Earth Sciences

Approximately 75,000 years ago, a massive explosive eruption from a volcano in western Indonesia (Toba caldera) coincided with the onset of the Earth’s last Ice Age.

In the current issue of Geology, University of Rhode Island geological oceanographers Meng-Yang Lee and Steven Carey; Chang-Hwa Chen and Yoshiyuki Iizuka of the Academia Sinica in Taiwan; and Kuo-Yen Wei of National Taiwan University describe their investigation into the possibility that eruptions from the Toba caldera on

Scientists have discovered why icy clouds found at the edge of space are higher at the South Pole than at the North. The answer to this puzzle is that the intensity of solar radiation at the South Pole is six percent higher than at the North Pole during the austral summer, as the Earth comes closer to the sun. New research from British Antarctic Survey and University of Illinois is reported in this month’s Geophysical Research Letters (published online 29 January 2004). This research helps under

Two scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have discovered that iron in Earth-core conditions melts at a pressure of 225 GPa (or 32 million pounds per square inch) or about 5,100 kelvins (8,720 degrees Fahrenheit).

Determining the melting point of iron is essential to determine the temperatures at core boundaries and the crystal structure of the Earth’s solid inner core. To date, the properties of iron at high pressure have been investigated experimentally through laser-h

Eleven Earth and space scientists say that a recent paper attributing most climate change on Earth to cosmic rays is incorrect and based on questionable methodology. Writing in the January 27 issue of Eos, published by the American Geophysical Union, Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and colleagues in Canada, France, Germany, Switzerland, and the United States challenge the cosmic ray hypothesis. In July 2003, astrophysicist Nir Shaviv and geologist Jan Ve

At the end of the Cretaceous, when large-sized theropods, such as Tyrannosaurus rex, roamed terrestrial environments, shallow seas and oceans were invaded by giant marine monitors – the mosasaurs. A recent investigation, presented in a new dissertation at Lund University in Sweden, has revealed that the Swedish mosasaur fauna is one of the most diverse assemblages known. Moreover, available data indicate that a major faunal turnover occurred about 80 million years ago.

The family Mosasaur

Massive Siberian peat bogs, widely known as the permanently frozen home of untold kilometers of moss and uncountable hordes of mosquitoes, also are huge repositories for gases that are thought to play an important role in the Earth’s climate balance, according to newly published research by a team of U.S. and Russian scientists in the Jan. 16 edition of the journal Science.

Those gases, carbon dioxide and methane, are known to trap heat in the Earth’s atmosphere, but the enormous