A beautiful piece of blue zircon crystal dating back about 4.4 billion years is evidence of the oldest piece of Earth’s crust .
Zircon crystals formed only 160 million years after the Solar System. (Photo: John Valley).
Ancient crystals were found on the edge of Western Australia at a remote rock formation known as Jack Hills . In a 2014 study in the journal Nature Geoscience, scientists dated the specimen to 4.39 billion years , making it the oldest solid object ever found on Earth, according to IFL Science .
Before the study, scientists knew zircon was among the most ancient geological materials on the planet, forming as minerals inside magma as they cool. Zircon is very hard and can last for billions of years, even when subjected to intense heat or pressure. As a result, they become the perfect time capsule to capture Earth’s early history. Zircon crystals are extremely small, almost invisible to the naked eye .
Born just 160 million years after the formation of the Solar System , the specimen was created just a few decades since the early Earth crashed into a Mars-sized object, creating the Moon and turning the planet into a rocky sphere. molten red. Since the zircon crystal is about 4.4 billion years old, the Earth must have cooled and formed a crust by then. In this timeframe, prehistoric zircon specimens are evidence that Earth developed a liquid water environment about 4.3 billion years ago, and life may have emerged not long after.
The results of the study help scientists understand how the Earth cools and becomes habitable. They can also learn how other habitable planets form. The discovery strengthens the theory that “Earth was cold early” and that temperatures low enough to sustain oceans and life could have formed earlier than previously thought, according to Professor John Valley, the Chemistry Geology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.