The eon's name "Hadean" comes from Hades, the Greek god of the underworld (and can be used to describe the underworld itself), referring to the hellish conditions then prevailing on early Earth: the planet had just been forme… See more

Prior to the 1980s and the discovery of Hadean lithic fragments, scientific narratives of the early earth explanations were almost entirely in the hands of geodynamic modelers.
In the last d… See more

A sizable quantity of water would have been in the material that formed Earth. Water molecules would have escaped Earth's gravity more easily when the planet was less massive during its formation. Photodisso… See more

Studies of zircons have found that liquid water may have existed between 4.0 and 4.4 billion years ago, very soon after the formation of Earth. Liquid water oceans existed despite the high surface temperatur… See more

A 2008 study of zircons found that Australian Hadean rock contains minerals pointing to the existence of plate tectonics as early as 4 billion years ago (approximately 600 million years after Earth's formation). However, s… See more