Earth is an ocean of magma
For millions of years the surface is molten rock, glowing under a sky of vaporised stone.
- When
- Known to
- ± 40 million years
- Era
- Hadean
The giant impact leaves Earth's outer layers completely molten, with a silicate atmosphere that condenses and rains back down. The magma ocean cools over a few million years, faster than intuition suggests because there is no insulating crust and the young Moon raises enormous tides. It is this episode, not the accretion before it, that sets the chemistry of the mantle we have today.