pretty neat. if you believe in science, that is.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/200 ... earthfound

Oldest Rocks on Earth Found



Scientists have found the oldest known rocks on Earth. They are 4.28 billion years old, making them 250 million years more ancient than any previously discovered rocks.

Earth formed about 4.6 billion years ago from a disk of gas and dust circling the sun. Remnants of crust from Earth's infancy are hard to come by because most of that material has been recycled into Earth's interior several times by the plate tectonics that continue to shape our planet's surface.

In 2001, geologists found an expanse of bedrock, known as the Nuvvuagittuq greenstone belt, exposed on the eastern shore of Hudson Bay in northern Quebec.

Suspecting that the rocks there could be from one of the earliest periods of Earth's history, geologists took samples to try and determine their age. They measured tiny variations in the isotopes (or species of an element that have different numbers of neutrons) of the rare earth elements neodymium and samarium in the rocks and determined that the samples were from 3.8 to 4.28 billion years old.

The oldest dates, which came from rocks that geologists call "faux amphibolite," are thought to be ancient volcanic deposits. They beat the previously oldest known rocks, which are 4.03 billion years old and come from a formation called the Acasta Gneiss in Canada's Northwest Territories.

The only dates of crustal material older than the newly-dated Nuvvuagittuq greenstone belt are from isolated mineral grains called zircons that are highly resistant to weathering and geologic processes. The oldest zircons, from grains in Western Australia, are about 4.36 billion years old.

The Nuvvuagittuq rocks are "the oldest whole rocks found so far" though, said geologist Richard Carlson of the Carnegie Institution, who analyzed the rocks with Jonathan O'Neil, a Ph.D. student at McGill University in Montreal. The team's findings are detailed in the Sept. 25 issue of the journal Science. Their work was supported by the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Carnegie Institution of Washington.

Examining such ancient rocks "gives us an unprecedented glimpse of the processes that formed the early crust," Carlson said.

Sciencedamnit ceebs.

I believe in science and I find rocks to be pretty damned boring.

I love this type of stuff. Considering the transformation that the Earth has made over the past 5.5 billion years, including being completely covered by molten lava and then completely submerged by liquid methane and then water, it's amazing that things from these eras survive. The stromatolites in Shark Bay are other good examples.

Wasn't this a Hardee Boys mystery?

I'd be really interested to hear the theory on how these rocks have never been subducted.

Maybe.

God they were dreamy.

They're saving themselves for rock-marriage?

Take that, retards who believe Earth is only 6,000 years old.

Looks like the side of my aunts fireplace...hey are not all the 'rocks' on this planet the same age? did some get here later than the others? i know there were comets n stuff but i thought mostly it was a rock party&everyone got together in a cosmic vibe...no? there were gases? who asked them around? airheads

uh, you know these rocks were placed there by satan, right?

goddamn canada has some old ass geology.

we should make a geology thread.

i thought this was gonna be about John McCain!!!???!@!#%!!!!!!!

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!!T@^!!!!!!!ZOUNDS!!^^$@!!!!!

I'm sure there are older rocks than those even. Keep digging Ceebs.

Wtf. Humankind has only been around for a few thousand years. This planet is at least 4,280,000,000 years old?

Science

I'm getting a RAGING clue.

i don't think it makes a difference to them anymore. there's already almost infinite evidence contradicting them and they refuse to budge.

they're just set on their ways. "don't bother, it's turtles all the way down"