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Geology
About six million years ago, the Mediterranean was sealed off from the Atlantic, and over centuries it ran dry. One megaflood reversed that.
As the closest icy ocean world to
Earth, Ceres may be a promising candidate in the search for signs of ancient life.
As US science faces record cuts to funding, jobs, and facilities, these 10 quotes help remind us how science brings value to us all.
If an asteroid hadn't killed off the dinosaurs, humans would almost certainly have never walked the Earth.
Planets can create nuclear power on their own, naturally, without any intelligence or technology. Earth already did: 1.7 billion years ago.
Here in our Solar System, terrestrial bodies get moons from gravitational capture or collisions. The Pluto-Charon system? It was both.
Our Moon is full of craters, basins, and ancient lava flows. But two large lunar Grand Canyons have the same origin: a single, giant impact.
Great tidal ranges are relatively rare on a global scale — and can be very deadly to the unsuspecting foreshore walker.
Caption:“At this time in Mars’ history, we think CO2 is everywhere, in every nook and cranny, and water percolating through the rocks is full of CO2 too,” Joshua Murray says.
2mins
“We wouldn’t be able to talk about minerals if it weren’t for the minerals themselves.” Mineralogist Bob Hazen explains how Earth’s rocks can teach us about our planet’s technicolor history.
A new method of mapping migration factors in erratic movements and changing climate.
Ancient currents seemed to move in concert with a 2.4 million-year dance between the Red Planet and Earth.
This may be the largest helium reservoir in U.S. history.
11mins
Humanity has two giant collisions to thank for its existence, explains biologist Sean B. Carroll.
Across the subterranean United States, not all rocks were created equally.
A basement renovation project led to the archaeological discovery of a lifetime: the Derinkuyu Underground City, which housed 20,000 people.
When battles raged in ancient cities, their rocks blazed so brightly that they could be reoriented according to Earth's magnetic field.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, matter can escape the center of the Earth.
Looking back on our planet's early history offers a new (and less crazy) meaning for the idea of a "flat Earth."
Perhaps it’s not just an oddly shaped hill, after all.
Seventy-five years after the anomaly's discovery, scientists have finally figured out why sea levels are so much lower here.
McDermitt Caldera, the site of an ancient volcanic eruption, straddles the border of Oregon and Nevada.
By looking down, scientists are looking back in time.
Rocks and minerals don’t simply reflect light. They play with it and interact with light as both a wave and a particle.
People discovered prehistoric fossils long before Charles Darwin published "On the Origin of Species." The remains of these unknown creatures often puzzled their discoverers.
The cycles of life all rely on the dynamism of the Earth's crust.
Mercury, Venus, and Mars are all uni-plate planets, and may always have been. Here's what's known about why Earth, uniquely, has plate tectonics.
Each year, several trillion pounds of microscopic silicon-based skeletons fall down the water column to pile up into siliceous ooze.
Why would the Earth suddenly start vomiting forth huge quantities of mud?