Study uncovers potential origins of life in ancient hot springs
Newcastle UniversityNewcastle University research turns to ancient hot springs to explore the origins of life on Earth.
Newcastle University research turns to ancient hot springs to explore the origins of life on Earth.
An educational collaboration between the Rocky Mountain Center for Occupational and Environmental Health (RMCOEH) and the Department of Mining Engineering at the University of Utah will bring an interdisciplinary approach to tackle tough problems in mining safety.
How far microplastics travel in the atmosphere depends crucially on particle shape, according to a recent study by scientists at the University of Vienna and the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organisation in Göttingen: While spherical particles settle quickly, microplastic fibers might travel as far as the stratosphere.
Palm Springs Downtown Park is an inviting 1.5-acre urban oasis for residents and visitors to Palm Springs, a design-forward desert destination nestled along the base of the San Jacinto Mountains along the southwestern boundary of the Coachella Valley in California’s Sonoran Desert of the USA.
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 from Virginia Tech and the U.S. Geological Survey. Particularly hard hit population centers such as New York City and Long Island, Baltimore, and Virginia Beach and Norfolk are seeing areas of rapid “subsidence,” or sinking land, alongside more slowly sinking or relatively stable ground, increasing the risk to roadways, runways, building foundations, rail lines, and pipelines, according to a study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences.
With the rise in machine learning applications and artificial intelligence, it's no wonder that more and more scientists and researchers are turning to supercomputers. Supercomputers are commonly used for making predictions with advanced modeling and simulations. This can be applied to climate research, weather forecasting, genomic sequencing, space exploration, aviation engineering and more.
A new study suggests ice recovered from high tropical mountains can reveal key insights about Earth’s past climate changes
Can a volcano erupt after tens of thousands of years of dormancy? If so, how can this be explained and what makes volcanic eruptions more dangerous, i.e. explosive? These are key questions in volcanic hazard assessment and can also draw attention to volcanoes that appear to be inactive.
When it comes to greenhouse gases, methane is one the biggest contributors. Not only is it massively abundant — it’s about 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere.
A new study has identified a potentially growing natural hazard in the North: frostquakes. With climate change contributing to many observed changes in weather extremes, such as heavy precipitation and cold waves, these seismic events could become more common. Researchers were surprised by the role of wetlands and drainage channels in irrigated wetlands in origin of frostquakes.
Fairy circles, a nearly hexagonal pattern of bare-soil circular gaps in grasslands, initially observed in Namibia and later in other parts of the world, have fascinated and baffled scientists for years. Theories for their appearance range from spatial self-organization induced by scale-dependent water-vegetation feedback to pre-existing patterns of termite nests.
Record breaking marine heatwaves will cause devastating mass coral bleaching worldwide in the next few years, according to a University of Queensland coral reef scientist.
Paleontologists are getting a glimpse at life over a billion years in the past based on chemical traces in ancient rocks and the genetics of living animals.
Night-time warming is vital, but conventional methods like active heaters are energy-intensive and contribute to carbon emissions.
In southern Germany just north of the Danube, there lies a large circular depression between the hilly surroundings: the Nördlinger Ries.
Researchers have discovered magnetic monopoles – isolated magnetic charges – in a material closely related to rust, a result that could be used to power greener and faster computing technologies.
Scientists from Stockholm University have investigated the mechanisms that create cool microclimates beneath forest canopies during warm and dry summer days. The study reveals how canopy shading and water evaporation together create cooler forest microclimates compared to temperatures outside forests.
A recent study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth sheds new light on the formation of the East Coast of the United States – a “passive margin,” in geologic terms – during the breakup of the supercontinent Pangea and the opening of the Atlantic Ocean around 230 million years ago.
Atmospheric scientists at UAlbany and China’s Jiangsu Meteorological Observatory recently co-published a new paper in AGU’s Geophysical Research Letters that finds unstable atmospheric conditions have significantly increased over the last several decades.
Traditional remote sensing satellites have struggled to meet the growing demand for real-time, popular applications of geospatial data. LuoJia3-01, launched on January 15, 2023, addresses this by establishing a novel, open-mode experimental verification platform that integrates remote sensing and communication.
Urban buildings, essential to socio-economic activities, present a complex dynamic of form and function.
In a recent paper published in the KeAi journal Rock Mechanics Bulletin, a scientist from Uppsala University presented a discussion on the mechanism of emergence in fractured media from a combined statistical physics and rock mechanics perspective.
Computer scientist Dr. Satish Puri is working on ways to organize and search for petabytes of geospatial data. He is developing algorithms that can use data for everything from geophysical trends to social issues. His work will eventually be incorporated into publicly available software for mapping and analytics.
An international team of researchers around botanists at the University of Vienna, Austria, has now analyzed the morphological diversity of fossilized flowers and compared it with the diversity of living species.
A multinational team of scientists, drillers and engineers has deployed to a remote part of Antarctica on an urgent mission to predict how fast the West Antarctic Ice Sheet will melt from global and ocean warming.
Scientists rely on pyrite, also known as “fool’s gold,” as a sensitive recorder of oceanic conditions, used to reconstruct timelines of global environmental change. Research from Washington University in St. Louis helps separate out local effects and sheds new light on the role of ancient microbial activity in driving the signals.
U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) researchers have discovered solar-wind hydrogen in lunar samples, which indicates that water on the surface of the Moon may provide a vital resource for future lunar bases and longer-range space exploration.
Despite public perception, the Antarctic ozone hole has been remarkably massive and long-lived over the past four years, University of Otago researchers believe chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) aren’t the only things to blame.
Extinct marine creatures hidden in Thai sanctuary
The world’s total population is expected to reach 9.9 billion by 2050. This rapid increase in population is boosting the demand for agriculture to cater for the increased demand. Below are some of the latest research and features on agriculture and farming in the Agriculture channel on Newswise.
Researchers have discovered a series of large undersea sediment deposits in a region near Italy that were likely formed by an ancient volcanic supereruption.
Scientists know very little about conditions in the ocean when life first evolved, but new research published in Nature Geoscience has revealed how geological processes controlled which nutrients were available to fuel their development.
In the largest survey of its kind ever conducted, using both satellite imagery and old aerial photos from the Danish National Archives, researchers from the University of Copenhagen firmly establish that Greenland’s glaciers are melting at an unprecedented pace.
Scientists have calculated a way to determine the speed of past underwater landslides, a new study has found.
Missouri University of Science and Technology has been awarded a $850,000 grant to focus on reducing pollution and waste related to the mining of critical minerals. The team will provide training and technical assistance to mining companies on environmentally friendly methods.
A Cornell analysis finds telescopes could better detect potential chemical signatures of life in an Earth-like exoplanet that more closely resembles the age the dinosaurs inhabited than the one we know today.
In the 1980s, geophysicists made a startling discovery: two continent-sized blobs of unusual material were found deep near the center of the Earth, one beneath the African continent and one beneath the Pacific Ocean.
The Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Jennifer Lotz as the Director of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI). Dr. Lotz will begin her five-year appointment as STScI Director starting February 12, 2024.
The planet’s demand for salt comes at a cost to the environment and human health, according to a new scientific review led by University of Maryland Geology Professor Sujay Kaushal.
Beta-diversity of biological assemblages is central to biogeography and ecology. Researchers from Illinois State Museum in the US and Chongqing University in China have presented a set of novel global maps showing geographic patterns of genus-based beta-diversity of flowering plants.
Long before Antarctica froze over, rivers carved valleys through mountains in the continent’s east. Millions of years later, researchers have discovered a remnant of this ancient highland landscape thanks to an aerial survey campaign led by the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics (UTIG).
A study from an international team led by researchers from Nagoya University in Japan and the University of New Hampshire in the United States has revealed the importance of the Earth’s upper atmosphere in determining how large geomagnetic storms develop.
Geoscientists analyze rocks in mountain belts to reconstruct how they once moved downwards into the depths and then returned to the surface.
GEOMAR researchers reconstruct historic volcanic eruption using 3D seismics
Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have successfully isolated a pattern of lab-made ‘foreshock’ tremors. The finding offers hope that future earthquakes could be forecast by the swarm of smaller tremors that come before them.
NASA sensors scattered across land, sea, and space have collected hundreds of terabytes of Earth science data over the past four decades. Imagine if a digital assistant like Alexa or Siri, powered by artificial intelligence (AI), could quickly and easily sift through that data to answer scientific questions for researchers.
The research team, led by Durham University, UK, used satellite data and radio-echo sounding techniques to map a 32,000 km2 area of land underneath the vast ice sheet.
Read the latest research news on air pollution, nanoplastics, waterborne illnesses and more in the Pollution channel on Newswise.