https://www.sciencealert.com/water-may-have-come-into-existence-far-earlier-than-we-eve...

"Life's most vital elixir may have formed within 200 million years of the Big Bang, new research suggests. Conditions for producing water were thought to be lacking this early on because heavier elements like oxygen were scarce, but new simulations indicate the baby Universe could still have been wet.

"Cosmologist Daniel Whalen from Portsmouth University in the UK and colleagues virtually recreated the explosions of two stars using early Universe parameters, and found the means to make water were already present as early as 100 million years after the Universe exploded into existence.

"... gases of hydrogen, helium, and lithium from the Big Bang coalescing into the first stars, releasing heavier elements like oxygen into the Universe during their explosive deaths:

***

"Today, highly metallic stars have an abundance of oxygen in their cores, but the first stars were made almost entirely out of hydrogen and helium. These early stars likely burnt hot and fast, making it hard for astronomers to catch traces of them, but new data from JWST may have just revealed the first direct evidence of their existence.

***

"Within the first second of the virtual supernovae, the temperatures and pressures were high enough to fuse more of the former star gases into oxygen. In the aftermath of this cataclysm, the expelled energized gases, stretching out as far as 1,630 light-years, began to cool.

"The rapid cooling happened faster than the material coalesced, causing ionized hydrogen molecules to pair up, forming water's other key ingredient: molecular hydrogen (H2).

"As these particles jostled about, particularly in the denser regions of the supernova haloes, oxygen collided with enough hydrogen to make the Universe wet."

Comment: if life was a purpose of the Big Bang, the early appearance of water was a very necessary component to design.

"Earth's obliquity is currently in the process of declining towards a minimum, which it will reach in 11,000 years or so; according to the team's calculations, the next ice age will kick off before then. (my bold)

"'This is vitally important information to understanding the long-term, future effects of current human activity, Barker said.

"'According to the latest IPCC reports, humans have already started to alter the course of climate away from its natural trajectory by the emission of greenhouse gases," he explained.

"'This means that the decisions we make now will have consequences into the far future. At present, projected future climate change is gauged relative to modern (or pre-industrial) conditions."

Comment: an amazing correlation. Which means if an ice age is coming lets keep the Earth very warm. This is an interesting factor to throw into the climate debate.

Another article with this viewpoint:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2470262-we-now-know-how-much-emissions-have-delaye...

"
“The amount we’ve already put into the atmosphere is so great that it will take hundreds to thousands of years to pull that out via natural processes,” says Barker. However, he says more research is needed to define Earth’s future natural climate in more detail.

"This is in line with earlier modelling that suggests rising CO2 levels due to anthropogenic emissions will prevent the onset of the next glacial period for tens to hundreds of thousands of years, says Andrey Ganopolski at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.

"However, he says even pre-industrial levels of CO2 in the atmosphere may have been high enough to delay the advance of the ice sheets by 50,000 years. That is due to the unusually minor orbital variations expected in coming millennia and the unpredictable way Earth responds to those changes."

Comment: we need global warming it seems.

https://www.sciencealert.com/study-reveals-how-earths-orbit-triggers-ice-ages-and-there...

"What triggers these periods of glaciation, or ice ages, is difficult to pin down, though for some time researchers have strongly suspected quirks of Earth's orbit around the Sun are involved.

"New research has demonstrated the precise relationship between past ice ages and each wobble, tilt, and angle of the planet's path, unlocking a new tool for predicting the future fluctuations of our global climate.

"'The link between slight changes in axial tilt and orbital geometry and the waxing and waning of continental ice sheets represents one of the oldest mysteries in climate science," Earth scientist Stephen Barker of Cardiff University in the UK explained to ScienceAlert.

"'As such, it represents a fundamental gap in our understanding of the climate system. Increasing our awareness of how Earth's dynamic climate system operates is crucial if we hope to be able to predict how climate might change in the future."

"Earth's orbit around the Sun isn't perfectly symmetrical. It has a somewhat oval shape referred to as orbital eccentricity, with the Sun off-center in the oval, which means Earth's distance from the Sun changes throughout the year.

"And the position of that oval in space shifts a little with each orbit; we call that orbital precession.

"Finally, the tilt of Earth's rotational axis, a property known as obliquity, changes as it orbits the Sun.

"It's been known for some time that these different properties of our planet's relationship to the Sun result in cycles of warmer and cooler climates, with periodic changes in different aspects of Earth's orbit affecting the seasonal and geographical distribution of sunlight.

"Collectively known as Milankovitch cycles, these periodic changes occur roughly every 20,000, 40,000, 100,000, and 400,000 years, but teasing out which aspects of Earth's orbit are involved in fluctuations in climate is not an easy task.

***

"With this information, the researchers created a detailed graph of glaciation cycles, against which they compared two idiosyncrasies of Earth's orbit – its precession and obliquity. And an amazing pattern emerged. The critical stages of the transitions between glacial and interglacial periods matched up with a particular relationship between precession and obliquity.

"Deglaciation – the end of an ice age – seems intimately linked to a relationship between precession and obliquity; but it's obliquity alone that's responsible for the onset of an ice age.

"This, the researchers say, explains the 100,000-year cycle. And it was all right there, hiding in plain sight.

***

"Earth's obliquity is currently in the process of declining towards a minimum, which it will reach in 11,000 years or so; according to the team's calculations, the next ice age will kick off before then. (my bold)

"'This is vitally important information to understanding the long-term, future effects of current human activity, Barker said.

"'According to the latest IPCC reports, humans have already started to alter the course of climate away from its natural trajectory by the emission of greenhouse gases," he explained.

"'This means that the decisions we make now will have consequences into the far future. At present, projected future climate change is gauged relative to modern (or pre-industrial) conditions."

Comment: an amazing correlation. Which means if an ice age is coming lets keep the Earth very warm. This is an interesting factor to throw into the climate debate.

https://theconversation.com/giant-glaciers-pulverised-earths-ancient-rocks-setting-the-...

"During the Cryogenian, our planet was plunged into a series of deep freezes when enormous glaciers flowed across the globe.

"In new research published in Geology, we show that these crushing rivers of ice, sometimes kilometres deep, pulverised the planet's rocky surface like enormous bulldozers.

"When the ice eventually thawed, the ground-up minerals washed into the oceans where they may have provided the nutrients needed for the evolution of complex life.

***

"Nobody is sure exactly what triggered these deep-freeze events, though scientists have proposed a range of possibilities. One key may have been a significant decline in atmospheric greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide

***

"As ice sheets advanced toward the tropics, they reflected more sunlight back into space, leading to further cooling. These processes together caused ice to spread rapidly until the planet was almost entirely frozen.

"Volcanic activity may have played a crucial role in ending these ice ages. As glaciers covered the planet, interactions between Earth's crust, oceans and atmosphere slowed dramatically. As a result, when volcanic eruptions injected CO2 into the atmosphere, it would not have been re-absorbed but rather accumulated over millions of years.

"These high levels of CO2 created a runaway greenhouse effect, warming the planet and eventually melting the ice. The resulting thaw caused rapid sea level rise and an influx of nutrients into the oceans.

"Distinct rock formations were created during this abrupt climate change, as the chemistry of the oceans responded to the new conditions. The surge of nutrients may have contributed to a cascade of biological changes, possibly setting the stage for the rise of complex life.

***

"Snowball Earth events were associated with a pronounced increase in older, deeper crust being exposed and ground down under kilometres of ice.

"As the glaciers retreated during thaw periods, massive outflows of melt water transported mineral grains that had been trapped and stabilised under the ice. Once exposed to liquid water, fragile minerals dissolved, releasing chemicals.

"This process – like the changes in the atmosphere – would have changed the chemistry of the oceans. The glacial retreat help shaped the distribution of elements critical to ocean ecosystems.

***

"On shorter timescales, however, human activities have become the dominant force driving climate change.

"While Earth itself will endure, the survival of complex human societies depends on our actions today. We are passengers on an extraordinary "spaceship Earth", a planet that recycles its chemical building blocks through dynamic geochemical cycles, using matter originally forged in ancient stars."

Comment: for life to appear using oxygen and nitrogen, the main components of our atmosphere, the geologic and glacial factors had to evolve and make a life-friendly Earth.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/09/240918165736.htm

"Some of the most dramatic climatic events in our planet's history are "Snowball Earth" events that happened hundreds of millions of years ago, when almost the entire planet was encased in ice up to 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) thick.

"These "Snowball Earth" events have happened only a handful of times and do not occur on regular cycles. Each lasts for millions of years or tens of millions of years and is followed by dramatic warming, but the details of these transitions are poorly understood.

***

"The study recently published in Nature Communications focuses on ancient rocks known as "cap carbonates," thought to have formed as the glacial ice thawed. These rocks preserve clues to Earth's atmosphere and oceans about 640 million years ago, far earlier than what ice cores or tree rings can record.

"'Cap carbonates contain information about key properties of Earth's atmosphere and ocean, such as changing levels of carbon dioxide in the air, or the acidity of the ocean," said lead author Trent Thomas, a UW doctoral student in Earth and space sciences. "Our theory now shows how these properties changed during and after Snowball Earth."

"Cap carbonates are layered limestone or dolomite rocks that have a distinct chemical makeup and today are found in over 50 global locations, including Death Valley, Namibia, Siberia, Ireland and Australia. These rocks are thought to have formed as the Earth-encircling ice sheets melted, causing dramatic changes in atmospheric and ocean chemistry and depositing this unique type of sediment onto the ocean floor.

"They are called "caps" because they are the caps above glacial deposits left after Snowball Earth, and "carbonates" because both limestone and dolomite are carbon-containing rocks. Understanding their formation helps explain the carbon cycle during periods of dramatic climate change. The new study, which models the environmental changes, also provides hints about the evolution of life on Earth and why more complex lifeforms followed the last Snowball Earth.

"'Life on Earth was simple -- in the form of microbes, algae or other tiny aquatic organisms -- for over 2 billion years leading up to Snowball Earth," said senior author David Catling, a UW professor of Earth and space sciences. "In fact, the billion years leading up to Snowball Earth are called the 'boring billion' because so little happened. Then two Snowball Earth events occurred. And soon after, animals appear in the fossil record."

***

"Eventually, carbon dioxide built up in the atmosphere to the point where it trapped enough solar energy to raise global temperatures and melt the ice. This let rainfall reach the Earth, and let freshwater flow into the ocean to join a layer of glacial meltwater that floated over the denser, salty ocean water. This layered ocean slowed down ocean circulation. Later, ocean churning picked up, and mixing between the atmosphere, upper ocean, and deep ocean resumed.

"'We predict important changes in the environment as Earth recovered from the Snowball period, some of which affected the temperature, acidity and circulation of the ocean. Now that we know these changes, we can more confidently figure out how they affected Earth's life," Thomas said."

Comment: the disappearance of snowball Earth set the stage for the first animals to appear perhaps by setting up a nutrient supply. Ediacaran and Cambrian animals followed

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/oxygen-killed-life-on-earth/?utm_source=interna...

"The cyanobacteria, experiencing the massive success of having an unlimited nutrient source wherever sunlight strikes the surface of the ocean, evolved into microbial mats in short order. Once they began producing oxygen, the early presence of that molecule systematically removed the early methane from Earth’s atmosphere, as oxygen reacts with methane to produce carbon dioxide and water. The loss of that early methane — a fabulously efficient heat-trapping molecule — greatly decreased the greenhouse effect from Earth’s early atmosphere: causing global temperatures to begin to drop.

***

"The Sun’s energy output, like that of all stars, was much lower in the early stages of its life, and so the large abundance of atmospheric methane was the only thing keeping Earth warm enough to have liquid water on its surface. With the oxygen destroying that powerful greenhouse gas, the planet couldn’t retain its heat nearly as well. This spawned the greatest ice age in history, leading to Snowball Earth conditions that lasted for approximately 300 million years.

"The geological evidence is overwhelming for incredibly cold conditions covering the entire planet at this time. Glacial deposits throughout northern North America (but also found as far away as Australia) display multiple sedimentary layers that show evidence for this frozen period persisting for long periods of time, spanning ages that correspond to being between 2.5 and 2.0 billion years ago. Evidence for past glaciation events, where glacial deposits must have been made even at then-tropical (i.e., equatorial) latitudes, has been very strong for more than half a century.

***

"Once you cool the Earth and remove its heat-trapping atmospheric layers, further cooling appears to be a runaway process. If ice sheets advance far enough down below the polar regions, it increases the total reflectivity of the planet, which translates into less solar energy being absorbed by the Earth overall. The further cooling leads to the formation of even more ice, which can eventually cover the entire surface of the planet — continents and oceans both included — in a global layer of ice. That’s what a “Snowball Earth” set of conditions looks like.

***

"It was geology, however, and not biology, that eventually led to the end of these Snowball Earth conditions. Even as the planet remained frozen, plate tectonics continued, as continental drift, seafloor spreading, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions all persisted. In particular, volcanoes continued to erupt beneath the ice, spewing those volcanic gases upward, where they would lead to cracks and fissures in the ice sheets. As volcanoes add copious amounts of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, they began increasing the strength of the planet’s greenhouse effect once again, while the simultaneous production of ash began to decrease the reflectivity of Earth. Eventually, after approximately 300 million years, our planet finally broke out of this glaciation era.

***

"Although much remains to be learned about the evolutionary process during these Snowball Earth conditions, it’s arguable that human-like life would never have arisen if oxygen had never destroyed our methane-rich atmosphere and given life the opportunity to evolve in this spectacular, unique direction.

"The period of time corresponding to 2.5 billion years ago in Earth’s natural history may yet represent the greatest mass extinction our planet has ever faced. Even at this primitive stage, however, life remained ubiquitous and resilient, with the destruction of the pre-existing dominant species enabling other, new organisms to evolve and rise to prominence, filling those now-vacant ecological niches. The Great Oxygenation Event was a transformative occurrence in Earth’s history, and may have paved the way for complex and differentiated life on our world. Without it, life may never have achieved the diversity it now boasts today, and the tree of life may not have been capable of giving rise to intelligent, advanced organisms like us."

Comment: this description of the history and causes of snowball Earth presents us with an amazing set of improbable contingencies which allowed us to appear. The logical explanation is a designer God.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/02/240207194410.htm

"Inspired during field work in South Australia's Flinders Ranges, geoscientists have proposed that all-time low volcanic carbon dioxide emissions triggered a 57-million-year-long global 'Sturtian' ice age.

***

"'We now think we have cracked the mystery: historically low volcanic carbon dioxide emissions, aided by weathering of a large pile of volcanic rocks in what is now Canada; a process that absorbs atmospheric carbon dioxide."

***

"The extended ice age, also called the Sturtian glaciation after the 19th century European colonial explorer of central Australia, Charles Sturt, stretched from 717 to 660 million years ago, a period well before the dinosaurs and complex plant life on land existed.

"Dr Dutkiewicz said: "Various causes have been proposed for the trigger and the end of this extreme ice age, but the most mysterious aspect is why it lasted for 57 million years -- a time span hard for us humans to imagine."

"The team went back to a plate tectonic model that shows the evolution of continents and ocean basins at a time after the breakup of the ancient supercontinent Rodina.

***

"They soon realised that the start of the Sturtian ice age precisely correlates with an all-time low in volcanic CO2 emissions.

"In addition, the CO2 outflux remained relatively low for the entire duration of the ice age.

"Dr Dutkiewicz said: "At this time, there were no multicellular animals or land plants on Earth. The greenhouse gas concentration of the atmosphere was almost entirely dictated by CO2 outgassing from volcanoes and by silicate rock weathering processes, which consume CO2."

"Co-author Professor Dietmar Müller from the University of Sydney said: "Geology ruled climate at this time. We think the Sturtian ice age kicked in due to a double whammy: a plate tectonic reorganisation brought volcanic degassing to a minimum, while simultaneously a continental volcanic province in Canada started eroding away, consuming atmospheric CO2.

"'The result was that atmospheric CO2 fell to a level where glaciation kicks in -- which we estimate to be below 200 parts per million, less than half today's level."

***

"Dr Dutkiewicz said: "Whatever the future holds, it is important to note that geological climate change, of the type studied here, happens extremely slowly. According to NASA, human-induced climate change is happening at a pace 10 times faster than we have seen before.'"

Comment: So, in view of the fact that CO2 is an important friend who keeps us warm, CO2 is not an enemy. Obviously volcanic outgassing plays a major role in CO2 levels along with the human input. We certainly do not want another glacial period. And we must understand all the simulations of future climate temperatures are extremely inaccurate. Is current alarmism necessary?

https://www.quantamagazine.org/in-the-milky-ways-stars-a-history-of-violence-20230928/

"A supermassive black hole churns at its center, surrounded by the “bulge,” a knot of stars containing some of the galaxy’s oldest stellar denizens. Next comes the “thin disk” — the structure we can see — where most of the Milky Way’s stars, including the sun, are partitioned into gargantuan spiraling arms. The thin disk is encased in a wider “thick disk,” which contains older stars that are more spread out. Finally, a mostly spherical halo surrounds these structures; it is mostly made of dark matter, but also contains stars and diffuse hot gas.

***

"Everything changed in 2016, when the first data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia satellite came back to Earth. Gaia precisely measures the paths of millions of stars throughout the galaxy, allowing astronomers to learn where those stars are located, how they move through space, and how fast they are going. With Gaia, astronomers could paint a sharper picture of the Milky Way — one that revealed many surprises.

"The bulge is not spherical but peanut-shaped, and it’s part of a larger bar spanning the middle of our galaxy. The galaxy itself is warped like the brim of a beat-up cowboy hat. The thick disk is also flared, growing thicker toward its edges, and it may have formed before the halo. Astronomers aren’t even sure how many spiral arms the galaxy really has.

***

"In the intervening century, astronomers have calculated that the Milky Way’s bulge is about 12,000 light-years across, that the disk spans 120,000 light-years, and that the halo of dark matter and ancient star clusters extends hundreds of thousands of light-years in every direction.

"A recent observation found that some halo stars are scattered as far as 1 million light-years away — halfway to Andromeda — which suggests that the halo, and therefore the galaxy, is not quite an island universe unto itself.

***

"In work published on September 14, Han and his team also showed that the dark matter halo might be tilted by about 25 degrees, causing the entire galaxy to look warped.

"And while that might seem weird enough, the tilt itself may be evidence of the Milky Way’s violent past.

***

"The first hints of violence came when astronomers peering through the storied 200-inch telescope at Palomar Observatory (which Hubble was the first to use) found evidence in 1992 that the Milky Way was ripping apart some of the globular clusters in its halo. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey confirmed that observation, and radio telescopes later found that the galaxy was also inhaling streams of nearby gas.

***

"As astronomers pored over the detailed motions and positions of about a billion stars, signs of a major disturbance in the galaxy emerged — they saw galactic wreckage in the halo. There, some stars orbit at extreme angles and have different compositions than others, suggesting that they originated somewhere else.

"Astronomers took these oddball stars as evidence of a titanic collision between the Milky Way and another galaxy. The merger, which probably happened between 8 billion and 11 billion years ago, would have catastrophically disrupted the young Milky Way, ripped the other galaxy to shreds, and sparked a firestorm of new star formation.

"The colliding galaxy’s remains are now called Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus, a result of two teams independently discovering the remnants of the merger.

***

"When Xiang and Rix used those clues to infer the migration histories of a quarter of a million subgiant stars, they found that the thick disk formed earlier than expected in galaxy formation theories — 13 billion years ago, barely an eye-blink after the Big Bang.

***

"The evidence for Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus continues to pile up. But what astronomers still don’t understand is why things have been calm ever since. The Milky Way’s chemical history and structural history seem atypical, Lu said.

"Andromeda, for instance, has a much more violent history than the Milky Way. It would be odd for our galaxy to be left alone so long, considering other galaxies’ histories and the prevailing cosmological model that says galaxies grow by smashing into each other, Wyse said. “The merging history is unusual, and the assembly history. Whether we are actually unusual in the universe … I would say is still an open question,” she said.

***

"Here, around one particular star on the Local Arm, eight planets formed around the sun — four rocky and four gaseous. But other arms may be different. Those environments might produce different populations of stars and planets in the same way that specialized flora and fauna evolve on continents with distinct biospheres.

“'Maybe life can only arise in a really quiet galaxy. Maybe life can only arise around a really quiet star,” said Jessie Christiansen, an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology who studies galactic conditions and their effects on planet-building." (my bold)

Comment: we are here on Earth going 'round a quiet star. In a very special galaxy. Serendipity, contingency or design? Only one cause must exist.

https://www.science.org/content/article/massive-lava-outburst-may-have-led-snowball-ear...

"About 717 million years ago, a climate catastrophe struck the planet, as temperatures plunged and glaciers enveloped the globe. The cause of this “Snowball Earth” episode has been mysterious, but it took place around the same time as a massive outburst of volcanism. Many researchers thought there might be a connection. But the timing was uncertain.

"Now, more precise dates, reported last month in Earth and Planetary Science Letters (EPSL) and in November 2022 in Science Advances, show the eruptions preceded the Snowball Earth event by 1 million to 2 million years. The lag points to a particular way the fire could have triggered the ice: through a chemical alteration of the fresh volcanic rocks known as weathering, which sucks carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere, turning down the planetary thermostat. The studies highlight the power of weathering as a key driver behind shifts in Earth’s climate, and how components of the planet as disparate as rocks and the atmosphere are inextricably linked, says EPSL study co-author Galen Halverson, a sedimentary geologist at McGill University. “Nothing can be understood in isolation.”

"Geoscientists debating the cause of the so-called Sturtian glaciation, which lasted 57 million years, have pointed to a number of possibilities—meteorite strikes, biologic activity, shifts in Earth’s orbit, and more. But recent studies have zeroed in on one of the largest volcanic outbursts ever, preserved today across northern Canada in what’s called the Franklin large igneous province (LIP). The eruptions spewed lava across an area at least the size of Argentina—and perhaps bigger than China.

"Volcanism can trigger cooling in two main ways. In one, eruptions release sulfur-rich gases, which form aerosols that block sunlight and cool the planet. A section of the Franklin lava likely even burst through rocks full of sulfur-rich minerals that could have supercharged the plumes. The other mechanism is weathering. Lava rocks are particularly susceptible to the reactions, in which CO2 in rainwater reacts with the rocks, ultimately forming minerals that precipitate in the ocean.

***

"By measuring the ratios of trace amounts of uranium and lead trapped in tiny crystals of the mineral zircon—and knowing how fast uranium decays to lead—the teams discovered that the Franklin LIP formed in just 2 million years or so, much faster than most previous estimates. And the primary pulse of volcanism happened 1 million to 2 million years before Snowball Earth, which has been dated through analysis of rocks scoured up by glaciers and eventually deposited in the ocean.

"That’s exactly the sort of time frame required for weathering to cause the cooling. “They’re just stunning the extent to which [the dates] all line up,” Halverson says. Additional analysis by Pu and her colleagues suggest the Franklin LIP formed a broad volcanic highland that would have been battered by wind and water, speeding up the weathering.

"Pu says other factors may have dialed up the weathering enough to cause a Snowball Earth event. For starters, all of Earth’s landmasses at the time were located near the equator, where temperatures were warm and rain frequently pelted the surface. The floods of lava also emerged during the breakup of the Rodinia supercontinent, which exposed fresh rocky surfaces to weathering and may have already begun to cool the global climate. And Gumsley says other large eruptions probably took place at this time in Siberia, China, Africa, and Antarctica, adding to the overall weathering effect.

"Case closed? Not for Harvard University geologist emeritus Paul Hoffman, a coauthor on the Science Advances study who led much of the early work on Snowball Earth. Even if the timing of the Franklin LIP has improved, that of the global glaciation remains slightly uncertain, he says. Forming the ice-scoured rock that marks the start of the episode requires the flow of thick ice at sea level, a process that may not have started until several hundred thousand years after the oceans froze over.

"Other Snowball periods remain mysterious. Some 650 million years ago, not long after the Sturtian glaciation, the planet plunged into another deep freeze—but no volcanic outburst preceded it, notes Linda Sohl, a paleoclimatologist at Columbia University who was not part of the study teams. Still, Halverson says weathering may have been a key factor then, too, because all the scouring by glaciers during the earlier Snowball would have exposed fresh rock.

"For the Sturtian glaciation at least, the case for a weathering trigger has grown, Sohl says. “In the very least, a revisit with weathering models seems in order,” she says. “The snowball glaciations are such fascinating events that are going to keep all of us quite busy for years to come.'”

Comment: previous entries described how life survived these periods.

https://www.sciencealert.com/snowball-earth-may-not-have-been-an-endless-frozen-wastela...

"Long before complex life crawled from the oceans to make itself at home on dry land, Earth endured an ice age like no other. On two separate occasions, fingers of ice stretched far from the poles, turning the planet into a frozen wasteland.

"Just how far glaciers reached has been a matter of debate. Some contend the runaway deep freeze extended across all latitudes, completely coating Earth in a thick coat of ice as far as the equator.

"Others argue equatorial latitudes may have been relatively ice-free. Evidence buried in the fossil record also suggests there might have been patches of exposed ocean, enough for oxygen and light to permeate the waters and allow complex life to flourish.

"In that vein, a new study by researchers from China and the UK is the latest to suggest 'Snowball Earth' wasn't completely covered in ice – and might have even exhibited habitable open-ocean conditions far away from the equator.

"Just what caused Earth to suddenly dip into an extended cold snap around 700 million years ago isn't all that clear. A drop in sunlight perhaps, or a loss of greenhouse gases, followed by a feedback of ice reflecting heat, creating yet more ice.

***

"While this may have helped kick-start a biodiversity explosion, times would have been tough for complex life trying to survive in cold waters cut off from the atmosphere in the midst of the extreme ice age. Starved of oxygen, life should, in theory, have been dominated by simple anaerobes and deep-dwelling chemotrophs.

"Only that isn't what the fossil record shows. Black shales buried in the Nantuo Formation of South China preserve traces of sediments shed by the Marinoan glaciers. Within them are macroscopic traces of surprisingly complex organisms, interpreted as a kind of algae.

"Being photosynthetic means a reliance on sunlight, meaning Snowball Earth might have been speckled with patches of ice-free ocean where life could stare up at the sky and soak up the rays.

"As far as evidence of exposed ocean during the Marinoan glaciation goes, questionable fossils of macroscopic algae leave plenty of room for debate.

"By analyzing the chemistry of the Nantuo Formation shale, the team behind this latest investigation hoped to uncover additional evidence that would help determine whether areas of the surface remained ice-free during this important period in Earth's history.

"Examining the nature of the material's iron content, for example, provided data on redox reactions that described levels of oxygen at the interface between sediment and the water above. By studying the mix of nitrogen isotopes, the team could get a better sense of the aerobic nitrogen cycle occurring near the water's surface.

"Putting the results into context provided by numerous other studies, it appears at least some of the planet's surface was ice-clear towards the close of the Marinoan, providing a warm oasis for photosynthesizing organisms.

"Importantly, based on the location of the fossil beds in South China more than half a billion years ago, these ice-free islands of open water would have appeared at mid-latitudes, far from the equator.

"Though it's possible meltwater ponds in the glaciers could have provided similar access to oxygen and light, the researchers argue it's unlikely such lakes would have had sufficient organic matter to keep carbon and nitrogen cycles churning.

"Being more of a 'slushball' than a completely frozen ball of ice would mean Earth's more complex life forms had refuges from the inhospitable darkness, allowing them to rebound more quickly once the planet warmed."
i
Comment: there were simple forms that survived. We are here after all that adversity. This supports my theory God did not control environmental events. An all-powerful God allowed this is happen, but it didn't get in His way.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-animals-may-have-conquered-snowball-e...

"Planet Earth used to be something like a cross between a deep freeze and a car crusher. During vast stretches of the planet’s history, everything from pole to pole was squashed beneath a blanket of ice a kilometer or more thick. Scientists call this snowball Earth.

"Some early animals managed to endure this frigid era from roughly 720 to 580 million years ago, but they had their work cut out for them. Despite their valiant successes, the repeated expansion and contraction of giant ice sheets pulverized the hardy extremophiles’ remains leaving almost no trace of them in the fossil record and scientists with little to no idea of how they managed to survive.

“'It’s basically like having a giant bulldozer,” says Huw Griffiths of the British Antarctic Survey. “The next glacial expansion would have just erased all that and turned it into mush, basically.”

"Despite the lack of direct evidence thanks to all that glacial churning, Griffiths argues it is reasonable to propose that a diverse range of animal life inhabited snowball Earth. He suggests that this flourishing would have pre-dated the so-called Cambrian explosion, a period around 540 million years ago when a great and unprecedented diversity of animal life emerged on Earth. “It’s not a huge leap of imagination that there were much smaller, simpler things that existed before that,” Griffiths says.

***
"The team considered three different frozen periods. The first was the Sturtian snowball Earth, which began about 720 million years ago. It lasted for up to 60 million years. This is a mind-blowingly long time—it’s nearly as long as the period between the end of the dinosaur era and today. Then came the Marinoan snowball Earth, which started 650 million years ago and lasted a mere 15 million years. It was eventually followed by the Gaskiers glaciation around 580 million years ago. This third glaciation was shorter still and is often called a slushball rather than a snowball Earth because the ice coverage was likely not as extensive.

"Though the ice smushed most of the fossils from these periods, scientists have found a handful of remnants. These rare fossils portray the weird animals that existed around the time of the Gaskiers glaciation. Among these ancient slushball-Earth dwellers were the frondomorphs—organisms that looked a bit like fern leaves. Frondomorphs lived fixed to the seafloor beneath the ice and possibly absorbed nutrients from the water as it flowed around them.

"Short on direct evidence, Griffiths and his colleagues instead argue that the survival strategies of animals during the great freezes of the past are likely echoed by the life that dwells in the most similar environment on Earth today—Antarctica.

***

"One of the challenges that inhabitants of a snowball Earth faced was the possible lack of oxygen, both because the oxygen levels in the air were low and because there was limited mixing from the atmosphere into the water. But oxygenated meltwater high in the water column might have supported animals that depended on it. Some denizens that live on the Antarctic seafloor today, such as certain species of feather star, solve this problem by relying on water currents to bring a steady flow of oxygen and nutrients from the small areas of open water at the surface to deep below the ice shelves. There’s no reason to think this didn’t happen during the Gaskiers slushball Earth period, too.

***

"Andrew Stewart, assistant curator at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa who also wasn’t involved in the paper, has studied countless species from harsh Antarctic environments. Many of these organisms cope in incredibly dark, cold, or chemically toxic places. For Stewart, Antarctic extremophiles are a reminder of how robust life on Earth really is—and perhaps always has been.

“'It’s just the most amazing place,” he says. “You go, No, bollocks, nothing can survive there! Well, actually it can.'”

Comment: of course, life survived these snowball periods. And the question of low oxygen is answered in previous entries as being adequate. A good research paper has as full review of the literature; this one obviously did not find my entries. The major point, however, is that it reenforces my view that God doesn't control every nuance of climate change but can respond with DNA alteration in new species. God is in total control of evolutionary destiny!!! A totally different an analysis than dhw's contrary distortions of my theory.

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/time-dilation/?utm_source=mailchimp&utm_med...

"No matter where you are in the Universe, time always passes at precisely the same rate for any observer: one second per second. But when it comes to how time passes at one location relative to another, both your speed and how deep inside a gravitational potential well you are affect the rates at which clocks run. As a result, there not only is no absolute time, but time passes faster at higher elevations on Earth than lower ones. From space to mountaintops to tabletops, we've measured the difference, and Einstein had it exactly right.

***

"...if you have two different clocks, you can compare how time flows under different conditions. If one clock remains stationary while the other travels quickly, the fast-moving clock will experience a smaller amount of time passing than the stationary clock: that’s the rule of time dilation in special relativity.

"What’s even more counterintuitive, however, is that the relative flow of time also depends on the difference between how severely space is curved between two locations. In General Relativity, this corresponds to the strength of gravity at your particular location, which means that your feet actually age at a different rate than your head when you’re standing up. Here’s the physics of how we know.

***

"...the laws of physics remain the same at all times and all places, and so these transitions that emit or absorb photons always occur at the same energy. However, if the emitter of a photon and the (potential) absorber of a photon aren’t located at the same time and place as one another, there’s a good chance that they won’t agree on the energies they observe.

When it’s because the objects are in relative motion with respect to one another, we know this effect as a Doppler shift.

***

"...here’s where things get weird: this same type of shift should also occur — even if everyone is stationary — when your gravitational field strength changes from one location to another.

***

"Just as you can have Doppler redshifts and blueshifts for light, you can also have gravitational redshifts and blueshifts. For example, if you send a photon from the Sun to the Earth, because the Sun’s gravitational field dominates the Solar System and is stronger near the Sun than farther away, that photon will lose energy (and become “redder”) as it travels from the Sun to the Earth. If it were to go in the opposite direction, from the Earth to the Sun, the photon would gain energy and become “bluer” in color.

***

"The overall lesson is this: for every meter of height that you gain, you need a Doppler shift of ~33 nanometers-per-second to compensate for it. It’s like being lower on the surface of the Earth requires you to be in motion at a certain rate just to have time pass at the same rate as it would if you were higher. In other words, without an extra little speed boost at your feet — without an extra amount of time dilation added in — time passes more quickly at higher elevations in Earth’s gravitational field.

"Your head, to be blunt, ages more quickly than your feet do."

Comment: God made our world counterintuitive in relativity and quantum mechanics. And folks like dhw wish to analyze God and outthink Him, complaining about what He has created and the way He did it, ignoring the factual history God created along the way. We have only a smidgeon of His mental capacity. We cannot fathom those depths.

Absorbing tiny satellite galaxies:

http://www.sci-news.com/astronomy/pontus-galaxy-10564.html?utm_source=feedburner&ut...

"Our Milky Way Galaxy began forming around 12 billion years ago. Since then, it has been growing in both mass and size through a sequence of mergers with smaller galaxies.

Perhaps most exciting is that this process has not quite finished, and by using Gaia data, astronomers can see it taking place.

***

“'If this process goes slowly, the stars from the merging galaxy will form a vast stellar stream that can be easily distinguished in the halo.”

“'If the process goes quickly, the merging galaxy’s stars will be more scattered throughout the halo and no clear signature will be visible.”

“'But the merging galaxy may contain more than just stars. It could also be surrounded by a population of globular clusters and small satellite galaxies.”

***

"In total, they studied 170 globular clusters, 41 stellar streams and 46 satellites of the Milky Way.

"Plotting them according to their energy and momentum revealed that 25% of these objects fall into six distinct groups.

"Each group is a merger taking place with the Milky Way. There was also a possible seventh merger in the data.

"Five — Sagittarius, Cetus, Gaia-Sausage/Enceladus, LMS-1/Wukong, and Arjuna/Sequoia/I’itoi — had been previously identified on surveys of stars.

"But the sixth was a newly-identified merger event. The authors called it Pontus, meaning the sea.

"Based upon the way Pontus has been pulled apart by the Milky Way, they estimate that it probably fell into our Galaxy some 8-10 billion years ago.

"Four of the other five merger events likely also took place around this time as well.

"But the sixth event, Sagittarius, is more recent. It might have fallen into the Milky Way sometime in the last 5-6 billion years.

"As a result, the Milky Way has not yet been able to completely disrupt it."

Comment: dhw is going to wonder in his usual way, why did God do so much with this galaxy when all He wanted was humans. The answer is humans need lots of protection from dangerous area in this galaxy as in its center. The Earth is two-thirds of the way out in the second spiral, far from the dangerous activity. God has His reasons, and this one is obvious.

Here is another version of the same scientific study:

https://www.sciencealert.com/new-map-charts-the-milky-way-s-dramatic-history-of-violenc...

http://www.sci-news.com/astronomy/pontus-galaxy-10564.html?utm_source=feedburner&ut...

"Our Milky Way Galaxy began forming around 12 billion years ago. Since then, it has been growing in both mass and size through a sequence of mergers with smaller galaxies.

Perhaps most exciting is that this process has not quite finished, and by using Gaia data, astronomers can see it taking place.

***

“'If this process goes slowly, the stars from the merging galaxy will form a vast stellar stream that can be easily distinguished in the halo.”

“'If the process goes quickly, the merging galaxy’s stars will be more scattered throughout the halo and no clear signature will be visible.”

“'But the merging galaxy may contain more than just stars. It could also be surrounded by a population of globular clusters and small satellite galaxies.”

***

"In total, they studied 170 globular clusters, 41 stellar streams and 46 satellites of the Milky Way.

"Plotting them according to their energy and momentum revealed that 25% of these objects fall into six distinct groups.

"Each group is a merger taking place with the Milky Way. There was also a possible seventh merger in the data.

"Five — Sagittarius, Cetus, Gaia-Sausage/Enceladus, LMS-1/Wukong, and Arjuna/Sequoia/I’itoi — had been previously identified on surveys of stars.

"But the sixth was a newly-identified merger event. The authors called it Pontus, meaning the sea.

"Based upon the way Pontus has been pulled apart by the Milky Way, they estimate that it probably fell into our Galaxy some 8-10 billion years ago.

"Four of the other five merger events likely also took place around this time as well.

"But the sixth event, Sagittarius, is more recent. It might have fallen into the Milky Way sometime in the last 5-6 billion years.

"As a result, the Milky Way has not yet been able to completely disrupt it."

Comment: dhw is going to wonder in his usual way, why did God do so much with this galaxy when all He wanted was humans. The answer is humans need lots of protection from dangerous area in this galaxy as in its center. The Earth is two-thirds of the way out in the second spiral, far from the dangerous activity. God has His reasons, and this one is obvious.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/gravitational-waves-should-permanently-distort-space-tim...

"The “gravitational memory effect” predicts that a passing gravitational wave should forever alter the structure of space-time. Physicists have linked the phenomenon to fundamental cosmic symmetries and a potential solution to the black hole information paradox.

"The first detection of gravitational waves in 2016 provided decisive confirmation of Einstein’s general theory of relativity. But another astounding prediction remains unconfirmed: According to general relativity, every gravitational wave should leave an indelible imprint on the structure of space-time. It should permanently strain space, displacing the mirrors of a gravitational wave detector even after the wave has passed.

"Since that first detection almost six years ago, physicists have been trying to figure out how to measure this so-called “memory effect.”

“'The memory effect is absolutely a strange, strange phenomenon,” said Paul Lasky, an astrophysicist at Monash University in Australia. “It’s really deep stuff.”

"Their goals are broader than just glimpsing the permanent space-time scars left by a passing gravitational wave. By exploring the links between matter, energy and space-time, physicists hope to come to a better understanding of Stephen Hawking’s black hole information paradox, which has been a major focus of theoretical research for going on five decades. “There’s an intimate connection between the memory effect and the symmetry of space-time,” said Kip Thorne, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology whose work on gravitational waves earned him part of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics. “It is connected ultimately to the loss of information in black holes, a very deep issue in the structure of space and time.”

***

"According to the memory effect, after the passing of the wave, the circle should remain permanently deformed by a tiny amount. The reason why has to do with the particularities of gravity as described by general relativity.

***

“'The memory is nothing but the change in the gravitational potential,” said Thorne, “but it’s a relativistic gravitational potential.” The energy of a passing gravitational wave creates a change in the gravitational potential; that change in potential distorts space-time, even after the wave has passed.

***

"...space-time has the potential to store information, which could be the key to solving the infamous black hole information paradox. Briefly, the paradox is this: Information cannot be created or destroyed. So where does the information about particles go after they fall into a black hole and are re-emitted as information-less Hawking radiation?

"In 2016, Andrew Strominger, a physicist at Harvard University, along with Stephen Hawking and Malcolm Perry realized that the horizon of a black hole has the same supertranslation symmetries as those in asymptotically flat space. And by the same logic as before, there would be an accompanying memory effect. This meant the infalling particles could alter space-time near the black hole, thereby changing its information content. This offered a possible solution to the information paradox. Knowledge of the particles’ properties wasn’t lost — it was permanently encoded in the fabric of space-time.

***

"Lasky and Schmidt have independently predicted that they’ll need over 1,000 gravitational wave events to accumulate enough statistics to confirm they’ve seen the memory effect. With ongoing improvements to LIGO, as well as contributions from the VIRGO detector in Italy and KAGRA in Japan, Lasky thinks reaching 1,000 detections is a few short years away."

Comment: So a black hole does not destroy information. That may solve the information paradox related to black holes. dhw should be willing to wait for research results, but unfortunately he isn't and constantly complains about God's deeds before they are understood..

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/08/210827121450.htm

"Around 650 million years ago, the Earth entered into the Marinoan glaciation that saw the entire planet freeze. The 'Snowball Earth' impeded the evolution of life. But as it warmed, biotic life began to flourish. A research team has now analyzed rock samples from China to tell us more about this transition.

"A research team from Tohoku University has unveiled more about the evolutionary process of the Marinoan-Ediacaran transition. Using biomarker evidence, they revealed possible photosynthetic activity during the Marinoan glaciation. This was followed by photosynthetic organisms and bacteria entering a period of low productivity. However, as eukaryotes expanded during the early Ediacaran period, they blossomed.

***

"Bacteria and eukaryote biomarkers demonstrate that bacteria dominated before the glaciation, whereas steranes/hopanes ratios illustrate that eukaryotes dominated just before it. However, the relationship between the biosphere changes and the Marinoan glaciation is unclear.

***

"Kaiho believes we are one step closer to understanding the evolutionary process that occurred before and after Snowball Earth. "The environmental stress of closed ocean environments for the atmosphere followed by high temperatures around 60°C may have produced more complex animals in the aftermath." Their findings show that bacterial recovery preceded eukaryotes' domination."

Comment: The Ediacaran diversity that appeared is very simple compared to the later Cambrian Explosion animals. This shows part of the evolutionary process that finally created our current biosphere.

https://phys.org/news/2021-07-earth-orbit-enabled-emergence-complex.html

"Scientists at the University of Southampton have discovered that changes in Earth's orbit may have allowed complex life to emerge and thrive during the most hostile climate episode the planet has ever experienced.

"The researchers—working with colleagues...studied a succession of rocks laid down when most of Earth's surface was covered in ice during a severe glaciation, dubbed 'Snowball Earth', that lasted over 50 million years.

***

"The research team ventured into the South Australian outback where they targeted kilometre-thick units of glacial rocks formed about 700 million years ago. At this time, Australia was located closer to the equator, known today for its tropical climates. The rocks they studied, however, show unequivocal evidence that ice sheets extended as far as the equator at this time, providing compelling evidence that Earth was completely covered in an icy shell.

"The team focused their attention on "Banded Iron Formations", sedimentary rocks consisting of alternating layers of iron-rich and silica-rich material. These rocks were deposited in the ice-covered ocean near colossal ice sheets.

***

'The team's results help explain the enigmatic presence of sedimentary rocks of this age that show evidence for flowing water at Earth's surface when this water should have been locked up in ice sheets. Dr. Gernon states: "This observation is important, because complex multicellular life is now known to have originated during this period of climate crisis, but previously we could not explain why".

"'Our study points to the existence of ice-free 'oases' in the snowball ocean that provided a sanctuary for animal life to survive arguably the most extreme climate event in Earth history", Dr. Gernon concluded."

Comment: how many 'chance' events or lucky accidents allowed/caused us to appear, or was God guiding it all?

https://www.universetoday.com/150287/the-core-of-the-milky-way-is-an-extreme-place/

"One of the violent places that astronomers love to study is the center of our Milky Way galaxy.

***

"The area of the galaxy they studied, known as the “central molecular zone” (CMZ) spans the 1600 light years closest to the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. That is approximately 16 times closer to the galactic center than our own sun is. Almost everything about this part of the galaxy is more “intense” than the further out reaches. The molecular gas clouds that comprise it have higher magnetic fields, radiation, and even pressures and temperatures.

***

"These types of extreme conditions are ideal places for stars to form, though there are several evolutionary steps the molecular gas clouds must go through before ending up as a ball of nuclear fusion. First, the molecular gas must form into “clumps” between 1 and 10 light years in diameter. If enough material accretes into a given clump, it can move on to the next stage, where it forms what is known as a “core”. Cores are about 10% the size of a clump, but contain all the same material, and therefore have much higher temperature and pressure than their predecessors. Cores then occasionally give birth to individual stars.

"This process is extremely slow and can take millions of years to transition from one state to another. To truly grasp how these transitions might happen, it is best to study as many distinct clumps as possible to watch discrete points in the evolution of the systems. Foreground and background emissions (i.e. noise) have so far made it extremely difficult to assess the prevalence of clumps or cores anywhere near the center of the galaxy, however.

"What was needed to tease the signal from the noise was a significant amount of time on a very powerful telescope. That is just what the research team received by obtaining 550 hours of observing time on the Submillimeter Array (SMA). With their data in hand, the team scoured it to find 285 new stand-alone cores that could eventually begin to form a star. Additionally, there are 531 other potential core candidates in the data, but their presence was not conclusive enough to include them in the total count without further confirmation first.

"Confirmation of another interesting observation was also hidden in the data – that cores form stars as a much lower rate than would be expected via modeling. In fact, the data from the SMA point toward star formation being as common elsewhere in the galaxy as it is in the cores at the violent center of the galaxy. That puzzles astronomers, as the higher pressures and temperatures in the center of the galaxy should be more conductive to the formation of stellar objects."

Comment: So we have a giant galaxy which is presenting puzzles when compared to theories based on other galaxies. Are we just different or special? Noted again, our Earth is way far away from all that dangerous activity. By design I would think, to protect life.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/space-telescope-shows-galaxy-size-bubbles-over-the-milky...

"He published simulations in 1977 that produced digital clouds lining up with the spur, and ever since then he has told anyone who would listen that the spur actually hovers tens of thousands of light-years above the disk. He described it as an expanding shock wave from a galactic calamity dating back millions of years.

***

"Then in 2010, the Fermi space telescope caught the faint gamma-ray glow of two humungous lobes, each extending roughly 20,000 light-years from the galaxy’s center. They were too small to trace the North Polar Spur, but they otherwise looked just like the galactic-scale clouds of hot gas Sofue predicted. Astronomers began to wonder: If the galaxy had at least one pair of bubbles, perhaps the spur was part of a second set?

***

"The new images have further cemented the change of opinion. They came from eROSITA, an orbiting X-ray telescope that launched in 2019 to track dark energy’s effect on galaxy clusters. The eROSITA team released a preliminary map in June, the fruit of the telescope’s first six months of observations.

"The map traces X-ray bubbles that stand an estimated 45,000 light-years tall, engulfing the gamma-ray Fermi bubbles. Their X-rays shine from gas that measures 3 million to 4 million degrees Kelvin as it expands outward at 300 to 400 kilometers per second. And not only does the northern bubble align perfectly with the spur, its mirror image is obvious as well, just as Sofue predicted. “I was particularly happy to see the southern bubble clearly exhibited, so similar to my simulation,” he said.

***

"But the meaning of eROSITA’s mushroom clouds is clear: Something went bang in the center of the Milky Way around 15 million to 20 million years ago, around the same time hyenas and weasels were emerging on Earth.

“I think now [the debate] is done, more or less,” said Predehl, who spent 25 years developing eROSITA.

"What exploded? Based on the energy required to make the clouds so big and so hot, there are two plausible sources.

***

"The ... culprit is the supermassive black hole that sits at the galaxy’s heart. The 4-million-solar-mass leviathan is relatively quiet today. But if a large cloud of gas once strayed too close, the black hole could have switched on like a spotlight. While feasting on the hapless passerby, the black hole would have gobbled down half the cloud while energy from the other half sprayed out above and below the disk, inflating the X-ray bubbles and perhaps the Fermi bubbles too (although the two pairs could also represent separate episodes of activity, Predehl noted).

"Astronomers have long observed other galaxies that shoot out jets above and below their disks, and they’ve wondered what makes the central supermassive black holes in those galaxies churn so much more violently than ours does. The Fermi bubbles, and now the eROSITA bubbles, suggest that the main difference may simply be the passage of time."

Comment: It all gets complexer and complexer and God has not explained why all the weirdness. But is always tums out the weird is necessary, and makes us agree God knows what He is doing and how everything we see must be necessarily designed for creation.

https://phys.org/news/2021-01-astronomers-universe-billion-years.html

"From an observatory high above Chile's Atacama Desert, astronomers have taken a new look at the oldest light in the universe.

"Their observations, plus a bit of cosmic geometry, suggest that the universe is 13.77 billion years old—give or take 40 million years. A Cornell University researcher co-authored one of two papers about the findings, which add a fresh twist to an ongoing debate in the astrophysics community.

"The new estimate, using data gathered at the National Science Foundation's Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT), matches the one provided by the standard model of the universe, as well as measurements of the same light made by the European Space Agency's Planck satellite, which measured remnants of the Big Bang from 2009 to '13.

***

"'Now we've come up with an answer where Planck and ACT agree," said Simone Aiola, a researcher at the Flatiron Institute's Center for Computational Astrophysics and first author of one of two papers. "It speaks to the fact that these difficult measurements are reliable.'"

Comment: Nice to know a definite estimate. And remember the Milky Way started at 1.8 billion years later