All things geology, climate, oceans, and more
Asteroids that smash directly into Earth’s surface can cause extensive damage, but, as new evidence uncovered in east Antarctica suggests, asteroids that explode on entry can be equally devastating. Super tiny black balls made from igneous rock are evidence of a calamitous event in the Sør Rondane Mountains of Antarctica some 430,000 years ago, according…
New basalt just dropped. An international team of scientists drilled nearly a mile into the Pacific seafloor and extracted a variety of the volcanic stone chemically and mineralogically different from any previously known sort. The team examined a 49-million-year-old outcrop of stone that formed just a couple million years after the Ring of Fire, that…
A volcano in Iceland is currently spewing molten lava after roughly 800 years of sitting dormant. And thanks to the wonders of technology, anyone with an internet connection can watch it happening in real time. Oddly enough, it’s actually quite soothing to watch, as far as live videos go, especially when you know that people…
A long-dormant volcano erupted on Iceland’s Reykjanes Peninsula on Friday, shooting a fountain of lava that lit the night sky roughly 19 miles (30 kilometers) southwest of the nation’s capital, the Icelandic Meteorological Office reported Friday. The eruption, estimated to be the peninsula’s first in almost 800 years, follows weeks of increased seismic activity in…
The old saying goes that March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb. This year, that sheep is bringing along some worryingly dry conditions for the rest of the season. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released its spring outlook on Thursday and predicted that more than half the country may…
Rain and sunlight are the key ingredients of rainbows, but many other environmental factors are required to consistently pull off this visual trick, as new research shows. “Rainbows are some of the most spectacular optical phenomena in the natural world, and Hawaii is blessed with an amazing abundance of them,” opens a new science paper…
Billions of years ago, parts of Greenland were a molten sea, a sharp contrast to the pale-blue ice seen there today. Researchers have now found isotope signatures of that burbling, primordial Earth in basalt rocks near Nuuk. It’s generally accepted that early in its history, Earth had a big magma ocean; it’s a common step…
We’re one step closer to officially moving up hurricane season. The National Hurricane Center announced Tuesday that it would formally start issuing its hurricane season tropical weather outlooks on May 15 this year, bumping it up from the traditional start of hurricane season on June 1. The move comes after a recent spate of early…
An iceberg more than 20 times the size of Manhattan split off from the Brunt Ice Shelf in Antarctica this week because our planet is totally having a normal one. The ginormous iceberg measures roughly 490 square miles (1,270 square km) and is nearly 500 feet (150 meters) thick, according to the British Antarctic Survey.…
Many miles off the western coast of the Americas, an undersea cable connects Los Angeles, California to Valparaiso, Chile. Stretched end-to-end, it’s equal to four-fifths of the Earth’s diameter. The cable is fiber optic; it’s a lifeline for data transmitted between the two continents. But according to new research, the cable could easily serve a dual function:…
Tim Boyd, the mayor of Colorado City, Texas, announced his resignation on Tuesday following a viral Facebook post where he whined about residents who wanted help during the extreme weather that has caused widespread power outages and dangerously cold conditions for millions of people throughout the state. Boyd accused some Texans who didn’t have power…
Volcanoes can kill you in many different ways. Are you on their slopes? A volcanic avalanche of superheated ash and gas or a sneaky lava flow would do it. Far across the bay? A tsunami caused by a collapsing flank will be delivered to your door. On the other side of the planet? The aerosols…
Stunning new evidence suggests the Arctic Ocean was covered by a thick layer of ice and filled with fresh water on at least two occasions during the past 150,000 years. The observation could finally explain strange and dramatic climate anomalies associated with these glacial periods. With all the human-induced melting that’s going on these days,…
Recent years have brought record-breaking wildfires, hurricanes, and other natural disasters supercharged by climate change. But even to our jaded modern eyes, the weather that befell Bristol in Western England at the turn of 17th century is pretty shocking. The meteorological situation in Bristol occurred during a short timespan within the Little Ice Age called…
After last year’s winter without a winter, New York is making up for it. A major nor’easter is crawling up the coast, the second big storm of the season to hit the city. It could bring nearly two feet of snow to New York and wreak havoc up and down the Eastern Seaboard. New Yorkers…
In March 2016, a research team dropped 39 seismometers to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean off the western tip of Africa, to listen for the rumblings of earthquakes near and far. A year later, they’ve found a hidden story of how the continents are growing farther apart—not pulled from either side by subduction zones,…
The truly frightening dust storm caused at least one fatal car crash.
In case you need more proof that we live in hell, a massive sinkhole opened in an Italian hospital’s parking lot on Friday. The gaping hole, which was 66 feet (20 meters) deep and 21,527 square feet (2,000 square meters) wide, swallowed at least three cars in the Naples car park. It also disrupted the…
A week into 2021, the lesson is already clear that things can get so, so much worse. As if to underscore that, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released a report on Friday looking back on 2020, which shows that the U.S. saw a record number of billion-dollar-plus disasters. Yet the total losses weren’t as…
The year 2020 will be remembered for many things, most of them unpleasant, but it will also be remembered for being one of the fastest on record, due to our planet’s accelerating rate of spin. Should this trend continue, it could result in an unprecedented “negative leap second.” Our clocks are falling out of sync,…
