Carbon dioxide, not water, triggers explosive basaltic volcanoes

Geoscientists have long thought that water—along with shallow magma stored in Earth's crust—drives volcanoes to erupt. Now, thanks to newly developed research tools at Cornell, scientists have learned that gaseous carbon ...

The geography of Antarctica's underside

Planetary scientists would be thrilled if they could peel the Earth like an orange and look at what lies beneath the thin crust. We live on the planet's cold surface, but the Earth is a solid body and the surface is continually ...

How magma and water shaped the iconic Columbia River Gorge

University of Oregon researchers are adding new details to the geological history of the iconic Columbia River Gorge, a wide river canyon that cuts through the volcanic peaks of the Cascades along the border between Oregon ...

Uranium isotopes reveal age and origin of volcanic rocks

From the beginning of time, uranium has been part of the Earth and, thanks to its long-lived radioactivity, it has proven ideal to date geological processes and deduce Earth's evolution. Natural uranium consists of two long-lived ...

Earth-like planets have Earth-like interiors

Every school kid learns the basic structure of the Earth: a thin outer crust, a thick mantle, and a Mars-sized core. But is this structure universal? Will rocky exoplanets orbiting other stars have the same three layers? ...

Researchers discover 'missing' piece of Hawaii's formation

An oceanic plateau has been observed for the first time in the Earth's lower mantle, 800 kilometers deep underneath Eastern Siberia, pushing Hawaii's birthplace back to 100 million years, says a Michigan State University ...

page 3 from 15