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| Venus Express reboots the search for active volcanoes on Venus |
| ESA’s Venus Express has measured a highly variable quantity of the volcanic gas sulphur dioxide in the atmosphere of Venus. Scientists must now decide whether this is evidence for active volcanoes on Venus, or linked to a hitherto unknown mechanism affecting the upper atmosphere. |
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| News from Earth's magnetic field |
| It is widely known that the geomagnetic field shields our planet against highly energetic cosmic particles. The importance of the magnetic field for answering geological, tectonic or even archaeological questions is less known. Where do large, very old meteorite craters exist like, for example, the one that might have led to the extinction of the dinosaurs? How did the continents move about the globe through geological times? How does the hidden subterranean structure of a volcano look like, i.e. how high is the danger of eruption" Where had towns and buildings of ancient civilizations been located, which have long since been destroyed? |
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| DOOMSDAY POLAR FLIP TAKES 7000 YEARS |
| A reversal of the Earth's magnetic field, a rare but feared event due to the catastrophic effect it could have on human life, takes about 7000 years to complete, a U.S. scientist predicts. |
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| METHANE ON MARS MAY SIGNAL VOLCANOES |
| The Mars Express orbiter has detected minute traces of methane in the Martian atmosphere, a finding that could point to volcanic activity or fermenting microorganisms. |
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| MARTIAN MYSTERY EXPLAINED |
| The spiral troughs of Mars' polar ice caps have been called the most enigmatic landforms in the solar system. The deep canyons spiraling out from Red Planet’s North and South poles cover hundreds of miles. No other planet has such structures. |
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| SOLAR WIND CRACKS EARTH’S MAGNETIC FIELD |
| The solar wind pries open immense cracks in the Earth's magnetic field, holding them apart for hours, while it gushes through to cause geomagnetic storms, according to new U.S. research. |
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| GRAVITY MAP SHOWS EARTH IS VERY LUMPY |
| Earth is a lumpy, squishy place - or so the newest, best-ever gravity map of the planet has revealed. |
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| DEEP CARBON COULD TRIGGER MASS EXTINCTION |
| A vast reservoir of carbon is stashed beneath the Earth's crust and could be released by a major volcanic eruption, unleashing a mass extinction of the kind that last occurred 200 million years ago, German geologists report. |
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| 'THE END OF THE WORLD' HAS ALREADY BEGUN, UW SCIENTISTS SAY |
| In its 4.5 billion years, Earth has evolved from its hot, violent birth to the celebrated watery blue planet that stands out in pictures from space. But in a new book, two noted University of Washington astrobiologists say the planet already has begun the long process of devolving into a burned-out cinder, eventually to be swallowed by the sun. |
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| VOLCANOES ON JOVIAN MOON SPEW SALT INTO ATMOSPHERE. DISCOVERY EXPLAINS 1970s OBSERVATION OF SODIUM ABOVE IO. |
| Astronomers at The Johns Hopkins University, the Observatoire de Paris, and other institutions have solved a nearly 30-year-old mystery surrounding Jupiter's moon Io, showing that volcanoes there appear to be shooting gaseous salt into the moon's thin atmosphere. |
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| SATELLITES REVEAL A MYSTERY OF LARGE CHANGE IN EARTH'S GRAVITY FIELD |
| Satellite data since 1998 indicates the bulge in the Earth's gravity field at the equator is growing, and scientists think that the ocean may hold the answer to the mystery of how the changes in the trend of Earth's gravity are occurring. |
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| 100,000-YEAR CLIMATE PATTERN LINKED TO SUN'S MAGNETIC CYCLES |
| Thanks to new calculations by a Dartmouth geochemist, scientists are now looking at the earth's climate history in a new light.
Mukul Sharma, Assistant Professor of Earth Sciences at Dartmouth, examined existing sets of geophysical data and noticed something remarkable: the sun's magnetic activity is varying in 100,000-year cycles, a much longer time span than previously thought, and this solar activity, in turn, may likely cause the 100,000-year climate cycles on earth. This research helps scientists understand past climate trends and prepare for future ones. |
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| STUDY OF DUST IN ICE CORES SHOWS VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS INTERFERE WITH THE EFFECT OF SUNSPOTS ON GLOBAL CLIMATE |
| University at Buffalo scientists working with ice cores have solved a mystery surrounding sunspots and their effect on climate that has puzzled scientists since they began studying the phenomenon. |
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| NASA SPACECRAFT PROVIDES CRITICAL LINK IN SUN-EARTH CHAIN. TIMED OBSERVES ATMOSPHERE'S RESPONSE TO RECENT SOLAR STORMS. |
| NASA's TIMED (Thermosphere, Ionosphere, Mesosphere, Energetics and Dynamics) spacecraft recently observed our atmosphere's response to a series of strong solar storms, providing important new information on the final link in the Sun-Earth Connection (SEC) chain of physical processes connecting the Sun and Earth. |
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| STRENGTHENING THE CASE FOR LIFE ON MARS |
| When it was announced last month that the Mars Odyssey satellite had found water ice beneath the planet's frozen carbon dioxide south polar ice cap, Dr. Lidija Siller, a physicist from the University of Newcastle, England, felt excited. "I believe that the data I have explains how this water became trapped underneath the surface", she said. |
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| MARTIAN SURFACE FEATURES WERE ERODED BY LIQUID CARBON DIOXIDE, NOT RUNNING WATER, RESEARCHERS SAY |
| Scientists have provided new evidence that liquid carbon dioxide, not running water, may have beeen the primary cause of erosional features such as gullies, valley networks, and channels that cover the surface of Mars. |
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| WHEN THE EARTH DRIED OUT |
| About a billion years ago, the continents emerged relatively suddenly from an ocean that covered 95 percent of the Earth's surface, according to a new theory by Eldridge Moores, a geologist at the University of California, Davis. The appearance of large masses of dry land would have caused more extreme weather, changes in ocean currents and the emergence of proper seasons. In turn, these environmental changes may have led to rise in atmospheric oxygen that enabled the explosion of new life forms around 500 million years ago. |
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| EARTH’S MAGNETIC FIELD REALLY DID REVERSE ITSELF |
| NWO researchers have developed an improved method of identifying the magnetic signals in old geological strata. The researchers used the new method to show that the earth’s magnetic field really did reverse itself ten million years ago. |
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| PERMIAN EXTRATERRESTRIAL IMPACT CAUSED LARGEST MASS EXTINCTION ON EARTH |
| What actually ended the Permian Period some 251 million years ago? Most Earth scientists think gradual sea fall, climate change, oceanic anoxia, and volcanism were the causes. But that's not so. A group of geologists working in southern China found evidence that it was an asteroid or a comet that smacked our planet, exploded, and then caused the most severe biotic crisis in the history of life on Earth. |
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| CLUES TO EARLY HISTORY OF SOLAR SYSTEM'S OLDEST DIAMONDS |
| Simulating implantation of noble gases into terrestrial diamond grains, scientists from the Karpov Institute for Physical Chemistry (Moscow, Russia) and the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry (Mainz, Germany) infer a sequence of events in the early life of presolar diamonds in meteorites, the most common form of stardust available for laboratory study (Nature, August 9, 2001). |
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| VENUS HOLDS CLUES TO FINDING EARTH'S PLATINUM AND DIAMONDS |
| Venus is key to understanding what the early Earth was like during the late Archaean and early Proterozoic when precious resources were formed. While modern Venus is in a quiet state most of the time, is does enter into short periods of intense volcanic activity where the old surface of Venus is destroyed and a new one is created. In its early history when life evolved, Earth worked in a similar way to modern Venus. |
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| THE GOLDILOCKS EFFECT: HOW OTHER EARTHS FORM JUST RIGHT |
| What does it take to make an Earth-like planet? It takes a stellar nursery rich in carbon, oxygen, iron, and silicon in a combination that's not too much, and not too little, but just right. |
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| WATER HAD APPEARED ON THE EARTH EARLIER THAN SCIENTISTS THOUGHT; ALSO, THE MOON ORIGIN THEORY NEEDS REVISING. |
| Geologists have found another evidence that surface waters, which helped to support life on the planet millions years ago, could have existed on the Earth even more earlier, than scientists previously thought. Determining a chemical composition of the oldest-known earth rock, scientists restored a picture of the “early” Earth. The mineral composition of the rock aged 4.4 bln years shows that the early Earth wasn’t in fact a volcano ash-formed dreggy ocean; the Earth was too cold to make it possible for waters and continents to appear on the Earth’s surface as well as to establish conditions under which life could exist. |
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| WHEN DO WE HAVE TO CHANGE COMPASS ARROWS NEXT? |
| Every half million years or so the Earth’s magnetic field changes suddenly for no obvious reason. Every 10 thousand years – just an instant in terms of the length of geological periods – the North and South Magnetic Poles change places. |
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