Scientists from the University of Münster in Germany have established that the early Earth was a "hellish place" in which the red-hot fragments of cosmic bodies boiled.
According to Live Science, the study was conducted by a group led by geophysicist Christian Maas. It showed that the Earth, at an early stage of its formation, was probably covered by an ocean of molten magma.
This was the result of an impact - a collision with an unknown space body the size of Mars, which is believed to have formed the Moon. The power of the collision was such that it literally turned the entire surface of the Earth into an ocean of molten magma. Moreover, its depth was several thousand kilometers.
Researchers have found that our planet's rapid rotation may have helped cool this ocean. Minerals crystallized in it, and gradually the magma ocean solidified. All these processes began about 4.5 billion years ago, shortly after the formation of the Earth.
By the way, Maas and his team in the laboratory have successfully simulated the crystallization conditions for silicate, a mineral most abundant in the earth's crust.
The experiment made it possible to calculate that the crystallization and sedimentation of minerals in the magma ocean took place over a long period of time - from a thousand to a million years in different parts of the planet. This is reported by Rambler. Next: news.rambler.ru/tech/41864057/?utm_content=rnews&utm_medium=read_more&utm_source=copylink
