archean

Modeling the Early Earth: Idealization and its Aims II

Junjie Dong and edited by Rajani Shrestha July 24, 2024

An artist’s impression of the early Archean Earth, with minimal landmasses and a global ocean. Image credit: Alec Brenner.

This week we have the second part of Junjie Dong’s insightful blog on modeling the early Earth. Following the discussion (“Modeling the Early Earth: Idealization and its Aims I”) about the major early Earth questions and challenges in modeling early Earth, Junjie now explores the imprtance of modeling as a scientific endeavor. He presents how one could more effectively model the ...[Read More]

Modeling the Early Earth: Idealization and its Aims I

Junjie Dong and edited by Rajani Shrestha July 10, 2024

An artist’s impression of the early Archean Earth, with minimal landmasses and a global ocean. Image credit: Alec Brenner.

The question of how we came to be is closely tied with how the Earth became what it now is. What was the early Earth like? How did it evolve to become a habitable world? Given a fragmentary rock record, how can we investigate the early Earth and its evolution? Dr. Junjie Dong from Caltech writes about modeling the early Earth in a two-part blog. For the first part, he introduces the approach to e ...[Read More]

The geodynamic processes behind the generation of the earliest continents

Anna Gülcher / Lucía Pérez Díaz May 8, 2019

The earliest continents played a fundamental role on Earth’s habitability. However, their generation is still not understood, and it requires an integrated approach between petrology and geodynamic modelling. In a new study, Piccolo and co-workers developed a method to handle the effects of chemical evolution on the geodynamic processes. They show that the production of the earliest felsic c ...[Read More]

Pre-plate-tectonics on early Earth: How to make primordial continental crust

Anna Gülcher / Lucía Pérez Díaz July 5, 2017

Artistic representation of the Earth in the Archean. Credit: Richard Bizley (www.bizleyart.com).

The sequence of events before continental crust formation has long been contested. Numerical simulations performed by Rozel and colleagues imply that the key to the puzzle could lie in the intrusive magmatism. Despite several decades of research on the topic, the trigger of proto-continental crust formation on early Earth remains an enigma. However, magmatic processes may hold the key to unravelli ...[Read More]