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geology

climate science

Solving the Faint-Sun Paradox

By Jonathan O'Callaghan
January 27, 2022
Read Later

We might have a past faint sun to owe for life’s existence. This has consequences for the possibility of life outside Earth.

Lava bubbling out of the top of a volcano.
geophysics

A Burp or a Blast? Seismic Signals Reveal the Volcanic Eruption to Come

By Robin George Andrews
June 1, 2021
Read Later

Scientists have begun to decipher the subtle signs that reveal how explosive a volcanic eruption is going to be.

Artistic representation of water radiolysis supporting life below ground.
microbiology

Radioactivity May Fuel Life Deep Underground and Inside Other Worlds

By Jordana Cepelewicz
May 24, 2021
Read Later

New work suggests that the radiolytic splitting of water supports giant subsurface ecosystems of life on Earth — and could do it elsewhere, too.

Q&A

The New Historian of the Smash That Made the Himalayas

By Robin George Andrews
April 14, 2021
Read Later

About 60 million years ago, India plowed into Eurasia and pushed up the Himalayas. But when Lucía Pérez-Díaz reconstructed the event in detail, she found that its central mystery depended on a broken geological clock.

A mosaic of five microscope images of igneous rocks. The rocks are dappled with blue, pink, orange and multicolor inclusions.
geology

Scientists Pin Down When Earth’s Crust Cracked, Then Came to Life

By Howard Lee
March 25, 2021
Read Later

New data indicating that Earth’s surface broke up about 3.2 billion years ago helps clarify how plate tectonics drove the evolution of complex life.

Graphical model of a cubic earth.
geophysics

Scientists Uncover the Universal Geometry of Geology

By Joshua Sokol
November 19, 2020
Read Later

An exercise in pure mathematics has led to a wide-ranging theory of how the world comes together.

An ice sheet stretching into the distance.
Abstractions blog

How Earth’s Climate Changes Naturally (and Why Things Are Different Now)

By Howard Lee
July 21, 2020
Read Later

Earth’s climate has fluctuated through deep time, pushed by these 10 different causes. Here’s how each compares with modern climate change.

John Priscu holds an ice core sample in a sterile laboratory.
Q&A

He Found ‘Islands of Fertility’ Beneath Antarctica’s Ice

By Steve Nadis
July 20, 2020
Read Later

John Priscu’s search for life that thrives under ice took him to subglacial lakes at the South Pole. Now he has his eye on Mars and Europa.

Destruction from 1999 Taiwan earthquake.
Abstractions blog

New Earthquake Math Predicts How Destructive They’ll Be

By Robin George Andrews
April 21, 2020
Read Later

The “pinball” model of a slipping fault line borrows from the mathematics of avalanches.


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