evidence: "That’s important because that’s the time when we think life was emerging," says Benjamin Weiss, the Robert R. Shrock Professor of Planetary Sciences in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS). "If the Earth’s magnetic field was around a few hundred million years earlier, it could have played a critical role in making the planet habitable." Nichols and Weiss are co-authors of the new study, which also includes Craig Martin and Athena Eyster at MIT, Adam Maloof at Princeton University, and additional colleagues from institutions including Tufts University and the University of Colorado at Boulder. [...] This research was supported, in part, by the Simons Foundation.