How did our planet avoid being frozen solid during the early days of our solar system?
early Earth
Posted inAGU News
How to Work in the Dark on Deep Time
Researchers who study the formation of Earth show how ingenuity can shed light on hidden moments of creation.
Posted inNews
Layered Zone Beneath Coral Sea Suggests Ancient Magma Ocean
Scientists studying South Pacific earthquakes suggest that an ultralow-velocity zone at the core-mantle boundary may be a remnant of a molten early Earth.
Posted inScience Updates
Rethinking the Search for the Origins of Life
Early Earth conditions and the chemistry that led to life were inextricably interwoven. Earth scientists and prebiotic chemists are working together in new ways to understand how life first emerged.
Posted inNews
A New Explanation for Organics on a Mars Rock That Fell to Earth
Organic molecules on a Martian meteorite have fueled nearly 30 years of scientific debate. New evidence suggests they were formed by Martian processes, offering more support for a once habitable environment on the Red Planet.
Posted inNews
How Much Did the Moon Heat Young Earth?
Tidal heating may have raised the surface temperature of early Earth and triggered global volcanism, a new study says.
Posted inNews
Oldest Pole Reversal Shows Early Earth Was Well Suited for Life
Australian rocks 3.25 billion years old preserved the oldest signs of Earth’s stable magnetic field and quickly moving crust, critical elements of life’s evolution.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Extinct Style of Plate Tectonics Explains Early Earth’s Flat Mountains
The geologic record suggests that despite Earth’s hot, thin crust during the Proterozoic, mountains were still able to form thanks to an extinct style of crustal deformation.
Posted inNews
Longer Days Likely Boosted Earth’s Early Oxygen
Microbial mats in a Lake Huron sinkhole, combined with modeling work, suggest that the changing length of Earth’s day could have played a key role in oxygenating the atmosphere.
Posted inScience Updates
An Unbroken Record of Climate During the Age of Dinosaurs
A scientific drilling project in China has retrieved a continuous history of conditions from Earth’s most recent “greenhouse” period that may offer insights about future climate scenarios.