The earthquake that shook Sumatra on on April 11, 2012 is distinct, not just because it was  magnitude-8.6 but also because it was both larger than scientists thought an earthquake of its…

Compared to most moons in our solar system, Titan is relatively smooth. It has few craters  but Titan is around four billion years old, about the same age as the rest of the solar system - so it…

A new study says a portion of the groundwater in the upper Patapsco aquifer underlying Maryland is truly ancient- over a million years old.  The work from the US Geological Survey, the Maryland…

Space is an extremely hostile environment. You knew that, though no one wants to think about exploding instantly as their blood boils without an atmosphere (or it does not - like how airplanes fly,…

Molecules containing large chains of carbon and hydrogen, which happen to be the building blocks of all life on Earth, have been found in meteorites from Mars but scientists have been unsure how this…

Based on new fossil evidence, the age of the Rhine river is five million years older than previously believed. The famous Rhine of song and legend flows through Switzerland, Austria,…

Over the past century, 70 percent of beaches on the islands of Kaua'i, O'ahu, and Maui have had long-term erosion, according to a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and University of Hawai'i (UH) report…

The "plumbing systems" that lie under volcanoes,  the location and behavior of magma chambers on the Earth's mid-ocean ridge system, a vast chain of volcanoes along which the Earth forms new…

A chemical analysis of lunar soil collected by Apollo astronauts forty years disputes the belief that a giant collision between Earth and a Mars-sized object gave birth to the moon 4.5 billion years…

ESA’s GOCE gravity satellite has provided us with the first high-resolution map of the boundary between Earth’s crust and mantle – the Mohorovičić discontinuity, or Moho. Earth’s crust, as you know,…