{"id":144786,"date":"2022-08-25T13:22:47","date_gmt":"2022-08-25T18:22:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/08\/scientists-have-traced-earths-path-through-the-galaxy-via-tiny-crystals-found-in-the-crust"},"modified":"2022-08-25T13:22:47","modified_gmt":"2022-08-25T18:22:47","slug":"scientists-have-traced-earths-path-through-the-galaxy-via-tiny-crystals-found-in-the-crust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/08\/scientists-have-traced-earths-path-through-the-galaxy-via-tiny-crystals-found-in-the-crust","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Have Traced Earth\u2019s Path Through the Galaxy via Tiny Crystals Found in the Crust"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/scientists-have-traced-earths-path-through-the-galaxy-via-tiny-crystals-found-in-the-crust2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><b>The Rhythm of Crust Production on Earth<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Many rocks on Earth form from molten or semi-molten magma. This magma is derived either directly from the mantle\u2014the predominantly solid but slowly flowing layer below the planet\u2019s crust\u2014or from recooking even older bits of pre-existing crust. As liquid magma cools, it eventually freezes into solid rock.<\/p>\n<p>Through this cooling process of magma crystallization, mineral grains grow and can trap elements such as uranium that decay over time and produce a sort of stopwatch, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gsoc.org\/news\/2020\/12\/07\/zircon\">recording their age<\/a>. Not only that, but crystals can also trap <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/srep38503\">other elements<\/a> that track the composition of their parental magma, like how a surname might track a person\u2019s family.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Rhythm of Crust Production on Earth Many rocks on Earth form from molten or semi-molten magma. This magma is derived either directly from the mantle\u2014the predominantly solid but slowly flowing layer below the planet\u2019s crust\u2014or from recooking even older bits of pre-existing crust. As liquid magma cools, it eventually freezes into solid rock. Through [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":556,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-144786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/556"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144786\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}