{"id":92957,"date":"2025-10-23T09:46:19","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T09:46:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/92957\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T09:46:19","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T09:46:19","slug":"theres-an-ancient-version-of-planet-earth-hidden-all-around-us-heres-how-scientists-found-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/92957\/","title":{"rendered":"There’s an ancient version of planet Earth hidden all around us. Here’s how scientists found it"},"content":{"rendered":"

A team of geologists and Earth scientists have discovered what they believe to be traces of planet Earth, as it was when it first formed, lingering in ancient rocks.<\/p>\n

There are various competing theories regarding the formation of Earth and the Moon.<\/p>\n

\"TheCredit: Holger Leue \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

But the general consensus is that around 4.4 billion years ago, when our planet was no more than 100 million years old, it was struck by a large asteroid or other similarly large spacerock.<\/p>\n

Debris from that impact then went into orbit around Earth, gradually coalescing into the familiar satellite \u2013 our Moon<\/a> \u2013 that we see when we look up after dark.<\/p>\n

\"Earth\u2019sEarth\u2019s Moon is thought to have formed when a Mars-like object called Theia smashed into Earth, flinging material into space that became the Moon. Credit: NASA<\/p>\n

Assuming such an impact took place, it would have engendered huge temperatures and pressures that, in turn, would have caused chemical reactions to occur in the very building blocks of our planet.<\/p>\n

Earth\u2019s geochemistry would have been forever altered by the impact.<\/p>\n

Most scientists have traditionally assumed that any evidence of what Earth\u2019s crust and mantle looked like (chemically) before the impact would have long since eroded away.<\/p>\n

\"AreCredit: Maciej Frolow \/ Getty Images
\nDiscovering our ancient planet <\/p>\n

Now, however, it seems that some traces of the ancient Earth may still linger on present-day Earth after all.<\/p>\n

The research team \u2013 including geophysicists, geologists, geochemists, oceanographers and planetary scientists \u2013 published their findings<\/a> in the journal Nature Geoscience on 14 October 2025.<\/p>\n

Their technique mostly involved looking at the isotopes of potassium found within rocks from a wide variety of sources, including various known outcrops of very ancient rock as well as samples from meteorites.<\/p>\n

Potassium occurs naturally in three different istopes: potassium-39, potassium-40 and potassium-41.<\/p>\n

All three molecules have the same number of protons in their nucleus, but a different number of neutrons.<\/p>\n

Rocks on Earth generally have high levels of potassium-39 and potassium-41, but only small traces of potassium-40.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe researchers gathered rocks from across the world, including from R\u00e9union Island. Credit: Kelly Cheng \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

During the study, the researchers gathered samples from several regions around the world that are known to contain very ancient rock.<\/p>\n

These included the Isua Greenstone Belt in Greenland, the Kaapvaal Craton in Western Australia, the Nuvvuagittuq Greenstone Belt in Quebec, Canada, the Kama\u02bbehuakanaloa volcano in Hawaii and R\u00e9union Island in the Indian Ocean.<\/p>\n

They ground the samples to a fine powder, which they then dissolved in acid to isolate the potassium.<\/p>\n

The team were then able to determine the balance between the three potassium isotopes within the rock, using an ultra-sensitive mass spectrometer.<\/p>\n

What they found was that these ancient rocks contained even less potassium-40 than the rest of Earth\u2019s rock does: the rocks displayed a ‘potassium imbalance’.<\/p>\n

\"MeteoritesMeteorites are primordial remnants from the formation of the Solar System. Photo by GUILLAUME SOUVANT\/AFP via Getty Images
\nEarth rocks versus spacerocks<\/p>\n

The team then turned their attention to samples from meteorites, which have their own levels of the three different potassium isotopes.<\/p>\n

They used computer modelling to see what would happen if similarly-constituted space rocks were to interact with the ancient rocks described above, under the kinds of pressure and temperature conditions you\u2019d expect to see during a giant impact.<\/p>\n

The resulting fusions predicted by the computer models looked remarkably similar to the rocks we most commonly see on Earth today.<\/p>\n

That led the team to conclude that, while a giant impact likely caused most of the material in Earth\u2019s mantle to transform both physically and chemically, the ‘imbalanced’ types of rock found in those ancient outcrops \u2013 that is, those with less potassium-40 \u2013 are relics of an earlier, pre-impact Earth.<\/p>\n

“This is maybe the first direct evidence that we\u2019ve preserved the proto-Earth materials,” said Nicole Nie, an assistant professor of earth and planetary sciences at MIT who co-led the research.<\/p>\n

“We see a piece of the very ancient Earth, even before the giant impact. This is amazing because we would expect this very early signature to be slowly erased through Earth\u2019s evolution.”<\/p>\n

\"ScientistsScientists can learn a lot by studying meteorites that fall to Earth. Credit: Enrico Cantore \/ Getty Images
\nMore mysteries to solve<\/p>\n

What the computer models failed to produce, however, was an exact match for Earth rocks today.<\/p>\n

They fed the models data on all of the different potassium balances found in the meteorite samples (each of which is unique, the meteors having formed in different regions of the Solar System at different times) but in no case did a simulated impact produce quite what we see in the real world.<\/p>\n

In other words, while the team may now have discovered proof of what Earth looked like before something enormous smashed into it, we still don\u2019t know quite what that something was made of.<\/p>\n

“Scientists have been trying to understand Earth\u2019s original chemical composition by combining the compositions of different groups of meteorites,” Nie said.<\/p>\n

“But our study shows that the current meteorite inventory is not complete, and there is much more to learn about where our planet came from.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A team of geologists and Earth scientists have discovered what they believe to be traces of planet Earth,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":92958,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[85,46,141,145],"class_list":{"0":"post-92957","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-space"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}