Swiss and German geophysicists have explained the formation of the Earth's continental crust. The corresponding study was published in the journal Nature, briefly reported by the Swiss Higher Technical School of Zurich.
Scientists examined two popular and radically different models of the formation of the lithosphere of rocky planets. The first mechanism involves the gradual accumulation and cooling of magma (as on Venus), the second - active volcanism (as on Io, one of Jupiter's moons).
Simulations carried out by scientists have shown that neither of the two models separately explains the formation of the Earth's continental crust, which took place during the Archean times (three to four billion years ago).
“If new crust is formed entirely by volcanoes, causing magma to rapidly cool on the Earth's surface, the crust would be too cold. On the other hand, the crust in a different approach will be hotter than it should be,”said study co-author Antoine Rocel.
Modeling showed that the Earth's continental crust was formed by two factors - the accumulation and cooling of magma (as on Venus) and volcanism (as on Io), with the latter mechanism responsible for the appearance of about 30 percent of the lithosphere uncovered by water.
The model used by geophysicists is two-dimensional. In the future, scientists plan to test their findings by building a three-dimensional model of the formation of the Earth's continental crust.