Deep-Earth Carbon Offers Clues on Origin of Life on Earth
Johns Hopkins UniversityScientists reveal details about carbon deep beneath the Earth’s surface and suggest ways it might have influenced the history of life on the planet.
Scientists reveal details about carbon deep beneath the Earth’s surface and suggest ways it might have influenced the history of life on the planet.
The surface of Mars clearly shows what looks like evidence of flowing water: riverbeds, deltas, and the like. But these signs have been a puzzle – until now. The Weizmann Institute’s Dr. Itay Halevy and Brown University’s Dr. James Head III have identified a possible source: violent eruptions from massive volcanoes that periodically melted Mars’ ice.
Scientific inquiry is a hit and miss proposition, subject to constant checking and rechecking. Recently, a new class of materials was discovered called topological insulators—nonmetallic materials with a metallic surface capable of conducting electrons. The effect, based on relativity theory, exists only in special materials—those with heavy elements—and has the potential to revolutionize electronics.
An ocean engineer at the University of Rhode Island has found that a massive underwater landslide, not just the 9.0 earthquake, was responsible for triggering the deadly tsunami that struck Japan in March 2011.
Virginia Tech geobiologist Shuhai Xiao and collaborators from the Chinese Academy of Sciences shed new light on multicellular fossils from a time 60 million years before a vast growth spurt of life known as the Cambrian Explosion occurred on Earth.
Three University of Michigan geologists are participating in an international effort to drill nearly a mile beneath the surface of New Zealand this fall to bring back rock samples from an active fault known to generate major earthquakes.
Geologists have long debated when and how the Tibetan Plateau reached a 14,000-foot-plus elevation, but new research shows it once was probably thousands of feet higher.
Iowa State's Franek Hasiuk is using 3-D printing to study the pores within limestone reservoir rocks. A better understanding of the pore networks within the rocks could help industry get at more oil. Hasiuk is also using 3-D printing to engage geology students.
Conditions on Earth during its first 500 million years may have been cool enough to form oceans of water instead of being too hot for life to form.
Scientists on a seafloor mapping mission have discovered a new seamount near the Johnson Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. The summit of the seamount rises 1,100 meters from the 5,100-meter-deep ocean floor.
Was Mars — now a cold, dry place — once a warm, wet planet that sustained life? Research underway at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory may one day answer those questions — and perhaps even help pave the way for future colonization of the Red Planet. By analyzing the chemical clues locked inside an ancient Martian meteorite known as Black Beauty, Florida State University Professor Munir Humayun and an international research team are revealing the story of Mars’ ancient, and sometimes startling, climate history.
New questions about geology, oceanography and seafloor ecosystems are being raised because of research by a Mississippi State University geologist.
Seismic events aren’t rare occurrences on Antarctica, where sections of the frozen desert can experience hundreds of micro-earthquakes an hour due to ice deformation. Some scientists call them icequakes. But in March of 2010, the ice sheets in Antarctica vibrated a bit more than usual because of something more than 3,000 miles away: the 8.8-magnitude Chilean earthquake. A new Georgia Institute of Technology study published in Nature Geoscience is the first to indicate that Antarctica’s frozen ground is sensitive to seismic waves from distant earthquakes.
Experts sit down to discuss recent findings in crystallography with a Nobel laureate. Reporters are invited to attend the event and ask questions.
Your teeth can tell stories about you, and not just that you always forget to floss.
A new geological study concludes.the disastrous March 22 landslide that killed 43 people in the rural Washington state community of Oso involved the "remobilization" of a 2006 landslide on the same hillside.
The 1500 mile Appalachian mountain chain runs along a nearly straight line from Alabama to Newfoundland—except for a curious bend in Pennsylvania and New York State. Researchers from the College of New Jersey and the University of Rochester now know what caused that bend—a dense, underground block of rigid, volcanic rock forced the chain to shift eastward as it was forming millions of years ago.
By measuring how fast Earth conducts electricity and seismic waves, a University of Utah researcher and colleagues made a detailed picture of Mount Rainier’s deep volcanic plumbing and partly molten rock that will erupt again someday.
A new study shows that some shark species may be able to cope with the rising salinity of Arctic waters that may come with rising temperatures.
University and government scientists are embarking on a collaborative research expedition to improve volcanic eruption forecasting by learning more about how a deep-underground feeder system creates and supplies magma to Mount St. Helens.
In a paper published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, University of Rochester Professor Carmala Garzione explains that the Altiplano plateau in the central Andes—and most likely the entire mountain range—was formed through a series of rapid growth spurts.
Soils that formed on the Earth’s surface thousands of years ago and that are now deeply buried features of vanished landscapes have been found to be rich in carbon, adding a new dimension to our planet’s carbon cycle.
1) Reducing soot. 2) Hydropower. 3) Understanding driver behavior. 4) A performance record in high-temperature superconducting wires.
Groundbreaking work by a team of chemists on a fringe element of the periodic table could change how the world stores radioactive waste and recycles fuel.
Shale, the source of the United States’ current natural gas boom, could help solve another energy problem: what to do with radioactive waste from nuclear power plants. The unique properties of the sedimentary rock and related clay-rich rocks make it ideal for storing the potentially dangerous spent fuel for millennia, according to a geologist studying possible storage sites. He presented his research today at the 247th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society.
Last year’s gigantic landslide at a Utah copper mine probably was the biggest nonvolcanic slide in North America’s modern history, and included two rock avalanches that happened 90 minutes apart and surprisingly triggered 16 small earthquakes, University of Utah scientists discovered.
Scientists at the URI Graduate School of Oceanography are shedding light on the genetic makeup of Earth’s deep microbial life and the geochemistry of the lavas that form the Earth’s crust through research conducted as part of the Deep Carbon Observatory, a 10-year international collaboration unraveling the mysteries of Earth’s inner workings.
The following is a sampling of research results that will be presented by University of Rhode Island scientists at the American Geophysical Union’s fall meeting in San Francisco from Dec. 9 to 13:
The tsunami that struck Japan’s Tohoku region in 2011 was touched off by a submarine earthquake far more massive than anything geologists had expected in that zone. Now, a team of scientists has published a set of studies in the journal Science that shed light on what caused the dramatic displacement of the seafloor.
Clay, a seemingly infertile blend of minerals, might have been the birthplace of life on Earth. Or at least of the complex biochemicals that make life possible, Cornell University biological engineers report in the Nov. 7 online issue of the journal Scientific Reports, published by Nature Publishing.
Researchers at the University of Delaware found staggering and spacing out turbines in an offshore wind farm can improve performance by as much as 33 percent.
Meteorite bombardment left large craters that contained water and chemical building blocks for life, which ultimately led to the first organisms.