(February 24, 2014 at 11:43 am)Stimbo Wrote: A piece of zircon found on a sheep ranch in western Australia has been dated as some 4.4 billion years old - almost as old as the 4.5 billion-year-old planet itself.
The tiny crystal was subjected to Uranium-Lead dating to determine its age. Then, to avoid the risk of a misleading date, the findings were confirmed via a seperate, independent dating method "known as atom-probe tomography that was able to identify individual atoms of lead in the crystal and determine their mass, and confirmed that the zircon was indeed 4.4 billion years old. "
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnew...Earth.html
Also, scientists confirmed that it was really, really dusty.