Zany Zircons

1/11/13

Heather emailed me informing me that we will start meeting next week. Though I did not get to work with sulfur diffusion this week, Ms. Mroczka emailed me an article about zircons, the minerals Dr. Bruce Watson is working on. It turns out that zircons are the oldest rock discovered by scientists on Earth at an impressive 4.4 billion years old. The really interesting thing about zircons is how much they can tell us about the world 4.4 billion years ago. As rocks grow, they form bands, picking up surrounding minerals or any other substances in their path. Therefore, from the zircons, we can figure out what minerals were present on very very early Earth. From this information, Dr. Watson found that titanium had been present at this time and based on the quantity of titanium, Dr. Watson could estimate the temperature of Earth during the time the zircons formed. The important information that Dr. Watson derived from this information was that rock that crystallize at the temperatures he calculated need water. This means that according to Dr. Watson's zircons, water was present on Earth 4.4 billion years ago!

Dr. Watson has a few quotes in the article Ms. Mroczka emailed me, which can be found here: http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2013/01/10/169047159/the-oldest-rock-in-the-world-tells-us-a-story