Earth Sciences news

Could salt crusts be key ingredient in cooking up prebiotic molecules?

Sep 18, 2009 | 4.8 / 5 (4) | 0

German scientists investigating the complex chemical mixture thought to be present in the early Earth’s oceans have found that amino acids can be 'cooked' into many other important chemical building blocks ...

Global warming: Our best guess is likely wrong

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

Jul 14, 2009 | 4.6 / 5 (49) | 54

No one knows exactly how much Earth's climate will warm due to carbon emissions, but a new study this week suggests scientists' best predictions about global warming might be incorrect.

New ancient fungus finding suggests world's forests were wiped out in global catastrophe

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

Oct 01, 2009 | 4.5 / 5 (25) | 1

(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists beleive extinct fungus species capitalised on a world-wide disaster and thrived on early Earth.

Arctic at warmest levels in 2,000 years or more

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

Sep 03, 2009 | 4.3 / 5 (64) | 25

Arctic temperatures in the 1990s reached their warmest level of any decade in at least 2,000 years, new research indicates. The study, which incorporates geologic records and computer simulations, provides ...

Airborne nitrogen shifts aquatic nutrient limitation in pristine lakes

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

Nov 05, 2009 | 3.3 / 5 (4) | 3

The impact of airborne nitrogen released from the burning of fossil fuels and wide-spread use of fertilizers in agriculture is much greater that previously recognized and even extends to remote alpine lakes, ...

A person stands in the basaltic Filu-co plateau, in one of the around 100 craters existing in the Argentine Patagonia

Patagonia site of world's biggest crater field: study

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

Sep 08, 2009 | 4.3 / 5 (18) | 0

Argentina can lay claim to the world's largest crater field, a volcanic area in Patagonia known as the "Devil's Slope," according to a study released Tuesday.

Residents search among the rubble of a collapsed building in Dujiangyan southwest China Sichuan province

Sichuan quake was once-in-4,000-year event: scientists

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

Sep 27, 2009 | 3.8 / 5 (5) | 3

People who were killed, injured or bereaved in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake had the cruel misfortune to be victims of an event that probably occurs just once in four millennia, seismologists said on Sunday.

Long debate ended over cause, demise of ice ages -- may also help predict future

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

Aug 06, 2009 | 4.4 / 5 (23) | 63

Researchers have largely put to rest a long debate on the underlying mechanism that has caused periodic ice ages on Earth for the past 2.5 million years - they are ultimately linked to slight shifts in solar radiation caused ...

El Nino Could Play A Role In Colorado's Winter Weather, Scientist Says

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

Nov 17, 2009 | 2 / 5 (1) | 2

(PhysOrg.com) -- El Nino, a warming event of the tropical Pacific Ocean that affects weather patterns in the United States and elsewhere, has strengthened in recent months and already appears to have influenced Colorado's ...

53 million-year-old high Arctic mammals wintered in darkness

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

Jun 01, 2009 | 4.8 / 5 (17) | 74

(PhysOrg.com) -- Ancestors of tapirs and ancient cousins of rhinos living above the Arctic Circle 53 million years ago endured six months of darkness each year in a far milder climate than today that featured ...

Belgium's Princess Elisabeth base in Antartica

Ozone: Climate change boosts ultraviolet risk for high latitudes

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

Sep 06, 2009 | 2.2 / 5 (13) | 5

(PhysOrg.com) -- Physicists at the University of Toronto have discovered that changes in the Earth's ozone layer due to climate change will reduce the amount of ultraviolet (UV) radiation in northern high ...

Peruvian glacial retreats linked to European events of Little Ice Age

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

Sep 24, 2009 | 4 / 5 (5) | 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- A new study that reports precise ages for glacial moraines in southern Peru links climate swings in the tropics to those of Europe and North America during the Little Ice Age approximately ...

Scientists discover Amazon river is 11 million years old

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

Jul 29, 2009 | 4.4 / 5 (7) | 4

Researchers at the University of Liverpool have discovered that the Amazon river, and its transcontinental drainage, is around 11 million years old and took its present shape about 2.4 million years ago.

A new day dawned fast: Recovery from marine mass extinction happened much faster than thought

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

Oct 02, 2009 | 4.8 / 5 (14) | 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- In 1979, Luis Alvarez and his collaborators stunned the world with their discovery that an asteroid impact 65 million years ago probably killed off the dinosaurs and much of the the world's ...