Earthquake

The Earth’s inner core is incredibly tricky to study, since it’s buried beneath thousands of miles of rock. New seismic studies suggest that it’s not just a solid ball of iron, as has been assumed, but might have pockets of liquid iron throughout.

The mission may be defunct, but NASA’s InSight Mars lander is still discovering new things about the Red Planet. Scientists poring over data have now made the first direct observations of another planet’s core, and it’s not quite what we thought.

Everyone is familiar with sunken treasure on the ocean floor. Now, researchers may have found an ancient ocean floor that is itself a type of geological buried treasure. What's more, it has mountains that are five times taller than Everest.

NASA’s InSight has detected the strongest and longest quake on Mars so far. The event was five times more powerful than any previous marsquake, unleashing as much energy as all others combined. With the lander failing the record is unlikely to topple.

NASA’s InSight Mars lander has made two major new discoveries. By sensing seismic activity from the Red Planet, the craft has now detected a large meteorite impact, and found evidence of magma pools and volcanic activity still occurring today.

Predicting the likelihood and severity of earthquakes is important, but it’s hard to account for all factors. Researchers in New Zealand have now uncovered an overlooked factor that could affect the impact of the next big quake – tiny marine fossils.

NASA's InSight Mars lander is trading less life for more science after the space agency decided to let the spacecraft's remaining science instrument run until the lander's solar power system fails completely sometime in August or September.

NASA’s InSight lander has recorded the two strongest quakes detected so far on Mars, with both measuring over magnitude 4. These seismic events rolled in from the far side of the Red Planet, and one also clocked the record for longest marsquake.

NASA's InSight has provided … well, insight, into the inner workings of the Red Planet. By monitoring marsquakes over the past two years, the instrument measured the thickness and composition of Mars’ crust, mantle and core, revealing some surprises.

Most earthquakes last seconds to minutes, but others rumble along slowly for weeks or months, at low frequencies that may not be felt at the surface. Now researchers in Singapore have discovered the slowest earthquake ever found, lasting 32 years.

As part of a project that could greatly speed up the detection of tsunamis, Caltech and Google researchers have developed a method that turns operating submarine communication cables into earthquake detectors without using special equipment.

By understanding the upper limits of the wobbling that precariously balanced rocks have endured in the past, researchers can gain a picture of future earthquake risk, and a cutting-edge new technique could improve the accuracy of this modeling.