What's up in
geophysics
geophysics
A Massive Subterranean ‘Tree’ Is Moving Magma to Earth’s Surface
Deep in the mantle, a branching plume of intensely hot material appears to be the engine powering vast volcanic activity.
geophysics
A Burp or a Blast? Seismic Signals Reveal the Volcanic Eruption to Come
Scientists have begun to decipher the subtle signs that reveal how explosive a volcanic eruption is going to be.
Q&A
The New Historian of the Smash That Made the Himalayas
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.
planetary science
Iceland’s Eruptions Reveal the Hot History of Mars
The new volcanic fissures are more otherworldly than they first appear.
geology
Scientists Pin Down When Earth’s Crust Cracked, Then Came to Life
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.
planetary science
Rumbles on Mars Raise Hopes of Underground Magma Flows
Small and cold, Mars has long been considered a dead planet. But a series of recent discoveries has forced scientists to rethink how recently its insides stopped churning — if they ever stopped at all.
geophysics
Scientists Uncover the Universal Geometry of Geology
An exercise in pure mathematics has led to a wide-ranging theory of how the world comes together.
Abstractions blog
New Earthquake Math Predicts How Destructive They’ll Be
The “pinball” model of a slipping fault line borrows from the mathematics of avalanches.
Q&A
A Rapid End Strikes the Dinosaur Extinction Debate
The paleontologist Pincelli Hull has nailed down the timing and speed of the extinction that killed off the dinosaurs — details that carry ominous warnings for today.