Geology

Everyone knows a 'day' - one rotation of Earth - is around 24 hours long and lengthening at a rate of some 1.7 milliseconds every century. Yet 2 billion years ago it was 19.5 hours and at that rate we should have days lasting 60 hours. Yet we don't. Instead, the tidal pull of the moon was halted for over a billion years. For that, we can thank the pull of the sun. This tidal stalemate between the sun and moon has been linked to the atmosphere’s temperature and Earth’s rotational rate. When the moon first formed some 4.5 billion years ago, the day was less than 10 hours long. But since…

Natural events like solar cycles, wildfires, and volcanoes have created dramatic shifts in climate throughout history. Sometimes they even have cultural impact, such as the 'year without a summer' in Europe due to a volcano on the other side of the world, which helped inspire Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein." Less understood have been underwater events. A new analysis of bronze-age underwater volcanic eruptions is helping researchers better understand the size, hazards and climate impact of their parent eruptions, which will mean more accurate climate simulations in the future.  Credit:…

Water is over 70 percent of the surface of the earth but how that came to be, through what mix of random chance and extraterrestrial involvement, has been a debate. Earth is a relatively small planet and relatively near its star so creating large surface oceans is difficult. A new study analyzed melted meteorites that had been floating around in space since the solar system’s formation four and a half billion years ago and found they had extremely low water content, among the driest extraterrestrial materials ever measured. This led them to conclude that water was likely delivered to Earth…

With the population at 8 billion and on its way to 10, there is renewed concern about resources, but water? Yes, though the percentage of the world's water that is potable can be counted on one hand many countries don't have access to oceans. And if Europe forces developing nations to obey European laws on water like they do energy and food, poor countries will never be able to create centralized water services. A new paper speculates that may lead to water wars in the future. Military groups may capitalize on environmental stress. To be more than science fiction, the authors created socio-…

Mars doesn’t have tectonic plates like Earth, but it does have volcanically active regions that can cause rumbles, and one way to develop a better understanding of Mars’ mantle and core is to examine seismic active. In March, NASA’s InSight lander detected two strong, clear quakes originating in a location of Mars called Cerberus Fossae – the same place where two strong quakes were seen earlier in the mission. Those quakes have magnitudes of 3.3 and 3.1; the previous quakes were magnitude 3.6 and 3.5. InSight has recorded over 1,300 quakes to date, but nothing like the magnitude 5…

Our life on earth began in water but how did it 'evolve'? To get an understanding of the link between the chemistry of carbon and water, scientists can track the various forms, or isotopes, of its constituent hydrogen and oxygen atoms over the history of the universe, like a giant treasure hunt. Recently, researchers from the CNRS, Paris-Saclay University, the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), and the University of Pau and the Pays de l’Adour (UPPA), with support from the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle (MNHN), have followed the trail of the isotopic…

In the Atacama Desert in Chile east of Pampa del Tamarugal, a plateau in northern Chile nestled between the Andes Mountains to the east and the Chilean Coastal Range to the west, fields of dark green and black glass inhabit a corridor stretching for 30 miles. If you've ever seen a glassblower at work, you know high heat will do the trick, but lacking a crucible 12,000 years ago, it has been a mystery what provided the 2,400 degree heat needed to turn the sand into molten glass that then solidified. A new study finds it was not of this earth.  Samples of the desert glass contain tiny…

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The Tibetan plateau covers nearly 1,600,000 square miles. With an average altitude of nearly 14,000 feet, Tibet is called the Roof of the World for good reason. It contains the world's two highest peaks, Mount Everest and K2, and the vast Himalayan mountain range towers higher than anywhere else on Earth. Some researchers contend it has been that height for most of its existence while others argue the roof of the world has gotten higher. Using new analyses of the Indian Ocean seabed and calculations of the movement of Earth's tectonic plates, a new paper argues that there was a major…

Along the coast of Tel Dor, a maritime city in northwest Israel occupied from the Middle Bronze II period,  2000 BC, through the Crusader period, there is a marine shell and sand layer from nearly 10,000 years ago, but it's in the middle of a large ancient wetland layer spanning as far back as 15,000 years ago.  What happened to create such a dramatic anomaly? A new study using underwater excavation, borehole drilling, and modeling suggests a massive tsunami struck, depositing seashells and sand in the middle of what was at the time fresh to brackish wetland. And it must have…