Ancient star dust found deep beneath the Pacific Ocean has led German scientists to make an astounding conclusion. They think it points to our human origins.

Researchers from the Technical University of Munich in Germany surmise that the star dust is likely debris from a supernova explosion that occurred some 3 million years ago, reports Reuters. The explosion rocked the Earth so much that it changed our planet's climate--drastically heating it up--and helped bring about human evolution just as our ancestors started to walk.

Study leader Gunther Korschinek speculates that the supernova may have caused an increase in cosmic rays for about 300,000 years, which would have warmed up the Earth's temperatures. Korschinek can tell that the star explosion occurred at the same time there was a significant climate change in Africa when drier conditions caused the forests to retreat and the savannah to emerge, reports Reuters. It's this major climate change that likely caused the hominids to emerge from the trees and begin to walk upright.

Five years ago, Korschinek and his team found star dust in Pacific sediments. This time they looked at a site much deeper in the Pacific Ocean near the equator but away from land. At 15,750 feet below the surface, they found a layer of iron-60, which was stable and easy to date. The age? About 2.8 million years old.

Reuters explains that iron-60 is an isotope or chemical variant of iron that is rare on Earth--so rare that scientists are in general agreement that it is unlikely to have come from anything other than a supernova. Iron-60 has a decay rate or half-life of about 1.5 million years, so it's easy to nail down when the star exploded. A bombardment of cosmic rays caused by a supernova explosion could affect the ozone layer, which would have let in more of the Sun's ultraviolet rays. And that would make it hotter and drier on some places on Earth.

Here's the catch: "It has not yet been established that such an increase of the cosmic ray intensity could have had a significant influence on the Earth's climate," the research team wrote in the journal Physical Review Letters. But there is a coincidence. "The African climate shifted toward more arid conditions about 2.8 million years ago," they wrote, adding, "some of the major events in early hominid evolution appear to be coeval with the African climate changes."

We may walk upright today because of a supernova explosion almost 3 million years ago.
source

Sounds like what happened in Mission to Mars.

Does the report say how our Moon and other planets may have been effected?

Very very interesting, but I am also wondering what the effects on other planets and moons may have been during this supernova!

But isnt the earth's life dated to many years past three-million, and if it took three-hundred thousand years to heat it up, it doesnt make sense the time is wrong or something. But none the less inresting.

I agree its an interesting story but the science doesnt fit!

did you guys actually read the first post?

yes, and it's bull crap... the earth is only a few thousand years old... not millions

Really? So how did the millions year old age keep popping up consistently and independantly in seperate disciplines without any sort of connection to each other?

Really? What are your views on dinosaurs (i.e. when they were on earth)?

This source claims other wise.

Is it your theory that the earth is only thousands of years old, or is this backed by studies?

How can a star produce dust? Aren't stars just gas?

was mission to mars the one with ice cube?

Edit: Wait, nevermind. that was ghosts of mars.

Stars can produce a form of dust, much like fire creates carbone dioxide which floats in the air and settle on approximate surfaces, it's a form of nuclear debrie.

Mankind is said to have been around 4 million years, after only a few hundred thousand years (we'll say 9 hundred thousand) this supernova incidenct occurrs. The date they said this would have happened is 2.8 million years ago....2.8 million + 300,000 (for the time it took to heat up) + 900,000 (for man to evolve from whatever to whatever they were before they walked)= 4 million years .


Bull crap...ah yes, why goodness!! that's all the proof we need let the scientists know we can stop researching now, ZaoFreak says Earth is only a few thousand years old!!! Really, with all the facts, artifacts, bodies, etc etc that date back past 10 thousand BCE...that's already more than a few thousand years old. A "few" is like 4 or 5....and our written history already dates back many thousands of years. But if it's your opinion, please, provide a source that will give a more valid opinion other than "bull crap."

lol i think i slight re-education is of need here lol.

the article was interesting , HOWEVER

after watching sky at night last night on BBC1 which was focussing on supernovas i have to tell you all that had a supernova occurred in a close enough vacinity for the debris to reach us then we would all be kaput just now.

The explosion woulda destroyed earth.

Sorry.

I woulda beleived it until last nite lol.

Which also scared me a little.

well that goes without saying, but i dont think it would have been that close.
Think of it like this:
Compare the supernova to a volcanic eruption. Earth is not sitting on the mountain, but far enough away to see and hear it, and still gets its fair share of ash and dust


and LMAO at "yes, and it's bull crap... the earth is only a few thousand years old... not millions"

Yes i think the basis of Jesusfreaks ideas might be a little fairytale called the bible, the drug of closed minds.

A common practice of non-believers is to ridicule the beliefs of the believers. Unfortunately, it's also a common practice of believers. Too many of the believers take the same stance as the non-believers in this ridicule, which is actually forbidden by the Bible they themselves claim to believe in.

It says in Biblical texts that we are not to judge others, but rather treat them as we would treat ourselves. Jesus himself hung around with prostitutes and the desolet, choosing not to slander their ways, but to help them in any form he could.

It hurts me very much that people of my belief have what is called a "religios spirit" in which they see themselves as superrior to non-believers, and take pleasure in making this known.

It does represent ignorance, and a closed mind.

As for myself, I am a believer, and I do my very best to keep my mind as open as possible, which is the reason I have started frequenting this site. Many of my kind would condemn it instantly.

I will not judge what you say, slugnugget, for it isn't my place to do so. But it does hurt that people of my faith are frequently singled out.

I'd imagine that if you went to the middle east and told a Muslim that his belief was a fairtale you would not return. This is also a form of judging by them. A terrible terrible one.

My words to you: I apologize for the ignorances of people of my faith, and I hope you too will keep an open mind about biblical teachings and followings, as I do with non-biblical teachings and followings.

Many people who are exposed to a negative aspect of a culture (In my town, it's the East Indians whom people are racist against) tend to Pre-judge that culture and obscure their sight from the beauty of and thefellowship with those people. I suppose it's human nature.

Hey Insight, have you met Norman or Gods_soldier yet? You would get along with them By the way, what was your opinion on the topic?

Why do people on this forum not talk about discoveries like this the same why they do about fictitous anamolies like lock ness, chupacabra, esp and the moth men? This is a great find and goes a long way to assist the theory of evolution! I'm surprised by everyone's reaction. Oh well.

I'm sorry if i offended any one, that was not my intent, i am not the religious type but having said that i do beleive in something, not god but a force bigger than our selves, i spose i land in the agnostic catergory, there is something more but i don't think we will ever be able to prove it.

I also wholeheartedly beleive in evolution there is just to many questions and facts to back it up, and anything that goes a little way to explaining where we come from cant be a bad thing.

I love the way you put that. I agree...Creationalists stop at the Bible for their explanation, they beleive that God put us all here. However, a lot of people want proof, the world can't be asked to go on and believe what a book said. People do change, we're taller on average than we were just a couple hundred years ago. It's not so hard to believe that we were once apes. They started to walk, the Earth warmed up a bit...we shed a lot of the fur. Our form of communication improved...over a few million years. When the meteor hit the earth and created the cloud that eventually caused the death of the dinosaurs, it's not so far-fetched to say that a similar cloud of "star dust" caused things to occur in our world forcing ourselves to walk and other things.

Perhaps this supernova was an act of God, and perhaps the dust spoken of here was the Dust that God made Adam, from. Or perhaps the dating method of this dust is inaccurate. Perhaps the iron isotope came from within the unexplored regios of the earth.

This find would be better if the dust contained material that was not found on earth.

I personally learned to distrust all forms of carbon and argon dating in my studies long before my beliefs came out, and I think they are the cruth in which many false findings gain their basis and momentum.

This message is for both sides of the spectrum: Does it really matter how old the earth is? God says that to him, a thousand years is to a day that a day is to a thousand years. I will not try to make a judgement on how old the earth is, however, I will say that carbon and argon datings are innaccurate enough not to be the basis behind the evolutionary theory.

FF, you make some very good points and Insight, you get me thinking in a slightly different way. Evolution is natures way to practice, if you do something long enough you get better, more efficient at whatever it is you're doing. Evolution is just on a much grander scale, take the car for example, they started out as slow rickety noisy machines, now days they are soficticated, safe and evironmentally sound, all this in just 100 years, are we really that much different from the machines we create?

Now that's an awesome metaphor and it's very true in my opinion. Humanity plays the role of god in a sense to machines because they our creation, they are what we bred, our children in a sense. We continually improve upon them to the point that now, many machines are self cleaning, self fixing, and need little help from humanity to maintain their good quality.

If a stardust were to rain down on us today, or a meteor or asteroid were to hit the Earth today, humanity would naturally have to make significant changes if the Earth's environment and atmospheres were to change drastically. 3 million years ago, it could have very well been that we had to learn to how to walk upright because of some extenuating circumstances that made it more difficult to remain on all 4's.