Drop of ancient seawater rewrites Earth's history

EurekAlert! ^ | August 1, 2019 | University of the Witwatersrand

[SunkenCiv]

Research reveals that plate tectonics started on Earth 600 million years before what was believed earlier...

Where it was previously thought that plate tectonics started about 2.7 billion years ago, a team of international scientists used the microscopic leftovers of a drop of water that was transported into the Earth's deep mantle - through plate tectonics - to show that this process started 600 million years before that. An article on their research that proves plate tectonics started on Earth 3.3 billion years ago was published in the high impact academic journal, Nature, on 16 July...

For their research, the team analysed a piece of rock melt, called komatiite - named after the type occurrence in the Komati river near Barberton in Mpumalanga - that are the leftovers from the hottest magma ever produced in the first quarter of Earth's existence (the Archaean). While most of the komatiites were obscured by later alteration and exposure to the atmosphere, small droplets of the molten rock were preserved in a mineral called olivine. This allowed the team to study a perfectly preserved piece of ancient lava.

"We examined a piece of melt that was 10 microns (0.01mm) in diameter, and analysed its chemical indicators such as H2O content, chlorine and deuterium/hydrogen ratio, and found that Earth's recycling process started about 600 million years earlier than originally thought," says Wilson. "We found that seawater was transported deep into the mantle and then re-emerged through volcanic plumes from the core-mantle boundary."

[SunkenCiv]

A diagrammatic representation of the Earth in the Archaean showing subducted ocean floor carrying its chemical signature into the deep mantle. The signature which includes water and chlorine is preserved in melt inclusions contained within olivine and carried back up to surface within komatiite lava flows.

Credit: Figure created by research team for news release. Wits University

[SunkenCiv]

join or quit view topics view or post blog bookmark post new topic subscribe

[SunkenCiv]

http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/louisfrank/index

[Army Air Corps]

Back when Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a mere slip of a girl...

[SunkenCiv]

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The Big Splash: A Scientific Discovery That Revolutionizes the Way  We View the Origin of Life, the Water We Drink, the Death of the Dinosaurs, the Creation of the Oceans, the Nature of the Cosmos, and the Very Future of the Earth Itself by Louis A. Frank and Patrick Huyghe

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[SunkenCiv]

RBG's senior picture is on a cave wall in France. /stolen

[Red Badger]

Komati river near Barberton in Mpumalanga ............. Is that near Wakanda?😄..........

[immadashell]

The signature which includes water and chlorine is preserved in melt inclusions contained within olivine and carried back up to surface within komatiite lava flows.

Does this mean municipalities were chlorinating water supplies 3.3 billion years ago? /sarc

[SunkenCiv]

Ma-pu-ma-langa, fun to say...

[SunkenCiv]

Ma-pu-ma-langa, fun to say...

Wakanda always wanna wanna wanna...

[SunkenCiv]

Yeah, and the protestors have been out there every minute since! ;^)

[bwest]

Means No Worries...

[D_Idaho]

“...a drop of water that was transported into the Earth’s deep mantle - through plate tectonics”

Science marches on.

[momincombatboots]

Lol.. 600 million years? Man, that’s better than a comic strip.
HBiased opinions masquerading as science ping. Def not science. Next up the hymalayas will melt by 2035.. o wait.

[SunkenCiv]

Plate tectonics was a big improvement over bowl tectonics.

[SunkenCiv]

Your post is not as good as a comic strip.

[momincombatboots]

Truth usually isn’t. Just tired of bab y food science being peddled as truth. It. Isn’t. Heck, it isn’t even science.

[SunkenCiv]

[NFHale]

Isn’t ALL seawater ultimately ancient, though?

[SunkenCiv]

Your opinion isn't truth, and you clearly know nothing about science.