this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2026
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Greenland sharks have existed for hundreds of millions of years through their ancient lineage while Saturn’s iconic rings are believed to have formed far more recently, possibly only 10 to 100 million years ago.

That means sharks were already swimming in Earth’s oceans long before Saturn wore its most famous feature.

Article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_shark

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[–] CptOblivius@lemmy.world 17 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Sharks existed before trees. That's always been crazy to me.

[–] starik@lemmy.zip 6 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Ohh that’s a cool one. Image earth with life but no trees.

[–] Chais@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I don't understand this to mean "without plants." Sharks still need oxygen.

[–] starik@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 day ago

Plankton photosynthesizes too.

[–] pressanykeynow@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

That's how it was for 90% of life existence. Trees are recent.

[–] GladiusB@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

"PrOvE iT!"

Fuckin neckbeards man.

[–] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Flowers and grass, too.

[–] aramis87@fedia.io 54 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Sharks have existed long enough that they've circled the entire Milky Way galaxy.

Twice.

[–] leftzero@lemmy.dbzer0.com 29 points 2 days ago

They're also older than the North Star (Polaris).

[–] starik@lemmy.zip 44 points 2 days ago (2 children)

The rings are practically brand new. And in another 100 million years, they’ll be gone. We are lucky to be around to see them.

[–] saltesc@lemmy.world 25 points 2 days ago (1 children)

But the sharks will never know 😞

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[–] partofthevoice@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Imagine the infinite number of things we completely missed out on, and the infinite more that we inevitably will also miss out on.

[–] starik@lemmy.zip 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The epic stories of history and prehistory that were never recorded and we will never know make me cry. Who lived the happiest life? Who endured the most pain? What was the most deserved comeuppance? Who got away with the most devious conspiracy? People have been around for hundreds of thousands and years, and these questions have answers, but we’ll never know them.

[–] partofthevoice@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

There’s a cool relationship between event and interpretation, which seems to dissolve the idea that any of those actually have answers.

If there were no life in the universe, what then exists? Is there still a meaningful distinction between a lake and a sky, when in fact the same molecules make up both the atmosphere and the lake? Without intelligent interpretation, doesn’t the difference of things become arbitrary because scale becomes arbitrary? Everything starts and ends with equilibrium — for example from the Singularity to Heat Death. What’s in between is just a noisy decomposition process.

To me, it seems like the act of interpretation is vital for anything to be meaningful in the first place. If you play that to its end, it should also mean the interpreting agent plays a role (via its process of interpretation) in assigning meaning to the arbitrary. In effect, it takes what is arbitrary and makes it non-arbitrary. It creates the foundation of knowledge.

So you could also argue, we didn’t actually miss anything. There was nothing of meaning occurring. Any meaning to past events would have to be assigned post-hoc, to an interpretation of past.

Or you could argue, the significance of a human-event is nonexistent if it were never interpreted. I.e., interpretation would have given it significance, though would have probably been phenomenologically interpreted as recognizing significance.

[–] starik@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 day ago (2 children)

There were a lot of experiences that were experienced, but never recorded. If a tree falls in the woods, and 100 people witness it and die without speaking a word of it, does it make a sound? Yes!

[–] partofthevoice@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yeah, actually. Take the person who lived the most suffering. Let’s call them person X (pX).

It’s actually not fair to say nobody interpreted pX’s suffering, because pX did. However, I also notice that this isn’t solely dependent upon what the person “goes-through,” in a physical, social, or other external sense. This is true because we all suffer in different ways with varying degrees of tolerance or perception of the things which might cause us to suffer. For example, how would you compare the worst physical versus mental ways to suffer, loss of limb or loss of loved? It’s tough.

So, what I imagine you have to end up with is, what matters is how events are internalized. That’s where you gauge suffering. Yet also true then, what you’re left with here is the subjective interpretation of events by pX. It’s just their interpretation.

[–] starik@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yes! I want to know how bad the worst life was. Taking into account pain tolerance, perception of time, everything.

[–] partofthevoice@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Doing a little bit of thinking here…

Do you think it’s possible to suffer while believing that you’re not suffering? Perhaps, to be in agony while wholly believing that you’re in euphoria?

[–] starik@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

No, it’s subjective. It would have to be dysphoric to be suffering.

[–] partofthevoice@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Would you think it’s possible that someone could exist in permanent dysphoric state, born and until death with truly having experienced no state beyond that? Or would you perhaps think there must be contrast with nondysphoric states for the effect to truly be meaningful?

[–] partofthevoice@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Those 100 people did interpret the tree falling, though.

Better might be: if a tree falls in the forest and only a protein was present (yes, a protein), did it make a sound? No — because sound doesn’t exist. Air ripples propagate and are interpreted as sound by ears, and there were no ears present to do the interpretation.

Similar if there was a human present. Did the tree make a sound? No — because the didn’t do anything different based on whether the human was present or not. The tree didn’t all of a sudden make anything. New information was interpreted, dare I say even curated, by the interpretation itself.

[–] pressanykeynow@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Still sad I missed that big bang thingy everyone's talking about.

Eh, the characters were one dimensional and the jokes got repetitive. I've seen better shows.

[–] wolframhydroxide@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I commented this when the last poster made this claim a month back: Sharks are older than most of the current, eaily-visible rings of Saturn. The E-ring is primary composed of material ejected from Enceladus, and there is no indication I have found which would suggest that the hydrothermal processes which cause the jets are anything new. Additionally, just because most of Saturn's current rings were formed more-recently doesn't mean there weren't rings back then. The gas giants have hundreds of moons, and they certainly used to have more. I think it is an undeniable, generally - accepted fact that the gas giants have all had significant rings at some point in the past (and they all, in fact, do have rings, just not all as spectacular as Saturn's current ones.

...which makes me wonder what the odds are of earth getting a ring once Kessler kicks off. But I suppose most of that junk is just going to burn up in the atmosphere and/or crash on somebody's house.

[–] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 day ago

The rings will outlast the sharks. Don't worry Saturn, humans are on the job!

[–] whimsy@lemmy.zip 6 points 1 day ago

Damn, crazy that they're still alive

[–] nbsp@programming.dev 23 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Genetic data indicate that Greenland sharks diverged from ancestral sleeper sharks in the Canadian Arctic approximately 1–2.34 million years ago

you are off by a bit?!?

early sharks existed back then, not greenland sharks.

i only know this bc the very fun zoo of us podcast did an ep on sharks last week https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/333-great-white-shark/id1463896106?i=1000763230492

[–] iopq@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Only because Greenland didn't exist back then

[–] village604@adultswim.fan 3 points 2 days ago

Greenland separated about 130m years ago.

[–] SpaceFacts@lemmy.world 21 points 2 days ago (4 children)
[–] aeronmelon@lemmy.world 11 points 2 days ago (1 children)

“An-cient shark! Do do dodo dodo…”

[–] Noodle07@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

Greenland shark do do dodo

[–] Drusas@fedia.io 12 points 2 days ago (1 children)

So round. Perfect for hugs.

[–] Sxan@piefed.zip 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I admire your huggy can-do attitude.

[–] starik@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 day ago

I’d not fren, why fren shaped?

~Blåhaj~ ~jus~ ~happy~ ~to~ ~find~ ~fren~ ~:>~

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[–] ivanafterall@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I read just yesterday in another comment here that the Appalachian Mountains are older than sharks.

[–] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Sharks showed up in the fossil record at about the same time the Appalachian mountains stopped their mountain building activity, 450 mya.

[–] aeronmelon@lemmy.world 10 points 2 days ago

“Saturn used to be a smaller Jupiter.”

“Okay, grandpa, let’s get you to bed.”

[–] altphoto@lemmy.today 5 points 2 days ago

And they all had something stuck to their eyeball.

[–] phase@lemmy.8th.world 3 points 1 day ago

The Greenland Shark genome has roughly 6.5 billion base pairs, which is the largest genome of any shark sequenced.

From Wikipedia's page.

[–] Godric@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

I love it when complex life finds a niche that just keeps on working. Crabs, Crocs, and Sharks keep catching Ws

[–] whyNotSquirrel@sh.itjust.works 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

What's this stick in his eye? Can you remove it please, I don't like it

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

also "sharks" in the early part of the evolution are more closely related to chimaeras than to elasmobranchis(which are true sharks, rays, skates)

[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)
[–] village604@adultswim.fan 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Thanks for reminding me about the chimera I made in the mythical beast photoshop assignment for my desktop publishing class 20 years ago. Our teacher was annoyed because he liked mine better than the chimera he made (he was a great teacher).

I think I still have my Photoshop 2.0 disc around somewhere.

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