If ever the addage that “size doesn’t matter” needed illustration, I think we’ve found it the story of the “4.4 billion year-old speck on display at the UW Madison Geology Museum”:http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=624&ncid=753&e=5&u=/ap/20050411/ap_on_sc/oldest_object. I mentioned this a few days ago, and lamented that the scientists involved felt a bit shameful about the fuss made over this speck.
The celebration is reported on in the above AP story. I particularly like that despite the poo-pooing by some of the scientists involved, the scientific point ofthe speck is made.
*Analysis of the object in 2001 by John Valley, a UW-Madison professor of geology and geophysics, startled researchers around the world by concluding that the early Earth, instead of being a roiling ocean of magma, was cool enough to have oceans and continents — key conditions for life.*
*”It’s not very much to look at because it’s so very small. But to me, the miraculous thing about the crystal is that we’ve been able to make such wide-ranging inferences about the early Earth,” Valley said. “This is our first glimpse into the earliest history of the Earth.”*
*Before its discovery, the oldest evidence for liquid water on the planet was from a rock estimated to be much younger — 3.8 billion years old.*
I like this story because it highlights just how critical the very smallest things in the universecan be. Instead of laughing at them, we’d best shut up and listen to them. Some of them have been around a long, **long** time and have a lot to say.
