Geology

Boulders the size of footballs could help scientists predict the West Antarctic Ice Sheet’s (WAIS) contribution to sea-level rise according to new research published this week in Geology. Scientists from British Antarctic Survey (BAS), Durham University and Germany’s Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) collected boulders deposited by three glaciers in the Amundsen Sea Embayment – a region currently the focus of intense international scientific attention because it is changing faster than anywhere else on the WAIS and it has the potential to raise sea-level by around 1…

Volcanoes are notoriously hard to study. All the action takes place deep inside, at enormous temperatures. So geophysicists make models, using what they know to develop theories about what they don’t know. Research led by Gregory P. Waite, an assistant professor of geophysics at Michigan Technological University, has produced a new seismic model for figuring out what’s going on inside Mount St. Helens, North America’s most active volcano. Waite hopes his research into the causes of the earthquakes that accompany the eruption of a volcano will help scientists better assess the hazard of a…

FACT: The inner core of the earth is a sphere with a radius of about 1,200 km, made mostly of iron, which has different mechanical and magnetic properties based on temperature. MYSTERY: Elastic waves pass that through this core move faster parallel to the earth’s axis of rotation than they do parallel to the equator. At the high temperatures that prevail in the core of the earth, these waves should pass at the same speed regardless of their direction. Scientists from Uppsala University and KTH present say they have an explanation for this puzzling characteristic. In 2003, they published a…

Using the genetic equivalent of an ancient thermometer, a team of scientists has determined that the Earth endured a massive cooling period between 500 million and 3.5 billion years ago. Reporting today (Feb. 7) in the journal Nature, researchers from the University of Florida, the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution and the biotechnology company DNA2.0 describe how they reconstructed proteins from ancient bacteria to measure the Earth’s temperature over the ages. “By studying proteins encoded by these primordial genes, we are able to infer information about the environmental…

Africa and Europe get about 4 mm closer every year in a northeast convergence direction. The exact position and geometry of the boundary between the African and Eurasian plates is unknown, but it is located near the Gibraltar Arc — an area of intense seismic activity. A group of researchers from the Andalusian Institute for Earth Sciences (CSIC) and the Department of Geodynamics of the University of Granada described for the first time the physical and mechanical properties of the uppermost part of the Earth’s crust — to a depth of 30 km which is where the highest magnitude earthquakes occur…

The Rocky Mountains have warmed by 2 degrees Fahrenheit. The snowpack in the Sierras has dwindled by 20 percent and the temperatures there have heated up by 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit. All could lead to dire consequences for the water supply in the Western United States, including California. Scientists have noted that water flow in the West has decreased for the last 20 to 30 years, but had never explained why it was happening. Until now. Scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison in collaboration with Scripps Institution of…

Most of the Earth’s listed active volcanoes are located at the borders between two tectonic plates, where upsurge of magma from the mantle is facilitated. When these magmatic uprisings occur at a subduction zone, where one tectonic plate plunges under another, they give rise to volcanic massifs such as the Andes cordillera. Other volcanic chains are formed along oceanic ridges, submarine regions of ocean-floor extension. However, some volcanoes are governed by a completely different mechanism: intraplate volcanism. As their name suggests, these volcanic constructions appear in the very…

Earthquakes occurring at the edges of tectonic plates can trigger events at a distance and much later in time, according to a team of researchers reporting in Nature. These doublet earthquakes may hold an underestimated hazard, but may also shed light on earthquake dynamics. "The last great outer rise earthquakes that occurred were in the 1930s and 1970s," said Charles J. Ammon, associate professor of geoscience, Penn State. "We did not then have the equipment to record the details of those events." The outer rise is the region seaward of the deep-sea trench that marks the top of the plate…

Since we can’t sample the deepest regions of the Earth, scientists watch the velocity of seismic waves as they travel through the planet to determine the composition and density of that material. A new study suggests that material in part of the lower mantle has unusual electronic characteristics that make sound propagate more slowly, suggesting that the material there is softer than previously thought. The results in the January 25, 2008, issue of Science call into question the traditional techniques for understanding this region of the planet. The lower mantle extends from about 400 miles…

People love to find things on Mars. Sometimes it's a face, and sometimes it's a really happy face. Other times it's pyramids or even DNA. This time, it's Bigfoot. The Mars exploration rover, Spirit, took this picture in late 2007. Launched in June, 2003, Spirit is a solar-powered explorer that is walking along the surface of Mars to see what we can learn about its geological history. Its non-evil robot twin, Opportunity, set down on the other side of the planet to do the same thing. But so far only Spirit has seen a Tusken Raider or Bigfoot or Xenu or whoever that is walking around. Take…