news 2020

Writing in PNAS, scientists from Cologne university present important new constraints showing that plate tectonics started relatively slow, although the early Earth's interior was much hotter than today. In an international collaboration earth scientists at the University of Cologne discovered that during Earth's early history mantle convection on, i.e. the internal mixing of our planet, was surprisingly slow and spatially restricted.

The weathering of rocks at the Earth's surface may remove less greenhouse gases from the atmosphere than previous estimates, says new research from the University of Cambridge.

The weathering of rocks at the Earth's surface may remove less greenhouse gases from the atmosphere than previous estimates, says new research from the University of Cambridge.

By Birgit Baustädter Neither hard like stone, nor soft like soil: transition rock is important for almost every construction project, but difficult to study. But this is now possible at the TU Graz. Transition rock is soft rock and hard soil; it is inhomogeneous, anisotropic and brittle. "This material can be found almost everywhere where building activities are undertaken.

Every year, earthquakes shake the ground and volcanoes erupt around the edges of tectonic plates-the massive pieces of Earth's crust that slide slowly across the planet, creating and destroying mountains and oceans on the scale of eons. But the question of when this plate subduction actually began has been a hotly contested debate in earth sciences.

New research reveals significant changes to the circulation of the North Pacific and its impact on the initial migration of humans from Asia to North America. The international study, led by the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and published Dec. 9 in Science Advances, provides a new picture of the circulation and climate of the North Pacific at the end of the last ice age, with implications for early human migration.

Was burial of the dead practiced by Neandertals or is it an innovation specific to our species? There are indications in favour of the first hypothesis but some scientists remain sceptical. For the first time in Europe, however, a multi-disciplinary team led by researchers at the CNRS and the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle (France) and the University of the Basque Country (Spain) 1 has demonstrated, using a variety of criteria, that a Neandertal child was buried, probably around 41,000 years ago, at the Ferrassie site (Dordogne).

Stanford researchers can predict where and when uranium is released into aquifers and suggest an easy fix to keep this naturally occurring toxin from contaminating water sources. Lurking in sediments and surrounding the precious groundwater beneath our feet is a dangerous toxin: uranium. Scientists have long known this and tested for it.

Erosion of the frozen soil of Arctic regions, known as permafrost, is creating large areas of subsidence, which has catastrophic impact in these regions sensitive to climate change. As the mechanisms behind these geological events are poorly understood, researchers from the Géosciences Paris Sud (GEOPS) laboratory (CNRS / Université Paris-Saclay), in cooperation with the Melnikov Permafrost Institute in Yakutsk, Russia, conducted a cold room 1 simulation of landslides, or slumps, caused by accelerated breakdown of the permafrost.

Stanford researchers used millimeter-sized crystals from the 1959 eruption of Hawaii's Kilauea Volcano to test models that offer insights about flow conditions prior to and during an eruption. Scientists striving to understand how and when volcanoes might erupt face a challenge: many of the processes take place deep underground in lava tubes churning with dangerous molten Earth.

Coral reefs are among the most diverse ecosystems in the world, protecting coastlines from erosion and supporting more than 500 million people through tourism and fishing livelihoods. But at the current rate of global warming, mass coral bleaching is expected to become more frequent and severe worldwide.

Precisely when will the long-lost US aircraft "Dakota" re-emerge from the Gauli Glacier? Radioactive traces from the Cold War now indicate that this will happen soon. It was a time that left its mark: as the great powers of the 1950s and 1960s carried out above-ground tests of their nuclear weapons, radioactive substances settled on the Earth's surface all around the world.

Martian geologist Kirsten Siebach among 13 chosen by NASA for rover mission Kirsten Siebach has to persevere a little longer, waiting for her ship to come in. That ship is in space , carrying a rover called Perseverance to Mars. And Siebach, a Martian geologist at Rice University, is now one of 13 scientists recently selected by NASA to help operate the rover and scout for samples that will eventually be returned to Earth.

Scientists from Heidelberg University investigate which factors determine the stability of ice masses in East Antarctica As temperatures rise due to climate change, the melting of polar ice sheets is accelerating. An international team of researchers led by geoscientist Dr Kim Jakob from Heidelberg University has now examined the dynamics of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet more closely.

An international team of geologists, headed by members of the University of Bern, has shown for the first time that the Swiss Alps are being lifted faster than they are being lowered through erosion - and are thus growing even higher. To do this, the researchers quantified the erosion of the Alps with the help of isotopes measured in the sand of more than 350 rivers throughout the European Alps.

A team of international scientists has gained new insights into Earth's atmosphere of 4.5 billion years ago. Their results have implications for the possible origins of life on Earth. Four-and-a-half billion years ago, Earth would have been hard to recognise. Instead of the forests, mountains and oceans that we know today, the surface of our planet was covered entirely by magma - the molten rocky material that emerges when volcanoes erupt.

Over the past 40,000 years, ice sheets thousands of kilometres apart have influenced one another through sea level changes, according to research . New modelling of ice sheet changes during the most recent glacial cycle by a McGill-led team offers a clearer idea of the mechanisms that drive change than had previously existed and explains newly available geological records.

Make geothermal energy safer by using supercomputer simulations. That is the aim of the research project FASTER (Forecasting and Assessing Seismicity and Thermal Evolution in Geothermal Reservoirs) which involves Università della Svizzera italiana (USI), the Swiss Seismic Service (SED), the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH), and the Swiss National Centre for Scientific Computing (CSCS).

Study offers clues about the fate of tectonic plates that sink deep in Earth's mantle In a study that gives new meaning to the term "rock bottom,” seismic researchers have discovered the underside of a rocky slab of Earth's surface layer, or lithosphere, that has been pulled more than 400 miles beneath northeastern China by the process of tectonic subduction.

Supercomputer simulations of planetary-scale interactions show how ocean storms and the structure of Earth's upper layers together generate much of the world's seismic waves. Decoding the faint but ubiquitous vibrations known as Love waves could yield insights about Earth's storm history, changing climate and interior.