Tag Archive for 'Earth'

Earth’s technosphere now weighs some 30 trillion tons -- a mass of more than 50 kg for every sq.m of the planet’s surface, according to Jan Zalasiewicz et al.

Humans and Domestic Animals Will Dominate Anthropocene-Era Fossil Record, Paleontologists Say

Dec 19, 2019 by News Staff

The terrestrial fossil record of the current geological epoch, the Anthropocene, will be unique in Earth history and will be dominated by humans, cows,...

Bed elevation of the Antarctic ice sheet color coded between minus 2 and 1 km (minus 1.2 and 0.6 miles) above sea level. The white lines delineate the basins from the ice sheet mass balance inter-comparison exercise (IMBIE). Image credit: Morlighem et al, doi: 10.1038/s41561-019-0510-8.

Scientists Create New Bed Topography Map of Earth’s Southernmost Continent

Dec 16, 2019 by News Staff

BedMachine Antarctica is a new bed topography map based on ice thickness data from different research institutes dating back to 1967, encompassing nearly...

This map shows locations of samples analyzed to estimate crustal thickness during the Laramide orogeny. Text in white boxes is the average crustal thickness and average age for locations (labeled in brown) with over 5 samples. CRM - Catalina-Rincon Mountains, BM - Baboquivari Mountains. Image credit: Chapman et al, doi: 10.1130/G47117.1.

Southwestern U.S. Was Once Similar to Today’s Tibetan Plateau: Study

Dec 5, 2019 by News Staff

New research suggests that during the Late Cretaceous epoch to the Early Paleogene epoch (80-50 million years ago), much of the southwestern United States...

Neanderthal. Image credit: Neanderthal Museum.

Were Neanderthals, Denisovans and Other Archaic Humans Victims of Sixth Mass Extinction?

Dec 1, 2019 by The Conversation

Nine human species walked the Earth 300,000 years ago. Now there is just one. A reconstruction of a Neanderthal man. Image credit: Neanderthal Museum. Neanderthals...

Massive Asteroid Impacts Triggered Early Plate Tectonics, Study Suggests

Nov 27, 2019 by News Staff

When and how the Earth evolved from a molten mass into a rocky planetary body continually resurfaced by plate tectonics remain some of the biggest questions...

Cheng et al report genome sequences and analyses of two early diverging Zygnematophyceae species, Spirogloea muscicola and Mesotaenium endlicherianum, that share the same subaerial/terrestrial habitat with the earliest-diverging embryophytes, the bryophytes. Image credit: Cheng et al, doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2019.10.019.

Natural Genetic Engineering Allowed Plants to Move from Water to Land

Nov 15, 2019 by News Staff

Horizontal gene transfer from soil bacteria to algae allowed early life to move to land, according to new research. Cheng et al report genome sequences...

The Nile is an international river as its drainage basin covers eleven countries: Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, South Sudan, Republic of the Sudan, and Egypt. Image credit: Jande Canthus.

Nile River is 30 Million Years Old, Research Shows

Nov 12, 2019 by News Staff

The Nile is a 4,130-mile (6,650 km) long river in northeastern Africa. It has been suggested that the river in its present path is at least 6 million...

An illustrated meteorite impact scenario to exemplify the Siljan impact event. Image credit: Henrik Drake.

Signs of Ancient Microbes Found within 381-Million-Year-Old Crater

Nov 6, 2019 by News Staff

Fractured rocks of impact craters may be suitable hosts for deep microbial communities on Earth and potentially other terrestrial planets, yet direct evidence...

A deep-sea hydrothermal vent. Image credit: Oregon State University / CC BY-SA 2.0.

Life Originated in Hydrothermal Vents, New Study Suggests

Nov 5, 2019 by News Staff

By creating protocells — seen as a key stepping stone to the development of cell-based life — in hot, alkaline seawater, a team of scientists...

Normal and mutated fern spores from the end-Triassic mass extinction. Scale bar - 20 μm. Image credit: Sofie Lindström, Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland.

Gaseous Mercury Emissions from Volcanoes Contributed to End-Triassic Mass Extinction

Oct 30, 2019 by News Staff

The end-Triassic mass extinction occurred 201.51 million years ago and resulted in the demise of some 76% of all marine and land species. Up until now,...

This painting depicts an asteroid slamming into tropical, shallow seas of the sulfur-rich Yucatan Peninsula in what is today southeast Mexico. The aftermath of this immense asteroid collision, which occurred approximately 65 million years ago, is believed to have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs and many other species on Earth. Shown in this painting are pterodactyls, flying reptiles with wingspans of up to 50 feet, gliding above low tropical clouds. Image credit: Donald E. Davis / NASA.

Study: Asteroid Impact, Not Volcanism, was Key in Driving End-Cretaceous Mass Extinction

Oct 23, 2019 by News Staff

The end-Cretaceous mass extinction 66 million years ago eradicated roughly 75% of the animal and plant species on Earth, including whole groups like non-avian...

Kimberlite from a mine in the United States. Image credit: Woudloper / CC BY-SA 1.0.

Researchers Find Chemical Signatures of Earth’s Primordial Mantle in Kimberlites

Oct 23, 2019 by News Staff

A team of geoscientists from Australia, Canada and the UK has detected primordial chemical signatures preserved within young kimberlites, small-volume...

Stormquakes offshore North America and seismic stations from 2006 to 2015. The located stormquakes are shown as the red circles, and the seismic stations are shown as triangles. Due to the location uncertainties, some of the apparent stormquake locations are beyond the coastlines. The yellow contours show regions where stormquakes were detected. The orange contour shows a comparison region offshore Mexico that has been struck by hurricanes but without excitation of stormquakes. The insert shows earthquakes (blue dots) reported in the International Seismological Centre catalog with magnitudes greater than 3 and shallower than 40 km from 2006 to 2015. Image credit: Fan et al, doi: 10.1029/2019GL084217.

New Geophysical Phenomenon Discovered: Stormquakes

Oct 22, 2019 by News Staff

Energetic storms generate strong ocean waves, which can interact with shallow seafloor features located near the edge of continental shelves known as ocean...

This artist’s rendering shows a white dwarf star with two planets. Image credit: Mark Garlick.

Rocky Exoplanets Often Have Earth- and Mars-Like Internal Properties

Oct 18, 2019 by News Staff

White dwarfs are dense, burned-out remnants of normal stars. Due to their strong gravitational pull, surface atmospheres of these ancient objects should...

Broken and rounded dodecahedral diamond from the Koffiefontein kimberlite pipe that hosted goldschmidtite; the mineral is seen in green and radiation damage of the diamond can be seen in the brown regions. Image credit: Meyer et al, doi: 10.2138/am-2019-6937.

Goldschmidtite: New Mineral from Earth’s Mantle Found inside Diamond

Sep 24, 2019 by Natali Anderson

A team of geologists from the University of Alberta, Northwestern University and the University of Glasgow has found a previously unknown mineral in a...

Schmitz et al argue that the mid-Ordovician ice age was caused by global cooling, triggered by extra dust in the atmosphere of Earth from the breakup of a giant asteroid in the main asteroid belt. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Dust from Disintegrated Asteroid Triggered Mid-Ordovician Ice Age

Sep 19, 2019 by News Staff

There’s always a lot of extraterrestrial dust floating down to Earth, but this dust is normally only a tiny fraction of the other dust in our atmosphere...

Chindesaurus bryansmalli. Image credit: Petrified Forest National Park.

Elevated Levels of Oxygen Gave Rise to North American Dinosaurs, Scientists Say

Aug 22, 2019 by News Staff

A team of researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the University of Texas Austin has used a new technique to analyze tiny amounts of gas...

The four MMS spacecraft -- shown here in an artist’s concept -- have made more than 4,000 trips through the boundaries of Earth’s magnetic field. Image credit: NASA / Goddard / Conceptual Image Lab.

NASA’s MMS Spacecraft Makes First High-Resolution Measurements of Interplanetary Shock

Aug 16, 2019 by News Staff

Interplanetary shocks are a type of collisionless shock — events where particles transfer energy through electromagnetic fields instead of directly...

Earth’s magnetic field connects the North Pole (orange lines) with the South Pole (blue lines) in this NASA-created image. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Most Recent Reversal of Earth’s Magnetic Field Lasted 22,000 Years

Aug 8, 2019 by News Staff

Earth’s magnetic field is produced in the planet’s liquid iron outer core as it spins around the solid inner core, and protects the surface from harmful...

Park et al revealed large-scale associations between industries and people across the globe: (a) the large-scale organization of geo-industrial clusters in the labor flow network; each circle represents a geo-industrial cluster, with size proportional to its number of employees; the colors represent the highest-level community membership; (b-e) two examples of hierarchical sub-structures in the labor flow network are illustrated; each circle represents a firm and the bar charts show the reduction in industry and region entropy within the cluster as a proportion of the parent cluster’s entropy: (b, c) the organization of banking and financial geo-industrial clusters are affected more by industries than geography; (d, e) the geo-industrial clusters in U.S. Midwest and South region form strong geographical clusters. Image credit: Park et al, doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-11380-w.

Scientists Create Global Map of Labor Flow

Aug 5, 2019 by News Staff

A team of scientists from Indiana University and the professional network LinkedIn has created the first global map of labor flow. Park et al revealed...

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