Scientific discoveries this week: 3/3/14
Jack Hills, Australia – A piece of zircon discovered in an outcrop on a sheep farm in Western Australia has been discovered to been discovered to be the oldest unchanging piece of earth discovered, at an age of 4.4 billion years. John Valley, the geoscience professor from the University of Wisconsin who led the research, claims that this could imply that the planet was capable of sustaining earth 4.3 billion years ago where the earliest fossils are 3.4 billion years old, implying life-sustaining temperatures earlier than previously thought.