Tens of tons of extraterrestrial solid material collide with Earth daily. Most of this material is small enough that it burns up in the atmosphere, but some fragments are large enough to cause quite a predicament.
A few years ago, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Sasha Wagner, assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences, proved false what scientists had thought for years. Soot-like molecules that formed an ancient carbon pool deep in the Pacific Ocean did not, in fact, originate from wildfires on land.“We discovered that there was an isotopic mismatch,” Wagner said.
Imaging techniques provide essential information in astronomical and space physics studies. The Soft X-ray imager (SXI) will obtain images of the Earth’s magnetosphere from solar wind charge exchange emission in a global view.
University of Cincinnati geologists reconstructed a massive landslide in Nevada that wiped out an area the size of a small city more than 5 million years ago.
Using machine learning to sift through a decade’s worth of seismic data, researchers have identified hundreds of thousands of microearthquakes along some previously unknown fault structures in Oklahoma and Kansas.
In its first year exploring Jezero Crater on Mars, the Perseverance rover collected rock samples that scientists anticipate will provide a long-awaited timeline for the planet’s geologic and water history.
Scientists on NASA’s Perseverance mission made a surprising discovery about the composition of rock in Jezero Crater, one that will help them get a better idea of when water existed on Mars, and ultimately, help them understand if the red planet was ever habitable to microbial life.
A new study of zircon crystals from two of Earth’s oldest continents indicates that the formation of Earth’s continental crust goes through cycles, with periods of increased crust production roughly every 200 million years, corresponding to the solar system’s transit through the four primary spiral arms of the Milky Way galaxy.
New Curtin research has found evidence that Earth’s early continents resulted from being hit by comets as our Solar System passed into and out of the spiral arms of the Milky Way Galaxy, turning traditional thinking about our planet’s formation on its head.
A new research center is exploring the use of fiber-optic sensing for seismology, glaciology, and even urban monitoring. Funded in part with a $473,000 grant from the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, the new UW Photonic Sensing Facility will use photons traveling through a fiber-optic cable to detect ground motions as small as 1 nanometer.
The ‘Lithium-Ion Battery State’ may not have the same ring to it as ‘Battle-Born’ or ‘Silver State,’ but the reality is that Nevada could soon be a leader in the lithium battery supply chain – potentially giving the U.S. an edge in the arms race for the in-demand metal that’s the key to powering everything from your cell phone to electric vehicles.
The eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano in January created an initial wave 90 metres high – almost the height of the Statue of Liberty (93m)
Now, researchers say ubiquitous evidence for ongoing geological carbon sequestration in mantle rocks in the creeping sections of the SAF is one underlying cause of aseismic creep along a roughly 150 kilometer-long SAF segment between San Juan Bautista and Parkfield, California, and along several other fault segments.
KINGSTON, R.I. – Aug. 10, 2022 – Over the next three years, three University of Rhode Island researchers are hoping to broaden the scientific understanding of methane emission dynamics in ultramafic rock systems – work that one day may help answer the mystery of the existence of past or present microbial life on Mars.Dawn Cardace and Soni Pradhanang, associate professors of geosciences, and Serena Moseman-Valtierra, an associate professor of biological sciences, have been awarded a $735,000 grant by the NASA Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research to study methane gas emissions at a site in northern California that has a rock system comparable to known sites on Mars.
Scientists at Newcastle University have uncovered a source of oxygen that may have influenced the evolution of life before the advent of photosynthesis.
A new study measured 38 years of change for glaciers in Kenai Fjords National Park, which lies south of Anchorage, and found that 13 of 19 glaciers show substantial retreat, four are relatively stable, and two have advanced. It also finds trends in which glacier types are disappearing fastest.
Researchers at the University of Bristol and Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre have discovered that super-eruptions occur when huge accumulations of magma deep in the Earth’s crust, formed over millions of years, move rapidly to the surface disrupting pre-existing rock.
California’s McKinney Fire grew to become the state’s largest fire so far this year. The risk of wildfire is rising globally due to climate change. Below are some of the latest articles that have been added to the Wildfires channel on Newswise.
Heinrich Events or, more accurately, Heinrich Layers, are recurrent conspicuous sediment layers, usually ten to 15 centimeters thick, with very coarse rock components that interrupt the otherwise fine-grained oceanic deposits in the North Atlantic.
A professor emeritus at Tohoku University has unearthed evidence pointing to a strong relationship between the magnitude of mass extinctions and global temperature changes in geologic times.
More of the world’s coastal glaciers are melting faster than ever, but exactly what’s triggering the large-scale retreat has been difficult to pin down because of natural fluctuations in the glaciers’ surroundings. Now, researchers have developed a methodology that they think cracks the code to why coastal glaciers are retreating, and in turn, how much can be attributed to human-caused climate change.
The latest technology to study glaciers fits in a backpack and can be carried up steep mountains. University of Oregon researchers have developed a portable tool that uses lasers to measure the composition of glacial ice, data that can help determine how fast that ice is melting. The instrument can be used to study glaciers in remote wilderness areas, like those in Oregon’s Cascade Mountains. And it can help verify satellite data collected about bigger glaciers, like those in Greenland and Antarctica.
For the first time, scientists have shown that glaciers in the tropical Andes mountains have been in sync with polar ice extent in Antarctica and the Arctic for nearly a million years. A study, published July 13 in Nature, is the first to show that the effects of greenhouse gases and other drivers of the Earth’s temperature are impacting glaciers in the Southern Hemisphere at the same pacing as ice sheets in the north.
Astronomy postdoc Valerie Payré is on an international team that discovered the origin of the martian meteorite known as Black Beauty, one of the most-studied meteorites in the world. It may hold clues to the development of Earth and other terrestrial planets and help explain why Earth sustains life when its closest neighbor does not.
A groundbreaking new study recently published in the journal Earth’s Future and led by researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in collaboration with the University of Alaska Anchorage, is the first to comprehensively account for the hydrological impact of lithium mining.
By analyzing noble gas isotope data, a scientist determined that the ancient plume mantle had a water concentration that was a factor of 4 to 250 times lower when compared with the water concentration of the upper mantle. The resulting viscosity contrast could have prevented mixing within the mantle, helping to explain certain long-standing mysteries about Earth’s formation and evolution.
As it captivated people around the world, the January eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano gave scientists a once-in-a-lifetime chance to study how the atmosphere works, unlocking keys to better predict the weather and changing climate.
High Mountain Asia, the planet’s most extensive icy systems outside the polar regions, have the world’s largest undeveloped hydropower potential and are seeing numerous dams and reservoirs under construction or planning. However, climate change is destabilising the landscapes and threatening numerous hydropower projects according to a new study led by researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS).
Researchers from Washington University in St. Louis received a grant from the National Science Foundation to determine the thermal and compositional structure of Antarctica using seismic, gravity and topography data and petrological modeling.
While wildfires over recent years have raged across much of the western United States and pose significant hazards to wildlife and local populations, wildfires have been a long-standing part of Earth’s systems without the influence of humans for hundreds of millions of years.
USC scientists have found evidence that the Earth’s inner core oscillates, contradicting previously accepted models that suggested it consistently rotates at a faster rate than the planet’s surface.
While much of public attention on Yellowstone focuses on its potential to produce large supereruptions, the hazards that are much more likely to occur are smaller, violent hydrothermal explosions.
The emergence of a mysterious area in the South Atlantic where the geomagnetic field strength is decreasing rapidly, has led to speculation that Earth is heading towards a magnetic polarity reversal.
New models that show how the continents were assembled are providing fresh insights into the history of the Earth and will help provide a better understanding of natural hazards like earthquakes and volcanoes.
In the fall of 2017, geology professor Patricia Gregg and her team had just set up a new volcanic forecasting modeling program on the Blue Waters and iForge supercomputers.
Scientists have come up with a new classification scheme for mountain belts that uses just a single number to describe whether the elevation of the mountain belt is controlled mainly by weathering and erosion or by properties of the Earth’s crust, i.e., the lithospheric strength: the “Beaumont number” (Bm).
Eden, a geoscience technology development company co-founded by Massachusetts Institute of Technology/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program student Paris Smalls, will receive $3.8 million in federal funding from the U.S. Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E).