Category: Earth

The Sturtian ‘Snowball Earth’ glaciation (717 to 661 million years ago) is regarded as the most extreme interval of icehouse climate in Earth’s history. In a new study, geologists from the University of Sydney and the University of…

As they have done over the past decade, Prof. Avraham Levy and Naomi Avivi-Ragolsky of the Weizmann Institute of Science planned to conduct a field experiment with wheat this year at the Gilat experimental station, the southern branch of the…

In 2018, in the Indian state of Kerala, more than 400 people died in a single series of floods that displaced millions. Flooding is a regular feature of the yearly monsoon season in tropical Asia, but until now it has been difficult to predict…

A few decades ago, seismologists identified a thin layer with a lower velocity in Earth’s metallic liquid core. The origin of this layer, known as the E’ layer, has been a mystery. Now, geoscientists have revealed that water from the…

A giant collision between the ancient protoplanet Theia and the proto-Earth about 4.5 billion years ago may have formed Earth’s Moon as well as two continent-sized regions — formally known as large low-velocity provinces — within…

The Great Sphinx of Giza is a limestone statue of a reclining sphinx, a mythical creature characterised by the combination of a human head and a lion’s body.

Situated on the Giza Plateau along the west bank of the Nile in Giza, the Great Sphinx…

Approximately 155 million years ago, a 5000 km piece of continent broke off from western Australia, leaving behind a basin hidden below the ocean known as the Argo Abyssal Plain.

This underwater feature lends its name to the newly formed continent…

Revealed by 3D seismic imaging, the newly-discovered water reservoir lies 3.2 km (2 miles) under the ocean floor off the coast of New Zealand, where it may be dampening a major earthquake fault that faces the country’s North Island. The…

While it is known that for diamonds to form there needs to be carbon deep in the Earth, and for these diamonds to turn pink they must be subjected to forces from colliding tectonic plates, Curtin University researchers have found the third…

Phosphate minerals such as those in the apatite group tend to be the dominant forms of phosphorus in minerals on the Earth’s surface. Phosphates can be created from phosphides during high-energy events, such as lightning and impacts. New…