linkedin post 2019-01-13 06:48:38

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SO ENDS this first weekend on the Great Unconformity, surely one of the most disruptive events in our planet along with the birth of the moon, the meteorite phase, plate tectonics, the Great Oxygenation event, snowball earth, and multicellularity. This has suffered from relative obscurity: even a BBC summary of the 25 biggest turning points in Earth’s history fails to mention it. Somehow it got subducted in obscure and badly written geological articles. I have the sense that most people have never heard of this, including biologists who have twisted themselves into pretzels to explain the Cambrian Explosion. https://lnkd.in/dZRSWah View in LinkedIn
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linkedin post 2019-01-13 06:47:15

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QUESTIONS. Was the Cambrian Explosion just an optical illusion caused by the Great Unconformity erasing a billion years of fossil history from the Earth? Was the Great Unconformity the result of millions of years of glacial scouring of the Earth’s surface, or the result of epic floods caused by the glaciers melting, or perhaps a combination of both? Was it relatively rapid (flooding) or slow (glaciation). View in LinkedIn
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linkedin post 2019-01-13 06:43:26

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SNOWBALL EARTH THEORY. “It has long been observed that the sequence of sedimentary rocks deposited in the past half-billion years often sharply overlies older igneous or metamorphic basement at an erosional surface known as the Great Unconformity. We provide evidence that this unconformity may record rapid erosion during Neoproterozoic “snowball Earth” glaciations.” https://lnkd.in/d6fatHN View in LinkedIn
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linkedin post 2019-01-13 06:40:27

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UNKNOWNS. ‘The Great Unconformity (GU), a global erosion surface separating Precambrian and Paleozoic rocks, represents ∼100–1000 m.y. of missing geologic time. The timing of erosion and amount of denudation leading to the formation of the GU remains largely unknown, but could provide important constraints to models of cratonic vertical movements during the supercontinent cycle, and estimates of sediment production that influenced Neoproterozoic ocean-atmosphere chemistry.” https://lnkd.in/dDNSQTU View in LinkedIn
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linkedin post 2019-01-15 05:03:19

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INTRINSIC PROPERTIES. "Plants moving toward the sun, proteins folding into complex structures in response to their surroundings, molecules stacking themselves together to form a crystal. No external machinery directs these functions. Instead, the structure and shape is embedded in the material properties themselves—a wonder of the natural world." https://lnkd.in/d6YRRJH View in LinkedIn
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linkedin post 2019-01-17 04:23:18

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OTHER LIFE. "Other examples of “fundamentally different” organizations include those without spatially localized individuals, hierarchical organization, genotype-phenotype distinction, or, indeed, any symbolic representation scheme. Macroscopic self-reproducing machines (robots), perhaps living in colonies and exploiting local resources to maintain themselves and grow, might give rise to a significantly different set of organizational possibilities and constraints." https://lnkd.in/dsMZPii View in LinkedIn
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linkedin post 2019-01-15 04:59:14

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RUPTURED FABRIC. "Kurzweil extends Moore’s law to include technologies from far before the integrated circuit to future forms of computation. Whenever a technology approaches some kind of a barrier, he writes, a new technology will be invented to allow us to cross that barrier. He predicts that such paradigm shifts will become increasingly common, leading to “technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history”. https://lnkd.in/dTveM5M View in LinkedIn
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