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| HIMALAYAS COULD HARBOUR MORE SULFIDE ORES |
| The Himalayan mountains may be a better place than the ocean floor to look for rich sulfide ores, according to Australian and Spanish research. |
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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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| 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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| BACTERIA START UNDERGROUND FIRES IN MALI |
| Patches of mysterious shoe-melting, foot-roasting hot ground in parts of West Africa may have been caused by bacteria, not volcanic activity as has been thought for decades. |
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| RUTGERS EXPLORER DESCRIBES SEA FLOOR HOT SPRINGS AS TEEMING WITH VALUABLE MINERALS AND MICROBES |
| With only about 5 percent of the sea floor explored in detail, a picture is emerging of a vast system of natural undersea dynamos, fueled by hot springs, that produce not only valuable mineral deposits, but habitats for unique, heat-loving organisms that can provide materials for products ranging from detergents to pharmaceuticals. |
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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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| COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY STUDY TIES THE FREQUENCY OF EARTHQUAKES TO OCEAN TIDES |
| A Columbia University scientist studying an active seafloor volcano in the Pacific Ocean has determined that there is a correlation between the hundreds of micro earthquakes she recorded and the ocean tides. |
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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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| WEIRD WAVE BEHAVIOR NEAR EARTH'S CORE |
| Strange things happen in the lower reaches of our planet's mantle, that plastic-like layer between Earth's crust and core that flows under pressure, lifting or lowering features on the surface. Geologists have been intrigued by observations that some seismic waves travel faster than others in particular patches of the lowermost mantle, but they haven't known exactly why that happens. New work by researchers at the University of Michigan and Yale University, published in the March 21 issue of Nature, helps explain the phenomenon and offers new insights into Earth's inner workings. |
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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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| 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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| A RISING FORCE: NEW STUDY ON ANCIENT MANTLE PLUMES |
| Boulder, Colo. -- The subject of mantle plumes--bodies of hot buoyant material that rise through Earth’s mantle--has become increasingly popular as scientists explore new links between mantle plumes and other Earth processes. |
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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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| 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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| NAPLES SITTING ON A TIME BOMB |
| Vulcanologists have discovered that the Italian city of Naples is sitting on a 400-square-kilometre reservoir of magma, just waiting to blow. |
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| MAPPING THE PLANET'S SHIFTING GRAVITY |
| Earth's gravity is a constant, right? Wrong - it varies slightly depending where you are on Earth and when, and scientists want to get a more detailed map of the variations. |
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| GEOLOGIST FINDS LOST ISLAND IN SANTA BARBARA CHANNEL |
| An island submerged for more than 13,000 years has been discovered beneath the ocean's surface about halfway between the Santa Barbara Harbor and one of the existing Santa Barbara Channel Islands by Edward A. Keller, professor of geological sciences and environmental studies at UC Santa Barbara. |
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| REVEALING EARTH'S DEEPEST SECRETS |
| In work that promises to advance understanding about the origin and dynamics of Earth's iron-rich inner core and the generation of the planet's magnetic field, a team that includes University of Michigan researchers has found that the elastic properties of iron are quite different at extremely high temperatures than at low temperatures. |
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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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| COULD GEOLOGY EXPLAIN WHY THIS IS SAID TO BE A FAVOURITE NESSIE HAUNT? |
| Earthquakes may be the origin of mythical sightings like Scotland's Loch Ness Monster, an Italian geologist believes. Visions of Nessie, along with some other figures from Greek mythology, probably arose because sites associated with them were active geological faults, the scientist claimed at a conference in Edinburgh. |
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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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| 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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| THERE WAS A TIME WHEN THE OCEAN WAS BOILING |
| At one time the temperature of the Sun was much lower than now. However, geologic evidence shows that even then,
in the first billion years of the Earth's existence, its oceans did not freeze. |
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