Life on Earth older than thought?

[Aramike]

Entropy and thermodynamics are paradigms, or better: theories or theoretical constructions. They make sense in that they match a lot of observation data, and are capable to bring new observations into an order that matches their claim. Nevertheless they are just theories. Like anything else in sciences is just subjective observation, and theory.

Actually, entropy with regards to thermodynamics is not a theory - its a physical law of nature. For it to be untrue, nature itself would have to change, whereas there would then be a new truth. This is often known as a "vacuum".

A responsible scientist does not claim to know the ultimate truth, but he will always say: "our current model explains it like this, and this makes sense according to what we know so far, because..." Only religious zealots and narcisstic missionaries - or stupid scientists - claim to have ultimate explanations that will not see any further alteration in the future.

You couldn't be more wrong. A responsible scientist claims to know the truth when he does indeed know the truth. Scientific truths are what enables technology to expand. For instance, it is a scientific truth that splitting the atom releases immense energy. It is a scientific truth that the earth is round.

There is a clear difference between a "theory" and a "law". A theory is predictive, whereas a law is an expression that is always true under the same conditions.