Some volcanic rocks found in Russia survived the collision of our planet with another celestial body that originated the Moon about 4,000 million years ago. The material has been preserved intact and has allowed a group of scientists to analyze it and publish the results in the journal Science .
Until now it was thought that, after the impact, the materials that made up our young planet mixed and fused completely. As a consequence, the Earth's mantle would have become homogenized, making it very difficult for the remains of this first stage in Earth's life to surface and be analyzed.
However, a team of scientists from the University of Maryland has just found some volcanic rocks in Russia that could have formed at that time. Analysis of these materials has revealed that the isotopic composition of tungsten, an element present in them, is different from that found in modern rocks. " We believe we have detected the isotopic signal of one of the first fragments of the Earth, which must have formed when our planet had half the current mass", explains M. Toubul, one of the people in charge of the research. "Most surprisingly, this portion of the Earth had such unusual chemical characteristics that it survived the cataclysm our moon created and remained intact in the Earth's mantle until they surfaced, allowing us to study them today."
