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Oldest piece of Earth's crust found
Topic Started: Feb 24 2014, 11:51 PM (201 Views)
CJ
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A very minor case of serious brain damage

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-26324968

A tiny 4.4-billion-year-old crystal has been confirmed as the oldest fragment of Earth's crust.

The zircon was found in sandstone in the Jack Hills region of Western Australia.

Scientists dated the crystal by studying its uranium and lead atoms. The former decays into the latter very slowly over time and can be used like a clock.

Its implication is that Earth had formed a solid crust much sooner after its formation 4.6 billion years ago than was previously thought, and very quickly following the great collision with a Mars-sized body that is thought to have produced the Moon just a few tens of millions of years after that. Before this time, Earth would have been a seething ball of molten magma.

But knowledge that its surface hardened so early raises the tantalising prospect that our world became ready to host life very early in its history.



Wow, it's pretty amazing that something like that can survive for so long. I wonder whether any life did exist at that point?
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Zero Revolution
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King Zero

Well I guess history is going to have to change now. :P That's really cool actually. 4.4 billion years is hard to imagine though...
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CJ
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A very minor case of serious brain damage

Well, the estimated age of the Earth is 4.54 billion years - which would give the Earth only 140 million years to cool down after forming. And the asteroid that struck to form the Moon won't have helped there :P .
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