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New study: Hell not as bad as we thought The very earliest years of Earth have long been presumed hot, violent and terrible - so much so that the era from 4.5 billion years to 4 billion years ago is known as the Hadean Eon, or Hellish time.However, a four-year study of the oldest known minerals on Earth, published in this week`s Science magazine, has found that Hadean is most probably a misnomer. Using a newly developed thermometer made of zircon, researchers have found evidence that environmental conditions on early Earth, within 200 million years of the solar system's formation, were characterized by liquid-water oceans and continental crust similar to those of the present day.
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