How Scientists Found The Oldest Rock On Earth
Scientists recently found the oldest thing on
Earth, a zircon crystal, and it dates back to 4.4 billion years ago!
Carbon dating is a helpful tool in order to date old things, but it's limited.
Trace is joined by
Elise Andrew from
I F***king
Love Science to talk about how exactly scientists were able to find the oldest thing on earth.
Read More:
Oldest
Rock Speck Zeros In On Earth's Cooling
Date
http://news.discovery.com/earth/rocks-fossils/oldest-rock-speck-zeros-in-on-earths-cooling-date-140223
.htm
"The oldest remaining grain of early Earth's original solid rock crust has now been confirmed to be a 4.374-billion-year-old zircon crystal from
Jack Hills,
Australia."
Uranium-Lead Dating
http://geology.about.com/od/geotime_dating/a/uraniumlead.htm
"Of all the isotopic dating methods in use today, the uranium-lead method is the oldest and, when done carefully, the most reliable. Unlike any other method, uranium-lead has a natural cross-check built into it that shows when nature has tampered with the evidence."
Gem
Found On
Australian Sheep Ranch Is The Oldest Known
Piece Of Earth, Scientists
Find
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/gem-found-on-australian-sheep-ranch-is-the-oldest-known-piece-of-earth-scientists-find-20140224-hvdkd
.html
"Scientists using two different age-determining techniques have shown that a tiny zircon crystal found on a sheep ranch in
Western Australia is the oldest known piece of our planet, dating to 4.4 billion years ago."
Confirmed: Oldest Fragment of
Early Earth is 4.4
Billion Years Old
http://www.livescience.com/43584-earth-oldest-rock-jack-hills-zircon.html
"
Ever heard this life advice? When solving a big problem seems impossible, break it into smaller steps."
Where Are the Oldest
Rocks on Earth Found?
http://www.livescience.com/32763-where-are-the-oldest-rocks-on-earth-found.html
"You don't need to go to a museum to find really, really old things.
Ordinary rocks, for example, may be millions or billions of years old, and are free for the taking."
Zircon Chronology: Dating the Oldest
Material on Earth
http://www.amnh.org/education/resources/rfl/web/essaybooks/earth/cs_zircon_chronolgy.html
"What are the oldest rocks on Earth, and how did they form?
The material that holds the greatest insight into these fundamental questions, because it can contain a record of some of the earliest history of the Earth, is a mineral named zircon."
Atom Probe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom_probe
"The atom probe is a microscope used in material science that was invented in
1967 by
Erwin Wilhelm Muller,
J. A. Panitz, and
S. Brooks McLane."
Oldest Bit Of
Crust Firms Up
Idea Of A
Cool Early Earth
http://www.news.wisc.edu/22568
"A timeline of the history of our planet places the formation of the Jack Hills zircon and a 'cool early Earth' at 4.4 billion years."
Hadean Age For A Post-Magma-Ocean Zircon Confirmed By
Atom-Probe Tomography
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo2075.html
"The only physical evidence from the earliest phases of Earth's evolution comes from zircons, ancient mineral grains that can be dated using the U-Th-Pb geochronometer."
Neodymium-142
Evidence For Hadean Mafic Crust
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/321/5897/1828
"Neodymium-142 data for rocks
from the Nuvvuagittuq greenstone belt in northern
Quebec, Canada, show that some rock types have lower 142Nd/144Nd ratios than the terrestrrial standard."
Oldest Known
Rock on Earth Discovered
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ
.jsp?org=
NSF&cntn;_id=112299&preview;=false
"
Canadian bedrock more than 4 billion years old may be the oldest known section of the Earth's early crust."
Follow Elise on Twitter: https://twitter.com/elise_andrew
Watch Elise on I F***
ING LOVE SCIENCE: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvOTgnW7oj9ZWDd2y5TEApw
Watch More:
How
Carbon Dating Works
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54e5Bz7m3do
TestTube
Wild Card
http://testtube.com/iflscience/new-dinosaur
How Did
Life Begin?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofFhHcvasHA
Photo ©
John Valley/
University of Wisconsin
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