Geology

4 billion ago, during the Archean eon, Earth's mantle temperatures were significantly higher than they are today, according to recent numerical model calculations. A new paper from researchers at at…

The Earth is about 4.6 billion years old but no rocks exist that are older than about 3.8 billion years. However, zircons that were eroded from the sedimentary rock section in the Jack Hills of…

Most science fiction and news stories describe Mars terraforming as a long term but simple process. You warm up the planet first, with greenhouse gases, giant mirrors, impacting comets or some such…

The Promised Land means different things to different people. To geologists, the site of some of the largest volcanic eruptions in earth's history might fit the bill, and that means Utah is a pretty…

Experimental techniques and computer simulations have determined a new way of predicting how water dissolves crystalline structures like those found in natural stone and cement.  In a new study…

On May 24th of 2013, a magnitude 8.3 earthquake hit deep beneath the Sea of Okhotsk, between Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula and Japan. The main shock of the earthquake was located at 610 kilometers (…

A new, internationally agreed radiocarbon calibration curve method will allow key past events to be dated more accurately. The work led by Professors Paul Blackwell and Caitlin Buck from the…

JHidden underneath hilly grasslands studded with ocotillos and mesquite trees in southeastern Arizona lies a world shrouded in perpetual darkness - Kartchner Caverns, a limestone cave system known…

Two subglacial lakes, each roughly 8-10 km2,  have been discovered 800 meters below the Greenland Ice Sheet. At one point they may have been up to three times larger than their current size.…

Methane has 30 times the warming effect of carbon dioxide but lacks the press awareness of its greenhouse gas cousin.  And a new study in Nature Geoscience has found that the seafloor off the…