Earth Sciences news

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

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

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Oct 02, 2009 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (14) | comments 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 ...


An enlarged image of Reduviasporonites

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

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

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

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


San Andreas fault

Major quakes can weaken seismic faults far away, scientists say

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Sep 30, 2009 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (8) | comments 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- U.S. seismologists have found evidence that the massive 2004 earthquake that triggered killer tsunamis throughout the Indian Ocean weakened at least a portion of California's famed San Andreas ...


Mystery solved: Marine microbe is source of rare nutrient

Mystery Solved: Marine Microbe Is Source of Rare Nutrient

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Sep 29, 2009 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (23) | comments 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- A new study of microscopic marine microbes, called phytoplankton, by researchers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and the University of South Carolina has solved a ten-year-old ...


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

created Sep 27, 2009 | popularity 3.8 / 5 (5) | comments 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.


Peruvian glacial retreats linked to European events of Little Ice Age

Peruvian glacial retreats linked to European events of Little Ice Age

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Sep 24, 2009 | popularity 4 / 5 (5) | comments 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 ...


Global warming may dent El Nino's protective shield from Atlantic hurricanes, increase droughts

Global warming may dent El Nino's protective shield from Atlantic hurricanes, increase droughts

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Sep 23, 2009 | popularity 3.1 / 5 (12) | comments 4

(PhysOrg.com) -- El Niño, the periodic eastern Pacific phenomenon credited with shielding the United States and Caribbean from severe hurricane seasons, may be overshadowed by its brother in the central Pacific ...


'Rosetta Stone' of supervolcanoes discovered in Italian Alps

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Sep 21, 2009 | popularity 4.3 / 5 (29) | comments 6

Scientists have found the "Rosetta Stone" of supervolcanoes, those giant pockmarks in the Earth's surface produced by rare and massive explosive eruptions that rank among nature's most violent events. The eruptions produce ...


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

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

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Sep 18, 2009 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (4) | comments 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 ...


Scientists discover surprise in Earth's upper atmosphere

Scientists discover surprise in Earth's upper atmosphere

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Sep 10, 2009 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (23) | comments 5

(PhysOrg.com) -- UCLA atmospheric scientists have discovered a previously unknown basic mode of energy transfer from the solar wind to the Earth's magnetosphere. The research, federally funded by the National ...


Ancient oceans offer new insight into the origins of animal life

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Sep 09, 2009 | popularity 4.4 / 5 (10) | comments 1

(PhysOrg.com) -- Analysis of a rock type found only in the world's oldest oceans has shed new light on how large animals first got a foothold on the Earth.


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

created Sep 08, 2009 | popularity 4.3 / 5 (18) | comments 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.


Belgium's Princess Elisabeth base in Antartica

Ozone: Climate change boosts ultraviolet risk for high latitudes

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Sep 06, 2009 | popularity 2.2 / 5 (13) | comments 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 ...


Zinc and UV Zapped Life into Being?

Scientists propose new hypothesis on the origin of life

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Sep 04, 2009 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (39) | comments 36

The Miller-Urey experiment, conducted by chemists Stanley Miller and Harold Urey in 1953, is the classic experiment on the origin of life. It established that the early Earth atmosphere, as they pictured it, ...


Arctic at warmest levels in 2,000 years or more

Arctic at warmest levels in 2,000 years or more

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Sep 03, 2009 | popularity 4.3 / 5 (64) | comments 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 ...