Scientists have recreated the extreme conditions at the boundary between Earth's core and its mantle, 2,900 km beneath the surface. Using the world's most brilliant beam of X-rays, they probed speck-sized samples of rock ...
Earth Sciences
Jul 18, 2012
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Earth is clingy when it comes to copper. A new Rice University study this week in the journal Science finds that nature conspires at scales both large and small -- from the realms of tectonic plates down to molecular bonds ...
Earth Sciences
Apr 5, 2012
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Jewelers abhor diamond impurities, but they are a bonanza for scientists. Safely encased in the super-hard diamond, impurities are unaltered, ancient minerals that can tell the story of Earth's distant past. Researchers analyzed ...
Earth Sciences
Jul 21, 2011
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A University of Missouri study published in Nature this week has found that the Earth's crust melts easier than previously thought. In the study, researchers measured how well rocks conduct heat at different temperatures ...
Earth Sciences
Mar 18, 2009
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Ancient, expansive tracts of continental crust called cratons have helped keep Earth's continents stable for billions of years, even as landmasses shift, mountains rise and oceans form. A new mechanism proposed by Penn State ...
Earth Sciences
May 8, 2024
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Little is known about the nature and evolution of Earth's continental crust before a few billion years ago because cratons, or stable swaths of the lithosphere more than 2–3 billion years old, are relatively rare.
Earth Sciences
Apr 24, 2024
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309
The oldest Scandinavian bedrock was "born" in Greenland according to a new geological study from the University of Copenhagen. The study helps us understand the origin of continents and why Earth is possibly the only planet ...
Earth Sciences
Mar 21, 2024
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117
Geoscientists have uncovered a missing link in the enigmatic story of how the continents developed—a revised origin story that doesn't require the start of plate tectonics or any external factor to explain their formation. ...
Earth Sciences
Jan 31, 2024
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151
The analysis of ancient, superdeep diamonds dug up from mines in Brazil and Western Africa, has exposed new processes of how continents evolved and moved during the early evolution of complex life on Earth.
Earth Sciences
Oct 18, 2023
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204
Continents are part of what makes Earth uniquely habitable for life among the planets of the solar system, yet surprisingly little is understood about what gave rise to these huge pieces of the planet's crust and their special ...
Earth Sciences
May 4, 2023
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