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| DID CRACKING CONTINENT TRIGGER A DEEP FREEZE? |
| The break-up of a supercontinent may have caused a 'Snowball Earth'.
The Earth might have been sent into an ice age by the break-up of a supercontinent 750 million years ago, creating a global snowball. |
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| ANCIENT HIMALAYAN MOUNTAINS EVEN OLDER |
| The world's highest mountains may be almost nine times older than previously believed, according to U.S. geologists. |
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| ATMOSPHERIC CARBON DIOXIDE GREATER 1.4 BILLION YEARS AGO |
| Billions of years ago, there was a lot more greenhouse gas than today, and that was a good thing – else the Earth might be an icy ball. |
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| ANCIENT SUPERFLOOD BROUGHT CLIMATE CHAOS |
| A catastrophic 'superflood' following the rupture of a massive glacier-dammed lake in Canada at the end of the Ice Age probably plunged the world into centuries of climatic chaos. |
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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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| ANOTHER METEOR STRIKE BLAMED FOR EXTINCTIONS |
| A large meteorite collided 380 million years ago into what is now the Moroccan desert and may have caused one of the five known mass extinctions of life on Earth, researchers report. |
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| UMASS STUDY RECONSIDERS FORMATION OF ANTARCTIC ICE SHEET |
| Findings detailed in Jan. 16 issue of Nature; greenhouse gases implicated
A study by University of Massachusetts Amherst geoscientist Robert DeConto posits an alternative theory regarding why Antarctica suddenly became glaciated 34 million years ago. |
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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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| GEOLOGIST’S DISCOVERY MAY UNLOCK SECRETS TO START OF LIFE ON EARTH. SCIENTIST CONTINUES TO BUILD CASE FOR ORIGIN OF PLATE TECTONICS. |
| A Saint Louis University geologist has unearthed further evidence in his mounting case that shifting of the continents -- and perhaps life on Earth -- began much earlier than many scientists believe. |
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| NOAH'S FLOOD HYPOTHESIS MAY NOT HOLD WATER. RENSSELAER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE PROFESSOR PART OF INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH GROUP REFUTING POPULAR THEORY. |
| In 1996, marine geologists William Ryan and Walter Pitman published a scientifically popular hypothesis, titled Noah's Flood Hypothesis. The researchers presented evidence of a bursting flood about 7,500 years ago in what is now the Black Sea. This, some say, supports the biblical story of Noah and the flood. |
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| NEW CELLULAR EVOLUTION THEORY REJECTS DARWINIAN ASSUMPTIONS |
| Life did not begin with one primordial cell. Instead, there were initially at least three simple types of loosely constructed cellular organizations. They swam in a pool of genes, evolving in a communal way that aided one another in bootstrapping into the three distinct types of cells by sharing their evolutionary inventions. |
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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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| NEW RESEARCH QUESTIONS EVIDENCE FOR EARLIEST LIFE ON EARTH. U.S. AND SWEDISH SCIENTISTS SUGGEST A NON-BIOLOGICAL ORIGIN FOR CARBON IN ANCIENT ROCKS. |
| New geological and geochemical data call into question recent claims for fossil life on Earth greater than 3.8 billion years ago, say researchers from The George Washington University and the Swedish Museum of Natural History in the May 24 issue of the journal Science. Such claims have been based on interpreting the sensitive biochemical behaviour of carbon, the principal element of life, and its relationship with the rocks in which the carbon is found. |
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| EARLIEST EVIDENCE OF ANIMALS YET? |
| Scientists say they have found fossil evidence of an "animal-like" creature which they report is twice as old as any animal fossils generally accepted by palaeontologists. |
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| NEW REPORT EXPLAINS ICE-AGE MYSTERY |
| University of California researchers have solved a longstanding mystery for scientists trying to understand how Earth's climate can quickly shift between cold and warm modes. |
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| YEARS OF RESEARCH, THOUGHT LEAD GEOLOGIST TO PROPOSE NEW SUPERCONTINENT COLUMBIA |
| In 1912, German meterorologist Alfred Wegener proposed a theory that first angered and then intrigued scientists and others ever since. |
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| LOST EUROPEAN DELTA PREDICTS THE FUTURE OF MODERN-DAY RIVERS |
| Twelve million years ago the Eridanos flowed through what is now the present Baltic Sea, past modern-day Scandinavia, North Poland and Germany, over Denmark and the Netherlands, and into what is now the North Sea Basin. There it formed a giant delta which covered the entire North Sea. About one million years ago during the ice age, land ice destroyed the river and the North Sea and Baltic Sea were formed. |
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| PRIMODIAL AIR MAY HAVE BEEN 'BREATHABLE' |
| The Earth may have had an oxygen-rich atmosphere as long ago as three billion years and possibly even earlier, three leading geologists have claimed.
Their theory challenges long-held ideas about when the Earth's atmosphere became enriched with oxygen, and pushes the likely date for formation of an atmosphere resembling today's far back into the early history of the planet. |
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| GEOPHYSICIST STUDIES LIFE IN THE EARLY SOLAR SYSTEM |
| Between the cataclysmic impact that created the Moon around 4.5 billion years ago and the first evidence of life 3.8 billion years ago, there may have been long periods during which life repeatedly spread across the globe, only to be nearly annihilated by the impact of large asteroids. |
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| DROPLETS IN SALT CRYSTALS CONFIRM HISTORIC OCEAN CHANGES |
| Microscopic water droplets trapped inside ancient salt crystals have provided evidence supporting a radical theory that the chemical composition of Earth's oceans has changed over the past 500 million years. |
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| A CURVE BALL INTO THE SNOWBALL EARTH HYPOTHESIS? |
| The idea that the Earth was encased in ice some 650 million years ago has sparked much scientific debate in recent years. In the ongoing Snowball Earth "fight," scientists continually uncover and report new evidence that supports their respective views. |
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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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| MELTING GLACIERS DIMINISHED GULF STREAM, COOLED WESTERN EUROPE, DURING LAST ICE AGE |
| At the end of the last Ice Age - 11.5 to 13 thousand years ago - the north Atlantic deep water circulation system that drives the Gulf Stream may have shut down because of melting glaciers that added freshwater into the north Atlantic Ocean over several hundred years, confirm researchers funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF)'s paleoclimate program. |
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| RESEARCHERS FIND GLASS-EATING MICROBES AT THE ROCK BOTTOM OF THE FOOD CHAIN |
| Welcome to the bottom of the deep-sea food chain. The rock bottom, that is. In the current edition of Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, a team of researchers uncovers and characterizes a process that is commonplace below the ocean bottom. In the upper 300 meters of the earth’s oceanic crust, microbes were found to have literally eaten their way through rock. Traces of this process are preserved in the glassy margins of underwater lava flows (scientists call super-cooled lava spewed by undersea volcanoes "glass," which is similar to material used to make stone-age axes and knives). |
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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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| JUST HOW OLD IS THE TIBETAN PLATEAU? |
| A study of the world's highest geological feature, the Tibetan Plateau, sometimes called the "roof of the world," has determined that the plateau rose to its current height much earlier than previously thought, according to a paper in the August 9th issue of the journal Nature, and it cannot go higher than it is now. |
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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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| ANCIENT AUSSIE ALGAE REVEAL EARLY HISTORY OF LIFE |
| The earliest convincing fossils of the branch of life that includes all the plants, animals and algae have been unearthed in northern Australia. |
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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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| THE ANCIENT EARTH'S MAGNETIC FIELD 3-FOLD EXCEEDED THE PREVIOUS ESTIMATE |
| A new methodology for measuring the geomagnetic field has showed that the ancient Earth’s magnetic field had been 3-fold stronger than it was thought. New methods help scientists to better understand the nature of the ancient Earth, including the information regarding the behavior of its melted core at the early stages of the planet evolution. |
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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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| WORLD MAP HALF A BILLION YEARS OLD |
| The layout of land and sea on the face of the Earth as it was 180 million years ago is relatively well known today. Pangaea, a gigantic continent, that took shape at the end of the Paleozoic era (250 million years ago) by comprising land fragments that had existed before did not last long as one piece. |
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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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