Zircon: The Keeper Of Earth's Time

Short Wave

NPR

Daily News, Nature, Life Sciences, Astronomy, Science, News

4.7 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 10 January 2023

⏱️ 12 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The mineral zircon is the oldest known piece of Earth existing on the surface today. The oldest bits date back as far as 4.37 billion years — not too far from the age of Earth itself at about 4.5 billion years old. And, unlike other minerals, zircon is hard to get rid of. This resilience enables scientists to use zircon to determine when major geological events on Earth happened. As part of our series on time, host Aaron Scott talks to science correspondent Nell Greenfieldboyce about why this mineral is often considered a geologic clock and has earned the nickname "Time Lord."

This episode is part of our series, "Finding Time — a journey through the fourth dimension to learn what makes us tick." Read more of Nell's reporting on zircon here.

Curious about other aspects of our universe? Email us at [email protected].

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.
0:04.6	Hey folks, Aaron Scott here and today we're going to be talking about some really, really,
0:09.6	really old stuff.
0:11.5	That's right.
0:12.5	It's the oldest earth stuff there is, literally.
0:15.3	NPR Science correspondent, Nell Greenfield, Boise, everybody.
0:18.3	Hey there, Nell.
0:19.3	Hey, so, you know, I went to the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History recently
0:25.1	and I walked past the Blue Hope Diamond into the mineral collection.
0:29.5	I don't know if you've ever been there.
0:31.0	Love rocks, yes.
0:32.0	And I saw some pretty golden gemstones that were like cut and polished and these are
0:39.4	zircons.
0:40.4	Zircons, which sounds like cubic zirconia as in the fake diamonds that we see advertised
0:46.7	on late night TV.
0:47.7	Is that what we're going to talk about today, Nell?
0:50.1	No, no.
0:51.1	So, we're talking about a natural mineral, zircon, and some people have called it the time
0:57.9	lord.
0:58.9	The time lord as in Dr. Fudan.
1:02.2	No, there is a species on Dr. Hoo, called zircon.
1:06.7	But these are tiny zircon crystals that are like little geologic clocks.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from NPR, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of NPR and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.