Sentences with phrase «formations billions of years old»

The biggest known deposits — in South Africa and Australia — are geological formations billions of years old.

Not exact matches

Rock formations have also been dated to be billions of years old in other parts of the world as well, of course, using those same radiometric dating methods.

It may seem like a trivial distinction for something billions of years old, but it could make a difference when pinning down the conditions that led to the solar system's formation, says Bouvier, and those needed for other life - friendly planetary systems to form.

The researchers studied exceptionally well - preserved deposits which are approximately 3.5 billion years old in the ancient Dresser Formation in the Pilbara Craton of Western Australia.

Using data from the Hubble Space Telescope, researchers estimated the rates of past star and planet formation in the universe, which is now about 13.8 billion years old.

A Cologne working group involving Prof. Carsten Münker and Dr. Elis Hoffmann and their student Sebastian Viehmann (working with Prof. Michael Bau from the Jacobs University Bremen) have managed for the first time to determine the isotope composition of the rare trace elements Hafnium and Neodymium in 2.7 - billion - year - old seawater by using high purity chemical sediments from Temagami Banded Iron Formation (Canada) as an archive.

They were found in 3.5 - billion - year - old rocks in an extinct volcano in the Dresser Formation in the hot, dry, remote Pilbara region of Western Australia.

«We detected borates in a crater on Mars that's 3.8 billion years old, younger than the likely formation of life on Earth,» said Gasda.

The 3.7 - billion - year - old structures may help scientists retrace the rise of the first organisms relatively soon after Earth's formation around 4.5 billion years ago (SN: 2/8/14, p. 16), the discoverers report online August 31 in Nature.

Early in the formation of our solar system (before 3.9 billion years ago) there was lots of large debris striking the surfaces of the young planets and moons; these older impact basins are larger than the more recent craters.

The oldest fragment of Earth's primeval crust is a zircon dated to be 4.4 billion years old, having formed less than 160 million years after planetary formation (more).

The argument for the healing properties of gemstone and crystal energy, which the book points out are billions of years old, comes from internal vibrations imbued during their formation.