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Boriana Kalderon-Asael conducts field work at a Middle-Upper Ordovician outcrop near Reedsville, Penn. Credit: Ashleigh Hood

Earth’s climate life story, 3 billion years in the making

Geology Page - July 24, 2021

The Alum Shale, here an example of a coastal deposit, consists of quartz and potassium Feldspar clasts as well as conspicuous Pyrite crystals (here: white) embedded in a clayey matrix. Scanning electron micrograph (scale: lower image edge length corresponds to approx. 40 μm). Credit: Schulz, GFZ

A rock with many perspectives

The early Earth was hotter than it is today and this affected the strength of the crust and mantle.

The Earth has a pulse — a 27.5-million-year cycle of geological activity, researchers say

An artistic representation of the potentially habitable planet Kepler 422-b (left), compared with Earth (right). Credit: Ph03nix1986 / Wikimedia Commons

Earth-like biospheres on other planets may be rare

Zircons studied by the research team, photographed using cathodoluminescence, a technique that allowed the team to visualize the interiors of the crystals using a specialized scanning electron microscope. Dark circles on the zircons are the cavities left by the laser that was used to analyze the age and chemistry of the zircons.Scientists led by Michael Ackerson, a research geologist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, provide new evidence that modern plate tectonics, a defining feature of Earth and its unique ability to support life, emerged roughly 3.6 billion years ago. The study, published May 14 in the journal Geochemical Perspective Letters, uses zircons, the oldest minerals ever found on Earth, to peer back into the planet's ancient past.The team tested more than 3,500 zircons, each just a couple of human hairs wide, by blasting them with a laser and then measuring their chemical composition with a mass spectrometer. These tests revealed the age and underlying chemistry of each zircon. Of the thousands tested, about 200 were fit for study due to the ravages of the billions of years these minerals endured since their creation. Credit: Michael Ackerson, Smithsonian.

Earth’s oldest minerals date onset of plate tectonics to 3.6 billion years ago

Study proves that magma chambers are huge masses of crystals with...

Geology Page - June 17, 2020

A schematic diagram of the Earth's deep oxygen factory shows the oxygenation and deoxygenation processes of hydrous mantle materials in the lower mantle across the ~1000 km depth beneath Earth's surface. Under the conditions of Earth's middle mantle, scientists discovered an oxygen-excess phase, (Mg,Fe)2O3+δ (0 < δ < 1) that can be formed with under-saturated water at >1000 kilometers depths. Those oxygen-excess materials may have long-termly oxidized the shallow mantle and the crust, which is essential to allow free oxygen to build up in Earth's atmosphere. Credit: Science China Press

Oxygen-excess oxides in Earth’s mid-mantle facilitate the ascent of deep oxygen

Geology Page - May 28, 2020

Earth

Earth’s lower mantle can be oxidized in the presence of water

Geology Page - May 26, 2020

The rising Earth from the perspective of the moon.

Project aims to create first 4-D maps of Earth’s mantle

Geology Page - May 26, 2020

Earth's mantle (dark red) lies below the crust (brown layer near the surface) and above the outer core (bright red).

The 12 questions earth scientists should ask in the next 10...

Geology Page - May 26, 2020

Researchers developed a technique that allows them to study the atomic arrangements of liquid silicates at the extreme conditions found in the core-mantle boundary. This could lead to a better understanding of the Earth's early molten days, which could even extend to other rocky planets. Credit: Greg Stewart/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

Earth’s evolutionary tale, researchers probe materials at deep-Earth conditions

Geology Page - May 18, 2020

$A new study of Earth's inner core used seismic data from repeating earthquakes, called doublets, to find that refracted waves, blue, rather than reflected waves, purple, change over time -- providing the best evidence yet that Earth's inner core is rotating. Credit: Michael Vincent$

Growing mountains or shifting ground: What is going on in Earth’s...

Geology Page - May 12, 2020

Earth, core, mantle

Heavy iron isotopes leaking from Earth’s core

Geology Page - April 17, 2020

The inner core is likely composed of the hexagonal close packed phase of iron and located at the center of the Earth at pressures between 329 and 364 GPa and temperatures of ~5000 to ~6000 K. Credit: Ehime University

Is the Earth’s inner core oscillating and translating anomalously?

Geology Page - April 17, 2020

The early Earth was hotter than it is today and this affected the strength of the crust and mantle.

International study sheds new light on the transformation of the Earth’s...

Geology Page - April 17, 2020

Volcanic gas emissions in Northern Iceland

New geochemical tool reveals origin of Earth’s nitrogen

Geology Page - April 17, 2020

The team's experiments compared carbon's compatibility with the silicates that comprise the Earth's mantle (outer circle) to its compatibility with the iron that comprises the planet's core (inner circle) while under conditions mimicking the Earth's interior during its formative period. They found that more carbon would have stayed in the mantle than previously thought. Credit: Rebecca Fischer, Elizabeth Cottrell and Marion Le Voyer, Kanani Lee, and the late Erik Hauri.

Most of Earth’s carbon was hidden in the core during its...

Geology Page - April 2, 2020

Arial view of the Bungle Bungle range, May 2016. Credit: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. Nichollas Harrison

How the Bungle Bungles got their stripes

Geology Page - March 17, 2020

Earth

Earth’s Mantle, Not Its Core, May Have Generated Planet’s Early Magnetic...

Geology Page - March 17, 2020

The rocks the team analysed are the oldest preserved mantle rocks. They allow us to see into the early history of the Earth as if through a window. Credit: UNSW

Building blocks for life on Earth arrived much later than we...

Geology Page - March 17, 2020

The grey line in the rock, running from the foreground away under the boulder towards the mountains, is one of the shear zones from the study area. Credit: Lucy Campbell

‘Fossil earthquakes’ offer new insight into seismic activity deep below Earth’s...

Geology Page - March 17, 2020

The rising Earth from the perspective of the moon.

What other planets can teach us about Earth

Geology Page - March 8, 2020

Benjamin Johnson of Iowa State University woks at an outcrop in remote Western Australia where geologists are studying 3.2-billion-year-old ocean crust. Photo by Jana Meixnerova. Photos provided by Benjamin Johnson.

Geologists determine early Earth was a ‘water world’ by studying exposed...

Geology Page - March 8, 2020

They may not look like much, but CI chondrites – small fragile meteorites as shown here – are thought to be our best compositional equivalents of the bulk material of our solar system.

Earth formed much faster than previously thought

Geology Page - February 21, 2020

The cruise is led by Ursula Röhl of MARUM (left) and Debbie Thomas of Texas A&M University (right). They are supported by the Expedition Project Manager Laurel Childress.

International team starts on drilling expedition

Geology Page - January 7, 2020

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