Scientists Discover a 4-Billion-Year-Old Ancient Piece of Earth’s Crust Underneath Western Australia



Lasers make it possible to locate old crust.

Using lasers smaller than a human hair to target miniscule grains of a mineral recovered from beach sand, Curtin University researchers have found evidence of an approximately four billion-year-old section of the Earth's crust that resides beneath the South-West of Western Australia.

The zircon mineral was used, and the lasers were used to vaporize portions of individual grains in order to reveal where the grains were originally eroded from as well as the geological history of the area, according to the Timescales of Mineral Systems Group at Curtin's School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, led by Ph.D. candidate Maximilian Droellner. This new finding contributes to our understanding of how the planet changed from being inhospitable to supporting life.

According to Mr. Droellner, "There is evidence that a chunk of crust up to four billion years old, roughly the size of Ireland, has been affecting the geological evolution of WA for the past several billion years and is a crucial component of rocks created in WA over this time."

This section of crust appears to still be present at a depth of tens of kilometers under the southwest corner of Western Australia, having endured numerous mountain-building processes between Australia, India, and Antarctica. It seems many areas around the world experienced a similar timing of early crust creation and preservation when comparing our findings to available data. The waning of meteorite bombardment, the stabilization of the crust, and the beginning of life on Earth reflect a profound transition in the evolution of the Earth around four billion years ago.                                                                                                   
No previous large-scale study of this region had been conducted, according to research supervisor Dr. Milo Barham, who is also from the Timescales of Mineral Systems Group at Curtin's School of Earth and Planetary Sciences. The findings, when compared with previous data, had produced exciting new insights.

According to Dr. Barham, the edge of the old crust "appears to form an essential crustal boundary controlling where economically valuable minerals are located."

"It is crucial for the future of optimum sustainable resource exploration to recognize these old crustal relics. Given how much time has passed, studying the early Earth is difficult, but it is crucial to understanding the significance of life on Earth and our search for it elsewhere in the universe.

Reference: Maximilian Dröllner, Christopher L. Kirkland, Milo Barham, Noreen J. Evans, and Bradley J. McDonald, "A persisting Hadean-Eoarchean protocrust in the western Yilgarn Craton, Western Australia," 17 June 2022, Terra Nova.

Professor Chris Kirkland, Dr. Barham, and Mr. Droellner are associated with The Institute for Geoscience Research (TIGeR). The Minerals Research Institute of Western Australia provided funding for the study and Curtin's premier Earth Sciences research institute.

By CURTIN UNIVERSITY

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hubble Spies a Spectacular Spiral Galaxy

Image
The majestic Wide Field Camera 3 image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the spiral galaxy NGC 5495's stately, arching spiral arms. NGC 5495 is a Seyfert galaxy, a kind of galaxy with a very brilliant center region, and is around 300 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Hydra. The electromagnetic radiation released by dust and gas sucked into a supermassive black hole dominates the electromagnetic radiation in these extremely bright cores, which astronomers refer to as active galactic nuclei. A series of observations, including this one, were made by astronomers who are investigating supermassive black holes that are hiding in the centers of distant galaxies. It can be particularly difficult to study the central regions of galaxies since they are so brilliant due to a combination of star formation regions, light from existing stars, and light produced by materials falling into supermassive black holes. Astronomers were able to separate the numerous
Read more

Predicting the Behavior and Health of Individuals: Why Do Brain Models Fail?

Image
With the help of machine learning, scientists have been able to better understand how the brain creates complex human traits by identifying patterns of brain activity linked to traits like impulsivity, attributes like working memory, and diseases like depression. These techniques allow scientists to create models of these linkages, which can then be applied to forecast human behavior and health. It only functions, though, if models are inclusive, which prior research has demonstrated is not the case. There are those people that simply do not fit any model. In a study that was just published in the journal Nature, researchers from Yale University examined who these models tend to fail in, why that happens, and what can be done to correct it. The study's principal investigator, an M.D.-Ph.D. Abigail Greene, a Yale School of Medicine student, says that in order to be most useful, models must be applicable to any particular person. She explained that the model must be applicable to the
Read more

Breakthrough: Physicists Take Particle Self-Assembly to New Level by Mimicking Biology

Image
A group of physicists have developed a brand-new technique for self-assembling particles. This development offers fresh hope for creating intricate and cutting-edge materials at the tiny scale. Self-assembly, which was developed in the early 2000s, provides scientists with a way to "pre-program" particles, enabling the creation of materials without additional human involvement. This is essentially the smallest version of self-assembling Ikea furniture. The discovery, which was published today, September 28, in the journal Nature, focuses on emulsions—oil droplets dissolved in water—and how they might be used to help foldamers self-assemble. The sequence of droplet interactions can possibly be used to anticipate these particular shapes. Through interactions between blue-blue, blue-yellow, and eventually yellow-yellow droplets, which are all mediated by sticky DNA strands, a chain of alternating blue and yellow droplets folds into a crown shape in microscopy images. The image a
Read more