An international team of researchers say they’ve found fossils dating back to at least 3.77 billion years ago, making them the oldest fossils ever found on our planet. The discovery, though sure to attract scrutiny, has implications for our understanding of how life got started on Earth—and how it may have emerged… Read more…
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Scientists Claim to Have Found Our Planet’s Oldest Fossils
New Zealand’s Kaikoura Canyon—known for its abundant seabed life—is now an undersea wasteland following a series of earthquake-induced mudslides. Read more…
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Enormous Mudslide Devastates New Zealand Marine Reserve
Scientists have uncovered 2 billion-year-old water in an Ontario mine. (Image: University of Toronto) Canadian Geoscientists have uncovered water that dates back a whopping two billion years. It’s the oldest water ever discovered on Earth, and it could broaden our understanding of how life emerged on our planet—and possibly elsewhere. Read more…
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Two Billion-Year-Old Water Found in Canadian Mine
Our solar system is rife with geologic activity, from eruptive ice moons to mountainous dwarf planets . Still, Earth always held a special place in the hall of geologic fame. It was the only bonafide planet to exhibit tectonic and seismic activity—until now. Read more…
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We Just Found Out That Mercury Is Geologically Active
In recent months, there’s been growing evidence that Pluto is hiding a liquid water ocean beneath its frozen surface. New models by researchers at Brown University support this hypothesis, and take it one mind-boggling step further: Pluto’s ocean may be more than 100 kilometers (62 miles) deep. Read more…
At this point, it’s safe to say that we’re going to be receiving a new ‘highest resolution image ever’ of Pluto on a close to 24 hour basis. Yesterday, we got our first peek at geologic features on the dwarf planet’s surface. And today, New Horizons beamed back the best image to date of four mysterious dark splotches near Pluto’s south pole. Read more…
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Pluto’s Mysterious Dark Splotches Come Into Focus
The earthquake in Nepal was so violent it moved mountains. Satellite imagery shows that the parts of the Himalayas sank three feet—and the area around it as much as five feet—as tectonic plates snapped under extreme pressure. But the mountains will regain their height, slowly but surely, thanks to the geologic forces at work. Read more…
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The Himalayas Dropped 3 Feet After the Nepal Earthquake
rossgneumann writes: The most abundant material on Earth didn’t have a name, and, in fact, hadn’t been seen — until now. For the first time ever, scientists have gotten their hands on a sample of bridgmanite, a mineral that is believed to make up more than a third of the volume of the Earth. In a new paper published in Science late last week, Oliver Tschauner of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and his team describe bridgmanite for the first time. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Scientists Have Finally Sampled the Most Abundant Material On Earth
Pity the poor mapmaker assigned to the South China Sea. The hotly disputed waters in the Pacific are torn between competing claims from all the countries that surround it. China, especially, has been aggressive and sly. It’s now dumping sand onto small reefs and shoals, building whole new islands to bolster its territorial claims . Read more…
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China is Building Fake Islands to Bolster Its Claim to Disputed Waters
It sounds weird, but the most abundant mineral on Earth finally got a name last week, thanks to a century-old meteorite. What? How? Why did it take so long? There were a whole confluence of reasons it took bridgmanite so long to get its name. Read more…
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Why Earth’s Most Abundant Mineral Only Just Got Its Name