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
30
1798
Over the last 540 million years, the Earth has weathered three major ice ages—periods during which global temperatures plummeted, producing extensive ice sheets and glaciers that have stretched beyond the polar caps.
Earth Sciences
Mar 14, 2019
11
2514
Deep under the ocean bed, a sinking tectonic plate causes a "swarm" of earthquakes, feeding molten rock into newly forming volcanoes, new research has discovered.
Earth Sciences
Jun 18, 2019
0
708
The temperature of Earth's interior affects everything from the movement of tectonic plates to the formation of the planet.
Earth Sciences
Mar 2, 2017
2
613
Scientists understand that Earth's magnetic field has flipped its polarity many times over the millennia. In other words, if you were alive about 800,000 years ago, and facing what we call north with a magnetic compass in ...
Earth Sciences
Nov 30, 2011
14
3
Friday's 8.9-magnitude temblor off the east coast of Japan ranks as one of the 10-largest earthquakes ever recorded. Though scientists have just begun to pore over the data, they have already made some surprising discoveries ...
Earth Sciences
Mar 12, 2011
8
0
Pangea, the supercontinent that contained most of the Earth's landmass until about 180 million years ago, endured an apocalyptic undoing during the Jurassic period, when the Atlantic Ocean opened up. This is well understood. ...
Earth Sciences
Dec 1, 2014
1
0
It's stunning but true that we know more about the surface of the moon than about the Earth's ocean floor. Much of what we do know has come from scientific ocean drilling – the systematic collection of core samples from ...
Earth Sciences
Sep 26, 2018
1
25
A new study carried out on the floor of Pacific Ocean provides the most detailed view yet of how the earth's mantle flows beneath the ocean's tectonic plates. The findings, published in the journal Nature, appear to upend ...
Earth Sciences
Jul 6, 2016
0
1265
From his geology lab at the University of Houston, Jonny Wu has discovered that a chain of volcanoes stretching between Northeast Asia and Russia began a period of silence 50 million years ago, which lasted for 10 million ...
Earth Sciences
Aug 26, 2019
0
1301
