological processes have aided in this shift.
It's the fact that we're generally used to thinking of the term 'evolve' in much more controversial settings that's got everyone hot and bothered, but sorry to disappoint; like everything else in geology, this is pretty dull.
Re:Even worst still... (Score:3, Informative)
He went to the "Free University of Amsterdam".
A theology school.
I can get a Phd in Theology in 5 minutes on the internet, and yes it would qualify as a 'Doctorate'. Because, you know, religion always gets a special pass.
I think that the Free University of Amsterdam is a "theological school" in approximately the same way that Harvard University is a "Congregationalist seminary"; i.e., not much any more. Of course, I've never been to either.
Besides, his doctorate is not in theology, and his C.V. seems to indicate that his peers approve of his work. As for "falsifiable tests or evidence", I wouldn't expect to find that in a news service article in the Vancouver Sun.
And while non-accredited degrees can be obtained quickly and easily on the Internet, most ThD/DD candidates spend just as much time in earning their degrees as you seem to imply they don't.