Geology

The Challenges Of Predicting Coastline Retreat

Despite much research on the many processes that erode rocky coastal cliffs, accurately predicting the nature, location and timing of coastline retreat remains challenging. This is also confounded by the apparently episodic nature of cliff failure.  Coastl ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 17 2013 - 9:14am

Rapid Coastal Subsidence In Bangladesh Since The 17th Century

Rapid coastal subsidence in the central Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta (Bangladesh) since the 17th century has been deduced from submerged salt-producing kilns. ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 19 2013 - 9:00am

SAR Interferometry Finds Sinkhole Precursors Along The Dead Sea

The water level in the Dead Sea has been dropping at an increasing rate since the 1960s, exceeding a meter per year during the past decade. This drop has triggered the formation of sinkholes and widespread land subsidence along the Dead Sea shoreline, res ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 18 2013 - 9:00am

New Evidence For Widespread Chicxulub-Induced Slope Failure In The Gulf Of Mexico

The largest known submarine landslide has been identified in the Gulf of Mexico, generated by the Chicxulub extraterrestrial impact which also caused the mass-extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period, providing new evidence for widespread Chicxulub- ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 20 2013 - 9:30am

The Missing-Mantle Mystery- Earth's "Hidden Flux" Of Material Identified

The Earth has a violent history: About 4.5 billion years ago, a maelstrom of gas and dust circled in a massive disc around the sun, gathering in rocky clumps to form asteroids. These asteroids, gaining momentum, whirled around a fledgling solar system, re ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 17 2013 - 10:33am

Java And The Long-Distance Impact Of Earthquakes

On May 27th, 2006 the ground on Java, an Indonesian island, shook with a magnitude 6.3 earthquake. The epicenter was located 25 km southwest of the city of Yogyakarta and initiated at a depth of 12 km. The earthquake took thousands of lives, injured ten t ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 23 2013 - 1:00pm

New Mineral Qingsongite Discovered

A new mineral, cubic boron nitride, has been officially approved by the International Mineralogical Association as “qingsongite.”  You'd think there aren't a lot of mineral discoveries happening every day but this had been in committee since 2009 ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 4 2013 - 10:46am

Insolation And Hysteresis: Why Ice Ages Keep Happening

Ice ages and warm periods have alternated fairly regularly in the Earth's history: 90,000 of every 100,000 years in the past had vast areas of North America, Europe and Asia being buried under thick ice sheets. Eventually, the pendulum swings back, i ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 12 2013 - 3:45pm

The Deep Earth Heat Key To Understanding Evolution

If you want to understand Earth's evolution, start with how heat is conducted in the deep lower mantle 400 to 1,800 miles below the surface. Researchers recently did. They were able to simulate the pressure conditions in this region to measure therma ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 9 2013 - 8:53am

Slow Earthquakes May Predict Normal Ones

Monitoring slow earthquakes may provide the basis for reliable prediction in areas where slow quakes trigger normal earthquakes. Geoscientists looked at the mechanisms behind slow earthquakes and found that 60 seconds before slow stick slip began in their ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 15 2013 - 9:14pm