Evolution of Earth’s Earliest Crust

地球的大陆地壳和海洋地壳，在太阳系中可能是独一无二的，在我们星球的岩石圈，大气层和生物圈的运作中起着核心作用。地壳在地球历史早期形成和稳定的机制仍然是地质科学中悬而未决的问题之一。在这个应用程序中，我建议解决这个问题，扩大我正在进行的研究计划，对阿科斯塔片麻岩复杂（AGC）的西北地区。AGC可以说包含了世界上最古老的岩石（40.2亿年），当然也是世界上少数几个可以提供地球历史前10亿年证据的地方之一。尽管它是一个古老的地壳地点，但AGC的大部分仍然没有被研究。特别是，所有以前的AGC研究都只集中在~30 km的范围内，

Earth’s continental and oceanic crust, the combination of which is likely unique in the solar system, plays a central role in the operation of our planet’s lithosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere. The mechanisms by which this crust formed and stabilized early in Earth history remains one of the outstanding questions in the geological sciences. In this application, I propose to address this question by expanding my on-going research program on the Acasta Gneiss Complex (AGC) of the Northwest Territories. The AGC arguably contains the oldest rocks in the world (4.02 billion years old) and is certainly one of the few locations worldwide where evidence can be brought to bear on the first one billion years of Earth history. Despite its status as an old crust locality, much of the AGC remains unstudied. In particular, all previous studies of the AGC have focused exclusively on a ~30 km