Earth Sciences
The theory of plate tectonics explains how major landforms and phenomena such as mountains, volcanoes, and earthquakes, are formed by the subterranean movement of geologic plates. Plate tectonics are also responsible for driving old crust sitting on the margins of oceans down to the earth’s mantle. As this process goes on, the minerals change in response to rising temperatures. Cubic CaSiO3 perovskite, a major phase in subducted oceanic crust, is one of these minerals. It is formed some 550km from the majority garnet. Until a new study, cubic CaSiO3 perovskite’s rheological properties were…
Time crystals are quantum systems whose lowest energy-state is where its particles are in constant motion. First proposed in 2012 by Frank Wilczek, time crystals are analogous to common crystals, except, whereas common crystals have atoms arranged periodically in space, time crystals atoms’ are arranged periodically in time and space. Time crystals don’t bleed energy to the environment and come to a state of rest because they are in a quantum ground state. Time crystals have motion without energy. Time crystals properties have led scientists to believe that they could some day help to…
Old timers of this blog will recall that I am an avid stone collector. In fact, of all experimental sciences I am fond of (Physics, Astronomy, Geology above others) Geology is the one that fascinated me first, as a six or seven year old child. We are talking about almost fifty years ago, when newspaper stands in Italy used to sell small packets containing pictures of soccer players (they were not even adhesive back then: you had to use your own glue to attach them in the proper place within collection albums which were sold separately) . Kids collected those "figurine", and exchanged them…
Quantum Mechanics (QM), the theory that describes the behaviour of matter at microscopic distance scales apparently unfathomable by our senses, is very hard to understand and make sense of. And indeed to this day, 100 years after its first formulation, there are thick debates among theorists on the very meaning and interpretation of the wave function, which is the mathematical description of a quantum system. Yet we deeply rely on QM to figure out the organization of matter at molecular, atomic, and subatomic level. It works, despite the open questions. And today we deeply rely on QM for our…
Like it or not, human-enhanced global warming is an established scientific fact. Indeed, as much as we hate the idea that we are affecting the future living conditions of hundreds of millions of human beings (not to mention animal species) with our carbon dioxide emissions, most of us - reasonable people with no agenda or direct interests in polluting industries - agree on the fact, and most of us also agree that we are doing far too little to alleviate the dramatic ongoing phenomenon. The science is out, and while it is a healthy thing to question the data and the results in all cases, it is…
While spending a few vacation days on a trip around central Italy I made a stop in a place in the Appennini mountains, to visit some incredible caves. The caves of Frasassi were discovered in September 1971 by a few young speleologists, who had been tipped off by locals about the existence, atop a mountain near their village, of a hole in the ground, which emitted a strong draft wind - the unmistakable sign of underground hollows.
The hole was barely wide enough for a person to squeeze in, and it led down vertically into the mountain. The group descended it with difficulty for about 100…
There are many stories about Yellowstone today by journalists saying it will erupt as a super volcano soon and that the effects will be devastating. No that is not what the study was about.
First, there is no sign of it erupting.
Then what about the study? The scientists looked at when it last erupted as a supervolcano 631,000 years ago years ago. They think there was a magma mixing event a few decades before the eruption. The research was about the timing of that event. It wasn't about how to predict the next eruption.
Here is Christy Till responding, when asked if his study…
WASHINGTON -- Twin NASA spacecraft have provided scientists with their first view of the speed, trajectory, and three-dimensional shape of powerful explosions from the sun known as coronal mass ejections, or CMEs. This new capability will dramatically enhance scientists' ability to predict if and how these solar tsunamis could affect Earth.
When directed toward our planet, these ejections can be breathtakingly beautiful and yet potentially cause damaging effects worldwide. The brightly colored phenomena known as auroras -- more commonly called Northern or Southern Lights -- are examples of…
PHILADELPHIA –- After two years spent analyzing data from BLAST, the Balloon-borne Large-Aperture Sub-millimeter Telescope, physicists are releasing the first results.
The study, published in the current issue of Nature, reveals that the Far Infrared Background, or FIRB, originates from individual galaxies some 7 to 10 billion light years away.
The telescope, designed by a collaboration led by the University of Pennsylvania, collected data 120,000 feet above Antarctica in 2006. Flying the telescope above much of the atmosphere allowed the BLAST team to observe the distant universe at…
Where does space begin? Scientists at the University of Calgary have created a new instrument that is able to track the transition between the relatively gentle winds of Earth's atmosphere and the more violent flows of charged particles in space – flows that can reach speeds well over 1000 km/hr. And they have accomplished this in unprecedented detail.
Data received from the U of C-designed instrument sent to space on a NASA launch from Alaska about two years ago was able to help pinpoint the so-called edge of space: the boundary between the Earth's atmosphere and outer space.
With that…