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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday March 04 2020, @08:34AM   Printer-friendly
from the waterworld dept.

3 Billion Years Ago, the World Might Have Been a Waterworld, With No Continents At All

Evidence from an ancient section of the Earth's crust suggest that Earth was once a water-world, some three billion years ago. If true, it'll mean scientists need to reconsider some thinking around exoplanets and habitability. They'll also need to reconsider their understanding of how life began on our planet.

[...] The work is focused on an area in the Australian Outback called the Panorama district. In that region in northwestern Australia there's a slab of ocean floor 3.2 billion years old, that's been turned on its side. The chunk of crust holds chemical clues about ancient Earth's seawater.

[...] Marine sediments have been well-studied over time, but the authors of this study looked at the ancient crust instead. The ancient oceans held different types of oxygen that were then deposited into the crust. The scientists gathered over 100 samples of the ancient rock and analyzed it for two oxygen isotopes: oxygen-16 and oxygen 18. They wanted to find the relative amount of each isotope in the ancient crust, to compare it to the amounts in the sediment.

Their results showed more oxygen-18 in the crust when it was formed 3.2 billion years ago, meaning the ocean at that time had more oxygen-18. The pair of researchers say that means that when that crust formed, there were no continents. This is because when continents form, they contain clays, and those clays would have absorbed the heavier oxygen-18. So if there had been continents 3.2 billion years ago, their crust samples would have held less oxygen-18. The over-arching conclusion of their work is that the Earth's oceans went through two distinct states: one prior to continents forming, and one after continents formed.

Also at University of Colorado Boulder and Popular Mechanics.

Limited Archaean continental emergence reflected in an early Archaean 18O-enriched ocean (DOI: 10.1038/s41561-020-0538-9) (DX)


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  • (Score: 2) by Mojibake Tengu on Wednesday March 04 2020, @11:53AM (4 children)

    by Mojibake Tengu (8598) on Wednesday March 04 2020, @11:53AM (#966429) Journal

    ...from $8.99

    No, thanks.

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  • (Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday March 04 2020, @02:19PM (3 children)

    by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 04 2020, @02:19PM (#966463) Journal

    DOI: 10.1038/s41561-020-0538-9

    Hint hint. Wink wink. Nudge nudge.

    sci hub.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Mojibake Tengu on Wednesday March 04 2020, @09:01PM (2 children)

      by Mojibake Tengu (8598) on Wednesday March 04 2020, @09:01PM (#966688) Journal

      I know. However, scihub is illegal in most western countries and a mere public pointing to it can put you into jail in those which enforce copyright hard by police.
      A minimum risk in my country is a confiscation of computers and equipment, as a proof of crime or offense, which itself is disturbing enough even if a sentence later ends with a pardon.
      All what's necessary to get caught is accumulating enough damage to make it a crime, such as reading illegally too many copyrighted articles. That's liberal Europe, you see...

      --
      Respect Authorities. Know your social status. Woke responsibly.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 04 2020, @11:57PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 04 2020, @11:57PM (#966755)

        Do what you need to do, friend. I'll think about you once a decade or so while you're in jail...ehhh...no I won't.

      • (Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 05 2020, @07:23AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 05 2020, @07:23AM (#966883)

        You'll be begging to pay $8.99.