3 ms·

Would this be the oldest thing on earth?

• Retric 3y ago
  Seems unlikely. I don’t have an estimate on hand but a significant percentage of the ~50 tons of material impacting earths atmosphere each day survives the trip relatively unharmed. It’s a surface are to volume ratio thing where small objects can avoid melting. As such there’s presumably a lot of ancient material embedded in the Antarctic ice sheet etc. That said these samples are uncontaminated which greatly increases their scientific value.
• marze 3y ago
  No, but very close.
• Keirmot 3y ago
  Wouldn't everything heavier than Iron be older? IIRC, gold for example is generated when stars go supernova, which implies all gold on Earth existed before the solar system formed.
  • kzrdude 3y ago
    Gold is a lot heavier than iron, so maybe the following does not apply to that but: We can't interpret such cutoffs as being strict. I would say, reaction speed depends on the gap between energy available and energy required but there's a lot of environments where the reaction can still happen at a fractional rate even if the mean energy level is below the minimum required. Iron is at the peak but in environments where it could be formed, slightly heavier elements could also be formed at a slow rate.