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posted by LaminatorX on Wednesday September 17 2014, @09:09PM   Printer-friendly
from the fumaroles dept.

John Leyden at the Register provides Was Earth once covered in HELLFIRE? No – more like a wet Sunday night in Iceland
Geoboffins DEBUNK long-held scientific belief

Early Earth may have been less like the hellish realm of molten magma previously suspected but also distinct from the sort of environment found in modern-day Iceland, according to research by geologists.

The Earth had already formed oceans, continents and an active crustal plates by the time it was 500 million years old, scientists reckon. This view of the Hadean, Earth’s first geologic eon, has been refined by a fresh study comparing zircon crystals that formed during this time around four billion years ago with those formed in Iceland and zircon found in other contemporary environments. study concluded that although the early Earth was not covered in an ocean of molten magma, as thought as recently as 30 years ago, it wasn't quite like modern Iceland either, puncturing a favoured analogy among modern geologists.

It's always interesting how our views of the past are redefined by painstaking research. I wonder how the flat-earthers feel about this.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 17 2014, @09:21PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 17 2014, @09:21PM (#94689)

    the world is not round but many sided.

    • (Score: 2) by pe1rxq on Wednesday September 17 2014, @10:10PM

      by pe1rxq (844) on Wednesday September 17 2014, @10:10PM (#94700) Homepage

      No, it is not!
      It is round, just like a pancake!

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday September 17 2014, @09:35PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday September 17 2014, @09:35PM (#94691)

    First of all heres the wiki for the geologic era we're talking about

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadean [wikipedia.org]

    that page apparently could use some editing.

    One interesting point is no one really disagrees about the

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Heavy_Bombardment [wikipedia.org]

    during which time, things were smoking hot and pretty much sucked. The difference is according to

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_early_Earth [wikipedia.org]

    which is more or less this article, things were nice and cool and pleasant ish before the LHB, whereas the traditional view is things pretty much ALSO sucked before the LHB.

    To add to the circus, the logic choppers are unleashed to have a roaring fit because for no technical reason the Hadean period is defined as ending at 4 billion but the LHB has an error factor such that it just might maybe be over the border in the earliest archean period. So technically, the Hadean period might be totally cool if the LHB happened a little later than most think. Because apparently the Hadean and Archean border is a revealed religious artifact that can't be changed so it'll just have to be exactly 4Byr even if 3999Myr would be totally different or WTF.

    I'm almost embarrassed to admit I learned most of this stuff by just clicking around wikipedia after some lovecraftian inspiration, the pure heck of it blue sky inspiration asking what was it like a long time ago... That and having a geologist as a roommate like a quarter century ago.

    • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday September 17 2014, @10:41PM

      by bzipitidoo (4388) on Wednesday September 17 2014, @10:41PM (#94707) Journal

      What's wrong with using round numbers until more data and research can refine what we know? 4 billion years is such a long time ago it's amazing there's anything left to study from those times. It wasn't until 1958 that the idea of plate tectonics became generally accepted, because it was the best explanation of all kinds of puzzling data. That's only been 56 years ago, give geologists a break! Science has really been galloping forward, providing all kinds of new techniques, observations, and findings. There are mountains of data to sort through.

      We now understand very well how the continents moved back to the time of Pangaea, between 300 and 200 million years ago, and we have a pretty good idea how they moved around from Pangaea back to Rodinia, about 1 billion years ago. Our knowledge of continental drift before Rodinia is much sketchier, but we have various ideas. That's excellent progress in just half a century, when we weren't sure that plate tectonics was a good explanation. We'll be piecing this puzzle together for a long time yet, testing out ideas about the early Earth.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 17 2014, @09:40PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 17 2014, @09:40PM (#94692)

    Lies! All lies!

    (I'm not one myself, but one of my sisters married into a round-the-bend family. Listening to the mother-in-law is hilarious or horrifying, depending on viewpoint.)

  • (Score: 2) by khakipuce on Thursday September 18 2014, @12:28PM

    by khakipuce (233) on Thursday September 18 2014, @12:28PM (#94937)

    "Early Earth" - the hadean, so that's a mere 600,000,000 years. Well obviously all that time can be viewed as analogous to 1 day and was homogeneous throughout.