all geology stories

Sulfur dioxide may have helped maintain a warm early Mars

404132862 — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 12:56:35 -0500

Sulfur dioxide (SO2) may have played a key role in the climate and geochemistry of early Mars, geoscientists at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) suggest in the Dec. 21 issue of the journal Science. Their hypothesis may resolve longstanding questions about evidence that the climate of the Red Planet was once much warmer than it is today.

Digging for solutions to energy crisis

50443248 — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 13:20:06 -0400

In the 1970s, Iceland was one of the poorest countries in Europe. Today it is one of the richest, with a per capita GDP higher than that of Denmark, from which it won full independence in 1944.

How did it accomplish this remarkable transformation? A key element was the shift from imported coal and oil to geothermal energy. Iceland now uses geothermal energy to generate a large portion of its electricity and nearly all of its heating needs.

Finding a fossilized needle in an Arctic haystack

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 06:27:54 -0400

The first season searching Arctic Canada for a fossil that would illuminate how our ancestors first crawled onto land proved Harvard Professor Farish Jenkins' explorer's maxim: Never go any place for the first time.

A crew of six trudged through a barren landscape during the summer of 1999, finding the wrong sort of rocks scattered across the wrong sort of terrain. In addition to dealing with the frustration and isolation, researchers had to keep a wary eye peeled for predators, since the islands of Arctic Canada are the stomping grounds for polar bears. So along with their scientific gear, the researchers carried rifles in case of an encounter.

Missing link crawls out of muck

50443248 — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 13:19:36 -0400

Paleontologists have discovered fossils of a species that provides the missing evolutionary link between fish and the first animals that walked out of water onto land about 375 million years ago. The newly found species, Tiktaalik roseae, has a skull, a neck, ribs, and parts of the limbs that are similar to four-legged animals known as tetrapods, as well as fishlike features such as a primitive jaw, fins, and scales.

Winds and waves sculpted a 'snowball Earth'

50443248 — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 16:12:28 -0400

It's a world hard to imagine. Some 650 million years ago, Earth's land and oceans were almost completely covered by ice and snow. The planet's population - primitive plants and animals like algae and bacteria - sheltered themselves around hot springs on the ocean floor, in surface ponds melted by volcanic heat, or in nooks where the ice was thin enough for the sun to seep through.

A theory that has been around since 1992 proposes that the Earth was like this at least twice between about 700 million and 600 million years ago. At first geologists dismissed it as a crazy idea, but for the past 10 years the idea of a snowball Earth has gained a lot of respect, if not snowballed.

Australian shale tells tale of layered seas

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:30:47 -0400

Harvard researchers have found important clues about the Earth's environment 1.5 billion years ago. Their results present quite a different picture from present times, in which oceans have oxygen-rich waters from top to bottom and are capable of supporting large animal life even in their depths. The findings are important not just for what they tell us about prehistoric oceans, but also for what they tell us about oxygen in the air at the time. Scientists believe oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere rose to today's levels in two distinct jumps, 2.3 billion years ago and at about 800 million years ago.

New earthquake mapping system could save lives

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:20:21 -0400

"The earthquake-hazard maps currently in use are based on the premise that the closer a building is to a large fault, the better designed it should be," says Harvard earthquake expert John Shaw. "But what these new, comprehensive 3-D models we've developed tell us is that this basic rule of proximity doesn't always work." A case in point is the quake that interrupted the 1989 World Series in San Francisco.

El Nino found to be 124,000 years old

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:11:27 -0400

Records preserved in corals from Indonesia reveal that El Niño was causing severe weather even before the last ice age began, when the climate apparently was like it was for most of the 20th century. "No question about it; there were El Niños that long ago," says Daniel Schrag, professor of earth and planetary sciences. "The finding suggests that El Niños are much more stable than we ever thought." Evidence of droughts and unusually wet weather, chemically etched into ancient reefs, show changes every three to seven years, a pattern that Schrag finds "remarkably similar" to those of El Niños from 1856 to 1976. After that, a sudden change occurred. Since 1976, the pattern looks completely different, with El Niño events appearing faster and stronger.