Geology

Volcanoes Like Mount Hood Can Quickly Become Active

Magma sitting 4-5 kilometers beneath the surface of Oregon's Mount Hood has been stored in near-solid conditions for thousands of years but that doesn't mean it won't change rapidly.  The time it takes to liquefy and potentially erupt is su ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 27 2014 - 5:29pm

Gondwana: What Sculpted Africa's Margin 130 Million Years Ago?

The break-up of the supercontinent Gondwana about 130 Million years ago could have led to a completely different shape of the African and South American continent- with an ocean south of today's Sahara desert. Researchers from the University of Sydne ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 1 2014 - 7:12pm

Recreating Jupiter's Moon On Earth

It's difficult to be certain yet but, based on information obtained on the Voyager and Galileo missions, scientists suspect that inside Europa, one of the icy moons of Jupiter, there exist reservoirs of liquid. The Voyager and Galileo missions also r ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 14 2014 - 10:16am

The Goldilocks Principle: Rocks Are Why We Don't Have Global Cooling

In the television show "Cosmos", the writers and host Neil deGrasse Tyson implied that the atmosphere on Venus was due to a runaway greenhouse gas effect. They also said Giordano Bruno was a martyr for astronomy and that Saturn was the 'jew ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 19 2014 - 4:15pm

2010 Chile Earthquakes: Water In Plate Boundary Zone Was Key Factor

The largest earthquakes occur where oceanic plates move beneath continents. Obviously, water trapped in the boundary between both plates has a dominant influence on the earthquake rupture process. Writing in Nature Geoscience (28.03.2014), a group of scie ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 29 2014 - 3:20pm

Geologic Clock: Interior Of The Earth Helps Determine The Moon's Age

The Moon formed nearly 100 million years after the start of the solar system, according to a paper based on measurements from the interior of the Earth combined with computer simulations of the protoplanetary disk from which the Earth and other terrestria ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 7 2014 - 2:30am

Brunswick Magnetic Anomaly Shows There's A Bit Of Africa In North America

The repeated cycles of plate tectonics throughout history that led to collision, assembly and disruption of large supercontinents have produced modern continents that are collages of bits and pieces of each other. Figuring out the origin and make-up of co ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 2 2014 - 11:32pm

Early Tibetan Plateau Larger Than Previously Thought- And Younger Too

The Tibetan Plateau — the world's largest, highest, and flattest plateau — had a larger initial extent than previously documented.   Known as the "Roof of the World," the Tibetan Plateau covers more than 970,000 square miles in Asia and Ind ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 10 2014 - 4:38pm

The Chemical Secrets Found In Ancient Mars Rocks

Geologists have analyzed 40 meteorites that fell to Earth from Mars those chemical signatures have revealed some secrets of the early Martian atmosphere. The atmospheres of Mars and Earth diverged in important ways very early in the 4.6 billion year histo ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 16 2014 - 2:37pm

Lost World: 3-Million-Year-Old Landscape Still Exists Under Greenland Ice Sheet

Parts of the landscape underlying the massive Greenland ice sheet may have been undisturbed for almost 3 million years, since the island became completely ice-covered, say researchers who based their discovery on an analysis of the chemical composition of ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 18 2014 - 11:12am