Magnetic fields are thought to govern the lifetime of protoplanetary disks by mediating the inward accretion of gas. At finer scales, magnetic instabilities may have led to turbulent eddies where the first planetesimals formed. A subset of these planetesimals then accreted to form the Earth, which, over several hundred million years, formed a crust consisting of mobile tectonic plates that hosted the first biosphere. Dr. Fu of Harvard University will discuss how new advances in paleomagnetic instrumentation has enabled access to complex meteorites and early earth rocks that record magnetic fields in the protoplanetary disk and document the motion of the first plates.