Artistic representation of the Earth in the Archean. Stromatolites, the first signs of life, are present in the shallow water. (Graphic: Tim Bertelink, CC BY-SA 4.0,
For the first time, ETH scientists have successfully recreated the formation of continental crust in the Archean using a computer simulation. The model helps us to better understand processes that took place three to four billion years ago. The present-day formation of continental crust can be investigated in the framework of plate tectonics; however, it is unclear how continental crust could have formed in the Archean, a period three to four billion years ago, when there was no plate tectonics. In the journal Nature, geophysicists led by Antoine Rozel, a senior assistant at the Institute of Geophysics at ETH Zurich, have now presented a computer model that is likely to add fuel to the scientific debate. With their model, they were able to recreate the origination of earlier continental crust for the first time, something which until now had proven particularly challenging. Venus or Io?. For their computer model, the researchers took inspiration from two opposing explanatory approaches.
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