Experts say the US east coast earthquake was an opportunity for people to learn the official protocol: ‘drop, cover and hold on’ Millions of people across the US east coast were jolted on Friday morning when a rare 4.8 magnitude...
Lanthanide elements are important for clean energy and other applications. To use them, industry must separate mixed lanthanide sources into individual elements using costly, time-consuming, and waste-generating procedures. An efficient...
Researchers describe zircons from the Andes mountains of Patagonia. Although the zircons formed when tectonic plates were colliding, they have a chemical signature associated with when the plates were moving apart. The researchers think...
In 1941, thousands of people died in Huaraz when the natural dam on a lake above the city gave way. Now, melting glaciers are raising the chances of it happening again • Photographs by Harriet Barber Lake Palcacocha is high in the...
Critics say it is a missed chance to recognise that the planet irrevocably left its natural state in the mid-20th century The guardians of the world’s official geological timescale have firmly rejected a proposal to declare an...
The oldest Scandinavian bedrock was 'born' in Greenland, according to a new geological study. The study helps us understand the origin of continents and why Earth is the only planet in our solar system with life.
Oceans are subject to continuous change, mostly over extremely vast periods of time running into millions of years. Researchers have now used computer simulations to demonstrate that a subduction zone originating in the Western...
A new report uncovers how hydrogen gas, the energy of the future, provided energy in the past, at the origin of life 4 billion years ago. Hydrogen gas is clean fuel. It burns with oxygen in the air to provide energy with no CO2. Hydrogen...
Mini missions are being launched amid the spires – a haven for dust particles that may contain clues about the cosmos and the early Earth On the roof of Canterbury Cathedral, two planetary scientists are searching for cosmic dust. While...
Everything is everywhere -- under certain conditions microbial communities can grow and thrive, even in places that are seemingly uninhabitable. This is the case at inactive hydrothermal vents on the sea floor. An international team is...
The period that liquid water was present on the surface of Mars may have been shorter than previously thought. Channel landforms called gullies, previously thought to be formed exclusively by liquid water, can also be formed by the...
A new study shines a spotlight on sulfur, a chemical element that, while all familiar, has proved surprisingly resistant to scientific efforts in probing its role in the origin of life.
Scientists have used the geological record of the deep sea to discover a connection between the orbits of Earth and Mars, past global warming patterns and the speeding up of deep ocean circulation. The patterns they discover suggest that...
Sand ripples are symmetrical. Yet wind -- which causes them -- is very much not. Furthermore, sand ripples can be found on Mars and on Earth. They would be even more fascinating if the same effect found on Mars could be found here on...
Rich history to 200 caves – from housing a secret printing press to widow’s shelter – as steps taken to protect the ‘sacred’ sites Hidden behind a tropical garden in the affluent Auckland suburb of Mount Eden is a subterranean secret – a...
In a new study, researchers have used the fossil record to better understand what factors make animals more vulnerable to extinction from climate change. The results could help to identify species most at risk today from human-driven...
For many hundreds of millions of years, the average temperature at the surface of the Earth has varied by not much more than 20 degrees Celsius, facilitating life on our planet. To maintain such stable temperatures, Earth appears to have...
Vote against formal geological recognition of ‘age of the humans’ is claimed to have violated committee rules The quest to declare the Anthropocene an official geological epoch has descended into an epic row, after the validity of a...
The fossilised Calamophyton remains show how early trees helped shape landscapes and stabilise riverbanks millions of years ago The world’s oldest fossilised trees, dating back 390m years, have been found in the high sandstone cliffs...
A team has collected dozens of samples from across southeastern Colorado, and their results could help to answer an enduring mystery: What made Colorado's High Plains so high?
Parts of the structure are younger than expected while an east wind blows the whole thing across the desert, researchers find They are impressive, mysterious structures that loom out of deserts on the Earth and are also found on Mars and...
Massive volcanic events in Earth's history that released large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere frequently correlate with periods of severe environmental change and mass extinctions. A new method to estimate how much and how rapidly...
New research documents the fastest-known large-scale breakage along an Antarctic ice shelf. A 6.5-mile crack formed in 2012 over 5-and-a-half minutes, showing that ice shelves can effectively shatter -- though the speed is limited by...
Sandy, Bedfordshire: When the ravines and valleys are all carved out, the drumlins and folds created, something miraculous will begin to happen Today’s dinosaurs in Bedfordshire are digging up the seabed that their flesh-and-blood...
Caistor St Edmund, Norfolk: As breeding season begins in the unseasonably mild weather, I’m transfixed by a local find – a meteorite I am holding a meteorite in my hand when something plummets to the ground just a couple of metres from...
Researchers are revisiting old building practices -- the use of by-products and cast-offs -- as a way to improve building materials and sustainability of the trade. A technique known as rammed earth construction uses materials that are...
A detailed survey of the volcanic underwater deposits around the Kikai caldera in Japan clarified the deposition mechanisms as well as the event's magnitude. As a result, the research team found that the event 7,300 years ago was the...
Our planet's lithosphere is broken into several tectonic plates. Their configuration is ever-shifting, as supercontinents are assembled and broken up, and oceans form, grow, and then start to close in what is known as the Wilson cycle.
A new study offers a glimpse into the possible impact of climate change on coastal wetlands 50 years or longer into the future. Scientists are usually forced to rely on computer models to project the long-term effects of rising seas, but...
This study reports widespread mineral carbonation of mantle rocks in an oceanic transform fueled by magmatic degassing of CO2. The findings describe a previously unknown part of the geological carbon cycle in transform faults that...
Researchers have uncovered the first direct evidence that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet shrunk suddenly and dramatically at the end of the Last Ice Age, around eight thousand years ago. The evidence, contained within an ice core, shows...
Rocks once buried deep in ancient subduction zones -- where tectonic plates collide -- could help scientists make better predictions of how these zones behave during the years between major earthquakes, according to a research team.
Inspired during field work in South Australia's Flinders Ranges, geoscientists have proposed that all-time low volcanic carbon dioxide emissions triggered a 57-million-year-long global 'Sturtian' ice age.
The Seattle fault zone is a network of shallow faults slicing through the lowlands of Puget Sound, threatening to create damaging earthquakes for the more than four million people who live there. A new origin story, proposed in a new...
The Circumpolar Current works as a regulator of the planet's climate. Its origins were thought to have caused the formation of the permanent ice in Antarctica about 34 million years ago. Now, a study has cast doubt on this theory, and...
Geoscientists have uncovered a missing link in the enigmatic story of how the continents developed- - a revised origin story that doesn't require the start of plate tectonics or any external factor to explain their formation. Instead,...
The Hayabusa2 mission that collected samples from the asteroid Ryugu has provided a treasure trove of insights into our solar system. After analyzing samples further, a team of researchers have unearthed evidence that cometary organic...
Tipping elements of the Earth system should be considered global commons, researchers argue. Global commons cannot -- as they currently do -- only include the parts of the planet outside of national borders, like the high seas or...
Researchers report that the roughness of pre-existing faults and associated stress heterogeneity in geological reservoirs play a key role for causing human-made earthquakes, so-called runaway events. The study combines novel fluid...
A research team investigated how the emergence of the first living systems from inert geological materials happened on the Earth, more than 3.5 billion years ago. Scientists found that by mixing hydrogen, bicarbonate, and iron-rich...
Analysis of iron meteorites from the earliest years of the solar system indicate that the planetary 'seeds' that ultimately formed Earth contained water.
Major cities on the U.S. Atlantic coast are sinking, in some cases as much as 5 millimeters per year -- a decline at the ocean's edge that well outpaces global sea level rise, confirms new research. Particularly hard hit population...
Ancient bricks inscribed with the names of Mesopotamian kings have yielded important insights into a mysterious anomaly in Earth's magnetic field 3,000 years ago, according to a new study.
A tiny, hard-working bacterium -- which weighs one-trillionth of a gram -- may soon have a large influence on processing rare earth elements in an eco-friendly way.
The Earth is a wonderful blue and green dot covered with oceans and life, while Venus is a yellowish sterile sphere that is not only inhospitable but also sterile. However, the difference between the two bears to only a few degrees in...
Our understanding of which aquatic species produce sounds just took a big step forward. Scientists have created an inventory of species confirmed or expected to produce sound underwater.
Drones flying along miles of rivers in the steep, mountainous terrain of central Taiwan and mapping the rock properties have revealed new clues about how water helps shape mountains over geological time.
Scientists have recently introduced a new method called ambient noise differential adjoint tomography, which allows researchers to visualise rocks with fluids better, leading to potential advancements in the discovery of water and oil...