The ancient Greek philosopher was on to something, researchers found. Plato, the Greek philosopher who lived in the 5th century B.C.E., believed that the universe…
A rock core from Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona, has given scientists a powerful new tool to understand how catastrophic events shaped Earth’s ecosystems before…
Indigenous knowledge, including oral histories, mythologies, place names, and classification schemes, can span many generations, preserving information that has helped native communities adapt to natural…
Finding ends a century-long search for microbes that live on manganese. Caltech microbiologists have discovered bacteria that feed on manganese and use the metal as…
An international team reveals discoveries about an unusual time called the “Carnian Pluvial Episode.” The Triassic Period, about 252 to 201 million years ago, was…
Thank goodness for the Earth’s crust: It is, after all, that solid, outermost layer of our planet that supports everything above it. But much of…
Earth’s Moon has a ‘near side’ that is perpetually Earth-facing and a ‘far side’, which always faces away from Earth. The composition of the Moon’s…
A new study shows for the first time that the collapse of terrestrial ecosystems during Earth’s most deadly mass extinction event was directly responsible for…
A team of researchers led by Arizona State University School of Earth and Space Exploration Professor Lindy Elkins-Tanton has provided the first ever direct evidence that extensive…
Skoltech scientists and their industry colleagues have found a way to use machine learning to accurately predict rock thermal conductivity, a crucial parameter for enhanced…
Oxygen first accumulated in the Earth’s atmosphere about 2.4 billion years ago, during the Great Oxidation Event. A long-standing puzzle has been that geologic clues…
A team of geologists led by CU Boulder is digging into what may be Earth’s most famous case of geologic amnesia. Researchers have spotted that phenomenon,…
In high-pressure experiments, scientists have discovered new forms of the common mineral feldspar. At moderate temperatures, these hitherto unknown variants are stable at pressures of…
After a cold winter, a shift in weather patterns has unleashed a blast of early summer heat across Alaska. On May 9, 2020, temperatures hit…
The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over part of Chile’s Atacama Desert, which is bound on the west by the Pacific and on the east…
By studying how the tiniest organisms in the Atacama Desert of Chile, one of the driest places on Earth, extract water from rocks, researchers at…
Research on Russian drill core challenges long-standing models of oxygenation on Earth. Earth may have been far more oxygen-rich early in its history than previously…
Learning how liquid silicates behave at these extreme temperatures and pressures has been a longstanding challenge in the geosciences. Far below the Earth’s surface, about…