Mysterious deep-Earth seismic signature explained

New research on oxygen and iron chemistry under the extreme conditions found deep inside the Earth could explain a longstanding seismic mystery called ultralow velocity zones. Published in Nature, the findings could have ...

Just what sustains Earth's magnetic field anyway?

Earth's magnetic field shields us from deadly cosmic radiation, and without it, life as we know it could not exist here. The motion of liquid iron in the planet's outer core, a phenomenon called a "geodynamo," generates the ...

Apollo-era lunar seismic data yields new lunar core model

(Phys.org)—Like the solar system's telluric planets, including Earth itself, the moon's internal structure is composed of geoochemically distinct mantle, crust and core layers. The core is mostly iron; much of our understanding ...

NuSTAR telescope takes first peek into core of supernova

(Phys.org) —Astronomers have peered for the first time into the heart of an exploding star in the final minutes of its existence. The feat by the high-energy X-ray satellite NuSTAR provides details of the physics of the ...

Earth's core reveals an inner weakness

(Phys.org) —The word "core" conjures up an image of something strong. However, new experiments show that the iron found in the Earth's core is relatively weak. This finding is based on x-ray spectroscopy and diffraction ...

Scientists solve a 14,000-year-old ocean mystery

At the end of the last Ice Age, as the world began to warm, a swath of the North Pacific Ocean came to life. During a brief pulse of biological productivity 14,000 years ago, this stretch of the sea teemed with phytoplankton, ...

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