Rock weathering and plate tectonics are vital to life. They both regulate the planet's surface temperature and provide bio-essential nutrients. But how and when these critical processes began on Earth is still a mystery. ...
We need two ingredients for life to start on a planet: dry land and (fresh) water. Strictly, the water doesn't have to be fresh, but fresh water can only occur on dry land.
New Curtin-led research has found evidence that fresh water on Earth, which is essential for life, appeared about 4 billion years ago—5 hundred million years earlier than previously thought.
Scientists led by Michael Ackerson, a research geologist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, provide new evidence that modern plate tectonics, a defining feature of Earth and its unique ability to support ...
Microscopic minerals excavated from an ancient outcrop of Jack Hills, in Western Australia, have been the subject of intense geological study, as they seem to bear traces of the Earth's magnetic field reaching as far back ...
Many accounts at present support the presence of liquid water on Mars, where hydrated minerals testify to past processes of aqueous weathering in Martian meteorites such as NWA 7533/7034. Planetary scientists aim to estimate ...
A combined team of researchers from the University of Cambridge and the University of California has found evidence that casts doubt on the use of zircon crystals as evidence of early development of the Earth's magnetic field. ...
Scientists at The Australian National University (ANU) say the early Earth was likely to be barren, flat and almost entirely under water with a few small islands, following their analysis of tiny mineral grains as old as ...
Since 2010, the best estimate of the age of Earth's magnetic field has been 3.45 billion years. But now a researcher responsible for that finding has new data showing the magnetic field is far older.
With the help of a tiny fragment of zircon extracted from a remote rock outcrop in Australia, the picture of how our planet became habitable to life about 4.4 billion years ago is coming into sharper focus.
