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See my edit https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7299294 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7299294 It has been found a long time ago on Jack Hills. But you
by yeukhon 13y ago
See my edit https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7299294 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7299294
It has been found a long time ago on Jack Hills. But you are right, somehow, someone, a long time ago, walked on Jack Hills and found a crystal pretty old and started calling for interest.
- it_learnses 13y agoIt seems like it's a pretty small crystal (largest dimension is about the width of 4 human hairs - if I understand correctly). I'm curious as to how they actually found it...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- Groxx 13y agoIt would probably have been found by someone looking for the ages of rocks. In which case: probably sifted out of buckets of earth, looking for signs of extreme age. Seems like it's from a known-interesting area, which would attract that kind of crowd.
- jofer 13y agoBasically, they took chunks of what they already knew was a very old (~3.6 billion years old) rock, ground them up, separated out the zircon grains, and dated many (100's to 1000's) of individual zircon grains.