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Shaped by erosion, fire, or water, caves have some surprising but always beautiful births.
The Hellisheidi power plant is the largest geothermal system in the world, but also the site of a unique science experiment.
Authorities evacuated people and closed off the area to traffic, while they find a way to stabilize the collapsed area.
There's no need to panic though.
It's way older than divers thought.
Fulfilling the job that scientists and unlucky undergrads have been doing for years, the kinetic machine Jller selects and sorts pebbles found on a 6 1/2 x 13 foot platform into a grid organized by geologic age. Without any assistance, the machine analyzes rocks based on their shape and sizes, understand their correct placement and transports them […]
Canadian aboriginals have been using clay to treat their ailments for centuries.
In the past decade, ice extent at the two poles couldn't be more different. The Arctic has seen its 13 smallest maximum ice extents in the last 13 years, and since 1979 lost 620,000 square miles of winter sea ice cover, an area more than twice the size of Texas. Meanwhile, in Antarctica, ice cover has actually increased despite warming trends
If I asked you to guess where we have the best chances of finding life outside of Earth, you’d be hard pressed to think about Europa. But Jupiter’s frozen moon is beginning to look more and more attractive, and may even harbor an Earth-like ocean. We’ve written extensively before about the life harboring possibilities of […]
Mount Ruapehu on New Zealand’s north island is starting to show signs of eruption, and hikers have been warned to stay away from it. This is the real-life Mount Doom from The Lord of the Rings, where many scenes of the movie were shot. Mount Ruapehu is a stratovolcano with three major peaks: Tahurangi (2,797 m), Te […]
A surprising study found that a group of ancient lizards called mosasaurs were in fact warm-blooded.
NASA just released the first ever topographic model of Mercury, the planet closest to the Sun.
Believe it or not, this is actually lava.
The prettiest carbon allotropes of them all, diamonds have fascinated royalty, collectors and window shoppers since ancient times. Some gem-grade diamonds, no bigger than a thumb, sell for tens of million. Most, however, aren't worth much. But even the most prized diamonds aren't perfect, and it is these imperfections that might settle and age long debate among chemists and geologists: what's the source of gem-grade diamonds? A recent analysis suggests both gem diamonds and the largely impure fibrous diamonds stem from the same source.
The exact path Hannibal took in this epic voyage across the Alps has been a matter of debate among scholars, but now scientists think they've finally found it by following some unlikely bread crumbs: ancient horse dung still teeming with preserved bacteria left by Hannibal's cavalry.
British paleontologists have identified a tiny, ancient animal that carried around its young tethered in capsules around its body, like kites.
Scientists have identified a 1.5 cm creature that predates the dinosaurs by 100 million years. While not exactly a spider, the tiny beast is the closest relative to spiders, but its lineage is extinct. Spiders are basically ubiquitous. They can be found on every continent except for Antarctica and in every environment ever – except […]
A survey of a major oil and natural gas-producing region in Western Canada founds evidence that hydraulic fracturing or "fracking" does indeed cause earthquakes in the region.
A few years ago, the Cassini spacecraft made a surprising discovery: there are geysers erupting on Saturn’s moon Enceladus, spewing water and ice to great heights. However, the process which causes these geysers remained unknown or controversial. Now, scientists at the University of Chicago and Princeton University have pinpointed a mechanism through which Saturn’s tidal forces […]
This is the geological map of Mars. That we have a geological map of another planet, as accurate as it may be, is simply amazing to me. More info after the scroll. Mars doesn’t have any tectonic plates, but that doesn’t stop it from having a very interesting geology. Most of our current knowledge about […]
Ammonite fossils are among the most common in the world, with their characteristic shape and chambered shell. But did you ever wonder what the deal is with those chambers? Ammonites are a group of cephalopod animals that lived as swimmers in the shallow parts of the ancient oceans. They were extremely successful, emerging in the early […]
We judge our planet's biological past by using geological evidence - fossils. Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals, plants, and other organisms from the remote past.
Fungi were thought to have a minimal impact on minerals' bioweathering. A recent study suggests that fungi are a lot more aggressive than meets the eye. These use acid to access precious nutrients like iron and burrow deep into rocks using mechanical force to further their reach.
About 55.8 million years, the rate of carbon emissions grew abruptly, leading to a period of massive warming. But today's rate of emissions is ten times higher.
New concerns are being voiced in Japan after it was discovered that a significant geological fault line passes right under a nuclear plant - and the fault is active.
How did South America slot next to Africa? Where was my country a billion years ago?
Around 65.5 million years ago a 10-km wide asteroid crashed into the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, suddenly altering all life on the planet.
Mars was never the same after a monster volcano erupted on the Red Planet some 3.5 billion years ago. Before the massive eruption, its poles were in completely different locations, so where it rivers and ice sheets. Moreover, the crust buckled and twisted in alien ways, like the skin and flesh of a peach shifting in relation to its pit.
Indonesian authorities lifted a tsunami warning issued after a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck off the island of Sumatra – the largest earthquake since the 2004 disaster. “There is no info on casualties or damages yet,” Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, a spokesman at the national disaster mitigation agency, said via text message. “The tsunami warning is based […]
Before life exploded in the Cambrian 542 million years ago, Earth's inhabitants were generally single-celled simple organisms.
As NASA’s New Horizons shuttle zoomed past Pluto, it snapped awesome photos not only of the “ex-planet”, but also of its moons. Now researchers are analyzing those pictures and reporting surprising finds – such as an ancient ocean on Charon, Pluto’s moon. Too big for its skin? The side of Pluto’s largest moon viewed by […]
We’ve seen unfortunate insects trapped in amber time and time again, but this time it’s something else. This time, a new species of ancient flower was found preserved in amber. The fossil species are a representative of the asterids, one of the most diverse groups that also include sunflower, coffee, potatoes and mint. Amber is […]
There are over 5,000 mineral species identified by scientists thus far, but fewer than 100 make up the entire planet's crust. The rest are so rare, short lived and notoriously difficult to replicate that you'd barely know they're here. Not understating the importance of such minerals -- which could offer clues on how the planet formed, but also lead to new industrial applications -- researchers from the United States cataloged the 2,500 rarest minerals on the planet.
They may have had huge mouths, but they fed on plankton - an international team of researchers has found evidence of two new plankton-eating fossil fish species.
A period of significant cooling from 536 to 660 AD brought forth massive societal changes in Europe and Asia, a new study found. The cooling, caused by volcanic activity, coincided with a massive plague, the decline of the Byzantine Empire and the spread of Slavic and Arabic people. It is well known that volcanic activity can […]
Some 50 million years ago, the world was in dire straits. Atmospheric CO2 levels were at over 1000 ppm, with some putting the level at 3500 ppm. Turtles and palm trees were thriving at the poles and sea levels were much higher than they were now as there was virtually no snow to be seen. […]
It's a song of ice and fire - scientists have just witnessed the eruption of the Big Ben volcano in the sub-Antarctic area.
Belemnites are an extinct order of cephalopods ("cephalo" meaning head and "pod" meaning leg) that lived during the Mesozoic era, some 200 to 65 million years ago. They were elongated organisms, resembling today's squids, only tinier and cuter.
The age of the Earth is 4.54 billion years - plus or minus 1% (0.05 billion years). But how do we know this?
Before WWII, there weren't that many plastics around. Today, we use so much that we could literally plaster the planet in one giant clingfilm. A paper published in the journal Anthropocene reviews the state of plastic production, use and pollution and concludes that no place on Earth has been spared.
British researchers have just made a stunning discovery - the biggest canyon may not be in the US or China but under Antarctic ice.
North Korea recently announced that it tested a massive H-bomb, one that's "capable of wiping out the entire United States".
Volcanoes are some of the most amazing geological features but quite often, they’re misunderstood or not understood at all. Here we’ll get to know them a bit better, starting with the basic facts and the moving onto cool and surprising facts, and of course, continuing with everyone’s favorite (from a distance): eruptions. Basic Volcano Facts 1. Volcanoes are […]
A new unfortunate world record has been triggered by fracking
Scientists working at the United States Geological Survey (USGS) have released the first ever digital geologic map of Alaska.
It's official - humanity has changed the Earth so much that we've basically created a new geological era, one that scientists call the Anthropocene.
Sinkholes can be dangerous. Here's what you need to know.
Gemologists working in Colombo, Sri Lanka, have confirmed the finding of the largest sapphire in the world.
Chinese researchers say their lunar rover found a new type of lunar rock unlike anything the Americans or Soviets had brought home before.
The annus horribilis continued at the jade mines in Myanmar, as another major landslide was announced, with at least one fatality and ten people missing.
