Greenland rocks have traces of ancient magma ocean, scientists discover
Researchers at the University of Cambridge may have found the reason why Vikings left Greenland, walruses.
Very little is known about what the Earth looked like during the Hadean Eon, which is characterized by the planet’s initial formation, the stabilization of its core and crust, and formation of its early atmosphere.
“It was a combination of some new chemical analyses we did and the previously published data that flagged to us that the Isua rocks might contain traces of ancient material. The hafnium and neodymium isotopes were really tantalizing, because those isotope systems are very hard to modify – so we had to look at their chemistry in more detail,” the study’s co-author and Carleton University associate professor Dr. Hanika Rizo explained.
The iron isotopes confirmed to the team that the Isua rocks had been made up of parts of the Earth’s interior that formed 4.5 billion years ago as a consequence of magma ocean crystallization.
They reported that crystal residues had melted and mixed with other molten rock upon moving to the Earth’s upper mantle, carrying the isotopes along with rock from both the lower and upper mantle.
Since then, tectonic shifts have “recycled” almost all rocks older than four billion years.
“Finding the geological evidence for the Earth’s former molten state is extremely difficult. This is because magma ocean crystallisation events would have taken place over 4 billion years ago, and much of the geological record from that period of Earth’s history has been lost since then,” lead author Helen Williams, a professor of geochemistry at Cambridge, told Fox News on Saturday.
Additionally, because much of the deep Earth is inaccessible, Williams and the team had to rely on nature to assist their research, though she noted that the chemistry of volcanic rocks was vital to their conclusions.
“Our results provide tantalizing evidence for the presence of deep magma ocean crystals formed from a time when the Earth was almost entirely molten,” she said.
“Although the results of our research are very exciting, they also pose further questions. What processes were responsible for the melting events that produced the Isua volcanic rocks? Were all ancient volcanic rocks derived from regions of the Earth’s mantle containing residual crystals formed during the cooling of a magma ocean? Is any of this material still present in the interior of the modern Earth and if so, can it explain the unique chemistry of magmas erupted in ‘hot spots’ like Hawaii and Iceland?”
“Clearly, much more remains to be discovered,” she said.
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Category: Science
Source: Fox