http://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. The source of arsenic in India's groundwater continues to elude scientists more than a decade after the toxin was discovered in the water supply of the Bengal delta in India. But a recent study with a Kansas State University geologist and graduate student, as well as Tulane University, has added a twist -- and furthered the mystery. http://phys.org/news239459791.html Space & Earth Wed, 02 Nov 2011 13:36:59 EST news239459791 Geologist John Goodge looks for clues about Antarctica's past in the 2 percent of the continent that is not covered in ice! http://phys.org/news239353523.html Space & Earth Tue, 01 Nov 2011 08:05:33 EST news239353523 Geologists are warning of shortages and bottlenecks of some metals due to an insatiable demand for consumer products. http://phys.org/news237633702.html Space & Earth Wed, 12 Oct 2011 10:21:48 EST news237633702 (PhysOrg.com) -- One of the supposedly best understood and least interesting landscapes on Mars is hiding something that could rewrite the planet's history. Or not. In fact, about all that is certain is that decades of assumptions regarding the wide, flat Hesperia Planum are not holding up very well under renewed scrutiny with higher-resolution, more recent spacecraft data. http://phys.org/news237631740.html Space & Earth Wed, 12 Oct 2011 09:49:11 EST news237631740 A geologist's sharp eyes and upset stomach has led to the discovery, and almost too-close encounter, with an otherworldly geological process operating in a remote corner of northern Chile's Atacama Desert. http://phys.org/news237552924.html Space & Earth Tue, 11 Oct 2011 11:55:32 EST news237552924 It was a marathon project that took six years and the collection and analysis of some 12,000 soil samples, but an international team of geologists has managed to create the Geochemical Atlas of Cyprus. http://phys.org/news237543670.html Space & Earth Tue, 11 Oct 2011 09:21:21 EST news237543670 (PhysOrg.com) -- About 3.8 billion years ago, Earth was teeming with unicellular life. A little more than 4.5 billion years ago, the Earth was a ball of vaporous rock. And somewhere in between, the first organisms spontaneously arose. Pinpointing exactly when and how that shift happened has proven a difficult bit of interdisciplinary detective work. http://phys.org/news235976216.html Space & Earth Fri, 23 Sep 2011 05:58:58 EST news235976216 (PhysOrg.com) -- Much like a meteor impacting a planet, highly charged ions hit really hard and can do a lot of damage, albeit on a much smaller scale. And much like geologists determine the size and speed of the meteor by looking at the hole it left, physicists can learn a lot about a highly charged ion's energy by looking at the divots it makes in thin films. http://phys.org/news234000793.html Physics Wed, 31 Aug 2011 09:13:27 EST news234000793 "What do I remember about an earthquake? I was in the 7th grade. All of a sudden the floor just started shaking. Desks were falling over. Kids were falling on the ground. It was so scary. It happened so quickly!" http://phys.org/news233916164.html Space & Earth Tue, 30 Aug 2011 10:00:01 EST news233916164 University of Cincinnati geologists – who routinely find themselves between a rock and a hard place when collecting research samples – have become the inspiration for prototype designs created by faculty and students in UC's nationally ranked College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning. http://phys.org/news233229531.html Other Sciences Mon, 22 Aug 2011 10:59:04 EST news233229531 Early manlike creatures may have been smarter than we think. Recent archaeological finds from the Mediterranean show that human ancestors traveled the high seas. http://phys.org/news232812463.html Other Sciences Wed, 17 Aug 2011 15:40:01 EST news232812463 The Zagros Mountains are well researched from a geological perspective. However, scientists at the ETH Zurich have now used computer simulations to demonstrate for the first time how it came about that mainly folds with almost constant wavelengths of 14 kilometers were formed. http://phys.org/news232280717.html Space & Earth Thu, 11 Aug 2011 11:25:49 EST news232280717 Every mountain and hill shall be made low, declared the ancient prophet Isaiah. In other words: erosion happens. But for the modern geologist a vexing question remains: how fast does this erosion happen? http://phys.org/news231000383.html Space & Earth Wed, 27 Jul 2011 15:46:36 EST news231000383 For decades NASA has been "following the water" on Mars with hopes of finding signs of alien life there; or at least signs that future colonists won't die of thirst. Now a Texas geologist has dared to revive an old, almost heretical idea -- backed up with all the latest data -- that the Red Planet has been bone dry for billions of years. http://phys.org/news230980243.html Space & Earth Wed, 27 Jul 2011 11:40:06 EST news230980243 What spreads the sea floors and moves the continents? What melts iron in the outer core and enables the Earth's magnetic field? Heat. Geologists have used temperature measurements from more than 20,000 boreholes around the world to estimate that some 44 terawatts (44 trillion watts) of heat continually flow from Earth's interior into space. Where does it come from? http://phys.org/news230119974.html Physics Sun, 17 Jul 2011 13:00:01 EST news230119974 (PhysOrg.com) -- Earthquakes and volcanoes are known for their ability to transform Earth's surface, but new research in the Caribbean has found they can also move ancient Earth rock foundations more than 1,000 miles. http://phys.org/news229683250.html Space & Earth Tue, 12 Jul 2011 09:54:27 EST news229683250 China's monopoly over rare-earth metals could be challenged by the discovery of massive deposits of these hi-tech minerals in mud on the Pacific floor, a study on Sunday suggests. http://phys.org/news228918901.html Space & Earth Sun, 03 Jul 2011 13:35:50 EST news228918901 NASA's newest Mars rover - or a replica of it, anyway - sat expectantly at the bottom of a hill. After years in design and construction, the grandly named Mars Science Laboratory was ready to test its wheels on a 20-degree flagstone slope in the "Mars Yard" at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge, Calif. http://phys.org/news226931071.html Space & Earth Fri, 10 Jun 2011 13:25:18 EST news226931071 (PhysOrg.com) -- In summer 2007, two geologists armed with rock hammers and a shotgun hiked through the Yukon, looking for fossils. For two weeks, Phoebe Cohen, a postdoc in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, and Francis Macdonald, an assistant professor of geology at Harvard University, set up camp along the Alaska-Canada border in a remote mountain range accessible only via helicopter. http://phys.org/news226657417.html Other Sciences Tue, 07 Jun 2011 09:23:58 EST news226657417 When geologists survey an area of land for the potential that gas or petroleum deposits could exist there, they must take into account the composition of rocks that lie below the surface. Take, for instance, sandstone—a sedimentary rock composed mostly of weakly cemented quartz grains. Previous research had suggested that compaction bands—highly compressed, narrow, flat layers within the sandstone—are much less permeable than the host rock and might act as barriers to the flow of oil or gas. http://phys.org/news226584437.html Space & Earth Mon, 06 Jun 2011 13:40:01 EST news226584437 (PhysOrg.com) -- Japanese geologist Tetsuji Onoue, of Kagoshima University, after studying chert rock (a form of microcrystalline quartz) he’d taken from Ajiro Island off the southern coast of Honshu, Japan, has discovered the oldest known bits of space dust to have fallen on the Earth. At an estimated age of 240 million years old, the microscopic iron rich spheroids, are some 50 million years older than any other space dust ever found on Earth. http://phys.org/news224846497.html Space & Earth Tue, 17 May 2011 11:10:01 EST news224846497 The mass extinction of marine life in our oceans during prehistoric times is a warning that the Earth will see such an extinction again because of high levels of greenhouse gases, according to new research by geologists. http://phys.org/news224827977.html Space & Earth Tue, 17 May 2011 05:14:40 EST news224827977 If alien geologists were to visit our planet 10 million years from now, would they discern a distinct human fingerprint in Earth's accumulating layers of rock and sediment? http://phys.org/news224676643.html Space & Earth Sun, 15 May 2011 11:11:53 EST news224676643 Spain suffered an unusually high death toll in a moderate quake that claimed nine lives in the southeastern city of Lorca on Wednesday, geological experts said. http://phys.org/news224425948.html Space & Earth Thu, 12 May 2011 13:32:40 EST news224425948 In a recent Geology paper geologists from the universities of Innsbruck and Leeds report on ancient cave systems discovered near the summits of the Allgau Mountains that preserved the oldest radiometrically dated dripstones currently known from the European Alps. http://phys.org/news223553259.html Space & Earth Mon, 02 May 2011 11:20:01 EST news223553259 Doren in the Austrian Bregenzerwald, February 2007: a slope 650 meters long breaks, resulting in a massive slide into the valley below. The nearest residential buildings are very close to the 70-meter-high rim. This barely avoided catastrophe is not the only incident. Geologists have been monitoring increasingly unstable masses of earth over the past few years in the Alps and other Alpine regions, which have slipped down slopes and on slid unchecked down valleys to more stable substrates. The scientists are primarily looking at heavy rainfall and snowmelt caused by climatie change, which in turn has caused the substrate to soften and has increased the weight on it. http://phys.org/news221393372.html Space & Earth Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:09:58 EST news221393372 Most deep-sea volcanoes produce effusive lava flows rather than explosive eruptions, both because the levels of magmatic gas tend to be low, and because the volcanoes are under a lot of pressure from the surrounding water. But by using an ion microprobe, Christoph Helo, a PhD student in McGill's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, has now proved that explosive eruptions can also occur. http://phys.org/news220546342.html Space & Earth Mon, 28 Mar 2011 15:52:41 EST news220546342 While rescue workers in Japan continue their search for missing persons amid the rubble in Sendai and beyond, geologists are sifting through seismic data and satellite images for hints to what caused one of the most catastrophic earthquakes in recorded history. For the past week, scientists around the world have posted charts and maps on blogs and websites to help describe the extent of the quake, and the vulnerabilities that possibly triggered the massive rupture. http://phys.org/news220102220.html Space & Earth Wed, 23 Mar 2011 12:31:05 EST news220102220 The recent monster quake that hit northeastern Japan altered the earth's surface, geologists say, loading stress onto a different segment of the fault line much closer to Tokyo. http://phys.org/news219935274.html Space & Earth Mon, 21 Mar 2011 14:30:04 EST news219935274 (PhysOrg.com) -- It appears that the supposed oldest examples of life on our planet -- 3.5 billion-year-old bacteria fossils found in Australian rock called Apex Chert -- are nothing more than tiny gaps in the rock that are packed with minerals. http://phys.org/news219499419.html Space & Earth Wed, 16 Mar 2011 13:03:58 EST news219499419