Uskiella spargen a small plant whose axes divide several times before bearing oval sporangia. Credit : Cyrille Prestianni

Discovery of the oldest plant fossils on the African continent!

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...

Open cut hard rock mining, Kalgoorlie, Western Australia.

Mining precious rare-earth elements from coal fly ash with a reusable...

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

One of the strombolian explosions that have occurred at Stromboli about every 10 minutes for at least 2000 years. © UNIGE, Luca Caricchi

Analysing volcanoes to predict their awakening

A new study led by A&S professor Tao Wen used a novel method of machine learning to explore the environmental impact of oil and gas drilling.

Environmental impact of hydrofracking vs. conventional gas/oil drilling: Research shows the...

In the time between mega-earthquakes, smaller earthquakes continuously occur between oceanic and continental plates (background earthquakes). Where a lot of energy is released through these earthquakes, we observe coastal mountains that rise faster. In contrast, slow-uplifting coastal areas coincide with fewer background earthquakes. Credit: University of Tübingen

Continuous activity of small earthquakes makes mountains grow

Chunks of exotic green rocks from the mantle erupted from the San Carlos Volcanic Field, Arizona. Credit: James St John

Rock crystals from the deep give microscopic clues to earthquake ground...

Agung, a volcano in Bali, had an explosive eruption in 2018. Credit: O.L. Andersen

New knowledge of Earth’s mantle helps to explain Indonesia’s explosive volcanoes

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...

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