Geology

How Old Is Water? Krypton Analysis Helps Scientists Unravel H20′s Life Story

How old is the water in your drinking glass? What about the ice cubes floating in it? Any answer is bound to make reference to the water cycle (evaporate, rain, repeat). Still, for most practical purposes, water is both eternal and constantly replenished. ...

Article - Matthew Van Dusen - Dec 20 2011 - 1:00pm

A Geologist's Experience (Accretionary Wedge 41)

For the 41st Accretionary Wedge Ron Schott asked for " the most memorable or significant geological event that you've directly experienced."  I had to think long and hard about this, because I haven't been lucky enough to witness anythi ...

Blog Post - Gareth Fabbro - Dec 27 2011 - 11:11am

Argon-Argon: Improving The World's Slowest Clock

Welcome to the world's slowest clock. The 'argon-argon clock' works by measuring the ratio of the amount of radioactive potassium in a sample of rock to the amount of its decay product, argon. As scientists already know the half-life of argo ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 5 2012 - 1:00pm

Why Have There Been So Many Earthquakes Recently?

I think most people- certainly myself- get that grim "what, another one?" feeling when you first hear news that there has been a big earthquake. But is it justified? In other words, have we recently been experiencing an increased rate of earthqua ...

Article - Oliver Knevitt - Jan 23 2012 - 11:29pm

The Rapid Timescales Of Caldera Volcanism

A new study in Nature shows that Santorini may have reactivated roughly a century before the Minoan "super-eruption", a lot quicker than had previously been thought.  How is it possible to time this awakening? I have written on here before about ...

Article - Gareth Fabbro - Feb 2 2012 - 6:12pm

Extinction: The Permian Period Was Gradual Doom

The deadliest mass extinction that we know of, 252 million years ago at the end of the Permian period,  took a long time to kill most of Earth's life, and it killed in stages. It wasn't superior to sudden extinctions just because it was gradual. ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 3 2012 - 3:25pm

Shale Gas Faux Danger

One of our popular topics last year was earthquakes.  That makes sense, with the earthquake in Japan.  It's not like there was some greater instance of earthquakes but if you are a Doomsday fearmonger, any event is a good event; that means anti-scienc ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Mar 6 2012 - 11:24am

GOCE Maps The Moho

ESA’s GOCE gravity satellite has provided us with t he first high-resolution map of the boundary between Earth’s crust and mantle – the Mohorovičić discontinuity, or Moho. Earth’s crust, as you know, is the outermost solid shell of our planet. Even though ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 9 2012 - 5:35pm

Paternity Test Shows Earth Is The Moon's Father

A chemical analysis of lunar soil collected by Apollo astronauts forty years disputes the belief that a giant collision between Earth and a Mars-sized object gave birth to the moon 4.5 billion years ago. In the giant-collision scenario, computer simulation ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 30 2012 - 5:30pm

The Plumbing Of Volcanoes And What It Might Tell Us About Eruptions

The "plumbing systems" that lie under volcanoes,  the location and behavior of magma chambers on the Earth's mid-ocean ridge system, a vast chain of volcanoes along which the Earth forms new crust, could bring scientists closer to predicting ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 3 2012 - 10:32am