Tectonic plates melt and mix rocks to create magma with a specific chemical makeup. Rochester geologists are using the chemical evidence to unlock information about plate tectonic activity on Earth more than 4 billion years ago.
Nationalgeographic.co.id – Earth is a dynamic and constantly changing planet. From the formation of mountains and oceans to volcanic eruptions, the surface of our planet is constantly changing. At the heart of these changes lies in the powerful force of plate tectonics—the movement of the plates in the Earth’s crust.
These fundamental processes have shaped the topography of our planet today and will continue to play a role into the future.
But what was plate tectonic activity like in early Earth? And did that process even occur at the time when life was thought to have formed?
“The dynamic tectonic nature of the modern Earth is one of the reasons why life exists today,” said Wriju Chowdhury, member of the research team. postdoctoral in the lab of Dustin Trail, professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Rochester. “Exploring the geodynamics and lithological diversity of early Earth can reveal how life first started on our planet.”
Chowdhury is the first author of this study paper. The results of his study have been published in the journal Nature Communications under the title “Eoarchean and Hadean melts reveal arc-like trace elements and isotopic signatures” on February 28.
The paper outlines how Rochester researchers used tiny zircon crystals to unlock information about magma and plate tectonic activity on the early Earth.
The research provides chemical evidence that plate tectonics likely occurred more than 4.2 billion years ago when life is thought to have first formed on our planet. These findings could prove useful in the search for life on other planets.
Rochester researchers Wriju Chowdhury and Dustin Trail uncovered information about the ancient Earth using tiny zircon crystals, which are billions of years old and a fraction of a millimeter in size (bars of scale in micrometers, where 1 micrometer = 0.000001 meter).
Plate tectonics on modern Earth “is extremely important,” says Trail, because it is “the dominant mechanism for the creation and destruction of the Earth’s crust.”
Earth is the only planet known to have a mobile upper crust that was destroyed and created cyclically. This process transports essential elements, such as iron and magnesium, from the Earth’s interior to its surface and controls Earth’s water and carbon cycles.
More importantly to geologists, however, plate tectonics melts and mixes rocks to create magma with a specific chemical composition, depending on the rocks involved and the location where the “breakdown” occurred. Therefore, the chemical makeup of magma can indicate the tectonic forces that created it.
Chowdhury and his colleagues conducted the research using zircons—tiny crystals in rock that are like tiny time capsules.
