Geophysics News

Feb 26, 2026 by Sergio Prostak

Most people know about lightning and the havoc it wreaks on forests. They do not know about the weak electrical glow, called a corona, that is thought to form on tree leaves under thunderstorms. Using an ultraviolet-sensitive instrument, Pennsylvania State University researchers have now directly observed and measured this electrical phenomenon on sweetgum, loblolly pine and other tree species under thunderstorms in several U.S. states. Coronae glow...

Feb 16, 2026 by News Staff

For years glaciologists puzzled over strange plume-like structures hidden deep within the Greenland Ice Sheet. Now a new study by scientists from the University...

Feb 16, 2026 by News Staff

New research by geoscientists from the University of Florida and the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris traces the origins of the Antarctic gravity...

Feb 3, 2026 by News Staff

Two immense, ultrahot rock structures located at the base of Earth’s mantle, around 2,900 km beneath Africa and the Pacific, have been shaping Earth’s...

Nov 24, 2025 by News Staff

For decades, scientists have been baffled by two enormous structures buried deep inside Earth. These anomalies may retain geochemical signatures distinct...

Oct 14, 2025 by News Staff

This happens due to plate tectonics and movements in the bedrock, caused by the large ice sheets on top melting and reducing pressure on the subsurface,...

Aug 21, 2025 by News Staff

While banning ozone-destroying gases such as CFCs has helped the ozone layer to recover, when combined with increased air pollution the impact of ozone...

Jul 28, 2025 by News Staff

In a new paper, Penn State Professor Victor Pasko and his colleagues described how they determined strong electric fields in thunderclouds accelerate electrons...

May 22, 2025 by News Staff

Locally known as Maka Lahi, meaning ‘Big Rock,’ this boulder was moved more than 200 m inland by a tsunami around 7,000 years ago. The limestone boulder...

Mar 4, 2025 by News Staff

More than four times stronger than the Gulf Stream, the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) is the world’s strongest ocean current and plays a disproportionate...

Mar 4, 2025 by News Staff

Heat from our Sun drives atmospheric temperature changes on Earth, which in turn can affect things like rock properties and underground water movement,...

Feb 26, 2025 by News Staff

By chemically analyzing crystals in ancient rocks, scientists from Curtin University, the University of Portsmouth and St. Francis Xavier University discovered...

Feb 11, 2025 by News Staff

Geoscientists from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, the Institute of Geology and Geophysics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Cornell...

Oct 3, 2024 by News Staff

There’s more to thunderclouds than rain and lightning. Along with visible light emissions, thunderclouds can produce intense bursts of gamma rays that...

Oct 1, 2024 by News Staff

Mount Everest, also known as Chomolungma in Tibetan or Sagarmāthā in Nepali, is about 15 to 50 m taller than it would otherwise be because of uplift...

Oct 1, 2024 by News Staff

During the Mesozoic era, between 250 and 120 million years ago, an ancient seafloor sank deep into Earth in the East Pacific Rise, a tectonic plate boundary...

Sep 2, 2024 by News Staff

Gold nuggets occur predominantly in quartz veins, and the current paradigm posits that gold precipitates from hot water and carbon dioxide-rich fluids...

Aug 28, 2024 by News Staff

First hypothesized more than 60 years ago, the ambipolar electric field is a key driver of the polar wind, a steady outflow of charged particles into space...

Aug 20, 2024 by Enrico de Lazaro

Scientists from James Madison University have performed a multi-variable investigation of thunderstorm environments in two distinct geographic regions:...

Aug 5, 2024 by News Staff

In the new study, Dr. David Hernández Uribe from the University of Illinois Chicago used computer models to study the formation of magmas thought to hold...