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Confirmed: Earth's Oldest Rock In Australia
SpamSlapper writes "Australia's ABC Science reports that ancient zircon crystals discovered in Western Australia have been positively dated to 4.374 billion years, confirming their place as the oldest rock ever found on Earth, according to a new study. The research reported in the journal Nature Geoscience, means Earth began forming a crust far sooner than previously thought, following the giant impact event which created the Earth-Moon system 4.5 billion years ago."
Where this rock is about as old as the social and development views of our current Prime Minister..
-- If at first you don't succeed, lie!
Imma hit you so hard, you gonna get a crust.
And, I'm gonna kick your ass into ORBIT around you, SON!
Now what?
"there's this book..."
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
The area these are found are extremely high in Iron content. There are a number of high grade iron ore mines nearby. I wonder if there is any link between the high iron content and the formation of these rocks.
The old stuff is always at the bottom of a pile.
They had to kill the rock to confirm its age.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I'm sure AC/DC will be delighted with their new title of oldest rock on the planet.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
I did not know that scientists had examined and dated every rock on (and every rock within) the Earth! The most spectacular part of this task was back when they dismantled Mt Everest, pebble by pebble, examining and dating every little rock, before re-constructing the mountain from all those sorted rocks.
I agree with your general sentiment regarding fake science, however, a little bit of reading comprehension will go a long way.
oldest rock ever found on Earth
It's not like the summary says "The oldest rock on earth!".
It's what happens when you leave science reporting to journalism majors. Reading the abstract to the original Nature Geoscience article is more enlightening.
One of the reasons people get so worked up about this mineral grain is because the oxygen isotope data says it formed when earth had oceans. If it's the age they think it is, it puts the development of oceans much earlier than they previously had evidence for. That would then support the impact hypothesis.
I figure they cut the crystals open and counted the rings, all 4.374 billion of them.
Whenever you see a science headline that says something retarded, you should assume bad science journalism, rather than bad science.
It's an older rock, and they are saving it so they cab reveal it next year
Now if you had moved your finger about 3 mm to your right of the letter b the sentence would make more sense. :)
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
obviously these scientists haven't carbon dated Mick Jagger yet!
The ABC is probably more at fault, they're supposed to have a dedicated science unit so it gets that kind of thing right.
Of course, one could take the view that it's obvious that not every single rock on Earth has been dated, therefore the only people who really need the word "known" in the headline are pedants or the immensely thick.
Blank until
Don't you mean cm to the right?
Egads! Americans using the metric system is like teaching dolphins to ride a bike. It's cute to watch them try!
It is a priority queue. Vegemite comes to the top first, then old rocks after.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Fine, it's the oldest known rock, you pedant. It's still plenty interesting because the oldest known rocks up until know were only about 3.8 billion years old. There is the potential to learn a great deal about the early days of the earth from this rock. Oh, and obligatory xkcd: 1194
And you don't have all the answers either
The 'rock' in question is a microscopic zircon crystal, not an actual chunk of rock. Think of it as a very hard grain of sand, that has been weathered off the rock in which it formed, deposited somewhere as sediment, which turned into sedimentary rock, and so on, perhaps a great many times, before it settled in the rock in which it was found.
The Himalayas started uplifting some 50 million years ago, but that doesn't mean the material in it can be no more than 50 million years old. The rocks weren't melted in the process. Who knows, perhaps there is a grain of zircon embedded in a chunk of sandstone in the Himalayas that's even older. Perhaps a geologist can explain why this is or isn't possible, but it would definitely be like searching for a needle in a haystack.
The reason for searching in places like Australia, is because exceedingly ancient rock formations are exposed there, significantly reducing the size of the haystack.
Had my hand on a rock yesterday at the Franklin insitue in Philly that said it was 5.5 billion years old that was "found on Earth". (Well the rock didn't speak, thats what the sign read.) I know a meteor isnt created on Earth, but it was found there.
Assuming "North" is "Up" is just a variation on the flat-earth mentality... :-)
I was thinking the same thing, I think about 1 cm sounds closer.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people