The Earth's oldest surface layer forming continents, termed its crust, is approximately 4 billion years old and is comprised of 25–50km-thick volcanic rocks known as basalts. Originally, scientists thought that one complete ...
An international team of researchers has found that some of the oldest terrain on Venus, known as tesserae, have layering that seems consistent with volcanic activity. The finding could provide insights into the enigmatic ...
Space Exploration
Sep 17, 2020
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642
Clues from some unusual Arizona rocks pointed Rice University scientists toward a discovery—a subtle chemical signature in rocks the world over—that could answer a long-standing mystery: What stole the iron from Earth's ...
Earth Sciences
May 16, 2018
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89
The Earth's history is written in its elements, but as the tectonic plates slip and slide over and under each other over time, they muddy that evidence—and with it the secrets of why Earth can sustain life.
Earth Sciences
Sep 22, 2017
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613
Earth has some special features that set it apart from its close cousins in the solar system, including large oceans of liquid water and a rich atmosphere with just the right ingredients to support life as we know it. Earth ...
Earth Sciences
Jan 21, 2016
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763
(Phys.org)—A team of researchers from the U.S., France and the U.K. is reporting that data sent back by the Mars rover Curiosity suggests that the Red Planet may have once had a continental crust similar to that found back ...
(Phys.org)—New research sheds light on how and when the modern day continents began to form. Researchers from the University of Bristol analyzed radio isotope abundances in 13,000 samples of continental crust of varying ...
An international research team, led by a Virginia Tech geoscientist, has revealed information about how continents were generated on Earth more than 2.5 billion years ago—and how those processes have continued within the ...
Earth Sciences
Mar 31, 2015
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1798
(Phys.org)—Scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego have used 20 years of satellite data to reveal a geological oddity unlike any seen on Earth.
Earth Sciences
Oct 11, 2012
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0
(Phys.org) -- In science fiction novels, evil overlords and hostile aliens often threaten to vaporize the Earth. At the beginning of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, the officiously bureaucratic aliens called Vogons, ...
Astronomy
Aug 2, 2012
4
0
