Oldest and Newest Places on Earth

When I was a kid, I had this globe next to my bed,

And when I couldn't sleep, sometimes I'd turn it on

And just kinda explore the world,

Feel the mountains and the ocean floors,

The country borders, the lakes and seas.

It was all very interesting to me.

And I couldn't help but wonder why it looked this way.

Did it always look like this? Did it once look different?

Why does Madagascar look like somebody chiseled it off of Africa?

For that matter, why does Africa's west coast

Have almost the exact same outline as South America's east coast?

Why is there a ridge on the ocean floor

That follows the same path almost exactly halfway between 'em?

I began to see the world as a bunch of puzzle pieces

That came together to be what it is today.

I didn't know how these things happened.

I didn't know why.

Nobody had ever said anything to me about plate tectonics,

But I inherently knew about it

Because of the hours I spent staring at this globe.

And I think this might have been

One of those formative experiences for me,

Just made me think differently about the Earth and geology.

And later when I did learn about plate tectonics

And the billions of years that it's been going on,

Well, that only added to the fascination.

A few years back, I traveled to Sedona, Arizona.

I found myself marveling at the rock formations

And pondering the millions of years of wind

It took to carve that out, just one grain of sand at a time.

People talk about Sedona being a spiritual place.

But I can't even argue with that

Because it forces you to think on unfathomable timescales,

And it kinda breaks your brain.

While at the same time, in volcanic areas around the world,

New rock is produced every day in sudden and violent outbursts.

Rock that later becomes fertile soil and explodes with life.

We live on an ancient planet that's constantly remaking itself,

And that's a concept I've always wanted to explore.

So somewhere along the way, an idea got embedded in my brain.

What if instead of talking about it,

I actually went to the places that best illustrated that?

What could I learn? What kind of story would that tell?

What if I traveled to the oldest and newest places on planet Earth?

This is my producer, Cooper,

And I'm about to wreck his world.

This is the face of someone

Who just wasted three months of his life.

Three months that he had spent planning

A very complicated trip to Australia.

Because in 2014, it was reported

That researchers had found zircon crystals

In the Jack Hills of Australia

Dating back to 4.4 billion years old,

Making these the oldest rocks on planet Earth.

There was just one catch.

These crystals are literally microscopic.

And we had certain parameters with this project.

One, it has to be rock that I can stand on.

That's the gag here.

I stand on the oldest and newest rocks.

Two, it has to be a natural formation,

Not behind a case in some museum somewhere.

That's too easy.

And too hard – I'd probably get arrested.

And three, it has to originate from Earth

And be the result of some geologic process.

So, some meteorite fragment that's as old as the solar system,

That doesn't count.

Now, I knew that the zircons were too small to stand on,

But I assumed the rocks that they were found in

Would be just as old, right?

Right?

So in 2023, we made preparations

To visit the Jack Hills in Western Australia,

Which is super remote, super inhospitable, not near a road.

This was gonna require working with an outfitter and a guide.

We needed satellite phone. This was a whole thing.

And just to be thorough,

I thought I could interview the geologist

A geologist from UC Boulder named Dr. Steven Mojzsis.

And amazingly, he responded.

He says the Jack Hills zircons

Are the oldest minerals on Earth.

While it is true that they're upwards of 4.38 billion years old,

They're weathered from older rocks as sedimentary detritus,

And a younger assemblage that occupied a sedimentary basin.

- He's speaking like a scientist here. - Right, right.

- Around 3.3 billion years ago. - Right.

So the rock itself is 3.3 billion years.

Yeah, that's what I was reading.

Yeah. So he said that's—

That is still a long time ago, but not the oldest place on Earth.

...Yeah.

What I was asking him was like, is it Pilbara or Jack Hills?

- And he was like, neither. - Kinda.

Yeah, we were looking in the wrong place.

According to Dr. Mojzsis,

The actual place that we're looking for was called

The Acasta Gneiss Complex in far north Canada.

So instead of going down here,

We are actually needing to go way up here.

It's not the same place.

And unlike the Jack Hills,

Where you can just kinda drive most of the way out to it,

The Acasta Gneiss Complex

Is in the middle of absolute nowhere.

There are no roads for hundreds of kilometers,

And the landscape is insane.

It's on the edge of a lake,

But the area is dotted with literally thousands of lakes.

The only defining feature is an island in the middle of it

That kinda looks a little bit like Snoopy.

In fact, the geologists call it "Snoopy Island".

I cannot tell you how many hours I spent

Scouring the maps looking for Snoopy Island.

It was like a hellish geological version of Where's Waldo.

So our plans had to change. Drastically.

And since it was approaching fall,

The temperatures in the area

Were already dipping into fairly dangerous territory, so...

We were gonna have to wait another year.

This was not the last thing that went wrong.

So while Cooper began looking

Into how exactly we get to this new location,

I began considering the "newest" rocks on Earth.

I'll be honest, this choice was always a bit arbitrary

Because technically new land is being created all the time

In volcanic hotspots around the world,

Of which there are currently 46,

According to the Smithsonian's Global Volcanism Program.

And there's no shortage of young land masses

Created by these volcanic hotspots around the world,

Any of which would work, but...

When it came down to it, one stood out amongst all the rest:

The Big Island of Hawaii.

Not only is the Big Island only half a million years old,

It's almost always erupting.

Plus it's a US state.

So there was no language barrier, no currency exchange.

There's an infrastructure and a national park right there,

And besides, it's freaking Hawaii. Who wouldn't want to go there?

So, Hawaii it would be.

With our locations chosen, the team went to work

Planning out our epic adventure in 2023.

Nothing was gonna stop us this time.

In the summer of 2023,

Just as we started finalizing our plans,

A massive wave of wildfires swept across Canada.

The smoke from these fires drifted over the northern United States,

Blanketing many major US cities.

It quickly became international news.

Just devastating fires

That are clearly linked to human-caused climate change.

But the scale of the human impact in Canada

Is quite concerning.

There's many fires burning at once,

And some of them are further north than we would typically expect.

So more so into the tundra, which is very uncommon.

And right in the middle of it was the town of Yellowknife,

Which was the closest town to the outcrop

And where we were planning to stay.

It also was the home

Of the Northwest Territories Geological Survey,

Who had helped us out tremendously with our planning.

All of our plans were on hold

As we waited for the fires to subside.

But that didn't happen.

In fact, it only got worse.

By mid-August, two major fires had reached

The outskirts of Yellowknife, and the order was given to evacuate.

My contacts at the Geological Survey suddenly became unavailable

As they and the other 20,000 people in Yellowknife

Fled for their lives.

Over the next couple of weeks,

Through a combination of human intervention

And just dumb luck, the winds changed,

The fires were diverted, and the town was saved.

But Yellowknife was pretty much a ghost town at that point.

It would take months for the residents to trickle back in

And for the town to become functional again.

And by that point,

Our opportunity was pretty much gone.

By the way, you might remember that in 2023,

Hawaii suffered through some devastating wildfires,

Especially on the island of Maui,

Where 102 people died in the town of Lahaina.

So yeah, both places we wanted to go to were on fire.

In the spring of 2024, one of my contacts

From the Northwest Territories Geological Survey

Put me in touch with this guy.

This is Jesse Reimink, a geologist from Penn State

And co-host of the PlanetGeo Podcast

And just happens to be one of the world's top experts

In the Acasta Gneiss Complex.

And it just so happened

That he was planning another trip in July

With this guy. This is Mike Ackerson.

He's a geologist with the Smithsonian Institution,

Who's leading a team of researchers, including Jesse,