News tagged with earth sciences

Organic carbon from Mars, but not biological

(Phys.org) -- Molecules containing large chains of carbon and hydrogen--the building blocks of all life on Earth--have been the targets of missions to Mars from Viking to the present day. While these molecules ...

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created May 24, 2012 | popularity 4.4 / 5 (5) | comments 2 | with audio podcast

Organic compounds found in proto-planetary disks

(PhysOrg.com) -- A new study from scientists in the US has reported that organic compounds could be formed in proto-planetary disks, and could have seeded the development of life in our own and other planetary ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Mar 30, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (7) | comments 0 | with audio podcast report

Study supports theory of extraterrestrial impact

A 16-member international team of researchers that includes James Kennett, professor of earth science at UC Santa Barbara, has identified a nearly 13,000-year-old layer of thin, dark sediment buried in the ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Mar 05, 2012 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (23) | comments 38 | with audio podcast

A small step for lungfish, a big step for the evolution of walking

The eel-like body and scrawny "limbs" of the African lungfish would appear to make it an unlikely innovator for locomotion. But its improbable walking behavior, newly described by University of Chicago scientists, ...

Biology / Plants & Animals

created Dec 12, 2011 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (16) | comments 11 | with audio podcast

Research group proposes first system for assessing the odds of life on other worlds

(PhysOrg.com) -- Within the next few years, the number of planets discovered in orbits around distant stars will likely reach several thousand or more. But even as our list of these newly discovered "exoplanets" ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Nov 21, 2011 | popularity 4.3 / 5 (8) | comments 8 | with audio podcast

First life may have arisen above serpentine rock, researchers say

(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 ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Sep 23, 2011 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (7) | comments 10 | with audio podcast

What caused a giant arrow-shaped cloud on Saturn's moon Titan?

(PhysOrg.com) -- Why does Titan, Saturn's largest moon, have what looks like an enormous white arrow about the size of Texas on its surface?

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created Aug 16, 2011 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (20) | comments 36 | with audio podcast

'Lost' samples from famous origin of life researcher could send search for first life in new direction

(PhysOrg.com) -- Stanley Miller gained fame with his 1953 experiment showing the synthesis of organic compounds thought to be important in setting the origin of life in motion. Five years later, he produced ...

Chemistry / Biochemistry

created Mar 21, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (10) | comments 11 | with audio podcast

Antarctic sea temperatures cooled in Holocene but now rising: study

(PhysOrg.com) -- A new study of an ocean sediment core taken from deep water off the coast of the western Antarctic Peninsula is beginning to fill in some of the gaps in our knowledge of climate variability ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Feb 10, 2011 | popularity 4.2 / 5 (18) | comments 20 | with audio podcast report

First measurement of magnetic field in Earth's core

(PhysOrg.com) -- A University of California, Berkeley, geophysicist has made the first-ever measurement of the strength of the magnetic field inside Earth's core, 1,800 miles underground.

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Dec 16, 2010 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (19) | comments 10 | with audio podcast

Meteorite just one piece of an unknown celestial body

(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists from all over the world are taking a second, more expansive, look at the car-sized asteroid that exploded over Sudan's Nubian Desert in 2008. Initial research was focused on classifying ...

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created Dec 15, 2010 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (16) | comments 5 | with audio podcast

Ancient forest emerges mummified from the Arctic

The northernmost mummified forest ever found in Canada is revealing how plants struggled to endure a long-ago global cooling.

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Dec 15, 2010 | popularity 4.3 / 5 (22) | comments 78 | with audio podcast

Rocks on Mars may provide link to evidence of living organisms 4 billion years ago

A new article in press of the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters unveils groundbreaking research on the hydrothermal formation of Clay-Carbonate rocks in the Nili Fossae region of Mars. The findin ...

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created Jul 29, 2010 | popularity 4.4 / 5 (16) | comments 1 | with audio podcast

Comet cause for climate change theory dealt blow by fungus

(PhysOrg.com) -- A team of scientists - led by Professor Andrew C Scott of the Department of Earth Sciences at Royal Holloway, University of London - have revealed that neither comet nor catastrophe were the ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Jun 17, 2010 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (14) | comments 2 | with audio podcast

Moon whets appetite for water

Scientists at the Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory, with colleagues, have discovered a much higher water content in the Moon's interior than previous studies. Their research suggests that the ...

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created Jun 14, 2010 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (18) | comments 3 | with audio podcast

Earth science

Earth science (also known as geoscience, the geosciences or the Earth Sciences), is an all-embracing term for the sciences related to the planet Earth. It is arguably a special case in planetary science, the Earth being the only known life-bearing planet. There are both reductionist and holistic approaches to Earth science.

There are four major disciplines in earth sciences, namely geography, geology, geophysics and geodesy. These major disciplines use physics, chemistry, biology, chronology and mathematics to build a quantitative understanding of the principal areas or spheres of the Earth system.

For more information about Earth science, read the full article at Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.