Earth Sciences

University of Arizona scientists have discovered why Eros, the largest near-Earth asteroid, has so few small craters. When the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) mission orbited Eros from February 2000 to February 2001, it revealed an asteroid covered with regolith — a loose layer of rocks, gravel and dust — and embedded with numerous large boulders. The spacecraft also found places where the regolith apparently had slumped, or flowed downhill, exposing fresh surface underneat

A paper published in today’s Nature suggests that global warming could rapidly accelerate due to a positive feedback mechanism caused by water vapour or rainfall. The paper, which examines a period of rapid climate change 55 million years ago, during the Paleocene and Eocene, offers a clear indication of how gradual global warming can rapidly speed up, causing catastrophic effects.

Until recently, the prevailing view was that the temperature rise during the Paleocene/Eocene,

Research cruise provides new information on tsunami during survey of remote area

A summer voyage to investigate the causes of one of the most devastating tsunamis in United States history has uncovered new mysteries about biological and geological processes off Alaska. Probing the depths below one of the world’s most important fisheries, scientists with Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, as well as Indiana State University and their

An academic from the University of Sheffield has produced the first glacial map of Britain, which could allow us to better predict climate change in the future. The map is published in the latest edition of the journal Boreas.

Dr Chris Clark, of the University’s Department of Geography, along with colleagues, has compiled over 150 years of scientific discovery to create the Glacial Map, which itself is the result of over ten years’ work. The map identifies over 20,000 geographical

It was not that cold in subarctic areas of Russia during the epoch of the latest glaciation. This has been proved by the remains of animals found there – not only remains of such frost-resisting animals as mammoths and reindeers, but also those of horses.

During the latest ice age, i.e. 25-15,000 years ago, it was not that cold in the subarctic part of the trans-Ural region as it had been considered earlier. The territory was not covered by glacial wilderness, but by dry and low-sn

The invasive sea squirt that federal and university researchers discovered on Georges Bank a year ago is flourishing in U.S. waters near the U.S.-Canada boundary, a joint research team announced today following a research cruise that concluded last week.

Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the University of Rhode Island estimate that mats made of thousands of individual squirts infest a 40 square mi