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Geology News And Research - October 2007 Archives
 | A series of monumental volcanic eruptions in India may have killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, not a meteor impact in the Gulf of Mexico. The eruptions, which created the gigantic Deccan Traps lava beds of India, are now the prime suspect in the most famous and persistent paleontological murder mystery, say scientists who have conducted a slew of new investigations honing down eruption timing. ...> Full Article |
Despite decades of ever more-exacting science projecting Earth's warming climate, there remains large uncertainty about just how much warming will actually occur.
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A Colorado State researcher is studying Earth's ancient earthquakes, or fossil earthquakes, to get a better understanding of how and why earthquakes happen.
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 | The greatest mass extinction in Earth’s history also may have been one of the slowest, according to a study that casts further doubt on the extinction-by-meteor theory. ...> Full Article |
 | A team of scientists have identified a new likely source of a spike in atmospheric methane coming out of the North during the end of the last ice age. ...> Full Article |
 | Seismologists have recast their understanding of the inner workings of Earth from a relatively homogeneous environment to one that is highly dynamic and chemically diverse. ...> Full Article |
Spanish researcher further refined the recently developed TEX86 paleothermometer. The thermometer measures seawater temperature dependent changes in the cell wall composition of archeabacteria.
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 | Over the next five years, an international team of scientists will drill deep into the Earth's crust off the shore of Japan to understand how undersea earthquakes are generated and to establish a series of permanent undersea observatories on the plate boundary. ...> Full Article |
 | A spectacular megabreccia (a coarse rock assemblage composed of large angular-to-rounded fragments, some over 6m in length, held together by a mineral cement - in this particular case by melted rock in the form of fine crystalline glassy material) in the Kraaipan granite-greenstone terrane, located roughly midway between Mafikeng and Vryburg, has provided the first clues to the recognition of a new meteorite impact locality. The discovery adds a sixth impact site to the list previously recorded in southern Africa and is exceeded in size only by the Vredefort and Morokweng impact structures. ...> Full Article |
A team scientists has devised a new way to study Earth's past climate by analyzing the chemical composition of ancient marine fossils. The first published tests with the method further support the view that atmospheric CO2 has contributed to dramatic climate variations in the past, and strengthen projections that human CO2 emissions could cause global warming.
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 | The saltiness of the sea comes from dissolved minerals, especially sodium, chlorine, sulfur, calcium, magnesium, and potassium, says Galen McKinley, a UW-Madison professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences. ...> Full Article |
New minerals include stornesite-(Y), chopinite and tassieite, all are extremely rare and represented only by microscopic samples.
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New research has shed light on an important, but previously little-understood period in Africa's climate history that has implications for understanding human evolution and the expansion of Homo sapiens out of tropical Africa.
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 | Carbon dioxide did not cause the end of the last ice age, a new study in Science suggests, contrary to past inferences from ice core records. ...> Full Article |
 | When Georgia Tech Assistant Professor Kim Cobb and graduate student Jud Partin wanted to understand the mechanisms that drove the abrupt climate change events that occurred thousands of years ago, they didn't drill for ice cores from the glaciers of Greenland or the icy plains of Antarctica, as is customary for paleoclimatolgists. Instead, they went underground. ...> Full Article |
 | Skiers and snowboarders in New Zealand may have the recent eruption to thank for an extended ski season. ...> Full Article |
 | Scientists drill into earthquake zone 10,000-plus feet beneath Earth's surface ...> Full Article |
 | A researcher's surprising discovery - made first in his garage and later verified through field work - has resulted in the naming of a new mineral species that may exist on Mars, and has caught the attention of the NASA space program. ...> Full Article |
 | One of the most ambitious earth science expeditions yet mounted to gain a better understanding of the earthquake process, has begun off the coast of Japan. ...> Full Article |
If our planet did not have the ability to store oxygen in the deep reaches of its mantle there would probably be no life on its surface. This is the conclusion reached by scientists at the University of Bonn who have subjected the mineral majorite to close laboratory examination. Majorite normally occurs only at a depth of several hundred kilometres under very high pressures and temperatures.
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A new artificial intelligence technique to speed the planning of tasks when resources are limited
'Tiger mothers' should tame parenting approach
Film coatings made from whey
Growing US violent extremism by the numbers
If a fat tax is coming, here's how to make it efficient, effective
Bobsled runs -- fast and yet safe
Fruit fly intestine may hold secret to the fountain of youth
New study may answer questions about enigmatic Little Ice Age
What really happened prior to 'Snowball Earth'?
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Waiting for Death Valley's Big Bang
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Researchers identify molecular 'culprit' in rise of planetary oxygen