Geology

Revealed: A Grand Canyon Under The Greenland Ice Sheet

Data collected from 2009 through 2012 by NASA's Operation IceBridge, an airborne science campaign that studies polar ice, reveals evidence of a large and previously unknown canyon hidden under a mile of Greenland ice. ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 29 2013 - 5:44pm

2011 Earthquake In Japan Caused Large Waves In Norwegian Fjords

Early on a winter morning in 2011, residents of western Norway who lived or worked along the shores of the nation's fjords were startled to see the calm morning waters suddenly begin to rise and fall. Starting at around 7:15 local time and continuing ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 30 2013 - 2:30pm

Characterizing The Composition And Geological History Of Mercury

The MESSENGER spacecraft has been orbiting Mercury since March 2011 and has been revealing new information about the surface chemistry and geological history of the innermost planet in the solar system. Weider et al. recently analyzed 205 measurements of ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 30 2013 - 2:38pm

Eurotank: Meandering River Created In The Laboratory

Natural rivers are not straight and they are rarely idle; instead, they bend and curve and sometimes appear to wriggle across the surface over time. That rivers can meander is obvious but how and why they do so is less well known. These questions are compl ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 30 2013 - 4:00pm

Tamu Massif Is The Largest Single Volcano On Earth- The Size Of The British Isles

Researchers have uncovered the largest single volcano yet documented on Earth. Tamu Massif covers an area roughly equivalent to the British Isles or the state of New Mexico, making it nearly as big as the giant volcanoes of Mars and placing it among the l ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 5 2013 - 1:53pm

Earth's Axial Precession 'Fixes' Dinner For Marine Organisms

The cyclic wobble of the Earth on its axis, axial precession, controls the production of  "fixed" nitrogen, a nutrient essential to the health of the ocean, according to a new study. ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 14 2013 - 7:30am

Aram Chaos Caused By Collapse Of Ice Lake

Chaotic terrains are enigmatic features stretching up to hundreds of kilometres across Mars. The mechanism by which they formed is hypothesis and even speculation in most cases. A recent paper, which combines observations from satellite photos of the 280 k ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 22 2013 - 11:56am

Deep Earthquakes Get A Little Less Mysterious

Deep earthquakes occur where the oceanic lithosphere, driven by tectonics, plunges under continental plates – examples are off the coasts of the western United States, Russia and Japan. Some new research is a step toward replicating the full power of thes ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 24 2013 - 8:47am

Mugearite: Unlike Any Other Igneous Rock On Mars

The first rock that scientists analyzed on Mars with a pair of chemical instruments aboard the Curiosity rover turned out to be a doozy – a pyramid-shaped volcanic rock called a "mugearite" that is unlike any other Martian igneous rock ever foun ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 26 2013 - 5:21pm

Curiosity Rover: Water For Future Mars Astronauts?

NASA's Curiosity Rover has sampled a surprising diversity of soils and sediments along a half-kilometer route during its first few months on Mars. And what it has found tells a complex story about the gradual desiccation of the Red Planet. Perhaps mo ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 26 2013 - 5:30pm