A billion years have vanished from the geological record – and over 152 years after this was first discovered, scientists can’t agree on why.
Source: New Scientist When Earth was young, its surface was probably covered in a magma ocean, and the gases rising from that seething sea may have provided it with an atmosphere nearly identical to the toxic one present on Venus today. Earth’s early magma ocean was probably created by a collision with a Mars-sized object
The trigger for “Snowball Earth” global ice ages may have been drops in incoming sunlight that happened quickly, in geological terms, according to an MIT study.
The last time we were in this position in the Milky Way, dinosaurs were just beginning to roam the Earth.
The Earth has been through a lot of changes in its 4.5 billion year history, including a shift to start incorporating and retaining volatile compounds from the atmosphere in the mantle before spewing them out again through volcanic eruptions.
Ancient air trapped in rock salt for 813 million years is changing the timeline of atmospheric changes and life on Earth.
