Earth's Oldest Continental Crust is In...

Australia. Geoscientists recently confirmed that some hills in Australia are 4.4 billion years old. The researching geoscientists studied crystals found in rock that solidified from lava at the atom level. While the research has confirmed how the earth became habitable, the scientists hope that the finding give insight into how other celestial bodies, like the moon, were formed.

To conduct the study, researchers exposed radioactive lead in the rock formations of Australia. These atoms, originally uranium, were trapped as the rock solidified from lava. Over the course of the 4.4 billion years, the uranium decayed into the lead that exists today.