![\"earth's](\"https:\/\/twistedsifter.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/lazy-load-0.7\/images\/1x1.trans.gif\" "\\"New")
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Shutterstock<\/p>\n
Our planet is around 4.54 billion years old \u2013 and as you might expect, it has changed a lot in that time.<\/p>\n
After all, we humans change almost unrecognisably in a 70(ish) year life span; imagine how much you\u2019d change if you have over four billion years to do so.<\/p>\n
So it goes without saying that the continents we see on our map now are very different to those that our distant ancestors knew, and they\u2019re almost unrecognisable from those that came long, long before us.<\/p>\n
But according to a new paper<\/a>, recently published in the journal\u00a0Nature, our planet might have changed more significantly than we ever before knew.<\/p>\n NASA<\/p>\n That\u2019s as a result of new research into zircons, which are the oldest minerals here on Earth, which proves that subduction \u2013 the process by which tectonic plates shift by pushing under one another, thus forming ocean trenches, volcanoes, and causing earthquakes \u2013 has been happening on our planet\u2019s surface for much longer than we knew.<\/p>\n In fact, the chemical signatures that the researchers discovered in the zircons prove that subduction was happening over four bullion years ago \u2013 so even that long ago, our plates were busy shaping our land masses into something resembling the ones we know now.<\/p>\n Incredibly, this can be understood from zircons that are as small as a grain of sand, since their crystallisation process locks in up to 500 million years of history \u2013 and, as Professor John Valley explains in a statement<\/a>, the zircons they studied prove something quite significant:<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re tiny time capsules and they carry an enormous amount of information.\u00a0What we found in the Jack Hills is that most of our zircons don\u2019t look like they came from the mantle, they look like continental crust. They look like they formed above a subduction zone.\u201d<\/p>\n Pexels<\/p>\n By understanding that subduction was present all that time ago, the scientists were able to disprove the theory that at one time, Earth was covered by one continuous unbroken crust, known as a \u2018uniform stagnant lid\u2019.<\/p>\n And understanding this helps researchers to begin to comprehend the processes by which our planet and its complex terrains were formed, and when features like mountain ranges began to emerge.<\/p>\n Though all the questions aren\u2019t answered yet, one thing that is incredible is our planet\u2019s ability to preserve its history in mere grains \u2013 as well as humankind\u2019s growing ability to interpret and learn from that hidden data.<\/p>\n Who knew so much could be hidden in one grain?<\/p>\n If you thought that was interesting, you might like to read a story that reveals Earth\u2019s priciest precious metal isn\u2019t gold or platinum and costs over $10,000 an ounce!<\/a><\/p>\n \n\t\tCategories: NATURE\/SPACE<\/a>, SCI\/TECH<\/a>\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Tags: \u00b7 continents<\/a>, crust<\/a>, earth<\/a>, mantle<\/a>, plate tectonics<\/a>, science<\/a>, single topic<\/a>, space<\/a>, subduction<\/a>, top<\/a>, uniform stagnant lid<\/a>, zircon<\/a>\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shutterstock Our planet is around 4.54 billion years old \u2013 and as you might expect, it has changed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":542436,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[64,63,139356,41324,129,182465,190880,128,7969,285,287306,4048,287307,287308],"class_list":{"0":"post-587671","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-continents","11":"tag-crust","12":"tag-earth","13":"tag-mantle","14":"tag-plate-tectonics","15":"tag-science","16":"tag-single-topic","17":"tag-space","18":"tag-subduction","19":"tag-top","20":"tag-uniform-stagnant-lid","21":"tag-zircon"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=587671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587671\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/542436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=587671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=587671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=587671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}