Geochemists from Trinity College Dublin’s School of Natural Sciences may have found a solution to a long-debated problem as to where – and how – life first formed on Earth. In a paper just published in the journal Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, the team proposes that large meteorite and comet impacts into the sea created structures…
Scientists Reveal Origin of Earth’s Oldest Crystals
New research suggests that the very oldest pieces of rock on Earth – zircon crystals – are likely to have formed in the craters left by violent asteroid impacts that peppered our nascent planet, rather than via plate tectonics as was previously believed. Rocks that formed over the course of Earth’s history allow geologists to…